The Turn of the Cycles

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Jack M. Balkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Good News ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Sexuality And Religion ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
Over Time

In the emerging party system, the Democrats will probably be the dominant party. The two major political parties will face off over identity issues like race, sexuality, and religion, but each party will be internally divided over issues of class and economic inequality. These fissures will become more pronounced over time and provide a long-term path for depolarization. Because each party will have a populist and a neoliberal wing, new forms of cross-party alliances will become possible—although the Democrats will remain more economically egalitarian than the Republicans for the foreseeable future. Whoever figures out how to create these cross-party coalitions will drive the direction of reform. The next regime will probably be turbulent and politics will be anything but peaceful. Real change that breaks the stranglehold of economic inequality will only come from difficult times that still lay ahead. The good news is that the cycles of constitutional time are slowly turning. The elements of renewal are available, if people have the courage to use them.

The Electoral System of Israel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Shugart
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Proportional Representation ◽  
Product Model ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Proportional Systems ◽  
Seat Allocation ◽  
Over Time

The electoral system of Israel is an “extreme” example of proportional representation because of its use of a single nationwide district. This feature has been a constant since 1949, while secondary features, such as legal thresholds and the proportional seat-allocation formula, have changed and had an impact on degrees of proportionality. The party system is highly fragmented, as expected in extreme proportional systems. By applying the Seat Product Model to indices of election outcomes, it is possible to determine whether Israel’s system is more or less fragmented and proportional than expected for its institutional design. This chapter reports that the long-term average outputs are about as expected, but they have fluctuated over time. Some of these fluctuations reflect changes in the secondary features of the system, while others are the results of political factors independent of the institutions.

Political Parties, Regimes, and Social Cleavages

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Riedl
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Antecedent Conditions ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Over Time

Historical institutionalism is central to the study of political parties because party creation, competition, and adaptation are fundamentally processes structured over time. In these processes, time and sequence frequently are necessary components of causal arguments in understanding contemporary political outcomes. An historical approach to party politics highlights how, in particular moments, agency and contingency can generate long-term legacies, whereas in other moments party systems are resilient to elite attempts to re-order competition. Historical institutionalist arguments identify the mechanisms that sustain particular outcomes over time, and demonstrate when change occurs, according to which constraints, opportunities, and antecedent conditions.

The Dynamics of the Party System Agenda

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Multidimensional Scaling ◽  
Party System ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Analytical Strategy ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

This chapter first addresses the question of whether the 23 issues included in the book can be reduced to a few dimensions in order to study attention to these dimensions. Such an approach would be very much in line with studies focusing on positional competition among political parties. To discuss this further, the chapter presents the results of a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis for each country based on the correlations of the 23 issues presented. MDS is a way of analysing whether groups of issues grow or decline together over time, which indicates that they are driven by similar attention dynamics. The MDS analysis does not find that issues argued to belong to the new, second dimension constitute a distinct group of issues in terms of issue attention dynamics. The chapter furthermore presents the reasons for studying immigration, the EU, the environment, education, and health care in the following chapters, including the ‘nested’ analytical strategy that will be pursued.

Electoral Systems in Context

2017 ◽  
pp. 920-942 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Allen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The Other ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
The Face ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the evolution of the Indonesian electoral system and its effects on political outcomes. Although Indonesia has repeatedly chosen to conduct elections using proportional representation, electoral rules have changed considerably over time. The chapter traces two trajectories of reform in the post-Suharto era: one restricting opportunities for small parties and the other restricting the power of party leadership. Efforts to shape party system outcomes using electoral rules have succeeded in some areas, particularly in preventing the formation of regional partisan cleavages. Yet the proliferation of political parties in the face of reforms meant to consolidate the party system underline the limits of institutional design.

scholarly journals The Influence of Media in the Evolution of Canadian Political Parties

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-45
Author(s):  
Madelaine Ware
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Media Influence ◽  
Federal System ◽  
The Media ◽  
Broadcast Radio ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

