scholarly journals Party fragmentation and campaign spending: A subnational analysis of the German party system

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110169
Author(s):  
Marc S Jacob ◽  
Jan Pollex
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Concentration Effect ◽  
Expenditure Patterns ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Continuous Basis ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Subnational Analysis ◽  
Capital Intensive

Party finance allows elucidating parties’ behaviour in differing political and institutional contexts, yet only a few studies investigate expenditure patterns. Given that campaign activities are central for parties to fulfil their core functions in representative democracy, this study seeks to explain why parties invest in electoral campaigns to different degrees. We argue that high party fragmentation reinforces parties’ focus on electoral races in election years, a mechanism we refer to as the ‘campaign concentration effect’. By contrast, in less fragmented systems, parties invest more in campaigning on a continuous basis. A subnational analysis of the German party system between 2009 and 2017 provides evidence for this effect. Our results imply that growing party fragmentation nurtures parties’ efforts to succeed in elections, which is likely to intensify parties’ orientation towards short yet capital-intensive campaigns.

Divergent Paths of Inequality in Turkey and Spain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekrem Karakoç
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Household Income ◽  
Party System ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Unemployment Benefits ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
Security Systems ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Key Sectors

Using most similar design and process-tracing methodology, this chapter investigates the divergent outcomes in income inequality in Turkey and Spain. Even though social-security systems in both countries have been hierarchical, benefiting civil servants, the security apparatus, and workers in key sectors and others in formal sectors at the expense of the rest, they have adopted different social policies over time. This chapter discusses how Turkish governments, with a focus on 1983 to the present time, have designed contributory and noncontributory pensions, healthcare, and other social programs that have affected household income differently. In democratic Spain, however, pension-related policies and unemployment benefits have been dominant forms of social policy, but the Spanish party system has not created major incentives for political parties to utilize these policies in electoral campaigns until recently. This chapter ends with a discussion of how social policies in Turkey and Spain have affected inequality since the two nations transitioned to democracy.

How Do Campaign Spending Limits Affect Elections? Evidence from the United Kingdom 1885–2019

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
ALEXANDER FOUIRNAIES
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Limit Formula ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
The Cost

In more than half of the democratic countries in the world, candidates face legal constraints on how much money they can spend on their electoral campaigns, yet we know little about the consequences of these restrictions. I study how spending limits affect UK House of Commons elections. I contribute new data on the more than 70,000 candidates who ran for a parliamentary seat from 1885 to 2019, and I document how much money each candidate spent, how they allocated their resources across different spending categories, and the spending limit they faced. To identify the effect on elections, I exploit variation in spending caps induced by reforms of the spending-limit formula that affected some but not all constituencies. The results indicate that when the level of permitted spending is increased, the cost of electoral campaigns increases, which is primarily driven by expenses related to advertisement and mainly to the disadvantage of Labour candidates; the pool of candidates shrinks and elections become less competitive; and the financial and electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents are amplified.

scholarly journals Looking through the mirror: representativeness of the Italian party system before the 2018 General Election

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Beniamino Masi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
General Election ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Key Policy ◽  
Use Of The Internet ◽  
Voting Advice Applications

The use of the Internet and communication technologies has dramatically increased in recent times. This change has affected every aspect of political life, with electoral campaigns and parties making no exception. One of the most significant advancements on the theme is the spread of Voting Advice Applications (VAAs). These tools are developed before elections to match users’ policy preferences to those of the parties running. By looking at the dataset created with the answers of the users of an Italian VAA, Navigatore Elettorale, this study aims at understanding the representativeness of the six main parties running in the 2018 General Election. Through the development of a Representative Deficit Index, the study will also assess the key policy areas in which each of these parties performed best in the eyes of the electorate. The finding shows a diversified pattern of (in)successes for each of the parties, with some unexpected results.

