Popular Politics and Electioneering between the Wars

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Mass Democracy

Disruption and rowdyism at political meetingswas a feature of Victorian and Edwardian electioneering. The advent of mass democracy, and the rise of Communism in Europe, ensured that such behaviour came to be portrayed as evidence of political extremism and a threat to political stability. As a result, Labour candidates, keen to position their party as one capable of governing for the nation as a whole, distanced themselves from popular electoral traditions now synonymous with a confrontational, and unacceptable, politics of class. Heckling, rowdyism and disruption came, by the 1930s, to be associated primarily with the Communist Party.

scholarly journals Prospects for the General Election of 2020: Tradition and Transition in Chinese Politics

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
David SG Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
General Election ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
National Elections ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Public Policy Debate

The decision by the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 to move to open direct national elections was taken in order to ensure political stability and continued economic growth, and to enhance its position of leadership. The first national general election in 2015 followed in the wake of the landmark Constituent Assembly. Victory in 2015 by the Chinese Communist Party has been accompanied by political stability and sustained economic growth. Though there is likely to be greater competition in the General Election of 2020 the principle change in politics has been the emergence of significant public policy debate. Issues of corruption, housing, and regional development are likely to be major considerations during the election, alongside debate on the simultaneous referenda that have been called on Tibet and federalism.

Indonesia-US Relations, 1949–1999

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Strategic Imperative ◽  
The Cold War

The US relationship with the Republic of Indonesia has gone through three distinct phases. From 1945 until 1966 Indonesia’s politics and foreign policy were driven by the imperatives of decolonization and nation building, dominated by its founding President Sukarno and cleaved by bitter rivalry between secular political forces, regional movements, Islamic parties and organizations, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and the armed forces. In the aftermath of the September 30th Movement, an alleged coup by the PKI (the Indonesian Communist Party), under the leadership of General Suharto, launched a campaign of mass murder in which hundreds of thousands of alleged Communists were killed and Sukarno ousted. Suharto would rule Indonesia for the next thirty-two years (1966 to 1998). With the Cold War inside Indonesia effectively over and a staunchly anti-Communist and pro-US regime in power, US-Indonesian relations entered a long period of what one might call authoritarian development in which US officials focused on political stability, supported the military’s heavy involvement in politics, encouraged pro-Western investment and development policies, and sought to downplay growing criticism of Suharto’s abysmal record on human rights, democracy, corruption, and the environment. The end of the Cold War reduced the strategic imperative of backing authoritarian rule in Indonesia, and over the course of the 1990s domestic opposition to Suharto steadily built among moderate Islamic forces, human rights and women’s activists, environmental campaigners, and a burgeoning pro-democracy movement. The Asian financial crisis, which began in the summer of 1997, accelerated the forces undermining Suharto’s rule, forcing his resignation in May 1998 and inaugurating a third phase of formally democratic politics, which continues to the 21st century. Since 1998 US policy has focused on regional economic and security cooperation, counterterrorism, trade relations, and countering the growing regional power of China.

Radicalism and Respectability in Working-class Political Culture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Exclusion ◽  
Religion And Gender ◽  
Mass Democracy ◽  
And Gender

Class, for some on the radical left, and especially those in the Communist Party, was not just an economic identity. It was also one earned through conduct, particularly a commitment to political activism, sobriety and self-improvement. This was, of course, a culture that had always enjoyed a limited appeal; during the inter-war period, however, this appeal was restricted further by the rise of mass democracy, which undermined the necessary sense of political exclusion. This chapter charts the social and cultural limits of Communism in Scotland, exploring the Party’s appeal by focusing on the criminal trials of activists charged with sedition, the role played by religion and gender within the Party, and the changing nature of independent working-class education, especially within the labour college movement, during the 1920s and 1930s.

Conclusion: Popular Politics, Radicalism and Inter-war Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Public Involvement ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Left ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Scottish popular politics was transformed during the inter-war decades. Local political identities, and especially those connected with the radical tradition, were subsumed within a more uniform national political contest. Further, the arrival of the mass franchise altered the way in which the relationship between the people and parliament was understood. The means by which politics was conducted duly changed: popular traditions of public involvement in politics came to be tarnished by association with political extremism in general, and Communism in particular. This occasioned a change in relations on the political left, and in the approach of the Labour Party. Equally, it differentiated inter-war politics in Scotland and Britain from that witnessed elsewhere in Europe.

Public Politics and Demonstrations of the Unemployed

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Meetings ◽  
National Office ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Public Politics

The political culture of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century placed a premium on the physical occupation of contested public spaces. Rooted in local custom, this confrontational tradition was sustained by the holding of mass rallies, demonstrations and public meetings. During the 1920s, however, the public traditions of popular politics were discredited, and increasingly identified with political extremism and especially Communism. As such, the response of the local and national authorities to such traditions changed. Concentrating on demonstrations of the unemployed, this chapter shows that the Labour Party, hoping to avoid association with the activities of the Communist Party, dissociated itself from local traditions of protest, preferring instead to stress the party’s fitness for local and national office.

