Members, leaders, and the distribution of power within parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 237-262
Author(s):  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Party Power

This chapter explores intra-party power. How far are British political parties elitist top-down institutions? What roles do grassroots members play and how much power do they wield? How much do leaders and members have in common ideologically, and does that matter in the competition for votes? In reviewing a wealth of empirical evidence that bears on these questions, the chapter draws on various classic models of party organization from cadre party to cartel party and finds that, notwithstanding their analytical usefulness, none of these models truly captures the complex reality of contemporary British party politics.

Born again, or born anew

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Beyens ◽  
Kris Deschouwer ◽  
Emilie van Haute ◽  
Tom Verthé
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Born Again ◽  
Two Stages

New-Flemish Alliance (N-VA) burst on the scene barely a decade ago and is now Belgium’s largest political party. One explanation for this success is that N-VA is not brand new but rose from the ashes of a dissolved party. How exactly should we differentiate between new and old parties? We use Barnea and Rahat’s (2011) analytical framework to assess dimensions of N-VA’s newness and capture the party at two stages – start-up and more developed. This shows that N-VA is a successor party, building on its predecessor’s ideology and programme, its electorate, activists and organization. However, we also find indicators that the party actively renewed in terms of ideology and party organization. The empirical evidence illustrates that newness of political parties should be conceived of as multi-dimensional, which allows for a more subtle approach to questions about the origin and varying success of new political parties.

Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Strategic Competition ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Issue Content ◽  
West European

This chapter presents an overview of the literature that deals with the issue content of West European party politics. As argued by de Vries and Marks (2012), there are basically two theoretical approaches to the struggle for the content of party politics. First, a bottom-up approach that sees the issue content of party politics as a reflection of social conflicts. Second, a top-down or strategic approach in which the issue content of party politics reflects the strategic competition among political parties. The presentation of the bottom-up approach focuses on presenting the most recent, prominent examples of such an approach, namely the works by Kriesi et al. (2008, 2012) and Hooghe and Marks (2018). The presentation of the top-down approach is more fragmented as the literature within this approach mainly consists of journal articles in which different elements of this approach have been developed.

Intra-Party Politics and Minority Coalition Government in South Korea

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOUNGMI KIM
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Organization Leadership ◽  
The Government ◽  
Key Dimensions

AbstractThis paper examines the internal dynamics of Korean political parties to understand why the minority coalition government of Kim Dae-jung suffered from political stalemate or deadlocks in the legislature. It shows that a focus on the size of the government in terms of a majority status in the legislature does not offer a convincing explanation of why the Kim Dae-jung administration slid towards ungovernability. Instead better insights come from an analysis of party organization, an aspect of party politics rarely examined through in-depth analysis. The paper shows that in terms of the key dimensions of organization (leadership type, factionalism, funding, linkage role) Korean political parties fail to connect citizens to the political system.

The Social and Attitudinal Basis of Political Parties: Cleavage Politics Revisited

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship

As a result of various political and non-political developments, the socio-culturally anchored and well structured character of European party systems has come under strain. This article assesses the overall social embeddedness of modern party politics and identifies newly emerging conflict-lines. It draws attention to phenomena that do not fit into the trend of dealignment, and discusses the relationship between group-based politics and democratic representation.

Oiling the Wheels of Multi-Party Politics in Africa: How Power Alternation Affects Party Financing in Ghana

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 666-682
Author(s):  
Joseph Oti Frimpong
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
Opposition Parties

Supplementing literature study with in-depth unstructured interviews from the two dominant political parties in Ghana on how they mobilize funds, the key argument of this article is that the loss of a presidential election in Ghana is a reduction in a party’s major income streams. Unlike other studies that look at incumbency advantage in party funding from the angle of governments’ policies that weaken the opposition parties, this article analyses incumbency from their sources of funds. It fulfils two major objectives of identifying the sources of funds of political parties and establishing the link between these sources and incumbency.

Why Legislative Networks? Analyzing Legislative Network Formation

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Wojcik
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Network Formation ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Exponential Random Graph Models ◽  
Graph Models ◽  
Personal Traits ◽  
Random Graph Models ◽  
Exponential Random Graph ◽  
The Social

Are the social networks of legislators affected more by their political parties or their personal traits? How does the party organization influence the tendency of members to work collectively on a day-to-day basis? In this paper, I explore the determinants of the relationships of legislators in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. I use exponential random graph models to evaluate the relative influence of personal traits versus party influence in generating legislator relationships. Despite a focus on personalism in Brazil, the analysis reveals that the effects of political parties on tie formation are roughly equal to the effects of personal traits, suggesting that networks may make political parties much more cohesive than contemporary literature would lead us to believe.

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.

scholarly journals Nationalists versus Ethnic based political parties In Ethiopia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miftah Mohammed Kemal
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
State And Society

Based on Secondary data the article analyzes party Politics in Ethiopia in light of its merits to building a democratic state and society in Ethiopia.

Switzerland’s Political Performance Compared: Determinants of a Success Story

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred G. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Inflation Rate ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Success Story ◽  
Interest Payment ◽  
Social Partnership ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
General Government ◽  
Central Bank Autonomy ◽  
Distribution Of Power

AbstractIn comparisons of OECD member countries, Switzerland receives top marks on central indicators of political performance such as the rate of unemployment, the inflation rate and general government net debt interest payment. Focusing on the period from 1990 to 2012, this essay examines the sources and causes of this success story, drawing not only on hypotheses and data that are specific to Switzerland but also on explanatory approaches that compare Switzerland to other wealthy democracies. Of the several key items involved – including the institutional, procedural and actor-related characteristics of Switzerland – the variables that have proven to be most important are those contributing to policy area-specific explanations (such as central bank autonomy, distributional conflict and fragmentation of fiscal policy), as well as indicators of social partnership in industrial relations and the distribution of power between political parties.

Lockout: Peace Formation in Northern Ireland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Mac Ginty
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Peace Process ◽  
State Level ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Pros And Cons

This chapter looks at the pros and cons of peace formation in Northern Ireland; a case where many would suppose that international, elite-level, and social claims had moved close together during the peace process, having been at least partly reconciled mainly by various international and state-level initiatives. This translates as a form of oligarchy between domestic political parties and the British and Irish governments which did its best to stage-manage popular input. Indeed, the agency of local actors was encouraged when deemed useful but was ignored if it fell outside of the intentions of the elite peace oligarchy unless it threatened a reversion to violence. At the same time, however, party politics managed to channel popular support into the peace process, even as popular legitimacy for the outcomes of this process was waning. The chapter argues that this level of peace process — elite negotiations and party politics — has not brought about reconciliation.

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