What Happened to the Democratic Party

1920 yılında Bitlis’te doğan Kasım Küfrevi, İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat fakültesinden mezun olduktan sonra siyasete atılmıştır. 1950 yılında Demokrat Parti (DP)den Ağrı adayı olarak gösterilen Küfrevi, Nakşibendi kimliği ile de ön plana çıkmıştır. Demokrat Parti, Ağrı’da yeni örgütlenen bir parti olmasına rağmen Küfrevi’nin bu kimliğinin de etkisiyle halkın kısa sürede ilgi ve güvenini kazanmıştır. Bu süreçte, Ağrı halkının parti, particilik ve ideolojik tutumdan ziyade Kasım Küfrevi ve beraberindekilere olan güven duygusunun yanı sıra, dini bağlılıklarının da etkili olduğunu söylemek yerinde olacaktır. 1950 yılının ardından 1954’te tekrar DP saflarında mecliste bulunan Küfrevi parti içerisindeki anlaşmazlıklardan dolayı DP ile yollarını ayırarak, aynı yıl Hürriyet Partisi’nde kurucu üye olarak görev almıştır. 1957 seçimlerinde Ağrı’dan bağımsız milletvekili olarak adaylığını koyan Küfrevi halkın kendisine gösterdiği teveccüh ile TBMM’ye girmeyi başarmıştır. 27 Mayıs 1960 Askeri Darbesi’nin ardından Yassıada’da yargılanan Küfrevi sonraki süreçte beraat etmiştir. 1965’te Yeni Türkiye Partisi’nden 13. dönem, 1969’da Cumhuriyetçi Güven Partisi’nden 14. dönem Ağrı milletvekili olarak mecliste bulunan Küfrevi, 14 Ekim 1973 – 12 Eylül 1980 tarihleri arasında Ağrı senatörlüğü yapmıştır. Demokrat Parti, Bağımsız, Yeni Türkiye Partisi ve Güven Partisi olmak üzere üç farklı partiden milletvekili olarak meclise girmeyi başaran Kasım Küfrevi, meccliste bulunduğu sürece gerek Ağrı özelinde gerekse, ekonomi, eğitim, fikir, sanat, sosyal ve siyasal konularda önergeler vermiş, bu önergelerin çoğunu mecliste kabul ettirmeyi başarmıştır. Farklı siyasi partiler altında seçime girmiş olmasına rağmen milletvekili seçilen Küfrevi hem dini bir kişilik olarak, hem de Ağrı halkı tarafından sevilen, saygı duyulan bir lider olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Çalışmada, Türk siyasi hayatına Ağrıdan milletvekili olarak katılan ve uzun süre politikada bulunan Kasım Küfrevi’nin yaşam öyküsü ile beraber siyasi geçmişi incelenecektir. Çalışma sırasında Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi, TBMM Arşivi, TBMM Zabıt Cerideleri ve süreli yayın seksiyonlarından yararlanılmıştır.

