On the determinants of referendum boycotts in Europe: democracy, quorum rules, and party motivations

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

This study aims to describe, and analyze the coalition strategies of local political parties and national political parties in the framework of winning regional heads in a region that has built a political dynasty for a dozen years, especially in Nagan Raya District, Aceh Province. The theory used is the political strategy theory used by Schroder (2010) which assesses political strategy is a framework of steps or plans used in order to realize political ideals. The political strategy is divided into two: political offensive strategy and defensive political strategy. This study uses a qualitative method. The data source consists of primary and secondary data. Primary data were obtained from the results of in-depth interviews with a number of informants, while secondary data were obtained from literature review and related documents. The research instrument is the researcher himself. Research informants consisted of coalition leaders, bearers of political parties, couples who won in Nagan Raya regional elections, Jamin Idham and Chalidin. The results showed that the strategy adopted by the candidate pair Jamin Idhan and Chalidin (JADIN) to fight incumbents, namely Teuku Raja Keumangan and Said Junaidi (TRK ONLY) was an offensive strategy.

Political parties are crucial for the development of democracy in Bangladesh. They represent interests of different social groups and, by means of participation in elections, affect the development of political and socio-economic power strategies. Thus, political parties provide guarantee of equal rights of all the country’s citizens and contribute to their involvement in the democratic process. The democratic institutions in Bangladesh are represented by 40 officially registered parties, among which the largest and most popular are the Awami League, the Nationalist Party, the Jatiya Party and the Jamaat-i-Islami. The article studies political parties’ participation in the life of the country since the establishment of Bangladesh and compares the four main political parties in terms of their ideology, organizational structure, leadership and popular support during elections. Throughout the country’s political history, the winning party has always enjoyed the monopoly of power, which has contributed to the aggravation of conflict between opposition parties and authorities. This situation significantly hinders the country’s socio-economic development. Strikes, often accompanied by extremist violence, are taking place in different parts of the country. The author uses the historical method to analyze the nature of the opposition of various political forces in Bangladesh.

