Conditions for new parties’ participation in a founding election in a democratic transition

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 434-443
Author(s):  
Myriam Aït-Aoudia

The literature on democratic transitions considers the participation of new parties in the first pluralist election in a post-authoritarian context (founding election) as something to be taken for granted. As such, it is never questioned. Specialists in democratic transitions ignore the research on “new parties,” which is, nonetheless, essential to the understanding of the particular characteristics of a post-authoritarian situation. Using an original qualitative study on Algeria, this article proposes to bring to light the political, organizational, and legal conditions of new political parties’ participation or nonparticipation in a founding election. In particular, this research allows us to grasp the dilemmas and difficulties faced by leaders of new parties and the types of support on which they rely to engage for the first time in an electoral competition. The analytical framework stemming from this “case study” is applicable to other national case studies.

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-113
Author(s):  
Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł ◽  
Katarzyna Sobolewska-Myślik

AbstractThe aim of the paper is to assess new political parties in Poland and to examine the question of their perceived novelty and influence on the party system. We employ Barnea and Rahat’s analytical framework to evaluate the newness of Polish parties in three party facets: party-in-the-electorate, party-as-organisation, party-in-government. This multi-dimensional analysis allows one to identify those fields in which any novelty may occur. Among the analysed factors is the new parties’ electoral base that enables one to assess whether the parties managed to mobilise a new electorate or rather attracted supporters from existing parties instead. Last but not least, we study the changes caused by these parties within the whole party system. In our research we include parties that entered the parliament for the first time after the last two elections: in 2011 and 2015. Before that time the parliamentary scene in Poland seemed to be firmly closed with a nearly constant set of actors. Both in the 2005 and 2007 elections no new parties entered parliament. Hence the 2011 election is considered to be an opening for new parties, but does not necessarily bring about a significant change in the Polish party system in terms of the electoral support for the two largest parties or within patterns of electoral competition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haruo Nakagawa

Akin to the previous, 2014 event, with no data on voter ethnicity, no exit polls, and few post-election analyses, the 2018 Fiji election results remain something of a mystery despite the fact that there had been a significant swing in voting in favour of Opposition political parties. There have been several studies about the election results, but most of them have been done without much quantitative analyses. This study examines voting patterns of Fiji’s 2018 election by provinces, and rural-urban localities, as well as by candidates, and also compares the 2018 and 2014 elections by spending a substantial time classifying officially released data by polling stations and individual candidates. Some of the data are then further aggregated according to the political parties to which those candidates belonged. The current electoral system in Fiji is a version of a proportional system, but its use is rare and this study will provide an interesting case study of the Open List Proportional System. At the end of the analyses, this study considers possible reasons for the swing in favour of the Opposition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Ruth Roded

Beginning in the early 1970s, Jewish and Muslim feminists, tackled “oral law”—Mishna and Talmud, in Judaism, and the parallel Hadith and Fiqh in Islam, and several analogous methodologies were devised. A parallel case study of maintenance and rebellion of wives —mezonoteha, moredet al ba?ala; nafaqa al-mar?a and nush?z—in classical Jewish and Islamic oral law demonstrates similarities in content and discourse. Differences between the two, however, were found in the application of oral law to daily life, as reflected in “responsa”—piskei halacha and fatwas. In modern times, as the state became more involved in regulating maintenance and disobedience, and Jewish law was backed for the first time in history by a state, state policy and implementation were influenced by the political system and socioeconomic circumstances of the country. Despite their similar origin in oral law, maintenance and rebellion have divergent relevance to modern Jews and Muslims.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ahmad El-Sharif

The Late King Hussein’s last Speech from the Throne in 1997 was given amidst public outcry over the outcomes of the parliamentary elections which resulted the triumph tribal figures with regional affiliations after the boycott of most political parties. This brought to public debate the questions of maintain the long-established balance between the several socio-political structures in the political life in Jordan. While the speech can be perceived as a reflection of King Hussein’s vision about ‘Jordanian democracy’, it can also be interpreted as an elaborate scheme to construct the conventional understanding of the exceptionality of Jordan and its socio-political institutions; including democracy. This article discusses the representation of ‘Jordanian democracy’, the state, and the socio-political structures in Jordan as reflected in the Late King’s last speech from the throne (1997). The analytical framework follows a critical metaphor analysis perspective in which all instances of metaphors used to epitomise these issues are primarily acknowledged from there sociocultural context. Herein, the article focuses on revealing the aspect of metaphorical language by which the Late King Hussein legitimizes and, hence, constructs, the prevailing ideology pf the ‘exceptionality’ of Jordan.


2018 ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Іvan Pobochiy

The level of social harmony in society and the development of democracy depends to a large extent on the level of development of parties, their ideological and political orientation, methods and means of action. The purpose of the article is to study the party system of Ukraine and directions of its development, which is extremely complex and controversial. The methods. The research has led to the use of such scientific search methods as a system that allowed the party system of Ukraine to be considered as a holistic organism, and the historical and political method proved to be very effective in analyzing the historical preconditions and peculiarities of the formation of the party system. The results. The incompetent, colonial past and the associated cruel national oppression, terror, famine, and violent Russification caused the contradictory and dramatic nature of modernization, the actual absence of social groups and their leaders interested in it, and the relatively passive reaction of society to the challenges of history. Officials have been nominated by mafia clans, who were supposed to protect their interests and pursue their policies. Political struggle in the state took place not between influential political parties, but between territorial-regional clans. The party system of Ukraine after the Maidan and the beginning of the war on the Donbass were undergoing significant changes. On the political scene, new parties emerged in the course of the protests and after their completion — «Petro Poroshenko Bloc», «People’s Front», «Self-help»), which to some extent became spokespeople for not regional, but national interests. Pro-European direction is the main feature of the leading political parties that have formed a coalition in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Conclusion. The party system of Ukraine as a result of social processes is at the beginning of a new stage in its development, an important feature of which is the increase in the influence of society (direct and indirect) on the political life of the state. Obviously, there is a demand from the public for the emergence of new politicians, new leaders and new political forces that citizens would like to see first and foremost speakers and defenders of their interests.


