Modi’s party will be relaxed about upcoming polls

Significance Each of these states except Punjab has a government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Punjab is one of just three states with a chief minister that belongs to India’s main opposition Congress party. Impacts A poor showing by Congress would further reduce its leverage with other opposition parties in talks over forming a broad anti-Modi alliance. Victory in UP would enhance Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s national profile. Election campaigning will likely lead to a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Opposition Party Behavior and Minority Government Support

Opposition parties in minority governments are partly responsible for government stability without being able to neglect their accountability to the electorate, a dilemma that, as this book shows, has many electoral as well as policy advantages for opposition parties. This book’s analysis of opposition behavior in the Swedish Riksdag (1991–2018) sheds light on the rationality of minority governments from an opposition perspective: receiving political influence without jeopardizing one's party profile. The author studies oppositional behavior in Swedish minority governments using quantitative and qualitative methods.

Land Property Regime According to the Vidovdan Constitution and the Agrarian Question in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Тhe paper discusses the attitudes of political parties on land property regimes in the context of the agrarian issue, and dynamics of the debate on this matter in the Constitutional Committee and in the Constituent National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The very notion of “agrarian question” concerns specifically small peasant landholdings in the process of development of capitalism. This question was raised in the context of the debate on socio-economic problems that were invited by, and eventually, introduced into the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Vidovdan Constitution, 1921) under the pressure of progressive opposition parties and parts of the ruling political organizations.

Kabore's latest moves in Burkina Faso may buy time

Significance This forms part of a broader reform of government and the security sector begun in recent months and accelerated by the military’s worst single loss so far in its six-year battle against jihadist insurgents. Kabore seems for the moment to have weathered the resulting wave of street protests and opposition mobilisation. Impacts Kabore’s vulnerabilities will spur both allied and opposition parties to reassess their political strategies. Anti-French sentiment will rise and fall with general insecurity, partly due to disinformation campaigns. Insecurity will persist and perhaps worsen in the short term, despite sweeping military personnel changes.

The Critical Antecedents of Populism

Under “normal” circumstances, people unhappy with their personal or national conditions turn their attention to traditional opposition parties. Only when there is widespread political dissatisfaction with all existing political choices does the potential for populism coming to power arise. This chapter focuses on two critical antecedents that make populism in power possible: mass discontent with existing political arrangements/institutions and elite disarray. It shows that, in all the cases discussed in the book, they provide the critical antecedents in which populist candidacies thrive. These two antecedents are not the only possible causes of populism but, when jointly present, they are sufficient conditions for the election of a populist leader.

Do Elections (Still) Matter?

This book sheds new light on this central democratic concern based on an ambitious study of democratic mandates through the lens of agenda-setting in five West European countries since the 1980s. The authors develop and test a new model bridging studies of party competition, pledge fulfilment, and policymaking. The core argument is that electoral priorities are a major factor shaping policy agendas, but mandates should not be mistaken as partisan. Parties are like ‘snakes in tunnels’: they have distinctive priorities but they need to respond to emerging problems and their competitors’ priorities, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. The ‘tunnel of attention’ remains constraining in the policymaking arena, especially when opposition parties have resources to press governing parties to act on the campaign priorities. This key aspect of mandate responsiveness has been neglected so far because in traditional models of mandate representation, party platforms are conceived as a set of distinctive priorities, whose agenda-setting impact ultimately depends on the institutional capacity of the parties in office. Rather differently, this book suggests that counter-majoritarian institutions and windows for opposition parties generate key incentives to stick to the mandate. It shows that these findings hold across five very different democracies: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The results contribute to a renewal of mandate theories of representation and lead to question the idea underlying much of the comparative politics literature that majoritarian systems are more responsive than consensual ones.

Capacity, incentives, and mandate responsiveness

The absence of significant agenda-setting effects of party platforms in the UK, as found in all other countries, seems counterintuitive: the comparative literature would predict the greatest impact in majoritarian systems, while counter-majoritarian institutions are meant to dilute governing parties’ policymaking powers. Comparing different political and institutional configurations in each country over time, we can confirm such a moderating impact of counter-majoritarian institutions and coalition constraints. We then show that party incentives may help to disentangle the British paradox. High incentives in electoral periods are associated with strong programme-to-policy linkages, in particular in the UK. We conclude that majoritarian systems provide governing parties with extended institutional powers to implement their mandate, although this may limit their incentives: opposition parties have less opportunity to pressurize them and scrutinize any drift away from mandate priorities. Consensual systems limit governing parties’ institutional power, but the ‘tunnel’ of attention may generate strong incentives to stick to campaign priorities.

Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the book’s main findings, in particular the existence of “tunnels of attention” constraining campaign agendas and their implications with regard to mandate responsiveness and its institutional determinants. Coalition partners, as well as opposition parties, emerge as key forces incentivizing governments to stick to their progamme. Majoritarian systems provide governments with unique powers to shape policy, but excessive majoritarianism seems to limit their incentives to respect their mandate. In contrast, counter-majoritarian institutions generate hurdles on executive capacity, but also incentives to respond to ‘tunnel’ incentives. These conclusions have important implications for party competition, democratic representation, public policy and comparative institutions. They point to multiple intriguing directions for future research.

Prospects for Venezuela in 2022

Subject Prospects for Venezuela in 2022. Significance President Nicolas Maduro’s administration will enjoy a period of political ascendency following success in this month’s regional government elections. Economic recuperation ahead of the 2024 presidential election will be the policy priority. Opposition parties will be preoccupied with addressing internal factionalism and diminished popular support. The contradictions in US strategy on Venezuela will persist and undermine multilateral dialogue initiatives.

Prospects for Mexico in 2022

Significance The government faces challenges on several fronts, but looks set to benefit politically from the weakness of opposition parties, which are struggling to gain public trust.