Parties in Russia: party system nationalisation in dominant party systems

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Maria Seredina
2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Langfield

What is responsible for the decline of democratically dominant parties and the corresponding growth of competitive party systems? This article argues that, despite a ruling party's dominance, opposition forces can gain by winning important subnational offices and then creating a governance record that they can use to win new supporters. It focuses on South Africa as a paradigmatic dominant party system, tracing the increased competitiveness of elections in Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province between 1999 and 2010. These events show how party strategies may evolve, reflecting how party elites can learn from forming coalitions.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
M. Moniruzzaman

<p>Political stability is desired by every state. But is it contingent upon regime types or party systems? Existing studies on political stability suggest that regimes such as authoritarianism, democracy, and dictatorship and their variants have variously influenced political stability. Some have proved to be friendly with political stability in certain countries, while counterproductive for some other. However, the existing literature has exclusively focused on regime types alone neglecting the factor of party systems. This article argues that not only regime types but party systems also influence political stability. Based on data from Asia, Africa and Latin America this article examines the following four assumptions. Firstly, absolute monarchy and absolute authoritarianism together with no or one party system generally maintain political stability. Secondly, constitutional monarchies together with multiparty system generally maintain political stability. Thirdly, presidentialism together with dominant party system generally maintains political stability. And finally, parliamentarianism together with multi-party system is generally negatively related with political stability.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-336
Author(s):  
Gülçın Balamır Coşkun

This article argues that the effects of high-level corruption scandals on the future of a dominant party depend on the existence of a rule of law system based on the separation of powers. The article will study two examples from a comparative perspective to concretise its theoretical claims: the Christian Democracy Party in Italy, which was the dominant party from 1948 to 1992, and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The comparison will be based on an institutionalist perspective. The first part tries to provide a theoretical clarification of the concepts of predominant party systems and corruption. The second part discusses whether the Turkish and Italian party systems can be classified as predominant and the characteristics of these systems. The final section seeks to draw out similarities and differences between these two systems and the effects corruption has on them.


2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Stephanie Burchard

Dominant party systems are defined by a lack of party alternation at the national level; however, dominant party systems do not inherently preclude electoral competition at the macro level, the micro level, or both. Nonetheless, little systematic work has documented the competitiveness of elections under a dominant party system. This article describes the nature of competition under one of sub-Saharan Africa's most enduring dominant party systems, Botswana. By examining electoral outcomes at the constituency level, this article demonstrates that elections in Botswana produce significant levels of competition, especially when compared to other sub-Saharan countries. Furthermore, electoral competitiveness appears unrelated to the party system at large: namely, competitiveness is no less or greater under dominant party systems than under multiparty systems.


1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1384-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Brass

This paper contributes to the substantive and methodological discussion of the issues concerning the causes of cabinet instability through analysis of data from Indian state politics. The focus of the analysis is on explaining the duration of Indian state governments in days with variables measuring the degree of fragmentation and cohesion in the party system, the composition of the cabinet, the characteristics of the opposition, and the role of ideological differences. A substantial amount of the variation in the durability of coalition governments is explained with variables that measure the degree of party system institutionalization and the extent of political opportunism, but ideological factors do not explain much of the differences in durability of governments. It is also found that none of the measures used can explain much of the variation in one-party majority governments for which, it is argued, explanations must be sought that focus on leadership skill and on relationships between leaders and factions in a dominant party.


