scholarly journals POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1607-1612
Author(s):  
Joseph Okwesili Nkwede ◽  
IBEOGU, ALOYSIUS S. ◽  
Eric Mwambene
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Party System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Elite Theory

This paper titled Political Violence and The Sustainability of Nigerian Democracy seeks to establish the causes of political violence in Nigerian democratic experiment and possibly suggest how to surmount the pathologies with a view to ensuring the survival of the nations fledgling democracy. The study adopted elite theory as a theoretical framework of analysis. The study established that greed, struggle for supremacy between godfathers and godsons have often led to political violence in the countrys party system. The implication of the study is that if the above factors are not assuaged, the polity will continue to elect and nominate mediocre to occupy positions of responsibilities. Similarly, the country polity will keep witnessing wanton destruction of lives and properties. The study therefore recommended that the existing sentiments and parochial cleavages such as ethnicity and religion should not be a pre-requisite when it comes to attracting the suitable qualified candidates for public and political offices.

Afterword

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hervik
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Moral Outrage ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Generative Power ◽  
Negative Change

This afterword offers reflections on some major points of this section concerning the generative power linking moral outrage to political violence. The authors have successfully taken up a topic of immense relevance and urgency in contemporary society. Their efforts are a first important step to address this from an empirical, analytical, and theoretical framework. In the afterword, I seek to add further perspectives to some of the findings, including a focus on moral outrage that situates it not strictly within personality as a preexisting universal that waits for someone to wake it up but rather in an approach to emotions as embedded within cultural understandings with an emphasis on the strategic side of the production of moral outrage in creating both positive and negative change.

scholarly journals Democracy, Islam and Party System in Indonesia: towards a consensus-oriented model?

PCD Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Pal Istvan Gyene
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Different Levels

This paper argues that the impact of “Islam” on the Indonesian political system is worth studying on three different levels: 1. society’s political divisions; 2. the party system 3. parliamentary politics. I contend that there is a specifically Indonesian “consensus-oriented” democracy model involved in the process—which is not, however, without Western predecessors—wherein political Islam and Islamist parties act not as destabilising factors but rather as “Muslim democratic” forces that strengthen democratic consensus in a manner similar to some “Western” Christian democratic parties. This research is based partly on a historical and, implicitly, comparative approach. It builds strongly on the theoretical framework and methodology of Sartori’s classic party system typology, Lijphardt’s “majoritarian” and “consensus-based” democracy model, and the so-called neo-institutionalist debate on the possible advantages and disadvantages of parliamentary and presidential governments.  

Michels and his Critics

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beetham
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Approach ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Elite Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Critical Literature

Ipropose in this paper to develop a theme from an earlier article I wrote on Michels: namely, that Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens is to be understood as the work of someone who had passed over from revolutionary Marxism into the camp of elite theory; more precisely, it is a work which takes as its starting point a problem posed within a revolutionary tradition and proceeds to answer it from within a quite different theoretical framework. We could say that it offers a Right-wing answer to a Left-wing question. It is in this conjunction that lie both the strengths and weaknesses of the work (1). One failing of much of the critical literature on Zur soziologie des Parteiwesens is that it treats the conceptual and other inadequacies in its argument as a series of isolated errors, of separate points to be challenged, rather than as arising systematically out of the particular intellectual conjunction I have indicated (2). I propose, however, to go further in this paper than simply present a historical analysis of the intellectual development of an individual thinker. I want to ask the question: How far can the inadequacies of Michels' argument be overcome from within the framework of elite theory itself, and how far can they only be overcome by breaking with some of the central assumptions of that perspective? In other words, I want to broaden out the enquiry to consider what are the limitations of an elite-theoretical approach to the study of parties and elites, particularly parties of the Left.

Parliamentary Cycles and Party Switching in Legislatures

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Mershon ◽  
Olga Shvetsova
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Party Switching

This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of preelectoral positioning—contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics.

