The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Basile
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Italian Case

AbstractThis paper sheds light on the role played by political parties in influencing policy change, by connecting literature on party competition and agenda-setting and focusing on a single-issue domain, namely decentralization in Italy from 1948 to 2013. The article argues that major decentralist reforms usually followed electoral campaigns in which most parties focused attention on the issue. Such shifts in attention are caused by, among other things, the issue entrepreneurship activity undertaken by individual parties that are trying to influence the party system agenda and obtain electoral, office, or policy advantage. Contrary to the expectations of the issue entrepreneurship model, however, the analyses reveal that the entrepreneurship role on decentralization in Italy was not played by those parties that can be classified as ‘political losers’ in the party system; rather, in the case of the policy of decentralization in Italy, issue entrepreneurship activity is mostly explained by strategic considerations other than purely electoral ones.

Party Politics Triumph over Substantive Scrutiny and Principled Policy: Examining Czech MPs’ Voting Behaviour in Regard to EU Affairs

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Martin Kuta
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
The Eu

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances – which are expressed through voting – towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties’ behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system.

Founding Coalitions in Southern Europe: Legitimacy and Hegemony

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Di Palma
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Broad Agreement ◽  
Easy Answer ◽  
Europe Today

ULTIMATELY, POLITICAL PARTIES ARE FOR GOVERNING; BUT who shall govern? In some countries the decision rests by broad agreement on the normal waxing and waning of electoral sympathies. Not so in Southern Europe today. Hopes or fears ofcontinuismo, have combined since the mid-1970s to raise divisive issues about the governing credibility of many parties, as Portugal and Spain inaugurated a party system after decades of no-party politics, Greece reinstated party competition after a briefer military rule, and Italy's parties underwent the most complicated electoral and coalitional test in thirty years of democracy.Otherwise said, the complexity of coalitional preferences does not reflect a generic situation of competitive multi-party politics. It reflects a specific situation of crisis of founding coalitions, and therefore points to a lingering issue of legitimation. Who then, shall govern in Southern Europe, and with what legitimacy? The question admits no easy answer.

The evolution of party funding in Italy: a case of inclusive cartelisation?

Modern Italy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Pizzimenti
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
System Level ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Collusive Behaviour

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the Italian public funding regime, in the light of the assumptions of the cartel party thesis. In the mid-1990s, the debate on party and party system change was revitalised by R. Katz and P. Mair (1995), who introduced the concept of the ‘cartel party’ as a means to study the increasing influence of the state on party politics. Among the main analytical dimensions of the cartel party argument, the system-level variables have received little attention with respect to the Italian case. In what follows I try to find out empirical evidence for the hypothesised changes in the relationship between parties and the state and in the patterns of inter-party competition. I will analyse the trends of the law-making process in the domain of party funding (1948–2014), by combining these observations with data on parties’ reliance on state funds and party collusive behaviour.

Divergent Paths of Inequality in Turkey and Spain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekrem Karakoç
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Party System ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Key Sectors

Using most similar design and process-tracing methodology, this chapter investigates the divergent outcomes in income inequality in Turkey and Spain. Even though social-security systems in both countries have been hierarchical, benefiting civil servants, the security apparatus, and workers in key sectors and others in formal sectors at the expense of the rest, they have adopted different social policies over time. This chapter discusses how Turkish governments, with a focus on 1983 to the present time, have designed contributory and noncontributory pensions, healthcare, and other social programs that have affected household income differently. In democratic Spain, however, pension-related policies and unemployment benefits have been dominant forms of social policy, but the Spanish party system has not created major incentives for political parties to utilize these policies in electoral campaigns until recently. This chapter ends with a discussion of how social policies in Turkey and Spain have affected inequality since the two nations transitioned to democracy.

The functions and positions of political parties in consociational democracies: theoretical and empirical contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
O. Morhuniuk
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Further Development

An article is devoted to the analysis of the functions and formats of political parties in consociational democracies. In particular, it is defined that parties that represent the interests of certain subcultures in society and that reach a consensus among themselves at the level of political agreements are called segmental. At the same time, parties that encapsulate different subgroups of the society that cooperate inside the party within main features of the consociational theory (grand coalition, mutual veto, proportionality in representations, and independence of segments or society subcultures) are called consociational. The theory of consociationalism has received a wide range of theoretical additions and criticism from political scientists over the past fifty years. And while political parties should have been, by definition, one of the key aspects of research within such democratic regimes (parties are part of large coalitions and agents of representation of certain subcultures), there is very scarce number of literature that focuses on this aspect. Therefore, the presented article provides a description of the functions of political parties that could be observed as inside their subcultures as well as in interaction with other segmental parties. Based on the experience of two European countries in the period of “classical” consociationalism (Belgium and the Netherlands), we explain the functions of the parties we have defined in such societies with examples of relevant consociational practices in them. Simultaneously with the analysis of segmental parties, the article also offers the characteristics of consociational parties. The emergence of such parties has its own institutional and historical features. The way of further development of the party system and the level of preservation of consociational practices makes it possible to understand the nature of changes in the societies. Similarly, the analysis of the forms of party competition and interaction between segmental parties makes it possible to outline the forms of those consociational changes that are taking place in the research countries.

