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.

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.

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.

Forging the Franchise

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Langan Teele
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Strategic Alliances ◽  
National Level ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Massive Change ◽  
Political Emancipation ◽  
Women’S Preferences ◽  
Do So

In the 1880s, women were barred from voting in all national-level elections, but by 1920 they were going to the polls in nearly thirty countries. What caused this massive change? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not because of progressive ideas about women or suffragists' pluck. In most countries, elected politicians fiercely resisted enfranchising women, preferring to extend such rights only when it seemed electorally prudent and necessary to do so. This book demonstrates that the formation of a broad movement across social divides, and strategic alliances with political parties in competitive electoral conditions, provided the leverage that ultimately transformed women into voters. As the book shows, in competitive environments, politicians had incentives to seek out new sources of electoral influence. A broad-based suffrage movement could reinforce those incentives by providing information about women's preferences, and an infrastructure with which to mobilize future female voters. At the same time that politicians wanted to enfranchise women who were likely to support their party, suffragists also wanted to enfranchise women whose political preferences were similar to theirs. In contexts where political rifts were too deep, suffragists who were in favor of the vote in principle mobilized against their own political emancipation. Exploring tensions between elected leaders and suffragists and the uncertainty surrounding women as an electoral group, the book sheds new light on the strategic reasons behind women's enfranchisement.

scholarly journals When do parties put Europe in the centre? Evidence from the 2019 European Parliament election campaign

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110083
Author(s):  
Michaela Maier ◽  
Carlos Jalali ◽  
Jürgen Maier ◽  
Alessandro Nai ◽  
Sebastian Stier
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
National Level ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Integrated Model ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The Media ◽  
Opposition Parties

European elections have been described as second-order phenomena for voters, the media, but also parties. Yet, since 2009, there exists evidence that not only voters, but also political parties assign increasing significance to European elections. While initially ‘issue entrepreneurs’ were held responsible for this development, the latest campaigns have raised the question of whether mainstream parties are finally also campaigning on European issues. In this article, we examine European Union (EU) salience in the 2019 European Parliament (EP) campaigns of government and opposition parties and the predictors of their strategic behaviours. We test the relevance of factors derived from the selective emphasis and the co-orientation approach within an integrated model of strategic campaign communication based on expert evaluations of 191 parties in 28 EU member states. Results show that the traditional expectation that government parties silence EU issues does not hold anymore; instead, the average EU salience of government and opposition parties is similar on the national level. The strongest predictors for a party’s decision to campaign on EU issues are the co-orientation towards the campaign agendas of competing parties, and party’s EU position.

History, Politics, and the Constitution: Ethnic Conflict and Constitutional Adjudication in Postcommunist Bulgaria

Slavic Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Venelin I. Ganev
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication

Infamously, the 1991 Bulgarian Constitution contains a provision banning political parties “formed on an ethnic basis.” In the early 1990s, the neo-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party invoked this provision when it asked the country's Constitutional Court to declare unconstitutional the political party of the beleaguered Turkish minority. In this article, Venelin I. Ganev analyzes the conflicting arguments presented in the course of the constitutional trial that ensued and shows how the justices’ anxieties about the possible effects of politicized ethnicity were interwoven into broader debates about the scope of the constitutional normative shift that marked the end of the communist era, about the relevance of historical memory to constitutional reasoning, and about the nature of democratic politics in a multiethnic society. Ganev also argues that the constitutional interpretation articulated by the Court has become an essential component of Bulgaria's emerging political order. More broadly, he illuminates the complexity of some of the major issues that frame the study of ethnopolitics in postcommunist eastern Europe: the varied dimensions of the “politics of remembrance“; the ambiguities of transitional justice; the dilemmas inherent in the construction of a rights-centered legality; and the challenges involved in establishing a forward-looking, pluralist system of governance.

scholarly journals Det perverse artefakt. Konflikt og erindringer i spanske tegneserier

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (111) ◽  
pp. 97-111
Author(s):  
Anne Magnussen
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Spanish Population ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The Common