Voting behavior is a very complex type of political behavior. Therefore, understanding why voters vote for a particular political party or a candidate requires developing complex models. In 1957, Anthony Downs, who built his model on Hottelings’ and Smithies’ models, argued that political parties’ and candidates’ ideological and issue positions can be expressed on a one-dimensional space. On one hand, it was highly reductionist to argue that political ideas on a particular issue can be expressed this way, on the other, it was highly practical from analytical point of view. Locating parties, candidates and voters on a one-dimensional space according to their ideological or issue positions was then a revolutionaly idea and helped comparing party, candidate and voter ideological and issue positions within and across countries. These models, which were called spatial models of party competition were further developed over time and helped understanding voting behavior. Currently, spatial models of party competition have two major competing models linking voter ideological positions with party ideological positions. Simply, while the proximity model proposes that voters vote for the parties or candidates that hold ideological positions in the political space that are closest to their own, the directional model suggests that the voters vote for the parties or candidates that are on their side of the two-dimensional political spectrum and more extreme than their own while being within the acceptability region. This research aims to test the applicability of these two voting models for the Turkish voter. Türkiye constitutes an interesting case study with its long-term PR electoral system as it was suggested in the extant literature that proximity model is a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in Proportional (PR) systems. Thus, we hypothesize that in Türkiye, where a PR electoral system is in effect for parliamentary elections, voter electoral preferences are better explained by the proximity model than the directional model. Our research analyzes Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) data for voters of the four major political parties in Türkiye, the Justice and Development Party (JDP), the Republican People’s Party (RPP), the National Action Party (NAP), and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). A series of Multiple Linear Regression Analyses were conducted to reveal associations between the dependent and the independent variables. Voter embracement, as expressed as like-dislike of each political party for each voter, is seperately used as the dependent variable for each analysis. Issue distance and issue scalar product were used as key independent variables representing the formulas for the proximity and the directional models, respectively. Additionally, education, age, gender and income were recruited as classical control variables. Comparing explanatory powers of the statistical models showed that, contrary to the findings of MacDonald and his colleagues, the proximity model of voting is a more appropriate tool than the directional model to explain voting behavior in Türkiye. From a macro-political perspective, this finding supports Westholm’s (1997) argument that the PR provides a more appropriate tool to explain voting behavior in PR systems. Yet, it should be noted that further multi-country comperative analyses required for certain results.

Seymour Martin Lipset and political sociology¹

This article examines the change in the presidential fortunes of the US Democratic Party from 1988 to 1992. It focuses on the role of presidential candidates as the key dynamic aspect of American party politics. The analysis recognizes that candidates can influence the vote in several ways, including their personal attributes, ideological positions and policy and performance issues that are associated with them. For many American voters, the presidential candidates are the party. Contrary to the fears of many, candidate-centered politics have not led to presidential elections being determined by the personalities of the nominees. Nor has the decline of party politics led to ideological volatility, with the deciding factor being how closely candidates position themselves to the median voter. The major reason why Clinton won and Dukakis lost was that domestic issues favored Vice President Bush in 1988 but worked against President Bush in 1992.

The study of complex political phenomena such as parties' polarization calls for mathematical models of political systems. In this paper, we aim at modeling the time evolution of a political system whereby various parties selfishly interact to maximize their political success (e.g., number of votes). More specifically, we identify the ideology of a party as a probability distribution over a one-dimensional real-valued ideology space, and we formulate a gradient flow in the probability space (also called a Wasserstein gradient flow) to study its temporal evolution. We characterize the equilibria of the arising dynamic system, and establish local convergence under mild assumptions. We calibrate and validate our model with real-world time-series data of the time evolution of the ideologies of the Republican and Democratic parties in the US Congress. Our framework allows to rigorously reason about various political effects such as parties' polarization and homogeneity. Among others, our mechanistic model can explain why political parties become more polarized and less inclusive with time (their distributions get "tighter"), until all candidates in a party converge asymptotically to the same ideological position.

From 1985 to 2000, in an unprecedented development in Canadian politics, three different parties governed the province of Ontario, each for a five-year period. Each party sought to reform the province’s welfare program in keeping with its ideological position. The authors demonstrate the manner in which welfare policies interacted with prevailing economic and labour market conditions to create dramatic fluctuations in the number of welfare recipients. The analysis shows that governing parties generally sought to match policies to economic conditions, but were often unable to do so because of their ideological stance or because of policies inherited from the previous government. The authors’ findings also reveal that it was in fact the New Democratic Party, after 1992, that initiated a restrictive policy of welfare benefits and eligibility, a policy direction continued by the Progressive Conservative Party once it assumed power in 1995.

Instagram has become an essential platform for youth engagement and political campaign discourse. This study builds on this strand of knowledge by analyzing how the U.S. Vice President and the Democratic party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, employed the platform during the 2024 campaigns over 5 months by assessing the narratives as well as user fantasies. Findings indicated that the narratives emphasized her administration’s political achievements and positions, her commitment to amplifying every voice, her personal and social identity, as well as global voice and initiatives. These narratives generate two fantasy themes around her personalized leadership style, impact, and ideological positioning. Harris’s campaign discourse on Instagram conformed to the identity expectations of the American electorates and the youth-dominated platform dynamics, positioning her as an advocate for equity.