It is a special honor to publish our work alongside rigorous critiques from Dorothy Sue Cobble, Kristoffer Smemo, Eric Schickler, and Devin Caughey. We are grateful for the opportunity to debate our research in the pages of Labor with such an esteemed and interdisciplinary group of labor historians and political scientists. In this memo we will restate our argument, address three common concerns raised by the commentators, respond to specific questions from individual commentators, and reflect on the potential implications of our argument for contemporary American politics.Our article, “Rewarded by Friends and Punished by Enemies,” argues that the CIO's political action committee (CIO-PAC) contributed to an ongoing anti-labor backlash from the Republican Party. The CIO-PAC was founded in 1943 and quickly formed a de facto alliance with the Democratic Party. Although the CIO-PAC repeatedly claimed to be nonpartisan, 94 percent of its endorsements in 1944 went to Democrats. While the CIO-PAC's partisan political engagement helped to attract prolabor support from Democratic members of Congress, it simultaneously pushed the Republican Party further toward anti-labor legislation.The CIO-PAC's opposite effects on the two parties meant that CIO power was associated with increasing polarization; the difference between Democratic and Republican voting on congressional labor legislation was small in districts and states where the CIO was weak, but this difference grew as CIO strength increased. The result was that Republicans were most likely to support anti-labor legislation, such as the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, when they represented constituencies in which the CIO was at its strongest. As Schickler and Caughey note, this dynamic cannot be explained by most theories of representation, which would expect Republican support for unions to increase with the strength of the CIO in their constituency. In other words, the CIO faced its fiercest enemies in places where we might otherwise expect it to have attracted friends.This polarizing effect of the CIO-PAC, as we stress throughout our article, was not the only cause of the passage of Taft-Hartley. Southern Democrats almost unanimously supported Taft-Hartley on the grounds that the CIO's efforts to unionize the South posed a threat to white supremacy. Around the country, public opposition to the CIO strike wave of 1945–46 encouraged many Democrats and Republicans to support Taft-Hartley. And the rising conservatism of the Republican Party, which had only increased since its late 1930s opposition to the New Deal, made Republicans more likely to support Taft-Hartley than Democrats were. Independent of these important dynamics, we assert that the CIO-PAC's political engagement further galvanized Republican opposition to organized labor in a way that may have contributed to the passage of Taft-Hartley.Our argument is therefore as nuanced as it is controversial, and we are excited to see it inspire difficult questions and critiques. Throughout the commentators’ excellent responses, three main issues were raised repeatedly. First, what was the relationship between the CIO-PAC and the anti-labor animus that motivated large parts of the Republican Party? If one caused the other, our commentators point out, then surely the 1943 creation of the CIO-PAC cannot explain a Republican anti-labor backlash that began in the 1930s. We believe that this common critique is based on a misunderstanding of our argument, and we welcome the opportunity to restate and clarify our claim that “the American labor movement's political strategy coevolved with the labor policy positions of the Republican and Democratic Parties.”Second, how did the CIO-PAC influence Republicans beyond our brief example of New York's 1944 Senate election? While our quantitative analysis does demonstrate a general relationship across the United States, we understand the desire for more qualitative evidence that the CIO-PAC's de facto alliance with the Democratic Party pushed the Republican Party in an anti-labor direction. Below, we briefly discuss how the CIO-PAC's 1946 decision not to endorse progressive, prolabor Republicans in Wisconsin and Minnesota likely contributed to the election of anti-labor Republicans (Joseph McCarthy and Edward John Thye), who voted in favor of Taft-Hartley the following year.Third, was the CIO-PAC responsible for the passage of Taft-Hartley in 1947? Cobble suggests that we unfairly blame the CIO-PAC for the anti-labor conservatism of the Republican Party and the passage of Taft-Hartley—“mighty weights,” she writes, “for the CIO-PAC to bear.” Schickler and Caughey, similarly, write that our article suggests that the CIO-PAC “cost unions more than it gained them” and therefore represented a strategic mistake by the CIO. However, we have no intention of holding the CIO materially responsible for the passage of Taft-Hartley, which was ultimately the result of numerous crosscurrents in American political life. Our hope is merely to draw attention to important negative consequences of the CIO-PAC (increased Republican backlash) that have been overlooked in previous research. Whether or not this negative effect was outweighed by the positive effect of increased Democratic support requires additional research. Similarly, more investigation and debate is needed to determine whether or not an alternative political strategy existed by which the CIO could have captured the benefits of the CIO-PAC without suffering all of its negative consequences.We believe that the CIO's political strategy coevolved with the labor policy positions of the Democratic and Republican Parties. This means that (1) the CIO's decisions regarding the PAC were influenced by the labor policies advocated by the two parties and that (2) the CIO-PAC's informal alliance with the Democratic Party influenced the subsequent labor policy positions of both parties.Regarding the first point, our article clearly explains how the labor policies supported by Democrats and Republicans in the late 1930s and early 1940s influenced the CIO's decision to create a PAC and almost exclusively to endorse Democrats. The prolabor legislation supported by President Roosevelt and the Democratic Party during the New Deal of the 1930s made a CIO alliance with the Democrats an appealing option. As we note in the article, the roots of the CIO-PAC's alliance with Democrats can be traced back to the CIO's Non-Partisan League of 1936, a short-lived organization that campaigned for FDR's reelection after realizing that “a willing Roosevelt administration offered labor a chance for a new kind of political advocacy.”Just as Democratic support for prolabor policies attracted the CIO, growing Republican opposition to organized labor made a CIO alliance with