The Issue Incentive Model of Party System Attention

2019 ◽  
pp. 24-40
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Niche Parties ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
Issue Attention ◽  
Setting Theory ◽  
Issue Competition ◽  
Issue Content

This chapter presents the ‘issue incentive model of party system attention’. This model uses the issue competition literature and policy agenda-setting theory as a platform for building a theoretical framework with individual issues as analytical points of departure, and at the same time, the model focuses on explaining the entire issue agenda and not just individual issues. The issue incentive model explains the issue content of party politics through the incentives that different issues offer to large, mainstream parties. The concept of the party system agenda is a key element in the framework as it is the dependent variable. The model is not focused on explaining party attention at a particular time such as during an election campaign, for instance; focus here is on attention in the medium term such as a decade. The concept of the party system agenda highlights the interaction among political parties and their shared perceptions of which issues are important. The incentives for large, mainstream parties with regard to a particular issue are argued to be decisive; partly because large, mainstream parties are much more flexible in terms of issue attention than niche parties are, and partly because the largest parties traditionally dominate government formation and thus politics. Furthermore, three types of incentives are argued to be particularly decisive for whether large, mainstream parties want to pay attention to an issue: issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations.

scholarly journals Party system and structure of party competition in the Republic of Srpska

2017 ◽  
pp. 27-38
Author(s):  
Stefan Vukojevic
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
General Elections ◽  
The Republic

In this paper the author analyzes the party system and structure of party competition in the Republic of Srpska, from the first postwar general elections for the National Assembly held in 1996, until the latest elections held in 2014. Based on Giovanni Sartori?s typology of party systems, the author classifies the party system in the Republic of Srpska and analyzes the structure of party competition by using Peter Mair?s theoretical framework. Determination of party system in the Republic of Srpska based on its numerical/ideological typology does not tell us much about the very essence of the party system. By means of Peter Meir?s three criteria, the author analyzes the structure of party competition which fosters a wider perspective of understanding the party system and defines its essence more precisely. Regardless of the various changes to which political parties are exposed, the very essence of the party system is manifested through tendency to gravitate towards stable patterns of party competition.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent Eaton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Party System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Policy Regime ◽  
Policy Regimes ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
World Today ◽  
System Collapse ◽  
The World

In addition to conceptualizing the two types of subnational policy challenges that are examined in the book, this introductory chapter explores the distinctive possibilities and limitations of subnational neoliberalism and subnational statism as two prominent types of subnational policy regimes. It also examines the causes that have made subnational policy challenges more common around the world today and specifically within Latin America, including globalization, democratization, decentralization, party system collapse, and indigenous mobilization. Next, the chapter assesses the importance of the shift toward greater territorial heterogeneity by analyzing the possible advantages and disadvantages of this shift, including when it results in cases of policy regime juxtaposition. The chapter ends with a brief overview of the theoretical framework, which stresses the importance of structural, institutional, and coalitional factors to explain variation in the success of subnational policy challenges.

scholarly journals Indigenous Parties and Democracy in Latin America

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúl L. Madrid
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Party System ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Latin American History ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
First Time

AbstractIn recent years, important indigenous parties have emerged for the first time in Latin American history. Although some analysts view this development with trepidation, this essay argues that the indigenous parties in Latin America are unlikely to exacerbate ethnic conflict or create the kinds of problems that have been associated with some ethnic parties in other regions. To the contrary, the emergence of major indigenous parties in Latin America may actually help deepen democracy in the region. These parties will certainly improve the representativeness of the party system in the countries where they arise. They should also increase political participation and reduce party system fragmentation and electoral volatility in indigenous areas. They may even increase the acceptance of democracy and reduce political violence in countries with large indigenous populations.

scholarly journals Parties under Stress: Using a Linkage Decay Framework to Analyze the Chilean Party System

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Morgan ◽  
Carlos Meléndez
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Party System ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Linkage Mechanism ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
Current State ◽  
Policy Alternatives

Conventional wisdom suggests Chile's party system is highly institutionalized. However, recent declines in participation and partisanship have begun to raise questions about this veneer of stability. This article assesses the current state of the Chilean party system, analyzing its ability to provide linkage. We specify a theoretical framework for identifying challenges to linkage and constraints on necessary adaptation. We then use this framework to evaluate linkage in the contemporary Chilean system, emphasizing how its representational profile has changed since the democratic transition. The analysis suggests the two partisan coalitions no longer present clear policy alternatives and programmatic representation increasingly depends on policy responsiveness and relics of old ideological divides. Significant institutional constraints impede parties’ ability to incorporate demands from emerging social groups, and clientelism remains a complementary but not core linkage mechanism. This evidence indicates that while representation in Chile has not yet failed, the system contains serious vulnerabilities.

Mind wandering as data augmentation: How mental travel supports abstraction

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myrthe Faber
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Data Augmentation ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mind Wandering ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Important Addition

Abstract Gilead et al. state that abstraction supports mental travel, and that mental travel critically relies on abstraction. I propose an important addition to this theoretical framework, namely that mental travel might also support abstraction. Specifically, I argue that spontaneous mental travel (mind wandering), much like data augmentation in machine learning, provides variability in mental content and context necessary for abstraction.

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