The Party Comes Back

2019 ◽  
pp. 380-427
Author(s):  
A. James McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Party Members

This chapter looks back at the diverse efforts to maintain order in the communist world. Here, one might reasonably credit the Soviet regime and its “small bloc” allies with seriously attempting to preserve some of the international movement's original ideals. In an important way, “developed socialism” meant that their populations could expect to enjoy relatively decent lives. Nonetheless, the chapter contends that the primacy of single-party rule made it increasingly difficult to sustain the basic elements of the Brezhnev consensus. Despite the best efforts of socialist planners to modernize their economies, these regimes could not keep up with their citizens' rising expectations. As conditions grew more uncertain, party members undercut their credibility by seeking to insulate themselves from these trials and using their positions to their exclusive benefit.

Strategizing the Sacred

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avi Max Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
Political Party ◽  
Religious Study ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Party Members ◽  
A Site

This chapter suggests that the representations of religion in young Islamists' lives are not the product of prevarication, but rather of personalization. Religious authority has become circulated to such an extent that it has come to mean multiple things to multiple members. In the midst of this diversification, political party members increasingly appropriate the authority to interpret and represent what “Islam” means or should mean to others. None of these myriad representations constitutes “lies.” Instead, these words and constructions represent and reflect members' own strategic desires for themselves. The chapter shows how the haraka represents for some a site for religious study, a place of Qurʾanic learning unfettered by politics. For others, it is a place to make contacts and to get ahead: an instrumental, not ideological, site. For still others, it serves as a strategic site, a place to try out new ideas, and even as a convenient scapegoat. And, yet, for others, it is completely ignored; it simply has no place in their lives as party members.

Party Members vs. Party Sympathizers in a Period of Declining Membership: Who Does What (and with Whom)?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aldo F. Ponce ◽  
Susan E. Scarrow
Keyword(s):  
Party Members

The Effects of Manifesto Politics on Programmatic Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Hennl ◽  
Simon Tobias Franzmann
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Core Business ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Decision Mode ◽  
Programmatic Change

The formulation of policies constitutes a core business of political parties in modern democracies. Using the novel data of the Political Party Database (PPDB) Project and the data of the Manifesto Project (MARPOR), the authors of this chapter aim at a systematic test of the causal link between the intra-party decision mode on the electoral manifestos and the extent of programmatic change. What are the effects of the politics of manifesto formulation on the degree of policy change? Theoretically, the authors distinguish the drafting process from the final enactment of the manifesto. Empirically, they show that a higher autonomy of the party elite in formulating the manifesto leads to a higher degree of programmatic change. If party members constrain party elite’s autonomy, they tend to veto major changes.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

scholarly journals Allies among Enemies: Political authority and party (dis)loyalty in Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
DAVID JACKMAN ◽  
MATHILDE MAÎTROT
Keyword(s):  
Political Competition ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Party Discipline ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Local Character ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Member Of Parliament ◽  
Ruling Party

Abstract The authority of political leaders in Bangladesh rests on diverse qualities, not least of which are the muscle and finance they can mobilize, and the relationships they can craft with senior party members. These are utilized to confront rivals both within and outside their own party. In some instances, the intensity of intra-party competition can be so severe that a further quality emerges: the capacity to find allies among enemies. Building local inter-party alliances can bolster the authority of politicians, yet be to the detriment of party coherence. This argument is developed through an analysis of mayoral and parliamentary elections held in the past decade in a small Bangladeshi city, where a ruling party member of parliament (MP) and opposition mayor appear to have developed such a relationship. This has thwarted the electoral ambitions of their fellow party members and has posed a serious challenge to party discipline. While political competition is often seen as being either inter- or intra-party, here it is focused around inter-party alliances. This portrayal suggests we need to give greater emphasis to the decentralized and local character that political authority can take in Bangladesh.

scholarly journals The Death of May’s Law: Intra- and Inter-Party Value Differences in Britain’s Labour and Conservative Parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172199563
Author(s):  
Alan Wager ◽  
Tim Bale ◽  
Philip Cowley ◽  
Anand Menon
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Value Differences ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Significant Disagreement ◽  
Party Members ◽  
First Time

Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced. May’s Law, not for the first time, appears not to be borne out in reality.

Party Messaging in the U.S. House of Representatives

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110297
Author(s):  
Tyler Hughes ◽  
Gregory Koger
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Strategic Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
The Media ◽  
Party Members ◽  
The U.S

Both Congressional parties compete to promote their own reputations while damaging the opposition party’s brand. This behavior affects both policy-making agendas and the party members’ communications with the media and constituents. While there has been ample study of partisan influence on legislative agenda-setting and roll call voting behavior, much less is known about the parties’ efforts to shape the public debate. This paper analyzes two strategic decisions of parties: the timing of collective efforts to influence the public policy debate and the substantive content of these “party messaging” events. These dynamics are analyzed using a unique dataset of 50,195 one-minute speeches delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 2016. We find a pattern of strategic matching—both parties are more likely to engage in concurrent messaging efforts, often on the same issue.

Lenin and the Crisis of Communism: The View from Inside

1991 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-100
Author(s):  
Cris Shore
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Political Ritual ◽  
May Day ◽  
First Time ◽  
Public Demonstration

THE 1990 MAY DAY PARADE IN MOSCOW'S RED SQUARE provided an extraordinary spectacle of the growing dilemma faced by the Soviet leadership. Mikhail Gorbachev, flanked by members of the Politburo, stood atop the Lenin Mausoleum while below an angry crowd of demonstrators booed, jeered and defiantly waved placards and portraits of opposition politicians. It was an historic occasion, reminiscent of the last days of the CeauSescu regime in Romania. Not since Lenin's day had there been a public demonstration of this kind in Red Square. This was the first time since the Bolshevik Party appropriated the International Labour holiday to celebrate its own power that the May Day parade had been disrupted. The symbolic significance was all too apparent: the key event in the calendar of Soviet political ritual had been visibly wrecked, the communist leadership had appeared weak and isolated, and even at the sacred heartland of Lenin's shrine Gorbachev's authority was being challenged and undermined by an angry Soviet public. From being a symbol of workers’ solidarity and Soviet military might, May Day had become further testimony to the crisis of legitimacy in the Soviet regime.

The Mensheviks and NEP Society in Russia

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Brovkin
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
New Period ◽  
History Of

AbstractContemporary scholarship on the development of the Soviet political system in the 1920s has largely bypassed the history of the Menshevik opposition. Those historians who regard NEP as a mere transition to Stalinism have dismissed the Menshevik experience as irrelevant,1 and those who see a democratic potential in the NEP system have focused on the free debates in the Communist party (CP), the free peasantry, the market economy, and the free arts.2 This article aims to revise some aspects of both interpretations. The story of the Mensheviks was not over by 1921. On the contrary, NEP opened a new period in the struggles over independent trade unions and elections to the Soviets; over the plight of workers and the whims of the Red Directors; over the Cheka terror and the Menshevik strategies of coping with Bolshevism. The Menshevik experience sheds new light on the transformation of the political process and the institutional changes in the Soviet regime in the course of NEP. In considering the major facets of the Menshevik opposition under NEP, I shall focus on the election campaign to the Soviets during the transition to NEP, subsequent Bolshevik-Menshevik relations, and the writings in the Menshevik underground samizdat press.

Coming to Terms with the Soviet Regime: The "Changing Signposts" Movement among Russian Emigres in the Early 1920s. DeKalb

1996 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 516
Author(s):  
Marshall S. Shatz ◽  
Hilde Hardeman
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Regime
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