The types of political parties in Canada have drastically changed over the last 150 years, and so too has the dominant forms of media. My research explores the role the media has played in the evolution of the Canadian party system, and attempts to answer the question: How has media contributed to the changes in the party system over time, and how has it facilitated a shift between the types of parties? The federal system has seen elite parties, mass parties and brokerage parties, and the market-oriented party, and my research examines how the media has influenced the way parties communicate their platform and policies with the electorate. As well, I explore the dominant types and modes of media present in each type of party system: from newspapers, to the introduction of broadcast radio, to television, to the recent phenomena of social media. Media influence is the most significant factor in the evolution of the Canadian party system, as it is the primary vehicle for the delivery of information to Canadian citizens. 

scholarly journals How Stable Is Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? A Cross-Time, Cross-National Analysis

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Bech Seeberg
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Issue Ownership ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Know How ◽  
Comprehensive Data ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Cross National

Research on issue ownership is accelerating and so is its use in studies of voting and party behaviour. Yet we do not know how stable issue ownership is. Does it describe a solid, persistent association between a party and an issue in the eyes of the electorate, or does it describe a more fluid and fragile issue reputation of a party among the electorate? Theoretical and empirical work suggests both stability and variability in issue ownership. To get closer to an answer, this article presents and analyses unprecedented comprehensive data on issue ownership. The analysis identifies stability rather than change in issue ownership over time and similarity more than difference across countries, and therefore suggests that issue ownership is a general and long-term rather than a local and short-term phenomenon. The implications for how voters perceive parties are important.

Consensus and Conflict: A Content Analysis of American Party Platforms, 1840–1896

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Silver
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Alternative Programs ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Platforms ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
American Party ◽  
Over Time

Throughout the nineteenth century, political parties attempted to mediate local, state, and national conflicts to forge a winning electoral coalition. The question here is whether party leaders felt that success depended on offering clear divergent positions to their voters. In other words, to what extent did the parties present alternative programs to the electorate—at any specific time or over time? This study examines the growth of the two-party system in nineteenth-century America by focusing on the interaction of the elites of the Democrats and Whig/Republicans in forging their electoral message. The methodology includes a content analysis of national and state party platforms during presidential election years 1840 through 1896 to show when and where parties emphasized certain issue proposals. Ultimately, this is a story of interparty polarization—over time, the two major parties tended to emphasize the same issues and offer divergent positions in their platforms.

scholarly journals Long-term impacts of parliamentary gender quotas in a single-party system: Symbolic co-option or delayed integration?

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-606
Author(s):  
Devin K Joshi ◽  
Rakkee Thimothy
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Party System ◽  
Symbolic Representation ◽  
Gender Quotas ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
Gradual Rise ◽  
Over Time

In recent years scholars have shifted their attention from the causes behind parliamentary gender quotas to their consequences for women’s descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. We contribute to this literature by focusing on long-term effects of gender quotas in the context of an authoritarian one-party system. Here we contest dominant theoretical explanations which posit that gender quotas in authoritarian states primarily serve the goals of symbolic co-option and window-dressing. Rather, we argue that while authoritarian adaptation may motivate the introduction of gender quotas, these quotas may result over time in what we call a delayed integration process featuring a gradual rise of women into arenas of power alongside increasing professionalization and capabilities of women within parliament. This argument is tested and supported via a 72-year longitudinal analysis of over 6000 female and male representatives of the Vietnamese National Assembly, a single-party parliament with long-standing gender quotas.

Political Parties and Political Representation

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Esaiasson ◽  
Lena Wängnerud
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Mail Surveys ◽  
Versus Profile ◽  
Formal Framework ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Policy Agreement

Although Sweden is characterized by a stable formal framework for political representation, major changes during recent decades have affected the conditions in which political representation is exercised. A once orderly five-party system has evolved into an unwieldy eight-party system, and turnover in the Riksdag has increased. Parties are challenged from the inside by an increased presence of previously excluded groups, such as women and foreign-born representatives. Analyzing a unique series of mail surveys to Swedish MPs from 1985–2010, the chapter reports congruence on left–right issues versus profile issues for newcomer parties, gender gaps in policy priorities and policy standpoints, and trends in citizens’ trust in representative institutions. The long-term perspective demonstrates that Swedish political parties are successful survivors. There is stability in policy agreement on left–right issues, and the increased number of parties and women MPs has meant stronger agreement between certain segments of MPs and voters.

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