THE PERVERSE ARTIFACT. CONFLICT AND MEMOIRS IN SPANISH CARTOON SERIESWithin the last 10 to 15 years, the Spanish debate about historical memory has gained much force, with a specific focus on memories of the Civil War (1936-39) and of the succeeding dictatorship that ended with a process of democratization at the end of the 1970s. Although the big Spanish political parties disagree on several memory related issues, they agree that the main objective is to secure a reconciliation of the Spanish population that – at least according to some parties, organisations and analysts – is still divided by the memories of the Civil War and the repressive Francoist dictatorship. Spanish comics from the end of the 1990s and the 2000s question the common and coherent narrative of the War and the dictatorship that is implied in this idea of reconciliation. This article offers an example of the ways in which the comics do this by activating two interconnected strategies. First, the comics destabilize place and narrative structure, andsecondly, they suggest that madness and a perverted gaze are the only sensible perspectives from which to contemplate Spain’s repressive and violent past. The analysis draws on the context of both the memory debate and the development within the Spanish and international comics field.

scholarly journals Public Perception regarding Weak Organizational Structure of Political Parties in Pakistan

2020 ◽  
Vol V (III) ◽  
pp. 142-149
Author(s):  
Naushad Khan ◽  
Syed Ali Shah
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Democratic Culture ◽  
The Military

The weak political organization of nearly all political parties is another contributing factor in political instability. No democratic culture prevails inside all political parties; all political parties, with the exception of very few, has been ruling by one family, and mostly are dominated by one family or person; their party of the election has been mostly blamed as selection and not an election. The scope of all parties has been limited to certain areas, religion and nationalities. .As a result of weak organizations of political parties and dominant rule of the military do not allow any government to form a government alone; all political parties rely on other political parties to form government in centre as well as province.

Španska državljanska vojna v kontekstu slovenskih in jugoslovanskih razmer med svetovnima vojnama

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-89
Author(s):  
Božo Repe
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Schism

SPANISH CIVIL WAR IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SLOVENIAN AND YUGOSLAV CIRCUMSTANCES BETWEEN BOTH WORLD WARSThe author describes the division of the Slovenian society in the 1930s concerning the Spanish Civil War. Slovenian history was marked by various ideological schisms – from Christianisation and anti-Reformation in the 16thcentury to the longest lasting ideological-religious schism of the 20thcentury, which had begun at the end of the 19thcentury, in the time when political parties had been formed. At that time the Catholic camp, under the influence of Dr. Anton Mahnič, wanted to organise the public life in the Slovenian provinces according to the principles of extreme Catholicism. The polarisation continued during the interwar period, especially in the 1930s, where we should search for the roots of the wartime fratricidal conflict. Slovenians are still divided along these lines, and the schism surfaces at every possible occasion, for example during elections or celebrations. We are burdened by it to the point where it actually prevents us from becoming a modern nation or at least hinders the process of its formation. The assessment of the Spanish Civil War, even more than 70 years thereafter, still remains essentially controversial, just as it was back then. This holds true for the Slovenian as well as for the European (nowadays mostly conservative) society.

On Their Own? Women Running as Independent Candidates in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
Bozena Welborne
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
National Level ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Office ◽  
Global North ◽  
Primary Vector ◽  
North And South

Abstract This paper considers examples of women successfully running as independents at the national level in the Middle East, investigating how existing electoral systems impacted their ability to contest political office. Women in the region face a host of challenges when it comes to launching political campaigns outside of sociocultural norms. Most extant literature on political participation focuses on parties as the primary vector for female participation in the Global North and South. However, women in the Middle East often cannot rely on this mechanism due to the absence of political parties or existing parties’ unwillingness to back women for cultural reasons. Yet, the region hosts many female independents holding office at the national level. Through the cases of Jordan, Egypt, and Oman, I unpack this phenomenon using an institutional argument and assess what the emergence of such candidates bodes for the future of women in the Middle East.

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