Party and Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Development ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The State ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Post War ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes

The book integrates philosophical, historical, and empirical analyses in order to highlight the profound roots of the limited legitimation of parties in contemporary society. Political parties’ long attempts to gain legitimacy are analysed from a philosophical–historical perspective pinpointing crucial passages in their theoretical and empirical acceptance. The book illustrates the process through which parties first emerged and then achieved full legitimacy in the early twentieth century. It shows how, paradoxically, their role became absolute in the totalitarian regimes of the interwar period when the party became hyper-powerful. In the post-war period, parties shifted from a golden age of positive reception and organizational development towards a more difficult relationship with society as it moved into post-industrialism. Parties were unable to master societal change and favoured the state to recover resources they were no longer able to extract from their constituencies. Parties have become richer and more powerful, but they have ‘paid’ for their pervasive presence in society and the state with a declining legitimacy. The party today is caught in a dramatic contradiction. It has become a sort of Leviathan with clay feet: very powerful thanks to the resources it gets from the state and to its control of societal and state spheres due to an extension of clientelistic and patronage practices; but very weak in terms of legitimacy and confidence in the eyes of the mass public. However, it is argued that there is still no alternative to the party, and some hypotheses to enhance party democracy are advanced.

scholarly journals Politics of Identity and Redrawing the State Boundaries in India: An Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol IV (III) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shoaib Malik ◽  
Azhar Mahmood Abbasi ◽  
Saima Gul
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The State ◽  
Politics Of Identity ◽  
New States ◽  
Indian State ◽  
The Creation

This article will examine the idea of new states/provinces in India. How India created 16 new states on ethno-lingual, and other lines and accommodate the ethnic groups. The case study of India is focussing on the different factors; including constitutional setup and role of different political parties of India in making of the new state. The following three basic questions investigate the paper’s perspective. First; what has been the basis of demands for the creation of new states in India? Second; what are the main hurdles in the reorganization of state and what urged the redemarcation of states in India? Third; what has been the stance of political Parties about the creation of new states in Indian state?

The Forgotten Pogroms, 1918

Slavic Review ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 648-653
Author(s):  
Michael L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
War Power

The outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in the former Habsburg lands in the fall of 1918 are often overlooked, in part because of the subsequent violence in Hungary (1919–1921), in part because of the myth of Czechoslovak exceptionalism that emerged during the interwar period. It is tempting to view the post-war power vacuum as the main context – and catalyst – for this wave of violence that erupted after the collapse of the monarchy. A closer look at the anti-Jewish violence, however, suggests that it was part of the state-building process, or at least part of an effort to demarcate the exclusive terms of membership in the newly-established states. In explaining or justifying the anti-Jewish violence, perpetrators (and their supporters) often invoked the canard of Jewish “provocation” or the myth of Jewish “power” as part of a larger discourse of exclusion that placed Jews outside the Hungarian, Polish, or Czechoslovak body politic.

scholarly journals Transforming State Visions: Ideology and Ideas in Armed Groups Turned Political Parties – Introduction to Special Issue

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devon E.A. Curtis ◽  
Gyda M. Sindre
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The State ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The Third ◽  
Post War

How do the visions of the state articulated by armed movements during conflict change when they become political parties after war? We show that ideas about the state are often central to the strategies and direction of these new parties, but there is variation in the extent to which these ideas have changed. The first part of this article shows why a focus on former rebel parties provides valuable insights into the role of ideas in post-war politics. The second part draws on the literatures on civil wars and political parties to highlight their relevance for former rebel parties. The third part provides a framework for understanding the variation in the role of ideology in former rebel parties, by focusing on ideological content and explanations of post-war ideological continuity and change. This part also introduces the other articles in the special issue and wider collection. Finally, we discuss the effects of these ideologies when they encounter other logics of post-war politics.

Towards the Final Legitimation of the Party

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Sole Source ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Formation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Dominant Influence

Chapter 3 investigates the process of party formation in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and demonstrates the important role of cultural and societal premises for the development of political parties in the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid in this context to the conditions in which the two mass parties, socialists and Christian democrats, were established. A larger set of Western European countries included in this analysis is thoroughly scrutinized. Despite discontent among traditional liberal-conservative elites, full endorsement of the political party was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the interwar totalitarian party, especially under the guise of Italian and German fascism, when ‘the party’ attained its most dominant influence as the sole source and locus of power. The chapter concludes by suggesting hidden and unaccounted heritages of that experience in post-war politics.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
International Monetary System ◽  
The State ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The aim of this book has been to evaluate the relationship between Britain’s financial sector, based in the City of London, and the social democratic economic strategy of post-war Britain. The central argument presented in the book was that changes to the City during the 1960s and 1970s undermined a number of the key post-war social democratic techniques designed to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Financial institutionalization weakened the state’s ability to influence investment, and the labour movement was unable successfully to integrate the institutionalized funds within a renewed social democratic economic agenda. The post-war settlement in banking came under strain in the 1960s as new banking and credit institutions developed that the state struggled to manage. This was exacerbated by the decision to introduce competition among the clearing banks in 1971, which further weakened the state’s capacity to control the provision and allocation of credit to the real economy. The resurrection of an unregulated global capital market, centred on London, overwhelmed the capacity of the state to pursue domestic-focused macroeconomic policies—a problem worsened by the concurrent collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Against this background, the fundamental social democratic assumption that national prosperity could be achieved only through industry-led growth and modernization was undermined by an effective campaign to reconceptualize Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation with the City of London at its heart....

State Sponsored Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
British Council ◽  
Material Condition ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Satanic Verses ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
Post War ◽  
Archival Work

Debates about the value of the ‘literary’ rarely register the expressive acts of state subsidy, sponsorship, and cultural policy that have shaped post-war Britain. In State Sponsored Literature, Asha Rogers argues that the modern state was a major material condition of literature, even as its efforts were relative, partial, and prone to disruption. Drawing from neglected and occasionally unexpected archives, she shows how the state became an integral and conflicted custodian of literary freedom in the postcolonial world as beliefs about literature’s ‘public’ were radically challenged by the unrivalled migration to Britain at the end of Empire. State Sponsored Literature retells the story of literature’s place in modern Britain through original analysis of the institutional forces behind canon-formation and contestation, from the literature programmes of the British Council and Arts Council to the UK’s fraught relations with UNESCO, from GCSE literature anthologies to the origins of The Satanic Verses in migrant Camden. The state did not shape literary production in a vacuum, Rogers argues, rather its policies, practices, and priorities were inexorably shaped in turn. Demonstrating how archival work can potentially transform our understanding of literature and its reading publics, this book challenges how we think about literature’s value by asking what state involvement has meant for writers, readers, institutions, and the ideal of autonomy itself.

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