Do the policy preferences expressed through political participation represent the citizens as a whole? Previous studies argue that there is no ideological bias in voting participation in Japan. However, previous studies have only analyzed Japan up to 2010, and it is unclear whether ideological bias was consistently absent in voting participation in the 2010s. In the 2010s, ideological issues, such as the maintenance of nuclear power plants or the acceptance of collective self-defense, emerged in Japan, and the two major political parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan, became increasingly polarized. Considering these changes, the influence of ideology on political participation may be growing. Therefore, this paper examines the relationship between people’s ideological positions and political participation using voter surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017. I find that since 2012, the more ideologically extreme Japanese voters are, the more they participate in voting. Furthermore, the same is true for other forms of participation. In general, the voices of ideologically moderate Japanese are becoming less represented by political parties and politicians.

While the analysis of party models and types of party members has been widely discussed at the theoretical level, empirical research has not attracted similar attention. This study contributes to filling this gap by examining an understudied case, namely party members in Portuguese political parties. The key objective of this article is to make a contribution to the study of activism and dedication to the party, in a comparative perceptive, considering different types of parties. The survey applied was based on an on-line questionnaire conducted within the MAPP (Members and Activists of Political Parties) research network. The dataset included members of several parties ranging from typical catch-all parties (PS - Socialist Party; PSD - Social Democratic Party) to elite-based types (CDS-PP - Social Democratic Centre-Popular Party), as well as 'movement' party types (BE - Left Bloc; LIVRE). The study covers four main dimensions of party membership: party members' socio-demographic profile, ideological attitudes, reasons for joining the party, and activism levels and types. We show that party membership in Portugal follows similar trends to other advanced European democracies, albeit with important differences between parties. These results are an important barometer for measuring the quality of democracy, especially one as young as Portugal's.

This article analyzes rhetorical strategies and evaluative vocabulary in English-language political rhetoric in the United States in relation to China in the context of the 2024 election campaign. The main focus is on the speeches of presidential candidates Donald Trump (Republican Party), Kamala Harris and Joe Biden (Democratic Party). The study reveals how the image of China as a geopolitical and economic competitor or an existential threat is constructed with the help of linguistic means, as well as how these strategies influence the formation of public opinion in the United States. Particular emphasis is placed on the linguistic and stylistic differences in the approaches to political debates of Republicans and Democrats, including the use of emotional-evaluative vocabulary, metaphors and other rhetorical devices. The work uses a multi-stage linguistic analysis, including a corpus study of vocabulary, an analysis of lexical and semantic expressive means and a comparison of the rhetorical strategies of the candidates. The study is based on the texts of 2024 election speeches and debates, both individual and within the framework of debates. The scientific novelty lies in the systematization of rhetorical strategies used by American politicians to construct the image of China and the identification of their connection with the ideological attitudes of the parties. The work analyzes specific speech techniques in detail: Republicans actively demonize China through military metaphors, categorical antitheses and hyperbolic accusations, which corresponds to their ideology of national protectionism and forms an image of an existential threat in the electorate. In contrast, Democrats use sports metaphors, neutral evaluative vocabulary and an emphasis on domestic priorities, which reflects their attitudes towards managed globalization and creates an image of China as a strategic competitor, not an enemy. Such language strategies, ranging from emotional confrontation to rational rivalry, directly affect political mobilization, forming fundamentally different models of perception of politics in the public consciousness. The work makes a significant contribution to the study of political discourse, demonstrating the mechanisms of transformation of ideological attitudes into effective tools of linguistic influence using specific examples. The obtained results are important for the analysis of political rhetoric in other countries facing similar challenges of global competition, and also allow us to predict the development of discursive strategies in future election campaigns.