the GOP all but impossible. As we note in our article, the CIO's 1942 report on the possibility of creating a political action committee concluded that unions “should not pretend that there is the slightest possibility of our achieving genuine influence in the Republican Party” given that “the Republican Party had reconstituted itself on anti–New Deal grounds, making it an unlikely partner.” We also explicitly noted that before the CIO-PAC, “the GOP joined forces with the business community in an increasingly aggressive backlash against the New Deal in the late 1930s and 1940s. This renewed alliance paved the way for an ideological assault on labor rights in the name of economic freedom.” In these ways, we agree with the commentators and the conventional wisdom that “the conservative counterreaction against labor was already well underway in Congress by the late 1930s, with overwhelming support from Republicans.” As we write, “Of course, the Republican Party's move toward anti-unionism was not solely driven by the CIO-PAC's informal alliance with the Democratic Party.”However, the Republican Party's general shift toward anti-labor policies before 1943 is only part of the story of Republican voting on Taft-Hartley in 1947. Most important, this rising conservatism cannot explain the variation that continued to exist among Republicans on questions of labor legislation. As Smemo discusses, the vote on Taft-Hartley exposed a rift within the Republican Party; while some “yearned to gut New Deal labor law,” other members of the GOP “could not imagine a direct confrontation with the organized labor movement.” Yes, the GOP was broadly moving to the right of the Democratic Party on labor issues, but many Republicans still voted against anti-labor legislation throughout the Eightieth Congress (1947–48).This is where the second part of our coevolutionary argument comes into play: the CIO-PAC's informal alliance with the Democratic Party influenced the subsequent voting behavior of both political parties. For Democrats, support for unions (voting against Taft-Hartley) increased with the strength of the CIO in their constituency. For Republicans, by contrast, support for unions decreased with the strength of the CIO in their constituency. As our interlocutors emphasize, the overall impact of the CIO-PAC on congressional voting was therefore to increase polarization between the two parties.Thus, we fully agree with Smemo that “the anti-labor reaction in Congress began shortly after the 1936 elections” and with Schickler and Caughey that “the CIO-PAC formed in 1943 largely in reaction to the consolidation of this new conservative bloc.” This earlier conservative backlash contributed to the large difference between Republican and Democratic voting on Taft-Hartley; model 4 in table 1 shows that Democrats, on average, were less likely than Republicans to support Taft-Hartley. However, such general partisan differences tell us nothing about why Democrats and Republicans voted similarly to one another in states and districts where the CIO was weak, but voted so disparately in places where the CIO was strongest. We can better understand this polarization, we argue, if we explore the ways in which the CIO-PAC made friends of Democrats and enemies of Republicans.Caughey and Schickler note that the core qualitative evidence for the mechanism presented in our article is an analysis of the New York Senate race in 1944, in which the Republican Party, confronting the CIO-backed Democrat Robert Wagner, decided not to nominate the relatively prolabor candidate Irving Ives in favor of avowed anti-communist Thomas Curran. The reasoning for this decision, we contend, was significantly rooted in the party's reaction to the presence of the CIO-PAC, which had made it difficult for prolabor Republicans to rely on traditional nonpartisan union support and had convinced party leaders to instead shift toward a more explicit anti-union (in this case, anti-communist) stance.As Caughey and Schickler point out, that was not the end of the story, nor did this particular moment signify a permanent break between Republicans and labor. Ives was nominated in 1946 and defeated former governor Herbert H. Lehman in the Republican wave of that year, signifying that the party as a whole was not quite ready to fully commit to a strategy of polarizing the electorate.Yet as Smemo's response to our article makes plain, this partial retreat from a stridently anti-labor platform did not necessarily imply a concomitant shift toward labor. Instead, it reflected a complicated negotiation among the factions of the Republican Party to take advantage of the splits in the labor movement as well as find a way to reconcile hardline business conservatism with the more accommodationist interests in the party. But this move almost inevitably involved shifting the priorities away from explicit alliance with the unions themselves and instead toward making labor legislation more favorable to management.1 After all, despite the endorsement of the AFL, Irving Ives did indeed vote for the Taft-Hartley Act. Similarly, Smemo points out that Ives's Fair Employment Practices Commission was “notoriously weak” and that he championed an “industrial pluralism to keep industrial unions subordinate to management”; by comparing Ives to Curran, our article may have overstated Ives's prolabor credentials.More broadly, however, Cobble points out that the class of 1946 included conservative Republican senators from states without a particularly strong CIO presence, some of whom (like Harry Cain and James Kem) would also vote for Taft-Hartley.2 We do not dispute that the Republican Party as a whole would have “jumped at the chance to eviscerate the Wagner Act in 1947.” What we contend is that in places where the CIO was strong, the Republican response to the PAC was particularly negative. For instance, twelve Republicans either won open seats or beat incumbent Democrats in the 1946 elections; of these, seven were in states with significant CIO membership. At the same time, rather than accommodating labor or moderating their party's pro-Taft-Hartley position, all seven voted for the bill.3 To conventional theories of interest group politics, such an outcome is very puzzling: it appeared that by 1946 in many of those states we would expect the CIO's voice to be loudest and most persuasive, strongly anti-labor Republicans were instead elected. While we agree that a general conservative backlash in public opinion (as well as Truman's more general unpopularity and the onset of the Cold War) partly explains this pattern, we contend that the threat posed by the CIO-PAC to Republicans seems to have played a key polarizing role.Take, as another example, the case of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who defeated the