Tripodos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
María Díez Garrido ◽  
Eva Campos Domínguez ◽  
Dafne Calvo

El escenario digital ha impulsado pro­fundos cambios en el entorno político, entre los que se puede distinguir el im­pulso de la transparencia informativa. La transparencia se ha convertido en uno de los valores democráticos que los políticos quieren demostrar de cara a la ciudadanía, ya que es un signo de le­gitimidad, evolución y lucha contra la corrupción. Los partidos políticos han introducido la transparencia en sus dis­cursos y argumentarios. Precisamente las formaciones tienen una reputación baja en cuanto a apertura informativa. Este artículo pretende estudiar la intro­ducción de la transparencia en el dis­curso electoral de los partidos políticos. Para ello, se estudia la presencia de la transparencia en los programas elec­torales de las principales formaciones políticas españolas durante las últimas Elecciones Generales (2015 y 2016). A continuación, se realiza un análisis de contenido de sus páginas web, que pretende conocer su nivel de apertura informativa. Esta metodología nos per­mite descubrir si lo que promocionan las formaciones en los programas se relaciona con el desarrollo en sus pá­ginas web. Los resultados muestran las diferencias entre los nuevos partidos y los tradicionales, así como la evolución entre unos comicios y los siguientes.   Political Parties’ Transparency As an Electoral Strategy. An Evaluation of Their Promises and Their Websites The digital scenario has produced pro­found changes in the political environ­ment, and transparency is part of this transformation. Transparency has become one of the most valued aspirations that politicians want to demonstrate to the public, as it is a sign of legitimacy, evolution, and the fight against corrup­tion. Political parties have introduced transparency in their speeches and ar­guments. At the same time, political for­mations have a low reputation in terms of informative openness. This article aims to study the introduction of trans­parency in the political parties’ electoral discourse. To this end, we explore the presence of transparency in the electo­ral programs of the main Spanish poli­tical parties during the last two General Elections (2015 and 2016). Next, we carry out a content analysis of their web sites, which aims to gain deeper insight into their level of informative openness. This methodology allows us to determine if Spanish political parties promote in their programs the same ob­jectives that they put forward on their web sites. The results also show the di­fferences between the new parties and the traditional ones, as well as their evolution between the General Elections in 2015 and 2016.


Author(s):  
Anne Wren ◽  
Kenneth M. McElwain

This article studies voters and parties, beginning with realignment or dealignment in the party-voter nexus. It discusses changes in the policy preferences of voters and even organizational changes to the party-voter linkage. Electoral competition, performance of traditional parties, and organizational change are discussed as well. This article determines that there are two parallel trends in the linkage between parties and voters. The first is that voters are showing weaker partisan identification with political parties, and a widening gap between the policy preferences of voters and the electoral manifestos of parties is apparent. The second trend is that improvements in educational attainment and innovations in media technology are strengthening the political capability of both parties and voters.


2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Daniel Hough

In the years since unification, Germany’s political parties have faceda number of formidable challenges. They range from incorporatingthe citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the FederalRepublic’s political processes, reassessing Germany’s role in thewider world, overcoming gridlock on many pressing policy questionsat home (perhaps best understood as the overcoming of the Reformstau),to finding a way out of Germany’s much maligned economicmalaise.1 Such challenges have had a not inconsiderable effect on theGerman party system, the end product of which has been that thissystem, once a bastion of cast-iron stability, has become characterizedby diversity and genuine electoral competition in a way that it hasnot been since the late 1950s. Therefore, the electoral position of themuch-vaunted Volksparteien, if perhaps not their control of the politicalprocess, has slipped considerably.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 314-336
Author(s):  
ADEEBA AZIZ KHAN

AbstractIn this article, by studying the candidate-nomination process of the two major political parties, I show how power is distributed within the political party in Bangladesh. I show that the general acceptance by scholars that political power lies in the hands of the innermost circle of the political-party leadership in Bangladesh is too simplistic. A more nuanced observation of power and influence within the party structure shows that, in the context of Bangladesh's clientelistic political system, which is based on reciprocity between patrons and clients and relies on the ability of middlemen to organize and mobilize (in order to disrupt through hartals and strikes), power is often in the hands of those mid-level leaders who are in charge of mobilizing because their demands cannot be ignored by the topmost leadership. Through studying the candidate-nomination process of the major political parties and using the Narayanganj mayoral election of 2011 as a case study, I answer questions such as whose interests political parties are representing, what channels of influence are being used, and why these channels exist.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-175
Author(s):  
JUDY CHIA YIN WEI

AbstractThis article aims to explore the effects of quasi-SNTV (Single Non-transferable Vote) under the Largest Remainder Proportional Representation (LRPR) in Legislative Council (LegCo) elections in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) after the British handover of 1997. Although the quasi-SNTV results from the inability of political parties to control their candidates, the Democratic Party (DP) and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) can obtain more seats in total than they could by coordinating around one single list if they can successfully control their party label and the political camps can coordinate different parties and candidates. The quasi-SNTV in Hong Kong is notable for the strategic coordination found in its alliances, a key aspect that differentiates it from Colombia's quasi-SNTV. The DP's failure can be attributed to its internal conflicts and the lack of coordination among the pro-democracy alliances. In contrast to the democratic camp, which lacks any overriding authority to coordinate different parties and candidates, the pro-China's united front machinery facilitates coordination and helps the DAB perform better than the DP in quasi-SNTV.


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