The Party Systems of the Established Liberal Democracies in the 1990s: Is this a Decade of Transformation?

1995 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ware
Keyword(s):  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
General Election ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Regimes

DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE 1990s ABOUT ONE THIRD OF the countries which had been governed continuously by liberal democratic regimes since the mid-1950s experienced major electoral upheavals at a general election. In the case of eight countries an argument could be made that electoral politics was not as it had been, and that the party systems were now experiencing problems that were quite different in scale from those with which they had contended during the previous forty years. The countries concerned were:– Sweden, where the 1991 general election produced a major decline in the share of the vote (5.5 per cent of the total) for the governing Social Democrats; this was the largest change in its vote share between consecutive elections since 1944.

An Analysis of the 2005 Japanese General Election: Will Koizumi's Political Reforms Endure?

Asian Survey ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
General Election ◽  
Political Reforms ◽  
Liberal Democratic

Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro has attempted to reform both Japan's economy and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Despite his party's landslide victory in the 2005 election, Koizumi's political reforms are unlikely to have a lasting impact on either party or electoral politics.

scholarly journals Democratic state-legal regime: Twenty-First Century threats

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (44) ◽  
pp. 288-294
Author(s):  
Nazar Rudyi ◽  
Volodymyr Makarchuk ◽  
Lubov Zamorska ◽  
Ivanna Zdrenyk ◽  
Iryna Prodan
Keyword(s):  
Russian Federation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Legal Regime ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
China Model ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Twenty First Century

The article deals with the democratic state-legal regime in the light of the twenty-first century threats. It is noted that the presence of formal features of a democratic regime does not always ensure the functioning of such mechanisms and institutions of democracy as the division of power, freedom of speech and assembly, fair elections and others. The main internal and external destructive elements influencing both settled and developing liberal-democratic regimes are determined. Emphasis is placed on the destructive activities of the Russian Federation in destroying and discrediting the basic institutions of liberal democracies and popularizing the China model of an undemocratic state-legal regime. The influence of scientific and technological progress, political, social, economic, environmental and military factors on the transformation of liberal-democratic regimes and the world global order is revealed. The danger (for the whole liberal-democratic world in general and Ukraine in particular) of the use of such a phenomenon as "hybrid war" by the Russian Federation in the context of the spread of the fascist concept of "Russian world" is pointed out. It is proved that there is the need to preserve a liberal-democratic state-legal regime, as the most successful of all regimes offered to humanity, for future generations.

Trust and Elections

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Hooghe
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Low Levels

Political trust is closely related to various forms of electoral behavior. First, political trust tends to stimulate voter turnout, as distrusting citizens are less motivated to cast a vote. Second, low levels of political trust have been associated with an anti-incumbent vote and with populist voting. Third, taking part in elections can actually boost levels of political trust, although it is debatable whether this effect is limited to supporters of the winning party in elections. The occurrence of this winner-loser gap, however, seems to depend strongly on specific characteristics of electoral and party systems. Across liberal democracies, processes of electoral dealignment have led to lower levels of voter turnout and a higher vote share for populist parties. To a large extent, it remains to be investigated what causal role political trust plays in these processes.

Utilitarianism and Human Rights

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Gibbard
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Democratic Participation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Freedom Of Action

INTRODUCTIONWe look to rights for protection. The hope of advocates of “human rights” has been that certain protections might be accorded to allof humanity. Even in a world only a minority of whose inhabitants live under liberal democratic regimes, the hope is, certain standards accepted in the liberal democracies will gain universal recognition and respect. These include liberty of persons as opposed to enslavement, freedom from cruelty, freedom from arbitrary execution, from arbitrary imprisonment, and from arbitrary deprivation of property or livelihood, freedom of religion, and freedom of inquiry and expression.Philosophers, of course, concern themselves with the theory of rights, and that is partly because of the ways questions of rights bear on fundamental normative theory. By far the most highly developed general normative theory has been utilitarianism. Now many opponents of utilitarianism argue that considerations of rights discredit utilitarianism, that utilitarianism yields conclusions about rights that we would normally regard as faulty, and that moreover, the reasons for regarding those conclusions as faulty turn out, upon examination, to be stronger than the reasons forregarding utilitarianism as valid. A valid theory cannot have faulty conclusions, and so thinkingabout rights shows utilitarianism not to be a valid normative theory.Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the utilitarian movement in nineteenth century England, accepted the incompatibility of utilitarianism and “the rights of man, ” and rejected talkof the latter as “anarchical fallacies”. His great successor John Stuart Mill, however, argued that a perceptive and far–sighted utilitarianism supports strong rights both of democratic participation and of individual freedom of action.