progressive incumbent Robert La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary in 1946 and went on to secure one of the state's Senate seats. Cobble is correct that Wisconsin was not the most favorable state for CIO political activism (although it was in the 70th percentile in terms of CIO density among US states) and that McCarthy's conservatism seems particularly ideological. However, the CIO was particularly active in the Wisconsin's urban centers and actively worked to undermine La Follette's campaign by attacking him for being insufficiently committed to the New Deal.Many historians have attributed the CIO's animosity toward La Follette to a communist faction of the union active in Milwaukee, which was ideologically opposed to his stance against the USSR. But historian David Oshinsky convincingly demonstrates that even “the anti-Communists” in the CIO “were committed firmly to the Democratic party and pictured La Follette's return to the GOP as the Waterloo for liberal unity in Wisconsin.”4 Thus, Howard McMurray, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, engaged in a calculated effort to appeal to CIO partisanship by tying La Follette—a consistent supporter of many of the New Deal labor efforts, even though lukewarm at times in his support for Roosevelt—to “‘calculated subversion’ of the liberal forces in Wisconsin.”5 Throughout the campaign, McMurray and the labor press worked in tandem to attack La Follette and shift the labor vote toward the Democrats, a strategy that largely reflected the national CIO-PAC's own priorities.Moreover, the attack was successful. La Follette's vote share plummeted in labor wards (particularly those with strong CIO presence) in cities like Kenosha and Milwaukee during the primary in 1946, while the Democrat's rose relative to 1940, when La Follette had last been on the ballot,6 even though the AFL had directly endorsed La Follette's candidacy. As the New York Times opined in 1946, “The CIO forces contributed to La Follette's as the CIO-PAC the to vote in the Democratic might Joseph McCarthy have from La Follette's at the of the Oshinsky that at the of the Republican a relatively in to even made a to the labor vote that do not blame labor for and and leaders who had that labor unions are as a part of the American way of as some of the on As the campaign however, and he the effect of the CIO-PAC's campaign against La McCarthy seems to have increasingly convinced of the political benefits of tying labor directly to concerns about Thus, he claimed that the union strategy of labor action with the who that their theories will in an of industrial and and he McMurray of being more than a being by the in In other words, though McCarthy was particularly to the interests of organized it that he also no to to the of industrial Instead, he went on the progressive Republicans also from the CIO's shift toward partisanship in the 1946 even when they the direct of the a former of the Party in Minnesota who had to the Republicans in of increasing in 1940, had been a to labor and had been a key of the state's liberal In had voted in favor of the Wagner Act. However, by 1946 the CIO had largely for partisan the way for his conservative Republican Edward to secure the party's and in the general In his Thomas noted that despite the that such as the and the would back in the state's the CIO will vote in the Democratic primary where there is a better for among the CIO, and Democratic In this case, the partisan shift by the CIO-PAC less for Republicans to to labor they increasingly that industrial were willing to in Republican at other words, we agree with our interlocutors that the story did not end with Irving Ives's in But the partisan by the CIO-PAC had a effect on a of Senate in the following and made it in some the Republican Party to shift even further away from an alliance with organized is that the McCarthy and also to a mechanism which the CIO-PAC may have contributed to the Republican backlash against organized labor. In both the CIO-PAC its support from progressive Republicans senators and helped to the outcome of Republican toward anti-labor both of whom went on to general in 1946 and vote in favor of Taft-Hartley in 1947. If the CIO-PAC had supported prolabor Democrats while also prolabor Republicans such as La Follette and the of the Republican Party in may have been less the very it is to imagine that CIO-PAC support for La Follette and could have their primary and general election as well as two Senate against Taft-Hartley. We are therefore grateful to our commentators for us to further explore the effect of the CIO-PAC on Republicans New is for new research on the 1946 election of anti-labor Republicans in and states in which the CIO was well organized Republicans won Senate and voted in favor of Taft-Hartley. whether if how the CIO-PAC influenced Republican and the subsequent labor policy positions of Republicans in these the same time, we that the CIO-PAC played an important and overlooked in the of Taft-Hartley, we do not contend that the CIO be for the of the GOP backlash or the passage in 1947. The argument we in our article is more nuanced and less than the presented by our We that the CIO-PAC to a backlash from the Republican Party that in the passage of As explained we that the Republican backlash against organized labor began before the CIO-PAC, our argument that the CIO-PAC merely contributed to a Similarly, we believe that it was this Republican backlash numerous but not to the that in the passage of Taft-Hartley. To be we do not believe that the creation of the CIO-PAC and its informal alliance on its to the GOP backlash or the passage of being we do that the partisan polarization associated with the CIO-PAC important and questions about the and of The commentators of the CIO-PAC's alliance with the Democratic Party and that the CIO gained more from Democrats than it from Cobble argues that the CIO-PAC the more than the and that “the effect of the CIO than the Similarly, Schickler and Caughey that was only the CIO was so to the Democratic Party that it anti-labor legislation as as it In these ways, the commentators to our main argument about the negative of the CIO-PAC it contributed to the Republican anti-labor while that these were clearly outweighed by the positive But we believe that the debate is not quite this if the benefits of the CIO-PAC outweighed its it that an alternative political strategy could have captured most of these benefits without suffering all of the same As Schickler and Caughey note when our that Republicans were increasingly anti-labor as CIO strength in their the only dynamic in American political is that increasingly when the of the CIO have a way to support prolabor if most of were without a backlash of the of white In other words, the