scholarly journals Rootedness, Activism, and Centralization: The Case of the Swiss People’s Party

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 252-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Favero
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Federal Level ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Organisational Model ◽  
Active Base

The Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei [SVP]) has increased its territorial extensiveness and organisational intensiveness in recent years, and has professionalised its strategies of communication. This article analyses the dynamics characterising the SVP’s organisation. It shows that with its locally rooted presence and its effort to generate ideological coherence, the party has embraced the “mass party” organisational model. It additionally assesses the extent to which the SVP’s centralised power at the federal level is conducive to the party’s further electoral success. Having considered both the party at national level and three of its most important cantonal branches, the article argues that the organisational dominance of the SVP’s central leadership was beneficial for the party’s electoral strength but will lead to tensions with cantonal and local branches, which are largely in charge, to build and maintain an active base.

scholarly journals Institutionalization of transnationalizing political parties: the case of the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari-Liis Jakobson ◽  
Tõnis Saarts ◽  
Leif Kalev
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
National Level ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Transnational Migrants ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Party Institutionalization

AbstractWhile party institutionalization research has advanced notably in the recent years, the institutionalization of political parties that extend their organizations abroad (i.e. transnationalizing parties) has remained an academically uncharted territory. This article draws on party institutionalization literature and analyses the particularities of institutionalization in transnationalizing parties. The findings suggest that transnational institutionalization takes place simultaneously on multiple levels (local, national and transnational) and is distinctly interactive, placing crucial importance on the activities and responsiveness of both the central party organization as well as the extraterritorial branches. The internal dimensions of institutionalization can be notably affected by the territorially and temporally scattered nature of emigrant communities and by the sense of inclusion provided to the activists. The external dimensions of transnational institutionalization involve a wider variety of actors than institutionalization on the national level and can also be more challenging due to the more contingent socialization patterns and interest in politics of transnational migrants. Transnational institutionalization of political parties is relevant to the parties and their continuous electoral success, but also for transnational migrant communities and impact of their political participation.

Regionalism and the Rise of the Populist Far Right in India

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Kenny
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
National Office ◽  
System P ◽  
Heads Of State

This chapter addresses India’s more recent experience of populism at the national level. While India has avoided a return to authoritarianism since the Emergency, populism has been a recurrent feature of Indian politics. The persistence of divided party rule between the national and subnational levels has meant an uneasy tension between two different modes of political mobilization for national office. National–subnational coalitions based on the distribution of pork have undergirded several Congress party governments. However, such coalitions remain inherently unstable given the autonomy of India’s subnational unit, and they are vulnerable to outflanking by populist appeals over the heads of state governments. The electoral success of the BJP under Modi in 2014 illustrates the appeal of populist mobilization in a vertically fragmented patronage-based system.

scholarly journals Why does the European Right accommodate backsliding states? An analysis of 24 European People’s Party votes (2011–2019)

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-187
Author(s):  
Lise Esther Herman ◽  
Julian Hoerner ◽  
Joseph Lacey
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
European People’S Party ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Fundamental Values ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Eu

AbstractOver the last decade, the EU’s fundamental values have been under threat at the national level, in particular among several Central and Eastern European states that joined the EU since 2004. During this time, the European People’s Party (EPP) has been criticized for its unwillingness to vote for measures that would sanction the Hungarian Fidesz government, one of its members, in breach of key democratic principles since 2010. In this paper, we seek to understand how cohesive the EPP group has been on fundamental values-related votes, how the position of EPP MEPs on these issues has evolved over time, and what explains intra-EPP disagreement on whether to accommodate fundamental values violators within the EU. To address these questions, we analyse the votes of EPP MEPs across 24 resolutions on the protection of EU fundamental values between 2011 and 2019. Our findings reveal below-average EPP cohesion on these votes, and a sharp increase in the tendency of EPP MEPs to support these resolutions over time. A number of factors explain the disagreements we find. While the EPP’s desire to maintain Fidesz within its ranks is central, this explanation does not offer a comprehensive account of the group’s accommodative behaviour. In particular, we find that ideological factors as well as the strategic interests of national governments at the EU level are central to understanding the positions of EPP MEPs, as well as the evolution of these positions over time. These results further our understanding of the nature of the obstacles to EU sanctions in fundamental values abuse cases, and the role of partisanship in fuelling EU inaction especially.

scholarly journals The Electoral Success of the Radical Left: Explaining the Least Likely Case of the Communist Party in Graz

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manès Weisskircher
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
National Level ◽  
Current Strength ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Political Opportunities ◽  
Party Family ◽  
Radical Left

Recently, scholars have shown a growing interest in radical left parties (RLPs). In terms of electoral success, the rise of the KPÖ Graz, the Communist Party in Austria’s second biggest city, represents perhaps the most counterintuitive case in Western Europe. Adding to previous studies, the rise of the KPÖ Graz contradicts many of the claims made and patterns found about the conditions for the electoral success of RLPs. While the national KPÖ was voted out of parliament in 1959, the Graz branch has been a member of local government since 1998. Since then, the party has managed to gain 20 per cent of the vote in three out of four elections. In 2017, the KPÖ defended its place as the second largest party in local legislature and stayed ahead of the radical right FPÖ, on the rise at the national level. In stark contrast to the Communists’ current strength, however, they did not gain even 2 per cent of the vote in 1983. This analysis shows how the party has managed to ‘own’ the issue of housing and to exploit local political opportunities in order to be electorally successful. The findings point to the importance of agency and the subnational level for RLPs, and highlight more general questions in the study of this party family.