1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 1239-1245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy J. Wiatr

Discussing the character of the Polish party system elsewhere, I have suggested a label of “hegemonic party system” for it, as well as for some other party systems based on similar principles. The hegemonic party systems stand mid-way between the mono-party systems and the dominant party systems as defined by Maurice Duverger. In an earlier paper written jointly with Rajni Kothari we have suggested the following typology of party systems:1. Alternative party systems, where two or more political parties compete for political power with realistic chances of success;2. Consensus party systems, where multi-partism does exist but one political party commands in a lasting way the loyalties of a predominant majority of the citizens and permanently runs the government;3. Hegemonic party systems, where all the existing parties form a lasting coalition within which one of them is accepted as the leading force of the coalition;4. Mono-party systems;5. Suspended party systems, where political parties exist but are prevented from regulating political life by other forces (for instance, by the military);6. Non-party systems, where the government is ideologically hostile toward the political parties as such and does not permit them to function.Quite obviously, this typology does not exclude mixed types of party systems. On the contrary, the very fact that in political life nothing is absolutely permanent leads to the emergence of transitory types of party systems.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Bielasiak ◽  
John W. Hulsey

The article examines how the structure of party systems, that is, effective number of political actors, electoral volatility, and shares of dominant party votes and seats, affect the initiation and direction of electoral reform in post-communist democracies. Based on a dataset of electoral rule changes in post-communist democracies from 1992 to 2008, we analyze the frequency and direction of reforms over time. The findings reveal that the frequency of reforms declines with successive electoral cycles but not to the degree suggested by theories of institutional inertia. Countries with high levels of voter volatility are more likely to engage in reforms; however, the findings in this article demonstrate that politicians react to volatility by inconsistently choosing between permissive and restrictive responses.


2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas van de Walle

This paper analyses the parties and party systems that have begun to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa's fledgling multiparty systems. Using a data base of 87 legislative elections convened in the 1990s, the paper identifies three trends. The position of parties late in the decade is primarily tributary of their performance in the first multiparty election conducted in the early 1990s. Parties that won founding elections are almost invariably still in power. Secondly, the typical emerging party system has consisted of a dominant party surrounded by a large number of small, unstable parties. Thirdly, party cleavages have been overwhelmingly ethno-linguistic in nature, while ideological and programmatic debates have been muted and rare. The second half of the paper provides tentative explanations for these striking patterns. It emphasises the illiberal nature of most of the new African democracies, their characteristic centralisation of power around the presidency, and the pervasive clientelism that structures the relationship between the state and the citizenry. These characteristics shape the incentives faced by individual politicians and thus much of their behaviour.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-353
Author(s):  
Rostislav Turovsky ◽  
Marina Sukhova

Abstract This article examines the differences between Russian voting at federal elections and regional legislature elections, both combined and conducted independently. The authors analyse these differences, their character and their dynamics as an important characteristic of the nationalisation of the party system. They also test hypotheses about a higher level of oppositional voting and competitiveness in subnational elections, in accordance with the theory of second-order elections, as well as the strategic nature of voting at federal elections, by contrast with expressive voting during subnational campaigns. The empirical study is based on calculating the differences in votes for leading Russian parties at subnational elections and at federal elections (simultaneous, preceding and following) from 2003, when mandatory voting on party lists was widespread among the regions, to 2019. The level of competitiveness is measured in a similar way, by calculating the effective number of parties. The study indicates a low level of autonomy of regional party systems, in many ways caused by the fact that the law made it impossible to create regional parties, and then also by the 2005 ban on creation of regional blocs. The strong connection between federal and regional elections in Russia clearly underlines the fluid and asynchronic nature of its electoral dynamics, where subnational elections typically predetermine the results of the following federal campaigns. At the same time, the formal success of the nationalisation of the party system, achieved by increasing the homogeneity of voting at the 2016 and 2018 federal elections, is not reflected by the opposing process of desynchronisation between federal and regional elections after Putin’s third-term election. There is also a clear rise in the scale of the differences between the two. At the same time, the study demonstrates the potential presence in Russia of features common to subnational elections in many countries: their greater support for the opposition and presence of affective voting. However, there is a clear exception to this trend during the period of maximum mobilisation of the loyal electorate at the subnational elections immediately following the accession of Crimea in 2014–2015, and such tendencies are generally restrained by the conditions of electoral authoritarianism.


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