Conflict and cohesion within parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-236
Author(s):  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Key Questions

This chapter explores a number of key questions relating to intra-party cohesion and conflict in Britain. To what extent do parliamentary backbenchers influence the development of government policy? How factionalized are British political parties? And what bearing does intra-party politics have on matters of cross-party cooperation and realignment? We discuss conceptual distinctions between factions, tendencies, and single-issue alliances, before going on to identify the main attitudinal clusters within the major parties’ extra-parliamentary memberships and parliamentary groups today. The chapter further identifies the most significant intra-party groups that exist inside parliament and among the parties’ grassroots.

Radical Party Politics and Mobilization Against It in the Slovak Parliamentary Elections 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-352
Author(s):  
Oľga Gyárfášová ◽  
Peter Učeň
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The People ◽  
Election Results

This article reviews certain trends in popular support for political parties – especially new ones – as they manifested themselves prior to and during the 2020 parliamentary elections. It summarizes the ways in which demand for change was expressed before and during the election through the election results and the data on party supporters. It concludes that the thesis on the radicalization of new generations of party-political challenges in the Slovak polity did not hold true in 2020. The main research question regards the possibility of conceptualizing the rise of two new moderate political parties, PS/Together and For the People, as a counter-mobilization against the previous emergence of radical anti-establishment and anti-systemic challengers within the party system.

Republicans and Socialists and the Origins of Italian Political Parties

Modern Italy ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-325
Author(s):  
Paolo Morisi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Initial Formation ◽  
National Crisis ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Science Centres

A central debate in political science centres on the origins of political parties and specifically on the question as to whether they emerged as a result of the rise of parliamentary institutions. Regarding the Italian party system, the commonly held view is that Italian parties emerged as a consequence of national unification and the establishment of parliament. This article contributes to the debate on the origins of Italian parties by presenting empirical evidence on the timing of their initial formation, analysing data regarding the social base, membership, organisational articulation and policy-making accomplishments of the two major political movements active before and after the establishment of the national parliament. The article argues that, at least in the Italian case, parties did not originate in the legislature; rather, similar to countries such as Germany and Spain, Italian parties developed as a result of a major national crisis.

How Does May’s Law Work in Multi-dimensional Competition? Intra-party Opinion Structure in Catalonia

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Montserrat Baras ◽  
Oscar Barberà ◽  
Astrid Barrio ◽  
Juan Rodríguez-Teruel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition

AbstractThis article explores how multi-dimensional competition party systems shape the intraparty opinion structure in political parties. The aim is to extend and test May’s law of ideological curvilinear disparity to multi-dimensional settings. The data are based on the case of Catalonia, a party system characterized by the relevant presence of non-state wide parties, where political competition is based on two main dimensions: the left right axis and the subjective national identity one. The paper shows that while the Catalan parties do fit with May’s law in the left-right axis, this is not the case in the national identity one. In addition, it further illustrates how the interaction between both axes affects party competition and internal opinion differences between leaders, activists and voters. The results attest the complexity of the intraparty opinion structures in multidimensional competition systems.

scholarly journals Political Parties and the War

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Party Control ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Political Conditions

The pathology of political parties is illustrated under especially illuminating circumstances during time of war. The internal political conditions of every important nation are influenced to some extent by its external relations. War on a world-wide scale is the external relation which has the most profound influence upon the internal political conditions of every participating nation. This influence varies in different cases, depending upon the proximity of the particular nation to the scene of the conflict, the extent of its participation, the relative danger of invasion by its enemies, the character of the internal governmental organization, the length of the conflict, and other factors. In normal times, it has been found by experience in nations operating under the two-party system that oscillations in the fortunes of the two principal parties occur with a surprising degree of regularity. This see-saw of party politics may have an injurious effect upon the continuity and constructiveness of the nation's foreign policy even in normal times; its continuation in time of war when the nation's fate may be hanging in the balance would be a serious, if not intolerable, danger. One effect of war upon the party system, therefore, is to bring about, at least for a time, a relatively greater stability of party control, if not complete quiescence of partisanship, either through coalition or through cessation of party opposition, or both.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document