The West German Social Democratic Party and The Politics of Internationalism in Central America

1987 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 89-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eusebio Mujal-Leon
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Democratic Parties

One of the Most Notable Aspects of the Crisis in Central America has been the opportunity it has offered a number of actors, both within and without the region, to become involved in an area long considered a traditional reserve and zone of influence of the United States. Over the last decade, no European Socialist or Social Democratic party has been more important or influential with respect to Central American issues than the West German Social Democratic Party (SPD or Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Despite being in the opposition since 1982, the West German Social Democrats have retained their prominence on international issues—particularly on Central American ones—for a number of reasons, such as: (1) having a solid electoral base (37% of the votes in the 1987 Bundestag elections); (2) having leaders who are internationally prominent; (3) having a well-organized foreign policy apparatus at their disposal (the well-financed Friedrich Ebert Stiftung foundation); (4) having connections to a similarly endowed trade union movement, organized around the Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund(DGB); as well as (5) having persisted in their efforts to coordinate joint initiatives with other Socialist and Social Democratic parties, both within the European Economic Community (EEC) and through the Socialist International (SI).

Swedish Social Democracy in Central America: The Politics of Small State Solidarity

1991 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Sofie Nilsson
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Small State ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Sandinista Revolution ◽  
Democratic Engagement ◽  
Nicaraguan Politics

Few events have captured the imagination of progressive countries and parties worldwide as did the July 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Many of these parties became strong supporters of the Ortega government and were thus quite taken by surprise — as were most of those involved and engaged in Central American politics — by the outcome of the Nicaraguan election in February 1991. One such party, one of the most determined in its support of the Sandinistas, was Sweden's Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiska Arbetare Partlet or SAP), even though Sweden may not immediately come to mind as a natural participant in Central American politics. How can this intense Swedish Social Democratic involvement and partisanship be explained? How has Swedish support been translated into practical positions? Did the election victory of Violeta Chamorro, who was supported by the United States (a country whose Central American policy came under relendess fire by the SAP), signal the end of Swedish Social Democratic engagement in Nicaraguan politics?

November Revolution (German History)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Kotte
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
German History ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

Over the course of November 1918, Germany’s political system changed from a constitutional monarchy to a parliamentary republic. The November Revolution was a consequence of the military defeat of the German Empire in World War I and was triggered by the naval mutiny carried out on October 29, 1918. Soldiers and workers throughout the Empire joined the movement, which turned into an open revolution and was headed by the two social democratic parties, the Majority Social Democrats Party (Mehrheitssozialdemokratische Partei) or MSPD (later the Social Democratic Party of Germany [Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands] or SPD) and the more socialist-leaning Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) or USPD.

scholarly journals The Demobilization of Class Politics in Denmark: The Social Democratic Party’s Group-Based Appeals 1961–2004

2018 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mads Thau
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
General Level ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

Abstract In Denmark, as in other Western European countries, the working class does not vote for social democratic parties to the same extent as before. Yet, what role did the social democratic parties themselves play in the demobilization of class politics? Building on core ideas from public opinion literature, this article differs from the focus on party policy positions in previous work and, instead, focuses on the group-based appeals of the Social Democratic Party in Denmark. Based on a quantitative content analysis of party programs between 1961 and 2004, I find that, at the general level, class-related appeals have been replaced by appeals targeting non-economic groups. At the specific level, the class-related appeals that remain have increasingly been targeting businesses at the expense of traditional left-wing groups such as wage earners, tenants and pensioners. These findings support a widespread hypothesis that party strategy was crucial in the decline of class politics, but also suggests that future work on class mobilization should adopt a group-centered perspective.

Czech Social Democracy and its “cohabitation” with the Communist Party: The story of a neglected affair

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubomír Kopeček ◽  
Pavel Pšeja
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Unsuccessful Attempt ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

This article attempts to analyze developments within the Czech Left after 1989. Primarily, the authors focus on two questions: (1) How did the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) achieve its dominance of the Left? (2)What is the relationship between the Social Democrats and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM)? We conclude that the unsuccessful attempt to move the KSČM towards a moderate leftist identity opened up a space in which the Social Democrats could thrive, at the same time gradually assuming a pragmatic approach towards the Communists. Moreover, the ability of Miloš Zeman, the leader of the Social Democrats, to build a clear non-Communist Left alternative to the hegemony of the Right during the 1990s was also very important.

