Campaigning Outside the Campaign: Political Parties and Referendums in Bulgaria

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stoycho P. Stoychev ◽  
Gergana Tomova
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Potential Reason

This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina. The instrumental use of referendums by political parties has already been acknowledged in earlier studies showing how parties in government used direct democracy tools to promote their policies and to gain legitimacy, while parties in opposition sought to augment their image in the eyes of the public. However, opposition parties may have another potential reason to promote referendums on top of their quest for a better public image: The topic of the referendum could be a legacy of their own government. This article reveals how this mechanism works by focusing on the first referendum at the national level in post-communist Bulgaria in 2013. It shows how the Bulgarian Socialist Party, in opposition at the time of the referendum, pursued a policy initiated when it was in office. We use primary data to investigate the extent to which the rhetoric of the party during the referendum campaign served as the basis for subsequent electoral campaigns.

scholarly journals Hijacked Direct Democracy: The Instrumental Use of Referendums in Romania

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 778-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergiu Gherghina
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
National Level ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
The Relationship

This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina. The relationship between political parties and referendums has been receiving increased attention in the literature. While most research has focused on the challenges faced by political parties, little attention is dedicated to the ways in which they can use referendums to serve their purposes. This article analyzes the seven national-level referendums organized in post-communist Romania between 1991 and 2012 and shows how referendums were not used primarily as a means to reflect citizens’ opinions on policy issues. Instead, they were primarily used as electoral strategies for legitimacy purposes or to augment the popularity of the initiators or main supporters. In isolated instances, they were oriented against other competitors.

The Visibility of Political Websites during Electoral Campaigns

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
J. Paulo Serra
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Need For Information ◽  
The Way

This paper discusses how political parties and candidates try to enhance the public visibility of their websites during electoral campaigns, through a process that the author proposes calling the “meta-campaign.” This process significantly depends on the actions of journalists and the way in which they cover electoral campaigns. The discussion is based on an exploratory and qualitative study of the Portuguese campaign for the 2009 European Parliament election. The main reason the authors chose this election was that European themes, being less familiar to Portuguese citizens than national ones, would highlight the need for information about the salient issues as well as the tools for attaining this information, with the websites of political parties and candidates clearly being one of the latter.

Toward E-Participation on the Basis of Era based Cellular Planning System

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Asghar Pourezzat ◽  
Seyyed Mahdi Sharifmousavi ◽  
Ghazaleh Taheri Attar ◽  
Hashem Sodagar ◽  
Majed Naji
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Information And Communication

The idea of direct democracy has been regarded as an unachievable ideal by political philosophers throughout history. Previously, the direct and sustainable participation of the public in trifling affairs related to their destiny wasn’t possible. By developing electronism, the possibility of direct and continuous polls makes direct democracy achievable. However, temporary polls can never refer to deliberated opinions of the people. Therefore, designing a system of continuously collecting public opinions about details of social life is necessary. Strategic era based cellular planning system (ECPS) using “Comprehensive system of the public information and communication” provides the capacity of gathering the opinions of various interest groups of the society as executable scenarios and saving to the database of system in order to chose them for implementation in accordance with their attractiveness and requirements of each era, depending on the opinions of the people and policy makers. In this regard, the possibility of continuous restructuring of social institutions based on deliberated opinions of people is provided. In this way, it prevents the imposition stemmed from traditions established in the old social institutions; so, democracy can be realized in its real sense away from traditions, institutions and power of political parties.

Discover, Instrumentalize, Monopolize: Fidesz’s Three-Step Blueprint for a Populist Take-over of Referendums

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 705-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pepijn van Eeden
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Disparities ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Apathy ◽  
Risky Option

This article assesses the referendums in Hungary in 2004, 2008, and 2016 diachronically. The review is framed by two competing liberal parliamentary approaches to direct democracy: A useful democratic corrective to the distortions of particracy, or a risky option leading to tyranny of the majority? Rather than choosing sides, this article shows how the conundrum conceals another, more interesting question: Which are the constraints under which the liberal parliamentary viewpoint shifts from the one to the other? Theorizing on post-democracy and populism provides a provisional answer: A consensualized, “post-political” parliament is key, as this, in combination with widening social-economic disparities, incentivizes illiberal populist parties to harness referendums, which prompts liberal parliamentarianists to change their minds. The referendums in 2004, 2008, and 2016 in Hungary substantiate this suspicion. Taken together, they offer a step-by-step blueprint for how, in a thoroughly postpolitical situation, a referendum evolves into a perfect catalyst for populists on their road to power, enabling them with (a) agenda-setting; (b) an explosive emphasis on popular legitimacy; (c) arousing voluntarism, while luring opponents into campaigning for boycott and political apathy; (d) combining social equalitarianism with identarian protectionism, and most importantly; (e) bypassing parliament itself. This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina.

