Suchergebnisse

The Nordic Region offers innovative interpretative approaches and models to overcome the "dilemma between security and prosperity". In this region, integration and fragmentation have been well-balanced and grounded on diversity. The first aim of this article is to explain the reasons for peace in Nordic Europe, a task sometimes more difficult than explaining wars. Historical cases of pacific resolution of disputes and the possible reasons for those policies are considered. Finally, the theoretical foundations of these approaches and how they influenced the political institutions are also analyzed.

This essay examines the effects of the electoral reforms in Italy on the behaviour of political parties, focusing on their conflicting & cooperative interaction. It identifies the incentives provided by the two different electoral systems introduced in 1993 & in 2005. It emphasizes the crucial role played by the strategic coordination between parties -- whose main product has been the making of pre-election coalitions -- in the causal path going from the electoral rules to the election results & the party system. It discusses the main features of new Italian party system & of its evolution up to the 2006 general election, particularly the establishment of a bipolar setting & the high degree of party fragmentation. Tables, Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

The debate on citizen images of political parties is long standing, but recently it has taken on added importance as the evidence of party dealignment has spread across Western democracies. This article assembles an unprecedented cross-national array of public opinion data that describe current images of political parties. Sentiments are broadly negative, & this pessimism has deepened over the past generation. Then, we demonstrate how distrust of parties decreases voting turnout, contributes to the fragmentation of contemporary party systems & the electoral base of new protest parties, & stimulates broader cynicism of government. Although political parties are the foundation of the system of representative democracy, fewer citizens today trust political parties, & this is reshaping the nature of democratic politics. 7 Tables, 2 Figures, 48 References. Adapted from the source document.

Following a protracted period of political paralysis, in Mar 1992, Israel's parliament adopted a new & original institutional reform meant to address the political system's shortcomings -- mainly, a fragmented party system in which small parties were thought to hold excessive power & government coalitions were ineffective & costly. The new system -- adopted in 1996 & repealed in Mar 2001 -- introduced the direct election of the prime minister alongside general parliamentary elections, whose voting system remained unchanged. This article discusses the nature of the reform, its impact on Israel's political system, & the reasons that ultimately led to its early demise. It documents how certain shortcomings in the reform -- the use of a double ballot, the possibility of by-elections for the Prime Minister only, the persistence of the confidence vote, & the parliamentary power to vote early dissolution -- led to split ticket, party fragmentation, unworkable coalitions, government paralysis, & frequent early elections. A discussion of the system's performance 1996-2001 helps clarify why it failed to achieve its goals & why it was replaced with a slightly modified version of the old system in place before 1996. 1 Table, 4 Figures, 30 References. Adapted from the source document.

In 1970, a new institutional arena for interpolitical party competition was introduced in Italy with the creation of fifteen regions. This paper aims at developing the topic of territorial differentiation of the Italian party system. It highlights facets & features of regional party arenas through a comparison between these arenas & the national system. Five systemic properties are taken into account: fragmentation, concentration, competitiveness, net volatility, & regionalism of voting behavior. The various indexes measuring these dimensions have been computed from both regional & national election results. It appears that a general nondifferentiation between local & national arenas has occurred, with a few relevant exceptions. Also investigated is whether these properties & the pattern of regional voting have undergone any significant change during the transition from the so-called "first" to the "second" Italian Republic. Some distinctive cases &, overall, four clusters of local party systems are identified, & some hypotheses concerning the reasons for the emergence of the various patterns are offered. Notably, a "personal factor" in several southern regions may be regarded as relevant. 7 Tables, 3 Appendixes, 47 References. Adapted from the source document.

The article provides a systematic assessment of the Italian political transition through the results of three national elections, from 1994 to 2001, covering a wide variety of topics. In particular, the residual polarization assumed by the previous literature is found theoretically flawed & empirically disproved. The more recent center-periphery cleavage has evaporated with the demise of the Northern League. Far from being "winning," the political extremes are stable or losing; parties of the center, in turn, are declining at a faster pace than in comparable democracies, & their numbers are, by 2001, among the smallest, whereas they were the strongest 10 years ago. As a consequence, the Italian case shows the whole set of standard conditions for bipolar, centripetal competitions, though two problems remain: fragmentation, which might be cured with the electoral reform, but is not the main, nor the most deviant feature, of the present system; & a deep destructuration crisis, whose indicators distinguish more sharply the Italian parties from their European counterparts, & whose effects might be felt for a long time & significantly depress the system performance of the main political actors. 13 Tables, 55 References. Adapted from the source document.

The creation of an efficient Common Market has been, & for many aspects still is, the main goal of European regulation. Until the Single European Act, European regulation was mainly implemented through judicial policies, but during the 1990s the development of regulatory reforms called the EU for moving to a new form of regulation: administrative regulation. Today, in fields of policy like monetary policy, competition policy, telecommunication policy, & energy policy, the EU is called to implement European rules in a permanent, focused, sustained, & homogeneous way. Transnational networks made of national independent regulatory agencies have been created in order to achieve an efficient & effective regulation. Agency theory gives theoretical support to the creation of transnational regulatory networks. Nevertheless, an empirical analysis of successes & failures proves that institutional design of the network (independence, communication, & coordination) is only one out of four factors that can determine efficiency & effectiveness of European administrative regulation. The other factors are: the level of political support of the policy, the quality of European rules, & the structure of the policy field (fragmentation rather than the presence of one dominant powerful actor). Thus, in order to evaluate the probability of success or failure of transnational regulatory networks agency theory must be integrated in substantial ways. 3 Tables, 38 References. Adapted from the source document.

Lebanon is often considered the unique country in the Arab world that witnessed some form of democracy. Confessional conflicts and the long civil war have revealed the instability of "Lebanese democracy" but, at the same time, its everlasting endurance that prevents authoritarianism. One of the most interesting interpretations of this phenomenon is Lijphart's model of consociational democracy focusing on the role of elites. The consociational model works in Lebanon since its independence (1943) to the outbreak of the civil war (1975) and with some important modifications, it has been re-established during the Lebanese Second Republic (from 1989 until today). The founding elements of those periods are the various national pacts (1943, 1898, 2008) that contributed to the development of a system based on the balance among confessions. The civil war had modified the basis of the 1943 National pact and those of the consociational model. However, in the post war period, Lebanon adopted a new formula that was, again, clearly inspired by consociativism. The new consociational model is less flexible both at the institutional (troika system) and the social levels and increased confessional divisions thus preventing the attainment of any compromise among communities, which could guarantee a political equilibrium. Paradoxically consociativism has been institutionalized and transformed in a sort of "communitarized constitutionalism", a system that perceives fragmentation both insuperable and fundamental. Adapted from the source document.