Vietnam in 2019

Asian Survey ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan London
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
State Repression ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
General Secretary

In 2019, a semblance of political stability prevailed in Vietnam even as the affairs of the Communist Party were beset by the uncertain health of its general secretary, corruption scandals, and the intensification of Beijing’s encroachment on its continental shelf. Vietnam saw continued economic growth but an increasingly complex growth picture. Improvements in the quality of life masked the persistence of economic vulnerability and increasing inequality, while civil society was constrained by state repression. Ominously, Vietnam’s ecological crisis intensified.

What the Framers Got Right and What They Got Wrong

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Lee Drutman
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Political Disagreement ◽  
Mass Democracy ◽  
Partisan Conflict ◽  
Modern Mass

This chapter discusses how James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, thought the best way to preserve political stability was to divide factions so that none could ever form a permanent majority. Indeed, Madison and the Framers feared political parties, and thought they had devised a political system that would prevent parties from ever forming. They were wrong: As they quickly found out, political parties were necessary for modern mass democracy to function. However, they were also right: Above all, they feared just two parties, one of which would be a majority. Majorities, they understood, have a tendency to oppress minorities. Ultimately, their prescient warnings about a doom loop of toxic two-party politics resonate today. Today, America faces the same toxic partisanship the Framers understood would be fatal to democracy-the partisanship where every single policy confrontation collapses into one single irresolvable partisan conflict, where trust breaks down, and where political disagreement becomes about domination and victory over the other.

Equilibrium, Structure of Interests and Leadership: Adenauer's Survival as Chancellor

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 634-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter H. Merkl
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Equilibrium Structure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Western Germany

In studies comparing the Bonn Republic with the Weimar Republic, few aspects of the former have received more attention from political scientists than its extraordinary political stability. Contrary to all expectations in the immediate postwar era, and under the same leadership, Germany's second try at parliamentary democracy has already outlasted the Nazi millennium and will soon have exceeded—successfully—the life span of its ill-fated democratic predecessor, the Weimar Republic. Interpretations abound which attribute the political stamina of the Bonn government to the economic prosperity of Western Germany, its Allied tutelage, its firm Western-oriented course, or its disenchantment with political extremism of either variety. Of particular interest to political scientists, however, are the theories which identify the political stability of the Bonn Republic with the “reign” of Konrad Adenauer from the beginning to this day.

scholarly journals “We Are All Part of the Same Family”: China's Ethnic Propaganda

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Brady
Keyword(s):  
Information Management ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Public Information ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Definition Of

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government works hard to promote an image of ethnic harmony in China and downplays ethnic conflict by carefully controlling public information and debate about ethnic affairs. Despite such efforts, the recent clashes in Tibetan areas in 2008 and violent riots in Urumqi in 2009 reveal the weaknesses of this approach. This paper surveys the broad themes of ethnic propaganda ([Formula: see text], minzu xuanchuan) in present-day China, looking at the organisations involved, the systems of information management they utilise, and the current “go” and “no-go” zones for debate. The paper forms part of a larger study of the politics of ethnicity in China. It is based on primary-and secondary-source research in Chinese, secondary sources in English, and extensive interviews with Chinese bureaucrats and scholars regarding China's ethnic affairs conducted during fieldwork in China in 2002, 2004, 2005–2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2012. Ethnic issues in China concern not only the minority peoples there, but also the majority Han – hence, my definition of ethnic propaganda incorporates materials relating to all of China's ethnic groups. The paper uses the events in Tibetan areas in 2008 and in Urumqi as case studies to demonstrate how these policies play out in periods of crisis. It concludes with a discussion of the role that ethnic propaganda plays in maintaining China's long-term political stability and its international affairs.

Organization and Leadership of the French Communist Party

1952 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles A. Micaud
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Political Force ◽  
Industrial Areas ◽  
French People ◽  
Agricultural Regions ◽  
French Communist Party

In the general election of June 1951, the French Communist Party lost almost 10 per cent of the votes it had obtained in 1946 and, thanks to an electoral system that was designed to reduce its parliamentary representation, almost half of its deputies. These results should not be interpreted as a serious defeat for a party that still holds the allegiance of one-quarter of the French people. Its loss of votes, particularly among peasant and middle-class elements, did not affect its major strongholds in industrial areas and in some agricultural regions. Communism in France remains a major political force in a position to threaten both political stability and capacity for effective military defense. The presence of a strong Communist Party, and to a lesser extent of a Gaullist Party that is in part its by-product, prevents the coalition government from adopting a forceful and constructive policy and giving the French people a sense of effective leadership.

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