THE CONCEPT OF BASIC INCOME IN THE BRITISH POLITIAL CONTEXT

The article explores the current debate on basic income in the UK. The growing interest in this concept, which implies the introduction of unconditional and equal for all regular cash payments, is caused by problems common to Western European countries, i.e. an increase in income inequality, the risk of technological unemployment, as well as the need to take urgent measures to support the population at times of pandemic. In the British context, however, ideological and political factors play a significant role, such as a rich intellectual tradition of developing universal approaches to social security and the desire of a number of parties, both national and regional, to use this increasingly popular concept for their own political purposes. It is concluded that in the medium term, the UK's transition to basic income is unlikely, but the very discussion on its introduction can serve as a catalyst for serious social transformations.

Technologies of Manipulation During the Presidential Elections of 1999 in Ukraine

The article examines the election campaigns of the late twentieth century. in Ukraine and proved, that they operated manipulation technologies. The state was democratizing the political system, adoption of new election legislation, transition to a mixed electoral system; political pluralism was formed, the number of parties has increased significantly, the struggle for power intensified. With each subsequent election campaign (presidential, parliamentary), the political struggle intensified, and voter engagement technologies have become more vulnerable. The author proves, that the ways and purposes of application of technologies depend on motivations of subjects of the power, as: obtaining, exercising and retaining power; the desire to achieve political and social results, most profitable for pragmatic actors, although this may run counter to collective goals. In Ukraine, democratic processes are not yet complete, traditions of democracy and stable political institutions are absent. Instead, manipulation technologies, electoral engineering, which are aimed at limiting the actions of competitors and creating favorable conditions for their own victory. This prevents the formation of certain restraints, barriers to manipulation technologies, familiar to many civilized democracies.

5. Winning and Losing Elections

This chapter assesses what politicians and members of political parties really care about: getting into office on the back of a successful election campaign. Rather than the general determinants of voting outlined in the previous chapter, this is about the choices voters and parties face within a particular system, so they can organize themselves to win. For that they need to play by the rules of the game, which includes developing strategies within electoral systems. The chapter then discusses the impact of electoral systems on that calculus, and how the number of parties is affected by the electoral system in place. It also looks at the factors that assist the winning of elections, and the extent to which the choices of parties and voters are affected by growing instability in the system. Overall, the chapter provides an overview of British political parties and party systems.

ADA APA DENGAN INDUSTRI PERTAMBANGAN INDONESIA ? (Sebuah Tinjauan Singkat dari Sudut Pandang Makro Ekonomi)

This study was conducted to determine the benefits and role of the mining industry for the prosperity of Indonesia. In addition, this study also wants to know the contribution of mining to state and regional revenues. And finally, the purpose of this research is to find out the labor absorption capacity of the mining sector industry. This research is a literature research, which includes a study of the thoughts of several figures related to the mining industry. Equipped with empirical data from related agencies, as well as literature searches from various sources of information, interviews were also conducted with a number of parties from both government and private agencies. The information needed is related to the benefits, roles, absorption of labor, and the contribution of the mining industry to the state and region of Central Sulawesi Province. This research was conducted for three months, starting from September 2020 to November 2020 in Palu City, Central Sulawesi Province. The results of the study indicate that the existence of the mining industry in Indonesia can still provide the greatest benefit to the prosperity of the people. The mining industry's contribution to state revenues and mining-producing regions shows a positive trend. The absorption of labor in the mining sector will increase, especially local workers in line with the downstream policy of the mining sector. Keywords: Contribution, Industry, mining, welfare, labor

REGIONAL PARTY SYSTEM OF NORTHERN IRELAND: EROSION OF BIPOLARITY

The subject of the article is the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland in 2000-2010s, as well as the factors contributing to the observed changes. The research is based on the theoretical framework of J. Lane and S. Ersson and is chronologically outlined by the period of 1998-2021. Cross-temporal comparative analysis was used as a key research method. The parameters of the comparative analysis include the following variables: number of parties, effective number of parties, number of significant parties, fragmentation of the party system, ideological polarization and electoral instability. The first part of the article is devoted to the characteristics of the theoretical and methodological research design. The second part is devoted to the analysis of the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland, which is based on the study of structural and ideological elements. In the final part, the results and key findings of the study are presented, including the characteristics of the key factors in the dynamics of the regional party system. The results of the study demonstrate the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland regarding two parameters - electoral stability and ideological polarization. The degree of electoral stability of the regional party is slightly decreasing due to the redistribution of electoral preferences from unionist parties to alternative ones. The change in the parameter of ideological polarization of the regional party system is observed in two directions - the erosion of bipolarity, as well as the centripetal tendencies of ideologically extreme party actors. The key factors in the dynamics of the regional party system in Northern Ireland at the present stage are the following: instability of the regional political system based on ethno-confessional criteria; the issue of European Union membership and the future status of Northern Ireland; changes in the demographic structure of the regional community.

