scholarly journals Do Populist Parties Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence From Over 40 Years of Electoral History in 31 European Democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arndt Leininger ◽  
Maurits J Meijers
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
The Relationship

While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determinants of voter turnout related to party competition. To fill this double gap in the literature, we examine the effect of populist parties, both left and right, on aggregate-level turnout in Western and Eastern European parliamentary elections. Based on a dataset on 315 elections in 31 European democracies since 1970s, we find that turnout is higher when populist parties are represented in parliament prior to an election in Eastern Europe, but not in Western Europe. These findings further our understanding of the relationship between populism, political participation and democracy.

A Note on Overseas Chinese Political Participation in Urban Malaya

1970 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-178
Author(s):  
Alvin Rabushka
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Transitional Societies ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Industrial Societies

The object of this note is to demonstrate that generalizations about political participation may be invalid when applied to “developing” or “transitional” societies. Specifically, the relationship between rates of voter turnout and levels of education for urban Chinese in Malaya is not consistent with results reported for Western societies.A geographical classification of bibliographic entries in Lester Milbrath's Political Participation discloses a very interesting statistic: only 3 of the 288 listed entries concern the transitional societies of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The lack of data on developing areas may, in large measure, explain the emphasis placed on studies of political participation in North America and Western Europe. Although there is more research on transitional societies today, most studies still focus on advanced industrial societies. The validity of the generalizations presented in Political Participation, therefore, is restricted to North America and Western Europe.Using data collected in Malaya (1957), I examine four of Milbrath's hypotheses. These include:(1) higher education increases participation (p.122);(2) middle-aged persons participate more than young or old persons (p. 134);(3) men are more likely to participate than women (p. 133); and(4) religion affects participation (p. 137).

Survival vs Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 241-261
Author(s):  
Fernando Casal Bértoa ◽  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
The Other ◽  
System Stability ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Special Pattern ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

The final chapter examines the impact of party system closure on the survival as well as the quality of democracy. We consider the question of whether closure is a necessary or sufficient precondition for the survival of democracy, and whether the other often proposed measures of party system stability, especially electoral volatility and parliamentary fragmentation, have a similarly important role. We use various indices to tap the quality of democracy, and we measure the relationship between these indices and closure by considering the intervening role of economic development. We find a special pattern in post-Communist Eastern Europe, indicating that closure can have pernicious consequences under certain conditions.

scholarly journals The Centre Does Not Hold: Coalition Politics and Party System Change in the Netherlands, 2002–12

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huib Pellikaan ◽  
Sarah L. de Lange ◽  
Tom W.G. van der Meer
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Coalition Formation Process ◽  
The Impact

Like many party systems across Western Europe, the Dutch party system has been in flux since 2002 as a result of a series of related developments, including the decline of mainstream parties which coincided with the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties and the concurrent dimensional transformation of the political space. This article analyses how these challenges to mainstream parties fundamentally affected the structure of party competition. On the basis of content analysis of party programmes, we examine the changing configuration of the Dutch party space since 2002 and investigate the impact of these changes on coalition-formation patterns. We conclude that the Dutch party system has become increasingly unstable. It has gradually lost its core through electoral fragmentation and mainstream parties’ positional shifts. The disappearance of a core party that dominates the coalition-formation process initially transformed the direction of party competition from centripetal to centrifugal. However, since 2012 a theoretically novel configuration has emerged in which no party or coherent group of parties dominates competition.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 217-236
Author(s):  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Augusto Valeriani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Democratic Life ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
The Relationship

Social media can contribute to the quality of democratic life by expanding the scope of citizens’ political participation and broadening the pool of participants. However, the relationship between political experiences on social media and political participation is not so strong as to justify unmitigated enthusiasm. Social media cannot and will not “save democracy” from citizens’ political apathy and distrust. While political experiences on social media do not disproportionately stimulate participation among ideologically extremist citizens, nor among those who voted for populist political actors, treating all forms of participation as equally desirable obscures important nuances that are key to evaluating social media’s contribution to democracy. Still, social media can be part of the solution to at least two important democratic ills—citizens’ disconnection from politics and inequalities between those who choose to exercise their voice and those who remain silent.

scholarly journals Conservation motivation, social equality and left-right ideological preferences in Western and Eastern Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márton Hadarics
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Great Part ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

We investigated how attitudes towards social equality can influence the relationship between conservation motivation (or openness) and personal ideological preferences on the left-right dimension, and how this relationship pattern differs between Western and Central & Eastern European (CEE) respondents. Using data from the European Social Survey (2012) we found that individual-level of conservation motivation reduces cultural egalitarianism in both the Western European and the CEE regions, but its connection with economic egalitarianism is only relevant in the CEE region where it fosters economic egalitarianism. Since both forms of egalitarianism were related to leftist ideological preferences in Western Europe, but in the CEE region only economic egalitarianism was ideologically relevant, we concluded that the classic “rigidity of the right” phenomenon is strongly related to cultural (anti)egalitarianism in Western Europe. At the same time, conservation motivation serves as a basis for the “rigidity of the left” in the post-socialist CEE region, in a great part due to the conventional egalitarian economic views.