scholarly journals The Interplay of Rhetoric and Voting Behavior in Pakistan: The Perspective of Youth

2020 ◽  
Vol V (II) ◽  
pp. 215-227
Author(s):  
Shabnam Gul ◽  
Zainab Asif Dar ◽  
Kishwar Munir
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electoral Campaigns

Political communication is one of the major aspects of any political system. The speeches of politicians, especially the political party leaders, are an important source of political awareness regarding pertinent issues facing any country. However, politicians often rely on political rhetoric to appeal to the emotions of prospective voters. This paper explored the use of political rhetoric in political discourse in Pakistan. Political rhetoric pertains to exaggeration of reality and distortion of facts to change the views and perception of the public. Politicians actively use this as a tool to gain the support of their potential voters in their electoral campaigns. The researchers analyzed the statements of leaders of three major political parties in Pakistan. It has been concluded from this research that politicians focus on populist political rhetoric when they address their voters to garner support rather than educating them about real political, social, and economic challenges. Thus political rhetoric is a significant factor in voting behavior.

Embodying Trust in the Electoral System

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bishop ◽  
Mark Beech
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
The Public ◽  
The People ◽  
Government Data ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Independent Candidates

This paper proposes a new method for distributing votes in democratic elections in such a way that allows for the public to put their trust in independent candidates or those from small political parties. Using the case of a party founded by the authors called The Pluralist Party the paper presents primary data to evaluate the effectiveness of the method – called delegated transferable voting (DTV). Using an auto-ethnographical empirical study in which one of the authors plays a significant role as anthropologist, the paper finds that DTV is more likely to lead to the election of independent candidates over party political ones. Pluralism advocates the election of those who are independent of political party whips in order to best represent the people. The election of independent candidates or small parties is a model of pluralism that can achieve this. The empirical study, through investigating the campaigning methods used by The Pluralist Party, shows that putting effort into an election – whether money, materials or labour and however funded – can improve outcomes for political parties. Making use of official government data in addition to the collected data showed that a higher number of votes for the Pluralist Party was associated with a higher education level, more rooms in a household, a lower number of people not in education, employment or training, and a lower ‘knol,' which is a unit for measuring brain activity.

scholarly journals How Political Parties Use Referendums: An Analytical Framework

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-690
Author(s):  
Sergiu Gherghina
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
European Countries ◽  
East European ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning

This article is part of the special cluster titled Political Parties and Direct Democracy in Eastern Europe, guest-edited by Sergiu Gherghina. Extensive research has shown how political parties use referendums to achieve their goals. Most studies use either a policy-oriented or an institution-based approach to explain parties’ actions. In spite of much empirical evidence, to date the analytical dimensions have not been put together to facilitate the study of referendum instrumentalization across countries. This article makes a first step in that direction and proposes a typology that distinguishes between the goals and types of action of political parties. The theoretical reasoning behind such a typology is then backed by empirical evidence from the five East European countries included in the special section of this journal.

Are European Election Campaigns Europeanized? The Case of the Party of European Socialists in 2009

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Hertner
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
National Level ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Type Model ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
European Elections ◽  
The Past ◽  
British Labour ◽  
European Election

AbstractIn the past, European election campaigns have been fought primarily at national level, organized and led by national parties. The European political parties had neither the financial nor the organizational means to lead pan-European election campaigns. The June 2009 elections, however, highlighted a different and potentially significant trend: new EU regulations provided for the direct financing of European political parties, allowing them to campaign directly in the elections. It is argued that these developments could lead to the Europeanization of European elections campaigns. This article applies the concept of Europeanization to the election campaigns of the Party of European Socialists and three of its member parties: the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democrats, creating an ideal-type model of Europeanization. It concludes that in the three cases Europeanization is still in its infancy.

Complicit Communists, Student Commandos, Fidelistas, and Civil War, 1956–1957

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lillian Guerra
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
National Level ◽  
Double Standard ◽  
Socialist Party

This chapter reveals how many Cubans increasingly associated support for the armed opposition with anti-Communism and disdain for the Partido Socialist Popular (Popular Socialist Party, PSP) with hatred of Batista for two reasons. First, Cuba's Communists continued other traditional political parties' pattern of fighting bullets with words; and second, Batista exercised an apparent double standard in allowing the PSP to operate more freely than mainstream opponents. Rather than threatening Batista's dictatorship, the PSP actually facilitated its continuation in the eyes of many citizens and key opinion makers among the organized opposition. Yet this was not just a matter of public perception; it appears to have been a matter of some fact, at least at the national level.

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