benefits of the CIO-PAC outweighed its does not it was the alternative strategy was the nonpartisan political to our friends and our of their political party. the CIO have continued this nonpartisan in a way that the benefits of the CIO-PAC without suffering all of its negative In our article, we offered two to the of the First, a large that the AFL had impact on the or passage of prolabor legislation during the early our own analysis of congressional voting on the Wagner Act that AFL union density was not associated with support or opposition from Democrats or As we the AFL support nor opposition from either however, and for the kind of debate we hope our work will argues that “the AFL to national with a in the early and some with the prolabor the way for the Wagner But if the nonpartisan contributed to such important the CIO could also have support for prolabor legislation without a partisan alliance with the Democratic Party. there a political strategy between the nonpartisan and the CIO-PAC that could have support from Democrats without simultaneously backlash from a debate about the political strategy of the CIO would a debate about the CIO's economic strategy during the 1940s. Schickler and Caughey, and have that the strike wave at the end of to a public backlash against the CIO that contributed to the passage of Taft-Hartley in The CIO was the argument and a strategy might have captured important economic without the backlash that in Taft-Hartley. In contrast, argues that organized was driven by a of CIO during than strike for and a better when the opportunity CIO leaders a in for union that the union and large In a this may have the CIO more than it but suggests that an alternative strategy may have many of the same benefits without suffering the same the three common concerns the commentators posed a of questions that This briefly on these additional were very to that Schickler and Caughey our and of CIO density to be both and are correct that the only other on CIO comes from is for only congressional our for congressional The two are relatively for the districts in the with our of CIO density is are also when despite the relative in variation districts as we voting on Taft-Hartley model 1 from table we find a negative and significant between Democrat and CIO. This means that the difference between Democratic and Republican voting on Taft-Hartley increased with the strength of the CIO. The main difference we find the is that the effect of CIO is no positive and when one the CIO density is not associated with Republican support for this in it is that our article may have a for our argument about the CIO-PAC and the Republican we only that the CIO-PAC had negative consequences if it Republicans to support What if the CIO-PAC only in a relationship between CIO density and Republican voting on that (as we the suggests that Republican members of Congress did not respond to the CIO in the way most theories of would Republicans in districts with CIO constituencies were no more likely to vote against Taft-Hartley then were Republicans in districts with CIO Taft-Hartley was supported by the overwhelming of Republicans in Congress, within the party continued to Republican members of the and Republican members of the Senate their support from the vote on Taft-Hartley. In his on the relationship between Taft-Hartley and the Republican Party, Smemo that this between and Republicans into the subsequent Smemo explains that the GOP to gut New Deal labor the party's could not imagine a direct confrontation with the organized labor this welcome for a Smemo the for more research on the dynamic relationship between the CIO-PAC and the Republican Party. Our article demonstrates that in Republicans with strong CIO constituencies were more likely to support Taft-Hartley than Republicans with CIO this relationship into the a between contrast, Smemo suggests that the within the GOP may have been the it could be that in were the of anti-labor legislation such as the by course, this will further research on congressional voting in the If the dynamic we in our article during this then the polarizing effect of the CIO-PAC Democrats but may to explain partisan polarization a of contrast, if Smemo is correct that the relationship in the (as Schickler and note that most theories of would then this would a for did the CIO-PAC from Republicans in to to in the way we would expect organized interest to the CIO from many Republicans from strong CIO states voted in favor of Taft-Hartley) and its political strategy in a way that Democratic support without If such strategic would further about the creation of the CIO-PAC and the passage of the CIO have such a political strategy earlier and the passage of the effects of the CIO-PAC on both the Democratic and Republican as well as the more general consequences of shift away from is to the of in the United Taft-Hartley was not only a for it also a relatively political for the unions as part and of the Democratic we believe it is to organized labor and party in a coevolutionary This us that for one within a party in partisan rather than can have and creating The and engaged of our interlocutors to our argument about the of political strategy on the part of the CIO also the of and the of specific to on work on the passage of Taft-Hartley in may even for contemporary American to be “the most is clearly meant to and the New Deal, when organized labor first began its alliance with the Democratic Party. as in the the Democratic Party is clearly the one with which unions have the our research suggests that labor be with its partisan of the Republican Party inevitably to power in the And while GOP no like the progressive Republicans of the 1930s, there still may be some potential for Republicans to support organized Republican members of the of voted in favor of the the to the most prolabor legislation in Congress in a And while the of the for the increasingly labor there is potential for the party's faction to support labor unions moving a Republican and that Republican senators share his that a conservative labor movement.” Although labor unions would be in to most Republican it is also to imagine that Senate could to Republicans who would then to be enemies of organized with one party can the of prolabor policies to the same other policy in contemporary American life. labor movement be of its of who power in This may only be however, if unions are willing to from a Democratic Party that itself increasingly the of class and among Our story of the CIO-PAC and Taft-Hartley suggests that labor movement would be to find ways to Democrats without potential in the such a it did for the CIO-PAC in the may more to the of the than to on of the labor As their own but they do not it as they they do not it but given and from the

