Myths about leaders: personalities and strategy-making

2018 ◽  
pp. 24-44
Author(s):  
Timothy Noël Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Strategy Group ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Research Department ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
Strategy Making

This chapter aims to demonstrate that both Labour and the Conservatives were far more strategically proactive when approaching Minority Government in the 1970s than has been assumed in popular and scholarly accounts. The analysis of the strategy-making processes in both main parties provides new insights by drawing on a combination of recently released papers of bodies including Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet meetings, the No. 10 Policy Unit, the Conservative Research Department (CRD), and correspondence between party leaders and their respective advisers. The examination of the often-overlooked impact of Minority Governments on the formation of strategy ranges from the transformation of established institutions to such innovations as Conservative leader Edward Heath’s ‘Party Strategy Group’, created primarily as a response to the Wilson Minority Government in 1974.

scholarly journals Avoidance, ambiguity, alternation: Position blurring strategies in multidimensional party competition

2021 ◽  
pp. 146511652110274
Author(s):  
Jelle Koedam
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Strategic Behavior ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Democratic Representation ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Political Outcome ◽  
Western European

In a multidimensional environment, parties may have compelling incentives to obscure their preferences on select issues. This study contributes to a growing literature on position blurring by demonstrating how party leaders purposively create uncertainty about where their party stands on the issue of European integration. By doing so, it theoretically and empirically disentangles the cause of position blurring—parties’ strategic behavior—from its intended political outcome. The analysis of survey and manifesto data across 14 Western European countries (1999–2019) confirms that three distinct strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty about a party's position. This finding is then unpacked by examining for whom avoidance is particularly effective. This study has important implications for our understanding of party strategy, democratic representation, and political accountability.

Research Note: “Negative” Personalization: Party Leaders and Party Strategy

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Pruysers ◽  
William Cross
Keyword(s):  
Research Note ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Negative Campaigning ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Party Strategy ◽  
Opposing Party ◽  
Campaign Communication ◽  
Personalization Of Politics

AbstractWhile the negative campaigning literature has witnessed tremendous growth in recent years, the precise targets of campaign negativity have not been fully explored, as candidates and their parties are largely treated as the same target. Likewise, although scholars are increasingly writing about the personalization of politics, this literature has not considered whether parties can “personalize” their opponents by focusing their messaging and attacks more on individual leaders than the parties they lead. In an attempt to bridge the gap between these two literatures, we develop the concept of negative personalization. Negative personalization, as we define it, is an emphasis on opposing party leaders in campaign communication more so than on the parties that they lead. Exploring recent election campaigns in Canada's largest province, we document the extent to which parties engage in negative personalization and suggest hypotheses for the factors leading to increased negative personalization.

The Conservative Research Department: the Care and Feeding of Future British Political Elites

1974 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-113
Author(s):  
Arnold Beichman
Keyword(s):  
Conservative Party ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Department ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Significant Step ◽  
The Right

One of the distinctive characteristics of the Conservative Party's history has been its ability for a century or more to moult its plumage at the right political season without really altering its gestalt. This comment does not imply an act of deception by Conservative Party leaders. Rather it recognizes that Peel, Pitt, Disraeli and, in the twentieth century, Tory leaders like R. A. Butler, Harold Macmillan, Iain Macleod and before them, Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill, somehow understood the need for social change and the politics of compromise; so much so that they were quite prepared, in the words of New York's Mayor Jimmy Walker, “to rise above principle” where and when it appeared to be necessary. The Conservative Party has endured as a party because of its unusual adaptability compared to conservative parties in other Western societies. Indeed, it has more than merely ‘endured’: the Conservative Party in an apparently hostile atmosphere, has been able to take and hold power for huge blocks of time in the past century.This adaptation to reality in the interests of power was particularly apparent after the landslide Conservative defeat in July 1945. Some party leaders were determined to adapt to the new realities by attempting to recapture the support of as sizeable a segment of the British working class as the party had enjoyed at the turn of the century. Promulgation of the Industrial Charter through the efforts of a high-powered Tory Committee and the Conservative Research Department was a significant step in that direction.