How Electoral Spending Relates to Political Persuasion

2019 ◽  
pp. 357-379
Author(s):  
David B. Magleby
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Television Advertising ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Large Role ◽  
Database Development ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Political Persuasion

A necessary element of electoral campaigns in mass democracies is money to fund candidate or party campaigns. This is especially true in the United States with its largely privately funded campaigns and primary elections, which determine party nominees. Campaigns expend these funds to persuade voters to turn out and vote for their preferred candidate. Factors such as competitiveness, electoral size, and type of election influence the importance and effectiveness of campaign spending. Since one marker of candidate viability is early fundraising efforts, called the “money primary,” candidates in privately funded systems must first persuade individuals and groups to contribute to their campaigns or spend independently on their behalf. What, if any, limits are placed on who and how much can be contributed to campaigns also play a large role in US elections. Since 2010, there has been a movement away from limiting what individuals and groups, including unions and corporations, can contribute and spend independently on races. These finances fund persuasion efforts, which have largely been on paid television advertising, but have increasingly been spent on database development for individual voter contacts and on social media. These persuasion efforts have changed in recent elections, as the Obama presidential campaigns made innovative use of email and social media, and the Trump campaign of 2016 expanded the use of Facebook and other social media compared to prior campaigns. In all cases, spending on electoral persuasion is used to mobilize or demobilize voters or motivate donors.

The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Basile
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Italian Case

AbstractThis paper sheds light on the role played by political parties in influencing policy change, by connecting literature on party competition and agenda-setting and focusing on a single-issue domain, namely decentralization in Italy from 1948 to 2013. The article argues that major decentralist reforms usually followed electoral campaigns in which most parties focused attention on the issue. Such shifts in attention are caused by, among other things, the issue entrepreneurship activity undertaken by individual parties that are trying to influence the party system agenda and obtain electoral, office, or policy advantage. Contrary to the expectations of the issue entrepreneurship model, however, the analyses reveal that the entrepreneurship role on decentralization in Italy was not played by those parties that can be classified as ‘political losers’ in the party system; rather, in the case of the policy of decentralization in Italy, issue entrepreneurship activity is mostly explained by strategic considerations other than purely electoral ones.

scholarly journals The Macro-Level Driving Factors of Negative Campaigning in Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsófia Papp ◽  
Veronika Patkós
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Multinomial Logit Model ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Number Of Parties

Covering the largest sample of countries to date, this study examines the effect of three country-specific factors on the tone of electoral campaigns across Europe: electoral system disproportionality, party system fragmentation, and the polarization of the electorate. We use an original dataset of statements made by political actors during eighteen electoral campaigns in nine European countries. Our multinomial logit model suggests that increasing disproportionality slightly increases negativity, while thanks to parties competing on the same market, less polarized electorates invite more negative political campaigns. Finally, we find a U-shaped relationship between party system fragmentation and negativity: Increasing the number of parties, negativity decreases first, only to start increasing again once the party system becomes very fragmented. We explain this with parties altering their coalition strategies with the changing number of parties: Less fragmentation makes it more likely to having to step into coalition with the competitors, thus decreasing negativity, while in very fragmented systems, parties not needed to any potential coalitions become easy targets to negative campaign.

Lithuania

2019 ◽  
pp. 303-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irmina Matonyte
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Political Protest ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Political Interference ◽  
Free Market Reforms

Since early 1990s, the electoral campaigns in Lithuania take place within the framework of long-term parliamentary party agreements on Euro-Atlantic integration (more specifically, in the context of fear of pernicious geo-political interference from Russia) and free market reforms (or, in other words, eagerness to integrate into the European market and to be part of the euro-zone). The overall distance between parties on the socioeconomic scale is fairly small and, among political elites, the pro-Western consensus is apparent. There are no real outcast parties in Lithuania. The Lithuanian society itself is not ravaged by deep socio-political cleavages and its ethnic, religious, or corporate divides are not sharp. Yet, electoral volatility is high and political parties are numerous. However, governments in Lithuania are relatively stable. The ministerial government model entrenches itself in Lithuania. Since 2000 the increasingly unstable multi-party system necessitates that the coalition governments are based on inter-party bargaining. The tendency is towards ‘oversized’ cabinets and surplus coalitions. As a rule, publicly available coalition agreements resemble rather memorandums of understanding than seriously thought-through documents of partnership for a particular policy agenda. Coalitions in Lithuania accommodate office-seeking parties and politicians. Commitment of the parties to the coalition in question is routinely maintained via the distribution of ministerial portfolios. The coalition management machinery produces personified accommodations, dubious compromises, delays, and postponements as typical modes of conflict resolution. These deficiencies in turn lead to erosion of political accountability, which further breeds frustration and political protest.

