Suchergebnisse

Despite the fact that the catch-all thesis has profoundly affected scholarship on political parties, operationalizing the thesis and applying it to evaluate empirical cases has proved challenging for scholars. The thesis has been criticized for lacking a theoretical framework of analysis and clear causal logic. Therefore, while it is often cited it is rarely tested. In this article I develop a model of the catch-all thesis and then test it in the case of France, one of the original cases specified by Otto Kirchheimer in his observations. The French case exhibits competing tendencies of party convergence and polarization with the persistence of ideology. Findings suggest some confirmation of the catch-all thesis prediction regarding bipolarization, yet not according to the rationale asserted in the thesis. Additionally, presidentialism effects prove an important explanatory factor and the 2007 elections suggest a possible catch-all party in the UMP. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

The 2005 German parliamentary elections produced two parties claiming victory, the inability to form a government, and Germany's second post-war grand coalition government. This article explores the peculiarities in the contemporary dynamic of the German party system. It considers the strategy and motivation of parties and the effect of party competition. A key focus is to revisit and evaluate the predictive power of Otto Kirchheimer's 'end of ideology' proposition in the German case. On the one hand, mainstream parties seem to be converging at the ideological centre across Western Europe. At the same time, some party polarisation within the party system is evident as more marginal parties such as those of the far left and far right have gained votes at the expense of the mainstream parties in recent elections. A third possibility is that both of these circumstances have produced a political void with voters becoming increasingly apathetic and non-ideological. This paper argues that in the aggregate, trends do not reflect the predictions of Kirchheimer. (German Politics / FUB)