Party placement in supranational elections

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Garzia ◽  
Alexander Trechsel ◽  
Lorenzo De Sio
Keyword(s):  
Iterative Method ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Policy Statements ◽  
Data Collection Procedure ◽  
Voting Advice Applications ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Cross National

Throughout the years, political scientists have devised a multitude of techniques to position political parties on various ideological and policy/issue dimensions. So far, however, none of these techniques was able to evolve into a “gold standard” in party positioning. Against this background, one could recently witness the appearance of a new methodology for party positioning tightly connected to the spread of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs), i.e. an iterative method that aims at improving existing techniques using a combination of party self-placement and expert judgement. Such a method, as pioneered by the Dutch Kieskompas, was first systematically employed on a large cross-national scale by the EU Profiler VAA in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. This article introduces the party placement datasets generated by euandi (reads: EU and I), a transnational VAA for the 2014 EP elections. The scientific relevance of the euandi endeavour lies primarily in its choice to stick to the iterative method of party positioning employed by the EU Profiler in 2009 as well as in the choice to keep as many as 17 policy statements in the 2014 questionnaire in order to allow for cross-national, longitudinal research on party competition in Europe across a five-year period. This article provides a brief review of traditional methods of party positioning and contrasts them to the iterative method employed by the euandi team. It then introduces the specifics of the project, facts and figures of the data collection procedure, and the details of the resulting dataset encompassing 242 parties from the whole EU28.

scholarly journals Who's Afraid of Conflict? The Mobilizing Effect of Conflict Framing in Campaign News

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 177-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas R.T. Schuck ◽  
Rens Vliegenthart ◽  
Claes H. De Vreese
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
General Information ◽  
National Study ◽  
Panel Survey ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Conflict Framing ◽  
Cross National Study ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Cross National

The ability of the news media to mobilize voters during an election campaign is not well understood. Most extant research has been conducted in single-country studies and has paid little or no attention to the contextual level and the conditions under which such effects are more or less likely to occur. This study tests the mobilizing effect of conflict news framing in the context of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections. The unique multi-method and comparative cross-national study design combines a media content analysis (N = 48,982) with data from a two-wave panel survey conducted in twenty-one countries (N = 32,411). Consistent with expectations, conflict framing in campaign news mobilized voters to vote. Since the effect of conflict news was moderated by evaluations of the EU polity in the general information environment, conflict framing more effectively mobilized voters in countries where the EU was evaluated more positively.

scholarly journals Una nuova frattura in Europa?

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-90
Author(s):  
Giorgio Malet
Keyword(s):  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Step Procedure ◽  
The One ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Cross National

In the enduring debate regarding the structure of political competition, substantial evidence has been accumulated on the emergence of a new European dimension and on its relevance in some national elections. Yet, there have been few attempts to match the supply side with the demand side of electoral politics through cross-national studies. To fill the gap, this article adopts a two-step procedure. On the one hand, it investigates the political potential of Euroscepticism tracing back the fault lines of a new cleavage to processes of economic competition, cultural diversity and political integration. On the other, it showcases the uneven process of politicization of the EU issues in Italy, France, and United Kingdom. In these countries the growing difficulties of mainstream parties to deal with issues that crosscut the traditional left-right dimension have paved the way to the success of new anti-establishment parties. These challengers have exploited conflicts and issues generated by the integration process thus undermining the conventional dynamics of party competition. Nonetheless, preferences on the integration process affect voting behaviour only in Great Britain and, partially, in France, while in the Italian case there is still little evidence of EU issue voting.

scholarly journals Losers together? Grand coalitions in the EU member states

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Marco Morini ◽  
Matthew Loveless
Keyword(s):  
Significant Rise ◽  
Grand Coalition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The European Union ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
The Eu

Abstract Over the last two decades, the formation of grand coalitions has grown in the European Union (EU), even in countries with no previous political experience with them. Alongside a significant rise in both new and radical parties, grand coalitions signal the increasing fragmentation of contemporary European politics. We, therefore, investigate the electoral performance of both mainstream and new parties entering and leaving grand coalitions. We find that mainstream parties do not appear to enter grand coalitions after negative election results. They are, however, punished in the following elections, albeit not as heavily as previous findings have shown. This post-grand coalition electoral penalty is true for both major and minor grand coalition members. These findings contribute to the literature on party competition and provide insights into the choices mainstream parties' have been making in response to recent and rapid changes in the electoral landscape of the EU.

scholarly journals Allies among Enemies: Political authority and party (dis)loyalty in Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
DAVID JACKMAN ◽  
MATHILDE MAÎTROT
Keyword(s):  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Local Character ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Member Of Parliament ◽  
Ruling Party