Posicionamientos ideológicos, agenda mediática y blogosfera | Ideological Placements And Media Agenda. An Analysis Of The Spanish Blogosphere At The 2008 General Elections

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guillermo López García ◽  
Carolina Clemente Satriques
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Nuevas Tecnologías ◽  
General Elections ◽  
La Red

Resumen El uso de las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en las campañas electorales se generalizó sustancialmente en los comicios generales de 2008 tras el punto de inflexión que constituyeron el 11M y los días posteriores hasta las elecciones del 14 de marzo. Esta efervescencia ha supuesto una suerte de cambios fundamentales en los procesos de construcción del mensaje político y un acercamiento importante entre política y sociedad a través de este nuevo espacio de comunicación interactivo. La proliferación de las herramientas de la llamada Web 2.0 en el campo de la comunicación política, especialmente de los weblogs, ha constituido una nueva plataforma de comunicación en las campañas electorales. Políticos y periodistas, aunque también ciudadanos han interiorizado las potencialidades de la red como un medio para transmitir mensajes políticos. Internet es todavía concebido como un espacio libre donde el sistema político español, característicamente bipartidista, alcanza dimensiones tendentes a una mayor polarización de los mensajes. El artículo intenta discernir la incidencia relativa de estas nuevas herramientas en la opinión pública española en el marco de una sociedad que ha hecho de Internet un medio fundamental de comunicación, tanto pasivo como activo. Por ello, se han tomado como muestra cuatro de los weblogs más importantes del panorama mediático español, de los que se tratará de analizar los mecanismos discursivos y estrategias argumentativas, así como los temas y personajes con mayor presencia en los artículos, con el fin de constatar orientación ideológica de cada uno de ellos y su influencia social.Palabras clave Campaña electoral; Elecciones Generales 2008; weblogs; opinión pública; NTIC.Abstract The use of new information and communication technologies (ICT) in electoral campaigns spread in the 2008 general elections after the turning point which constituted the 11M and the subsequent days until the election day which took place the 14th of march 2004. This effervescence has led to a sort of essential changes in the process of constructing political messages and an important rapprochement between politics and society through this new interactive communication space. The proliferation of Web 2.0 tools in the field of political communication, especially the weblogs, has led to a new platform in the electoral campaigns. Politicians and journalists but also citizens have internalized the potentialities of the Net as a media for transmitting political messages. Internet is still conceived as a free space where the Spanish political system, which is characteristically a two-party system, reaches dimensions designed to a major polarization of the messages. This article tries to find out the relative incidence of these new tools in the Spanish public opinion within a society that has turned the Internet into the current way of passive and active communication. The sample is formed by four of the most important weblogs of the Spanish media landscape from which it will be tried to analyze the discursive mechanisms and argumentative strategies, as well as the themes and characters with greater presence in the articles in order to establish the ideological orientation from each of them and their social influence.KeywordsElectoral campaign; General Elections 2008; Weblogs; public opinion; ICT.

Accountable to Themselves: Predominance in Southern Africa

1997 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 547-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNETH GOOD
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Party System ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Democratic Practice ◽  
Steep Decline

While public attention has focused on the stature of Nelson Mandela, there has been at a deeper level in South Africa since 1990 a steep decline in state capacity, and a marked deterioration in democratic practice. The participatory democracy which had so characterised the decade of the 1980s was brought to a sharp end after the return of the nationalist leaders, and the workings of even a liberal, representative democracy have also suffered under the rise since 1994 of a predominant party system and élitism. The latter features are present too in Namibia, with similar consequences. Democracy which is understood merely as electoralism, as Botswana earlier had shown, has few defences against predominance. The voters' brief electoral act is wide open to manipulation and containment. Power is shared by élites, while popular participation is rendered moribund, and concern for justice and equality ceases.

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