The electoral platform of the Democratic Party is analyzed, which has received the characteristics of the "most progressive" in the entire American history. Its politicized nature is based on the demonization of the current Republican President Donald Trump. The Democratic program is designed to become a platform for uniting all anti-Trump forces, and as such it contains many deliberately impossible promises and slogans. Significant emphasis in the program is placed on reforming the American political system, which, according to the idea of the political strategists of the Democratic Party, is designed to exclude, in principle, the coming to power of politicians like Donald Trump, who represents the interests of the ruling US financial and economic elite. In the 21st century the American political system of checks and balances has become increasingly unresponsive to the pressing needs of American socio-economic development. Reforms and transformations in the economic and social spheres require a fairly long time horizon for their implementation. As the American political practice of the last 10-12 years shows, the implementation of the declared political course and the implementation of large-scale reforms and transformations are possible only if one of the two main political parties in the United States controls all power over its executive and legislative branches. The loss of control over one of the chambers of Congress simultaneously leads to the blocking of programs of long-term reforms and transformations, which turns into an increase in the intensity of internal political struggle, which most negatively affects the effectiveness of the functioning of state institutions in American society. In these conditions, the need for strengthening authoritarian principles in the US government system is objectively growing, designed to level off the blocking of reforms and transformations initiated by the party that controls the Executive branch of government. In addition, a paradigm is emerging in which a periodic change of the political guard in Washington, embedded in the very idea of a bipartisan liberal democratic system, turns into a sharp increase in destructive principles in the activities of the state, when the political party that came to power as a result of the Presidential election perceives its mandate simply in the form of a program of almost complete dismantling of the legacy left by the previous administration. This political "zero-sum game" leads to quite destructive foreign policy consequences that directly affect the ideological and socio-economic positions of the United States in the international arena.

List of Tables, Charts, Figures Preface PART I: OLD LEGACIES, NEW IDEAS The Contours of the Postwar Right From Transition to Democracy to the Establishment of Party Democracy PART II: PARTY DEVELOPMENT Parties and Elections, 1974-1981 The Political Elite Level: How 'New' was ND? The Internal Organization Level: How 'Democratic' was ND? Battles for Ideological and Political Positions PART III: PARTIES AND BEYOND Democracy Building and Political Parties References Index

ABSTRACTDo Nigerian political parties take left/right ideological positions? Perspectives in comparative politics see party competition in Africa's ‘third wave’ democracies as devoid of disagreement on class or economic grounds – and thus as ‘absent’ of left/right ideology. Yet, a dearth of disagreement among governing parties can also suggest ideological agreement or ‘convergence’. This article maps the development of the left/right cleavage in Nigeria's party system, examining the evolution of economic pledges in the manifestos of parties that took power across Nigeria's four attempts at electoral democracy. It finds that relative to the deeper levels of economic disagreement voiced in earlier periods, the governing parties of Nigeria's Fourth Republic are now largely unanimous in the enunciation of their economic visions. Evidence of such convergence troubles a strict insistence on either the polarisation or ‘absence’ of economic ideology among governing parties in Africa's largest electoral democracy.

Parties in advanced democracies take ideological positions as part of electoral competition, but some parties communicate their position more clearly than others. Existing research on democratic party competition has paid much attention to assessing partisan position taking in electoral manifestos, but it has largely overlooked how manifestos reflect the clarity of these positions. This article presents a scaling procedure that better reflects the data-generating process of party manifestos. This new estimator allows us to recover not only positional estimates, but also estimates for the ideological clarity or ambiguity of parties. The study validates its results using Monte Carlo tests, a manifesto-drafting simulation and a human coding exercise. Finally, the article applies the estimator to party manifestos in four multiparty democracies and demonstrates that ambiguity can enhance the appeal of parties with platforms that become more moderate, and lessen the appeal of parties with platforms that become more extreme.

Review: <i>The Congressional Black Caucus: Fifty Years of Fighting for Equality</i>, by Sherice Janaye Nelson