This essay argues that the violent explosion at Marikana is an indication that ordinary South Africans are rapidly losing faith in the democratic institutions and social contract arrangements that underpin the 1994 post-apartheid South African democratic social contract, whether Parliament, the collective bargaining system, or the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). Similarly, “legitimate” institutions, such as political parties, trade unions and civic organisations – the organisations which pre-date 1994 – are also increasingly experienced by their members and supporters as not responsive, relevant or accountable. Marikana shows that if democratic institutions and “legitimate” institutions do not become more responsive, accountable and democratic quickly, ordinary people will increasingly look to new ones, including populists ones, or seek answers in violence. The essay concludes that although there are still many democratic and “legitimate” institutions which generate high levels of trust and enjoy widespread credibility and legitimacy, South Africa may have to renew aspects of its democratic social contract, institutions and rules, and in some cases, even create new, more relevant ones.

Political representation is a cardinal feature of democracy, without which democratic institutions and structures cannot function. The literature on the subject covers many aspects ranging from electoral systems, institutional design, political parties, position of minorities and electoral politics. In fact, as a multi-faceted subject, political representation is integral to legislative governance.

Studies on the Irish referendum experience have generally accepted that political parties play a fundamental role in the direct democratic process. While this is rarely problematised, parties often campaign in referendums in order to steer them towards outcomes that are strategically beneficial. Contemporary research on Irish referendums has delved into how parties shape their campaigns to achieve these goals, but a more preliminary question is still to be addressed: to what extent do parties participate in referendum campaigns? This paper attempts to do so by examining campaign expenditure, which offers a concrete quantitative indicator for party engagement vis-à-vis referendums. Departing from theory on party behaviour and referendum instrumentalization, the article takes into account Irish regulations on campaign finance before offering a descriptive and explorative comparison of the expenditure of Irish political parties in recent referendum campaigns. Several patterns within the data are then discussed in light of potential influential factors identified in previous scholarly work. Results suggest that a referendum’s topic and its salience in the public sphere, as well as a party’s financial resources and government status, could explain party behaviour in Irish referendum campaigns, and a set of congruent hypotheses for future research are formulated in the conclusion.