Abstract The authority of political leaders in Bangladesh rests on diverse qualities, not least of which are the muscle and finance they can mobilize, and the relationships they can craft with senior party members. These are utilized to confront rivals both within and outside their own party. In some instances, the intensity of intra-party competition can be so severe that a further quality emerges: the capacity to find allies among enemies. Building local inter-party alliances can bolster the authority of politicians, yet be to the detriment of party coherence. This argument is developed through an analysis of mayoral and parliamentary elections held in the past decade in a small Bangladeshi city, where a ruling party member of parliament (MP) and opposition mayor appear to have developed such a relationship. This has thwarted the electoral ambitions of their fellow party members and has posed a serious challenge to party discipline. While political competition is often seen as being either inter- or intra-party, here it is focused around inter-party alliances. This portrayal suggests we need to give greater emphasis to the decentralized and local character that political authority can take in Bangladesh.

scholarly journals EU Labor Market Inequalities and Sustainable Development Goals

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2675
Author(s):  
Elena Jianu ◽  
Ramona Pîrvu ◽  
Gheorghe Axinte ◽  
Ovidiu Toma ◽  
Andrei Valentin Cojocaru ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Public Policy Issue ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
To Come ◽  
Business Practitioners ◽  
The Eu

Reducing inequalities for EU citizens and promoting upward convergence is one of the priorities on the agenda of the European Commission and, certainly, inequality will be a very important public policy issue for years to come. Through this research we aim to investigate EU labor market inequalities, reflected by the specific indicators proposed for Goal 8 assumed by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, based on cluster analysis for all the 27 Member States. The research results showed encouraging results from the perspective of convergence in the EU labor market, but also revealed a number of analyzed variable effects that manifested regional inequalities that were generated in the medium and long term. Based on the observations made, we want to provide information for policy-makers, business practitioners, and academics so as to constitute solid ground for identifying good practices and proposing to implement policies aimed at reducing existing inequalities and supporting sustainable development.

scholarly journals Free movement of workers in the EU and occupational pensions

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Del Sol ◽  
Marco Rocca
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Occupational Pensions ◽  
Minimum Standards ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
Free Movement Of Workers ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Cross National

The European Union appears to be promoting at the same time both cross-national mobility of workers and an increased role for occupational pensions. There is, however, a potential tension between these two objectives because workers risk losing (some of) their pension rights under an occupational scheme as a consequence of their mobility. After long negotiations, the EU has addressed this issue through a minimum standards Directive. Shortly before the adoption of this Directive, the Court of Justice also delivered an important decision in the same field, in the case of Casteels v British Airways. By analysing the resulting legal framework for safeguarding pension rights under occupational schemes in the context of workers’ mobility, we argue that the application of the case law developed by the Court of Justice in the field of free movement of workers has the potential to offer superior protection compared to the Directive. We also highlight the fact that the present legal framework seems to afford a much fuller protection to the intra-company cross-national mobility of workers employed by multinational companies, while also seemingly favouring mobility for highly specialised workers.

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.

Umweltschutzrecht in Tschechien

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-317
Author(s):  
Veronika Tomoszková
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
Conditional Mode ◽  
State Of The Environment ◽  
The Eu

After 40 years of a totalitarian regime, the state of the environment in Czechoslovakia was catastrophic. The revolutions that swept through Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in 1989/1990, including Czechoslovakia, sparked enthusiastic hopes for a better, democratic and perhaps “greener” future for this region. The major strategic goal of all the post-communist CEE countries was to join the European Union. The “eastern” enlargement was to take place under strict conditions in order to ensure that the EU does not suffer the negative consequences of an ill-prepared expansion. In the light of joining the EU, Czechoslovakia managed to adopt the whole series of progressive environmental legislation. However, after the parliamentary elections in June 1992 and the split of Czechoslovakia, environmental protection had to give way to economic growth and the overall transformation of society. This paper describes the development of Czech environmental law from a legal and a political perspective, providing examples illustrating the Czech Republic’s performance in implementing the EU environmental law and policy. After 17 years of membership in the EU, the Czech Republic and the implementation of the EU environmental law is still in conditional mode - the availability of the EU funds is the main leverage and motive to comply with the EU law.

The Party System: Structure, Policy, and Europeanization

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Niedermayer
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
System Properties ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Eu

The German party system has changed since the 1980s. The relatively stable ‘two-and-a-half party’ system of the 1960s and 1970s has become a fluid five-party system. This development can generally be attributed to changes on the demand and supply sides of party competition and to the changing institutional framework. The European integration process is part of this institutional framework and this chapter deals with the question of whether it has influenced the development of the party system at the national level. To systematically analyse the possible impact, eight party-system properties are distinguished: format, fragmentation, asymmetry, volatility, polarization, legitimacy, segmentation, and coalition stability. The analysis shows that one cannot speak of a Europeanization of the German party system in the sense of a considerable impact of the European integration process on its development. Up to now, the inclusion of Germany in the systemic context of the EU has not led to noticeable changes of party-system properties. On the demand side of party competition, this is due to the fact that the EU issue does not influence the citizens' electoral decisions. On the supply side, the lack of Europeanization can be explained mainly by the traditional, interest-based pro-European élite consensus, the low potential for political mobilization around European integration, and the marginal role of ethnocentrist–authoritarian parties.

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