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Decision Rule Selection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laver ◽  
Ernest Sergenti
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rule ◽  
Positive Feedback ◽  
Party System ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Track Record ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Survival Of The Fittest

This chapter extends the survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary environment to consider the possibility that new political parties, when they first come into existence, do not pick decision rules at random but instead choose rules that have a track record of past success. This is done by adding replicator-mutator dynamics to the model, according to which the probability that each rule is selected by a new party is an evolving but noisy function of that rule's past performance. Estimating characteristic outputs when this type of positive feedback enters the dynamic model creates new methodological challenges. The simulation results show that it is very rare for one decision rule to drive out all others over the long run. While the diversity of decision rules used by party leaders is drastically reduced with such positive feedback in the party system, and while some particular decision rule is typically prominent over a certain period of time, party systems in which party leaders use different decision rules are sustained over substantial periods.

Endogenous Parties, Interaction of Different Decision Rules

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Laver ◽  
Ernest Sergenti
Keyword(s):  
Decision Rule ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Competitive Environment ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Robert Axelrod

This chapter attempts to develop more realistic and interesting models in which the set of competing parties is a completely endogenous output of the process of party competition. It also seeks to model party competition when different party leaders use different decision rules in the same setting by building on an approach pioneered in a different context by Robert Axelrod. This involves long-running computer “tournaments” that allow investigation of the performance and “robustness” of decision rules in an environment where any politician using any rule may encounter an opponent using either the same decision rule or some quite different rule. The chapter is most interested in how a decision rule performs against anything the competitive environment might throw against it, including agents using decision rules that are difficult to anticipate and/or comprehend.

More Shadow than Substance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Substance P ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Black Republicans ◽  
State And Local ◽  
American Party ◽  
Local Party

This chapter studies how, as the 1970s progressed, black Republicans were able to claim clear victories in their march toward equality: the expansion of the National Black Republican Council (NBRC); the incorporation of African Americans into the Republican National Committee (RNC) hierarchy; scores of black Republicans integrating state and local party hierarchies; and individual examples of black Republican success. African American party leaders could even point to their ability to forge a consensus voice among the disparate political ideas of black Republicans. Despite their ideological differences, they collectively rejected white hierarchies of power, demanding change for blacks both within the Grand Old Party (GOP) and throughout the country. Nevertheless, black Republicans quickly realized that their strategy did not reform the party institution.

Minting the Obverse: Library and Information Studies as a One-Sided Coin

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Gorichanaz
Keyword(s):  
Professional Education ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Research Department ◽  
Library And Information Studies ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
Key Concepts

A synthesis of the work of Michael Buckland reveals the critique that, for too long, LIS has been a one-sided coin. Growing out of professional education, LIS has traditionally nurtured only its applied, practical and empirical side. Challenging this imbalance, emerging research in LIS points to the development of the basic, liberal arts and conceptual side of the discipline. Indeed, the advent of JCLIS reflects this trend. An interest in basic LIS is welcome for a number of reasons: By clarifying key concepts, it will lead to improved practice; by contributing more widely to human knowledge it will fulfill the obligations of being an academic research department; and by exploring information issues which are becoming relevant to all members of society, it will realize a greater purpose. This paper surveys the extent to which the basic side of LIS has emerged, examining the content of the top LIS journals and the curricula of the top LIS institutions. The findings point to an inchoate reverse, but one with numerous challenges that remain beyond the horizon. This paper serves as an invitation to researchers and educators to consider how they can further contribute to minting the basic side of the coin of LIS.

Party Leaders in the Czech Populist Parties and Movements

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-119
Author(s):  
Michal Kubát ◽  
Maciej Hartliński
Keyword(s):  
Party Leaders ◽  
Official Position ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Significant Factors

AbstractThe aim of this article is to analyse the role and importance of leaders in the Czech populist parties and movements, as well as determining significant factors which condition their institutionalisation. The main focus will be placed on the role of leaders in establishing their respective parties, their formal position and intraparty selection processes in VV, ANO, SPD and ÚPD. Examples of actions taken by the leaders of ANO and SPD show that building populist parties on the foundation of the strong, formal and official position of the leader in their party as well as becoming open to more members prove effective when it comes to the discussed issues...

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