Ewolucja systemu partyjnego i sceny politycznej w Bułgarii w latach 1990-2017 – od dwublokowości do wielopartyjności

This article concerns the evolution of the party system and the political scene of Bulgaria after the system transformations. The foundations of this analysis are the results of the elections to the National Assembly in the years 1990-2017. In order to identify the type of the party system, official election results and the effective number of parties index (ENP) were used. This index was used to characterise the party system after 2001. Some conditions from communism time had an influence on the shape and kind of how the Bulgarian party system and political scene evolved after system transformation. Between 1990-2001 in Bulgaria, a two-block or two and a half-block party system existed. From 2001 it evolves in the direction of a multiparty system.

Main channels of party communication in Ukraine

The dynamics of the creation of the party press in Ukraine at the end of the 20th – beginning of the 21st century becomes obvious in the context of the emergence of new parties and the establishment of their journals. The main purpose of political communication is to inform, persuade, and mobilise the electorate. The quantitative indicators of the party press have changed because the number of parties has increased, as a result of which new publications have appeared more intensively. The party press is one of the most important sources of information about the party and its leader(s), the social orientation of the programme foundations; it is one of the main channels of communication with party members, supporters, and opponents. As a result of the development of information technologies, political parties started using internet resources to establish effective communication with more voters. The use of digital technologies, multimedia tools, bringing the information and propaganda activities of parties closer to the needs and opportunities of the readership in a certain way expands the social and communication horizons of party influence.

How Populist are Parties? Measuring Degrees of Populism in Party Manifestos Using Supervised Machine Learning

One of the main challenges in comparative studies on populism concerns its temporal and spatial measurements within and between a large number of parties and countries. Textual analysis has proved useful for these purposes, and automated methods can further improve research in this direction. Here, we propose a method to derive a score of parties’ levels of populism using supervised machine learning to perform textual analysis on national manifestos. We illustrate the advantages of our approach, which allows for measuring populism for a vast number of parties and countries without resource-intensive human-coding processes and provides accurate, updated information for temporal and spatial comparisons of populism. Furthermore, our method allows for obtaining a continuous score of populism, which ensures more fine-grained analyses of the party landscape while reducing the risk of arbitrary classifications. To illustrate the potential contribution of this score, we use it as a proxy for parties’ levels of populism, analyzing average trends in six European countries from the early 2000s for nearly two decades.

The Number of Parties and Decision-Making in Legislatures

This paper proposes a model of a legislature, formed by several parties, which has to vote for or against a certain bill in the presence of a lobbyist interested in a certain vote outcome. We show that the ease with which the lobbyist can manipulate a legislature decision increases with the number of elected parties, and, consequently, decreases with an electoral threshold. On the other hand, a lower electoral threshold increases the representativeness of a legislature. We combine these two effects in a notion of fairness. We show the existence of an electoral threshold that optimizes the fairness of a political system, which is close to 1–5%. Namely, the optimal threshold (in our sense) is close to thresholds that exist in most parliamentary democracies.

What Makes Party Systems Different? A Principal Component Analysis of 17 Advanced Democracies 1970–2013

Party systems, that is, the number and the size of all the parties within a country, can vary greatly across countries. I conduct a principal component analysis on a party seat share dataset of 17 advanced democracies from 1970 to 2013 to reduce the dimensionality of the data. I find that the most important dimensions that differentiate party systems are: “the size of the biggest two parties” and the level of “competition between the two biggest parties.” I use the results to compare the changes in electoral and legislative party systems. I also juxtapose the results to previous party system typologies and party system size measures. I find that typologies sort countries into categories based on variation along both dimensions. On the other hand, most of the current political science literature use measures (e.g., the effective number of parties) that are correlated with the first dimension. I suggest that instead of these, indices that measure the opposition structure and competition could be used to explore problems pertaining to the competitiveness of the party systems.