This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).
Studies of party- and party-system stability have often explored the connection between the party-level property of Party Institutionalization (PI) and parties' electoral performance and organizational longevity, yet scholars still have not agreed on a standard measure for this concept. This article argues that the length of party statutes could provide part of such a measure, specifically for the extent to which parties have become routinized (a key dimension of PI) through the formalization of their rules and practices. We validate the plausibility of this measure using data on 303 parties from 49 countries, demonstrating that party statute length varies systematically and in ways predicted by our knowledge of how party organizations reflect their institutional environments and the complexity of internal coalitions. We also show that statute length varies in expected ways with attributes often associated with higher or lower levels of party institutionalization. We conclude that statute length offers a conceptually congruent and objective indicator of formalization, one that could be used either alone or combined with measures of parties' informal practices to advance our understanding of the relationship between PI and democratic development.
In this article, I make a first attempt at identifying how coalitions are represented in a state party's platform. Using the Christian Right as a test case for Republican coalition membership, I further examine the notion that platforms reflect elite opinion coalitions by linking coalition group influence to both elite opinion and the structure of the party organization. Using state Republican Party platforms from 2000, I identify the extent of Christian Right influence on each platform based on the proportion of platform paragraphs that focus on Christian Right issue positions and explain the variation in that proportion across states. My findings suggest that, indeed, the Christian Right's power as a coalition player is evident in state Republican Party platforms, and, at least for the Christian Right, it seems that both mass opinions and elite opinions are at work in determining the tone of the Republican Party platform.
This article focuses on the impact of online participation platforms on the internal organization and democracy of a set of emerging political parties such as the Five Star Movement, Podemos, France Insoumise, the Pirate Parties and Barcelona en Comu. Taking cue from the recent publication of Paolo Gerbaudo's book The Digital Party, the article argues that digital parties can be divided in two ideal party types: the platform party and the networked party. Whereas the platform party is highly centralized, led by a charismatic leader, and strictly focused on the electoral competition, the networked party is a more decentralized ideal party type, which allows policy proposals and leadership positions emerge from the network itself. The article concludes by noting that while it would be easy to cast these two variants of the digital party as an alternative between political realism and political idealism, both types of parties face symmetrical challenges such as how to move beyond plebiscitarian consultations and how to scale deliberation from the local level to the national level.
The "issue profiles" that emerge when the 2 major pol'al parties of the US are defined according to differing criteria are discussed. Data derive mainly from the U of Connecticut's Soc Sci Data Center. It is found that over a wide array of issues, from 1948 to the present, the Democratic Party, as defined by behavioral criteria (voting support), has been more "liberal" than its self-identified counterpart, while behavioral Republicans are persistently more "conservative" than self-identified GOP partisans. Any study of the "parties in the electorate" should take into account definitional biases. Most analysis has been confined to parties defined by the self-identification of the electorate. When behavioral constructions are used instead of partisan self-perception, there are consistently greater inter-party variations. The choice of which definition is to be used in determining the composition of the citizenry parties must be related to the analysis being performed & the election or elections examined. 4 Tables. Modified HA.
MANY RECENT DISCUSSIONS OF THE DECLINE OF PARTY ARE PREDICATED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE DUVERGER/SOCIALIST MASS-PARTY MODEL IS THE ONLY MODEL FOR PARTIES. THE AUTHORS CONTEND THAT THIS ASSUMPTION IS MISCONCEIVED, THAT THE MASS-PARTY MODEL IS ONLY ONE, TEMPORALLY LIMITED AND CONTINGENT MODEL, AND THAT IT IS NECESSARY TO DIFFERENTIATE NOTIONS OF ADAPTATION AND CHANGE FROM NOTIONS OF DECLINE OR FAILURE. FOLLOWING AN ANALYSIS OF HOW VARIOUS MODELS OF PARTY CAN BE LOCATED IN TERMS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE STATE, THE AUTHORS CONTEND THAT THE RECENT PERIOD HAS WITNESSED THE EMERGENCE OF A NEW MODEL OF PARTY, THE CARTEL PARTY, IN WHICH COLLUDING PARTIES BECOME AGENTS OF THE STATE AND EMPLOY THE RESOURCES OF THE STATE (THE PARTY STATE) TO ENSURE THEIR OWN COLLECTIVE SURVIVAL. FINALLY, THE AUTHORS SUGGEST THAT THE RECENT CHALLENGE TO PARTY IS IN FACT A CHALLENGE TO THE CARTEL THAT THE ESTABLISHED PARTIES HAVE CREATED FOR THEMSELVES.
The entry and success of new parties has become a regular event in modern democracies. From the emergence of green to protest parties, new movements have entered the electoral arena. This article addresses one of the less studied aspects of new parties: the dynamic process of party exit and entry into politics. The article argues that changes to the party system, produced by the collapse of a political party, can lead to the successful entrance of new parties in the next election. The premise is that one party's loss is a future one's gain. The empirical results provide strong evidence that the size of the policy space created by a party collapse has a substantial impact on the level of new party's success.
Many recent discussions of the decline of party are predicated on the assumption that the Duverger/socialist mass-party model is the only model for parties. We contend that this assumption is misconceived, that the mass-party model is only one, temporally limited and contingent model, and that it is necessary to differentiate notions of adaptation and change from notions of decline or failure. Following an analysis of how various models of party can be located in terms of the relationship between civil society and the state, we contend that the recent period has witnessed the emergence of a new model of party, the cartel party, in which colluding parties become agents of the state and employ the resources of the state (the party state) to ensure their own collective survival. Finally, we suggest that the recent challenge to party is in fact a challenge to the cartel that the established parties have created for themselves.
'Party identification' has been variously described: as an anchor; as constituting 'psychological membership' of, or 'psychological identification' with the party; and so on. The compilers of a recent collection of political attitude measures, published under the auspices of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (where most of the election analyses since 1952 have pivoted about the concept), even describe party identification as 'probably the most important attitude variable in the field of political behavior'.² But the term itself and its connotations are misleading. Even where they do not suggest a borrowing from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysisγ they tend to define away a set of questions that need to be answered: a preference for one party compared to what?; an intense preference, in what sense and compared to whom?4In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that 'if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free', and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.
Theories that explain variations in party systems typically emphasize the role of political institutions and social cleavages. Using a panel dataset of election returns from 15 Indian states from 1967 to 2004. this article establishes considerable variation in the effective number of parties across states and over time, despite the same political institutions and relatively stable social cleavages. We argue that a hitherto ignored dimension, the level of party organization, has a significant impact on the nature of the party system. The level of party organization incentivizes politicians differently in terms of their decision to stay, join another party or float a new party, when their ambitions are thwarted within a party. To test this theory, a unique indicator of party organization is developed on the basis of extensive qualitative research. We find that in Indian states where parties are more organized, both the effective number of parties and electoral volatility are lower.