Partisan Activism in the Age of Individualization

2019 ◽  
pp. 66-87
Author(s):  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The Social ◽  
Party Elites ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Democratic Parties

This chapter addresses the following question: How do contemporary party members view themselves, their party, and their role in it? This question is important because the success of party reforms depends centrally on whether the newly-created channels of participation and engagement are recognized as meaningful and valuable by those who engage in parties (or are generally inclined to engage in them); and to find out what could be considered meaningful and valuable by these individuals we need to understand what they expect from a party in terms of participation and opportunities to make one’s agency felt. The basis of the study, as will be explained in detail, are focus group interviews held with party members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), two parties that were chosen as empirical cases because Social Democratic parties are arguably on top of the list of the parties that may be considered ‘victims’ of the trend of shifting participatory norms, having lost much of their once-great electoral support across most of Europe. An important finding the chapter presents is the tendency of party members to demand (not more direct participation like membership ballots or the like but) more face-to-face contact and two-way communication with party elites and their fellow activists—which strengthens the general case for a more deliberative understanding of parties that the book advances.

The decline of Western European social democracy: Exploring the transformed link between welfare state generosity and the electoral strength of social democratic parties, 1975–2014

2019 ◽  
pp. 135406881986133
Author(s):  
Karl Loxbo ◽  
Jonas Hinnfors ◽  
Magnus Hagevi ◽  
Sofie Blombäck ◽  
Marie Demker
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Success Factor ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Western European ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Party Family ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

Social democratic parties are crumbling at the polls. Surprisingly, however, the causes of this demise remain largely unexplored. This article contributes to filling this gap in the research by studying the long-term impact of welfare state generosity on the vote share of social democratic parties in 16 Western European democracies. If the welfare state indeed was a key factor behind social democratic growth in the past, we ask whether the recent plight of these parties is down to a reversal of their previously dominant success factor? The article makes three principal findings. First, we show that social democratic parties primarily benefited electorally from expansive reforms at lower levels of welfare state generosity. Second, we find that this dynamic of diminishing returns also helps explain the demise of the Social Democratic party family in the whole of Western Europe. Lastly, our results reveal that programmatic turns to the right predict electoral losses in the least generous welfare states, whereas such shifts either pass unnoticed or predict vote gains in the most generous ones. We conclude by arguing that the structure of welfare state institutions is one important explanation for variations in the demise of the once powerful Social Democratic party family.

Optimal Electoral Strategies for Socialist Parties

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK LICHBACH
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Electoral Strategies ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

A strategic dilemma confronts social democratic parties in postindustrial politics: whether to depend on the working class or on the middle class for electoral support. If a social democratic party becomes more heterogeneous (argue working-class strategists) or more homogeneous (argue the middle-class strategists) in class support, then it will also become more electorally successful. The controversy is addressed in two ways. First, a formal model of vote maximization offers a more complete explication of the strategic tradeoffs confronting party leaders than is offered by either the working-class or the middle-class strategists. Second, the alternative electoral strategies are also probed using aggregated survey data on social class and party fortunes. Data come from 41 elections in the postwar era contested by five social democratic parties. Findings come from regressing the total, working-class, and middle-class votes for each party on (lagged) Rose and Urwin's indexes of social cohesion of party alignments and on (lagged) Alford's indexes of class voting. Analytical results and empirical findings are interpreted in terms of their implications for party leaders.

scholarly journals Workers’ Politics, the Communist Challenge, and the Schuman Plan: A Comparative History of the French Socialist and German Social Democratic Parties and the First Treaty for European Integration

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Shaev
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Steel Workers ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Schuman Plan ◽  
Social Democratic Parties ◽  
Steel Industries

AbstractThe Schuman Plan to “pool” the coal and steel industries of Western Europe has been widely celebrated as the founding document of today’s European Union. An expansive historiography has developed around the plan but labor and workers are largely absent from existing accounts, even though the sectors targeted for integration, coal and steel, are traditionally understood as centers of working-class militancy and union activity in Europe. Existing literature generally considers the role coal and steel industries played as objects of the Schuman Plan negotiations but this article reverses this approach. It examines instead how labor politics in the French Nord and Pas-de-Calais and the German Ruhr, core industrial regions, influenced the positions adopted by two prominent political parties, the French Socialist and German Social Democratic parties, on the integration of European heavy industry. The empirical material combines archival research in party and national archives with findings from regional histories of the Nord/Pas-de-Calais, the Ruhr, and their local socialist party chapters, as well as from historical and sociological research on miners and industrial workers. The article analyses how intense battles between socialists and communists for the allegiance of coal and steel workers shaped the political culture of these regions after the war and culminated during a mass wave of strikes in 1947–1948. The divergent political outcomes of these battles in the Nord/Pas-de-Calais and the Ruhr, this article contends, strongly contributed to the decisions of the French Socialist Party to support and the German Social Democratic Party to oppose the Schuman Plan in 1950.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document