scholarly journals The Quantity and the Quality of Party Systems

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (7) ◽  
pp. 899-920 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell J. Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Developing Democracies ◽  
Party Polarization ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
Ideological Voting

Previous research claims that the number of parties affects the representation of social cleavages in voting behavior, election turnout, patterns of political conflict, and other party system effects. This article argues that research typically counts the quantity of parties and that often the more important property is the quality of party competition—the polarization of political parties within a party system. The author first discusses why polarization is important to study. Second, the author provides a new measurement of party system polarization based on voter perceptions of party positions in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, which includes more than 50 separate elections from established and developing democracies. Third, the author compares party polarization and party fractionalization as influences on cleavage-based and ideological voting and as predictors of turnout levels. The finding is that party polarization is empirically more important in explaining these outcomes.

scholarly journals REGULASI PARTAI POLITIK DALAM MEWUJUDKAN PENGUATAN PERAN DAN FUNGSI KELEMBAGAAN PARTAI POLITIK

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 375
Author(s):  
Teguh Imansyah
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Party System ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
The Law

<p>Partai poli Ɵ k adalah pilar dari sistem demokrasi, sepak-terjang partai poli Ɵ k merupakan variabel yang mempengaruhi kualitas demokrasi. Jika partai poli Ɵ k menjalankan peran dan fungsinya dengan baik, kualitas demokrasi akan menjadi baik. Begitu pula sebaliknya.Namun realitas yang berkembang saat ini menunjukan lemahnya kelembagaan partai yang ada saat ini. Keadaan tersebut terlihat dari menurunnya Ɵ ngkat kepercayaanj terhadap partai dan maraknya kasus pelanggaran hukum yang terjadi pada para kader partai. Permasalahannya adalah bagaimana regulasi sistem kepartaian yang ada dalam membentuk kelembagaan partai untuk memenuhi fungsinya sebagai partai poli Ɵ k sesuai dengan undang-undang. Dengan menggunakan metode peneli Ɵ an sosio yuridis dapat disimpulkan bahwa regulasi kepartaian yang ada belum berpengaruh signi fi kan dalam penguatan kelembagaan partai. Lemahnya kelembagaan partai yang ada saat ini lebih disebabkan oleh sistem internal partai yang belum modern.</p><p>Poli Ɵ c party is a pillar of the democra Ɵ c system, the ac Ɵ ons of the poli Ɵ cal par Ɵ es are variables that a ff ect the quality of democracy. If poli Ɵ cal par Ɵ es ful fi ll their respec Ɵ ve roles and func Ɵ ons properly, the quality of democracy will be good, and vice versa. But the reality shows currently developing the ins Ɵ tu Ɵ onal weakness of the exis Ɵ ng par Ɵ es. The situa Ɵ on can be seen from the decline in the level of trust in the party and the rampant cases of law viola Ɵ ons that occurred at the party cadres. The issue is how the exis Ɵ ng regula Ɵ ons of the party system in the form of ins Ɵ tu Ɵ onal party to ful fi ll its func Ɵ on as a poli Ɵ cal party in accordance with the law. Using sosio-juridic research methods can be concluded that the regula Ɵ on of party that is not signi fi cant in the ins Ɵ tu Ɵ onal strengthening of the party. The ins Ɵ tu Ɵ onal weakness of the exis Ɵ ng party is more due to the party's internal systems were not modern.</p>

scholarly journals The Possibilities of Internet Voting in Jamaica: Moving from Convenience to Fixing the Problem of Voter Apathy among the Youth

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Internet Voting ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
The Relationship

Recent scholarship recognises the importance of information and communication technologies (ICT), particularly the Internet, and its focus on ways to overcome challenges to political participation. The advent of Internet voting or I‑voting in encouraging youth political participation has been framed within the context of convenience voting which can help to strengthen democracy by encouraging voting, especially among apathetic youth. This paper explores the relationship between Internet voting and youth political participation in the Jamaican society through a survey of 600 youth. The findings suggest that while it may not substantially reduce apathy, which is more intricately linked to perceived overarching systemic failures, Internet voting holds the potential to improve voter turnout at the polls. While convenience was not a major factor driving political apathy, it was an important factor in encouraging participation at the polls.

scholarly journals Hvordan gik det med lokaldemokratiet?

Politik ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sune Welling Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Structural Reform ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
The Relationship

The article reviews studies that have examined the local democratic consequences of the Danish Structural Reform, with focus on studies that have used the municipal amalgamations (which were part of the aforementioned reform) to study the relationship between the size of political systems and the quality of democracy in those systems. The reviewed studies tend to find negative effects of municipal size on the quality of local democracy, although the effects are weak to moderate in size. These results are consistent with the existing local government literature on the relationship between size and democracy, which also has shown that size does not matter much for the quality of democracy. If there indeed are differences between local democracies of different sizes then this has more to do with the characteristics of those who choose to live in these communities, than it has to do with size.

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