Political communication plays an important role in political contestation. Political parties must maximize political strategies through party machines run by legislative candidates and political parties. PKB is the incumbent party in Tegal Regency which has a political strategy mission to maintain the most votes and seats. The strong emotional relationship between Nahdliyin and PKB is the key to the success of the political battle. The purpose of this study is to explore the success of the PKB party in maintaining the majority of legislative seats in the DPRD during three election periods. This study uses a qualitative methodology by taking samples from elected DPRD members from the PKB Faction and the Chairperson of the PKB Branch Representative Council of Tegal Regency. Data collection was carried out through interviews with various sources, including PKB DPRD members, leaders of the Tegal Regency National Awakening Party, and related literature reviews. The results of the study revealed that the political communication strategy used by PKB party legislative candidates is in line with the Philih Lesly planning model, characterized by focused organizational activities and the community being the main target of activities.

The social capital in a general election is understudied compared to the economic capital. This study discusses the social capital of the Nasional Demokrat (Nasdem) party in the 2019 legislative election. Nasdem was in the top three rows of political party seats in the legislative election and won the most votes in the city of Makassar. This study used primary data collected from various related stakeholders: Nasdem’s agent/organizer, Nasdem's legislative candidate, community leader, general election commissioner, and residents/voters. Content analysis based on in-depth interviews found the significant relation of social capital with Nasdem's strategy in winning the 2019 legislative election in Makassar. Therefore, social capital could be a theoretical and practical discussion in a general election, especially for the political party. More specifically, social capital in Nasdem strategy refers to bonding and bridging social capital, which was in the form of disaster care programs, free ambulance, family and friendship relations, and sons of the regions discourse. The study contributes to evidence of social capital implementation to political party strategy for winning the general election.

This study aims to determine the political communication strategy used by a particular political party, Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan (PDIP) for female legislative candidates in the 2024 legislative elections in Bekasi Regency. The research used a descriptive qualitative approach. Data was collected using interview techniques with five informants. The results revealed a number of elements of political communication in relation to the PDIP's political communication strategy for female legislative candidates in the 2024 legislative elections. Party administrators as political communicators while providing direction to their female candidates. The political messages conveyed to the community focus on their abilities and background expertise to help the community which leads to voting. The channels used, in addition to social media, also use public communication channels, social communication and use MPP online-based applications. The political targets or targets of the candidates are quite broad, because they are not limited by targets from women's groups only, but are more general ranging from student groups, community members, and other community groups. The political communication strategy used by PDIP Bekasi Regency on female candidates in the 2024 legislative elections is a vertical political communication strategy, party administrators and female candidates in the context of providing direction from party administrators to female candidates through small meetings, technical guidance, consolidation and coordination

An econometric analysis of a happiness function, based on a surveyof 6,000 persons in Switzerland, indicates that: (1) the more developed the institutions of direct democracy, the happier the individuals are; (2) people derive procedural utility from the possibility of participating in the direct democratic process over and above a more favorable political outcome; (3) the unemployed are much less happy than the employed, independent of income; (4) higher income is associated with higher levels of happiness. The consideration of institutional differences in cross-regional data offers important new insights into happiness research.

To the observer who has experienced the transformation of Germany from imperial to republican regimes and the struggles for and against the establishment of democracy after the First World War, the most striking feature of the political scene in present-day West Germany–the Bundesrepublik–is the nearly complete absence of social or political mass movements. Whereas German society from 1918 to 1933 was virtually seething with political and social schemes, creeds, sects, and parties, post-Nazi Germany seems quiet and sober. The labour unions have become even less concerned with fundamental changes in the social order than they were in the days of the Weimar Republic. The youth movement seems dead. There is no mass movement of former Nazis or of neo-Fascists. Even the Communists are no longer a strong force.Voting in all kinds of elections is very heavy, but organized membership in political parties is low. There seems to be a widespread reluctance among the older people to join any kind of organized political group or to commit themselves to any kind of “cause.” Most Germans, having burnt their fingers once or twice, seem to refrain from active participation in public life as much as possible. This does not mean that the channels through which a common will, a political consensus, is formed have ceased to function. Political parties, though fewer in number than in the Weimar era, do exist; trade unions and organizations of farmers, artisans, business men, and industrialists exert their influence along with numerous and varied “lobby” organizations (refugees and expellees, victims of nazism, veterans' organizations, war invalids' associations, and so on); and last though not least the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical (Protestant) churches raise their voices and take a stand on all important issues of public life. But none of these influential groups seems to aim at radical changes in the political or economic order. Nor is any large and powerful group opposed to the democratic system of government which was formed under the authority of the American, British, and French occupation regimes.

This paper aims to outline the political situation and the political strategy of political parties in the face of political contestation in the realm of local politics. This article objectively the underlying thoughts on some of the problems faced by political parties, namely; First, that the majority of political parties have not been able to build a party structure to the deepest levels lower in real terms, and the Second, political parties tend to show the face of the management of the party that the conventional / traditional, less utilize information technology systems and the lack of measuring instruments used by political parties in facing political contest, especially in the realm of local politics. Moreover, political parties also have not been able to demonstrate clearly the number of cadres, Party members and sympathizers at various levels of the party structure. This paper on the theory of thought underlying political strategy Peter Schroder. In the data-collection efforts, this paper emphasizes the qualitative data acquisition with a literature study. The study concludes that the political strategy that can be done by political parties in the face of political contest local include strategic political mapping, preparation of planning, building resources, analysis of internal and external environment, strategize major influence voting behavior, mobilization, imaging and coordination.