Dilemmas of Inclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafaela M. Dancygier
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Equality And Diversity

As Europe's Muslim communities continue to grow, so does their impact on electoral politics and the potential for inclusion dilemmas. In vote-rich enclaves, Muslim views on religion, tradition, and gender roles can deviate sharply from those of the majority electorate, generating severe trade-offs for parties seeking to broaden their coalitions. This book explains when and why European political parties include Muslim candidates and voters, revealing that the ways in which parties recruit this new electorate can have lasting consequences. The book sheds new light on when minority recruitment will match up with existing party positions and uphold electoral alignments and when it will undermine party brands and shake up party systems. It demonstrates that when parties are seduced by the quick delivery of ethno-religious bloc votes, they undercut their ideological coherence, fail to establish programmatic linkages with Muslim voters, and miss their opportunity to build cross-ethnic, class-based coalitions. The book highlights how the politics of minority inclusion can become a testing ground for parties, showing just how far their commitments to equality and diversity will take them when push comes to electoral shove. Providing a unified theoretical framework for understanding the causes and consequences of minority political incorporation, and especially as these pertain to European Muslim populations, the book advances our knowledge about how ethnic and religious diversity reshapes domestic politics in today's democracies.

scholarly journals Threat or Corrective? Assessing the Impact of Populist Parties in Government on the Qualities of Democracy: A 19-Country Comparison

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Davide Vittori
Keyword(s):  
Negative Impact ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Country Comparison ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Scholars have long debated whether populism harms or improves the quality of democracy. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on the impact of populist parties in government. In particular, it inquires: (1) whether populists in government are more likely than non-populists to negatively affect the quality of democracies; (2) whether the role of populists in government matters; and (3) which type of populism is expected to negatively affect the quality of liberal-democratic regimes. The results find strong evidence that the role of populists in government affects several qualities of democracy. While robust, the findings related to (2) are less clear-cut than those pertaining to (1). Finally, regardless of their role in government, different types of populism have different impacts on the qualities of democracy. The results show that exclusionary populist parties in government tend to have more of a negative impact than other forms of populism.

Group-Differentiated Rights and the Liberal Democratic State: Rethinking the Headscarf Controversy in Turkey

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Arat
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Clifford Geertz ◽  
Ethnocultural Groups ◽  
Special Rights ◽  
The Relationship

The development of liberalism with both the courage and the capacity to engage itself with a different world, one in which its principles are neither well understood nor widely held, in which indeed it is, in most places, a minority creed, alien and suspect, is not only possible, it is necessary.-Clifford Geertz. 2000.Available Light.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, p. 258.Over the past two decades, the debate over multiculturalism challenged the justice of neutral, “difference blind” rules in liberal democracies. Allegedly neutral institutions were shown to be implicitly biased toward the priorities, experiences, or interests of the dominant groups in the society. Criticism of difference-blind rules and claims for justice to minority groups defined the relationship between government and opposition in many contexts. Arguments for special rights to protect minorities, women, or ethnocultural groups gained legitimacy (Young 1990, Jones 1990, Phillips 1991, Taylor 1994, Kymlicka 1995, Kymlicka and Norman 2000).

Does Liberal Democracy Presuppose a Cultural Nation? Four Arguments

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARASH ABIZADEH
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Shared Norms

This paper subjects to critical analysis four common arguments in the sociopolitical theory literature supporting the cultural nationalist thesis that liberal democracy is viable only against the background of a single national public culture: the arguments that (1) social integration in a liberal democracy requires shared norms and beliefs (Schnapper); (2) the levels of trust that democratic politics requires can be attained only among conationals (Miller); (3) democratic deliberation requires communicational transparency, possible in turn only within a shared national public culture (Miller, Barry); and (4) the economic viability of specifically industrialized liberal democracies requires a single national culture (Gellner). I argue that all four arguments fail: At best, a shared cultural nation may reduce some of the costs liberal democratic societies must incur; at worst, cultural nationalist policies ironically undermine social integration. The failure of these cultural nationalist arguments clears the way for a normative theory of liberal democracy in multinational and postnational contexts.

Position of Nepali Congress in the Electoral Politics of Nepal

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-42
Author(s):  
Amrit Kumar Shrestha
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Status ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Election Commission

Nepali Congress (NC) is one of the oldest political party of Nepal. It played a vital role to abolish the century long autocratic Rana rule in 1951. It fought against the party-less Panchayat system and the regressive step of the king. It opposes active kingship and communism. It believes in a representative democracy. It has participated in every election of Nepal that was conducted democratically. It won more than two-thirds majority seats in the first general election held in 1959. In every election, it stayed in the first or second position. This article tries to analyze the status of NC in the elections of Nepal. Data of seven general elections were examined in this article. Data were extracted basically from the reports of the Election Commission.

scholarly journals Security and democratic equality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Milstein
Keyword(s):  
Civil Liberty ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Democratic Community ◽  
Police Powers ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic Equality ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Fear Mongering ◽  
American Cities

Abstract After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fear-mongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal-democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document