scholarly journals Theories, methods and practices – a longitudinal spatial analysis of the (de)securitization of the insurgency threat in Russia

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aglaya Snetkov
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Security Policies ◽  
North Caucasus ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Federal Level ◽  
Longitudinal Methods ◽  
Political Effect

How do securitizing actors go about desecuritizing policy issues that have been securitized across multiple spatially bounded referent objects? Do such desecuritizations develop as a single or manifold process and with what political effect? And critically, how do we methodologically approach the study of such processes? These are pertinent questions that have been left underexamined in the (de)securitization literature. In seeking to fill this gap, this article makes two main points. First, it calls for a greater focus on the study of (de)securitizations that are constructed according to multiple spatially bounded referent objects, and on how these diverging strands of discourse and practice shape the overarching process. Second, it argues for a greater use of longitudinal methods of analysis as a better way to capture the evolutionary dynamics of desecuritization processes, which (re)constitute security policies and agendas. To illustrate these claims, the article considers the empirical case of Russia’s (de)securitization of insurgent threats since 2000 by tracing this process over a longitudinal period and across three spatial-referent objects, namely the local level: Chechnya; the sub-federal level: North Caucasus; and the national level: Russia.

scholarly journals What Does It Take to Get Elected in a Post-Communist Democracy?

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siim Trumm
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Campaign Spending ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Party Organisation ◽  
Electoral Performance ◽  
Local Party

The literature on post-communist democracies has traditionally suggested that organisational strength is considerably less important for electoral success than extensive media-based campaigns. Recent studies on party-level electoral dynamics, however, indicate that this might not be the case any longer. Building on these insights, this study goes beyond the party-level analyses of electoral success and failure by focusing on the electoral fortunes of individual candidates in a post-communist democracy. Using original data from the 2011 Estonian Candidate Survey, this article looks at the comparative impact of candidates’ campaign spending and the strength of their local party organisation, alongside other potentially relevant characteristics, on their likelihood of getting elected and vote share. The findings suggest that candidates’ electoral performance in Estonia is still first and foremost shaped by their own campaign spending. In addition, I find evidence that candidates fare better if they have prior local-level and national-level political experience, conduct more personalised campaigns, and are positioned higher up on their party’s district-level list.

Bamboo Shoots and Weak Roots: Organizational Expansion of New Parties in Japan

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
KEN HIJINO
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Local Organizations ◽  
Organizational Stability ◽  
Regional Elections

AbstractRecent research claims that local party organizations are essential for new parties seeking organizational stability and national-level electoral success. Yet new parties which emerged in Japan since the 1990s have failed in building nation-wide networks of local organizations. The article asks how these parties sought to expand locally and why their attempts have been largely unsuccessful. It finds evidence that under certain conditions (in urban areas and multi-member districts, or when controlling local chief executive offices and endowed with inherited resources) new parties have been more successful in standing and winning seats in regional elections. Regions with these favorable conditions are few, however, resulting in the overall weakness of the new parties’ local organizations. The study also disconfirms expectations that a party's control of national government should result in their improved representation at the local level. The article contributes to elucidating the incentives and dynamics of building party organizations in terms of local elected offices for newcomer parties in Japan. It hints at similar challenges for entrepreneurial parties with few social roots in other established democracies.

scholarly journals Globalization Of Entrepreneurship: Overwhelming Institutional Response In Favor Of SMEs In India

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sivakumar Venkataramany ◽  
Daniel Fox
Keyword(s):  
Commercial Banks ◽  
Small And Medium Enterprises ◽  
National Level ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Entrepreneurial Firms ◽  
Institutional Response ◽  
Federal Level ◽  
Lending Institutions ◽  
Medium Enterprises ◽  
Small Scale Industries

Indias approach to the promotion of entrepreneurial firms is unique, and to some extent, overwhelming. The country has a dedicated ministry for small scale industries at the federal level supported by several agencies at federal and state levels. Besides, numerous commercial banks, regional rural banks, urban and cooperative credit lending institutions participate in funding the micro, small, and medium enterprises. Such an effort, though seemingly superfluous, is the dire need for a country to enhance the competitiveness of entrepreneurial firms in order to unite them under an organized structure and integrate their operations into that of major global firms. Three national-level Entrepreneurship Development Institutes are engaged in skill development. This paper offers a critique of the present policy with regards to the SMEs with a prospective outlook into their future.

Fidesz looks set to win another Hungarian election

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Civil Society Organisations ◽  
European People’S Party ◽  
International University ◽  
At Home

Subject Pre-election politics. Significance The election campaign has started early, almost a year before the polls. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has already moved against an international university and independent civil society organisations, prompting opposition from many young people. He faces trouble in Brussels, including within his own party group. At home, opposition lines are being redrawn, with a new player, Momentum Movement, on the ascent. Impacts The European Commission will face increasing pressure from the European Parliament to take a tougher stance on Hungary. Internal strife will hit the European People’s Party as members push to exclude Fidesz. With Fidesz’s continued electoral success at home, Orban’s formula may be copied in Europe and beyond.

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