In modern democracies, political parties have a very important political role. The existence of political parties is vital for the functioning of democracy. Political parties remain the cornerstone of the systems of government, and without their presence and operation, it is impossible to talk about the system and democratic institutions. Governance in a democracy means to and through political parties. Political parties and competition between them create the political system. Political parties constitute the central object of political sciences and they are almost always the main protagonists in the political systems. They undoubtedly represent the political power and the motor of parliamentarianism. Through the parliamentary action, the political parties build and operate the entire state structure of a state, regarding the functioning of parliament, the government, the head of state, to the local government bodies and other political institutions. Political parties are the socially dynamic forces representing one of the most significant achievements of democracy. This is well-argued with their very central role and crucial importance of the parties.

THE BASIS OF SUPPORT FOR HUGO CHÁVEZ: MEASURING THE DETERMINANTS OF PRESIDENTIAL JOB APPROVAL IN VENEZUELA Orlando J. Pérez Central Michigan University Introduction Since 1999, Venezuela has experienced a dramatic transformation of its political system with the coming to power of Hugo Chávez. Chávez dismantled the previous political system and established neo-populist structures that rely on his personal appeal and the close collaboration of the armed forces. Chávez has relied heavily on significant support from the poor and those who felt economically and politically excluded by the “Punto Fijo” system.1 President Chávez has built an impressive record of electoral victories; winning every electoral contest except one since coming to power in 1999. He continues to receive relatively high levels of support among sectors of Venezuelan society. However, there is evidence of growing discontent with high crime rates, high levels of inflation, and significant corruption in the public administration. Using data from the AmericasBarometer surveys conducted in 2007, 2008 and 2010, this paper seeks to examine the basis of Chávez’s popular support. Populism as the Underlying Principle of the Regime Brian Loveman and Thomas Davies argue that “In the 1960s and 1970s professional military officers in Latin America scanned the panorama of the hemisphere’s history and blamed the ineptitude and corruption of civilian politicians as well as the imported institutions of liberal democracy for the wretched conditions in their region” (Loveman and Davies 1997: 3). This appears to be the same motivation in Venezuela. An alienated population fell under the charm of the charismatic paratrooper who was willing to sacrifice his life for the country in a heroic effort to take over the government and “save” the nation from a corrupt political system. Populism as a political regime has a long history in Latin America. From Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina and Getulio Vargas in Brazil in the 1940s to Evo Morales in Bolivia and Chávez today, leaders from the ideological right and left have employed populist means to gain support and govern their nations. Studies have focused on the mechanisms by which populist leaders acquire and retain popular support. Significant scholarly C 2012 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 59 The Latin Americanist, June 2013 attention has been given to defining and understanding the factors leading to the emergence of populist regimes (Conniff 1999; de la Torre 2000). Kurt Weyland (2001) argues that populism is “a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power based on direct, unmediated uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of mostly unorganized followers.” Additionally, according to Weyland populist leaders seek to dismantle the pre-existing institutional structures in order to subordinate them to the will of the leader. Populism as a political regime is characterized by five factors. First, populism rejects traditional mechanisms of political participation. Populist leaders arise in situations where traditional political parties undergo a crisis of representation by organizing outside, and in opposition to, the traditional political structures. Second, populist are skilled at “mass communication .” Populist leaders use rallies, television, and, more recently, social media to link the leader with the masses. The importance of mass communication is to transcend the traditional media and create unmediated links between the leader and the population. Third, populists build alternative means of social mobilization either through new political parties and social movements or the development of plebiscitarian mechanisms. Repeated referenda are used to validate the leader and his/her policies. These mechanisms have the added advantage that they bypass the institutional checks of a liberal democracy and marginalize the traditional political opposition.2 Fourth, populist tend to wrap themselves in the national flag. They attempt to appropriate national symbols and myths in order to garner support and advance their agenda. Normally such approach also involves the creation of national enemies, foreign and domestic, that are used to rally popular support. The use of national symbols and common enemies are often used as mechanisms to divert attention from domestic problems. Fifth, populist leaders base a significant portion of their legitimacy on charisma and personal appeal. Populist regimes seek to establish an “organic” relationship between the leader...