Party Agendas Research Articles

The European Union at 50—Xenophobia, Islamophobia and the Rise of the Radical Right

Europe is a controversial continent. Although Europe stands for high values and fundamental rights, it simultaneously demonstrates a rise in Islamophobia—the fear of Islam and Muslims, and Xenophobia—the fear of immigrants, foreigners and strangers. On March 18, 2007, the European Union celebrated its 50th anniversary. Whereas it could be expected that the European Union should by now—at the age of 50—be mature enough to outgrow racism, the opposite seems to be the reality. The radical right has risen in an unprecedented way and what is even worse—the centre-right has adopted far rightist approach and by that has become more radical and radicalized. This article tries to explore these two interconnected topics: the discrimination against Muslims living in the EU member states and the dangerously rising phenomenon of the radical right, manifested in their national election results and in the radicalization of the agenda of the centre-right political parties. The author fears that these two trends endanger numerous ideals and ideas Europe stands for, and hopes that the EU can stop racism once and for all.

Irish Political Parties' Attitudes towards Neutrality and the Evolution of the EU's Foreign, Security and Defence Policies

This article traces the evolution of attitudes and policies of Irish political parties towards Irish neutrality and the European Union Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) across four decades. The article provides conceptual snapshots of the position of parties' policies along two policy dimensions. The first dimension captures policies of limited ‘military’ neutrality and ‘positive’/‘active’ neutrality. The second dimension captures minimalist EU foreign and security policy, defined as ‘civilian’ or ‘soft’ security policy, to a maximalist EU CFSP/ESDP ‘hard security’ policy amounting to a ‘militarized’ EU. The positioning starts with the campaign for Irish membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), focusing on the accession negotiations and the 1972 referendum campaign and finishes with an analysis of parties' positions on the Security and Defence Policy aspects of the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. Evidence shows the positions of the larger parties of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party shifted away from fundamental neutrality to embrace treaty‐based progress towards a maximalist EU ESDP. Over the same time period, the smaller parties of Sinn Féin and the Green Party were more consistent in their adherence to positive neutrality and in their opposition to the development of a maximalist EU ESDP. The forces of Europeanization have been evident in influencing evolving party discourses in Ireland. Much of this influence has been occasioned by the impact of participation in government on parties and the sporadic requirement to engage with referendum campaigns. The process of Europeanization has thus been subtle and muted and has interacted in intricate ways with domestic party agendas and objectives.

The Public or Parties in The Media?

As the media plays a central role in the way modern democracies function, it is important to study whether the media engages in a top-down or a bottom-up mode of covering election news. The article studies whether the media agenda is congruent with the parties’ and the public’s agenda by analysing the three agendas in five national Danish election campaigns. Theoretically, increased professionalisation of politicians’ efforts to influence media coverage suggests convergence between the media and the party agendas, while increased commercialisation of the media suggests convergence between the media and the public agendas. However, since both the professionalisation of the parties and the commercialisation of the media are ongoing processes, convergence between all three agendas may be expected. Results show that the media agenda is slightly more similar to the agenda of the parties, but in general the media seems to be rather good at balancing their obligations to represent the issues of the elite on the one hand and to give voice to public concerns on the other. During the past two decades no convergence between the agendas is found, i.e. the interaction of the three different agendas is rather stable.

In the Mexican Labyrinth: The Elections, the Left, and the Fight for the Mexican Soul

The election was not about particular policies, as has normally been the case in American elections; nor was it about party agendas, as in most European elections. It was about the soul of Mexico. Although issues and policies were sometimes discussed, their impact was marginal. What was at stake in the minds of many was nothing less than Mexico's destiny. To understand the ideological debate taking place in Mexico today one has to go back to a different time and place. The situation is not very different from that of the discussions that divided Slavophiles and Westernizers in Russia under the reign of Nicholas I. The tale of Mexico's last fifteen years might be read as a dramatic poem by Pushkin. In "The Bronze Horseman," the Russian poet set a scene where modernizers and Slavic melancholics are fighting to win the soul of poor young Yevgeny. The Tsar's statue, with its arm reaching out toward the future, was a symbol of modernity for many in St. Petersburg. In Mexico the end of the myth of revolution and the opening up of the country to the world—with NAFTA a key symbol—require a rejection of what many people, mostly from the left love dearly. But the time has come for Mexicans to escape from what anthropologist Roger Bartra has shrewdly called "the cage of melancholy" and embrace not an allegedly glorious past but a risky yet unavoidable future.

Party profiles on the web: an analysis of the logfiles of non-partisan interactive political internet sites in the 2003 and 2004 election campaigns in Belgium

During recent election campaigns non-partisan party profile websites (PPWs) have become hugely popular in various countries with multiparty systems, sometimes even attracting 25 percent of all voters. On these interactive websites, PPW users respond to policy questions, and their answers are used to calculate the distance between their own preferences and party agendas, resulting in an individualized `party profile'. PPWs can be seen as one of the few innovations in election campaigning that fully exploit the internet's interactive opportunities. The analysis in this article of the log files of 2003 and 2004 Belgian PPWs demonstrate that PPW users tend to be highly educated, male and young. Party and policy preferences of late PPW users (the final days before the elections) are not more crystallized than those of early PPW users (40 days before the elections). The article concludes with speculation on what this finding might reveal about campaign dynamics.

The 2006 Regional Election in Catalonia: Exit, Voice, and Electoral Market Failures

This paper analyses the results of the 2006 autonomous election in Catalonia and their implications for Spanish politics. In accordance with the analytical framework provided by Hirschman (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, Harvard University Press, 1970), and using individual and aggregated data, we show that demands shared by a significant number of voters were unsatisfied in this election, provoking an electoral market failure and a consequential rise of exit (or abstention) and voice (or blank and null votes and voting for new parties). All these behaviours are symptoms of both an increasing level of political discontent and a lack of political integration due to a divergence between issues salient to Catalans and the dominant focus of party platforms and agendas.

Political Bias in the Irish Media: A Quantitative Study of Campaign Coverage during the 2002 General Election

The aim of this study is to give some systematic insights into how Irish media tend to report an election campaign. The main focus will be on their attitudes toward and treatment of the competing parties and candidates. Content analysis data from television newscasts and campaign stories in four of the largest newspapers is used to investigate three different forms of media bias: coverage bias, agenda bias, and statement bias. We find that Irish media tend to grant disproportionate amounts of coverage to the government parties, Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats; the more prominent the coverage, the less proportionate it becomes. The extent to which media take the freedom to ‘distort’ party agendas in their reporting appears to depend on party size, campaign strategy and the acquired status and acceptance of a party amongst the political and media establishment. Most notable, however, is the predominantly negative attitude of all Irish print media towards political actors. Instead of a polarised partisan press, as for example in the UK, in Ireland we seem to be faced with a rather homogenous anti‐politics bias.

From the director’s chair

A general election is always a watershed event, providing an opportunity to revise and renew major national policies. The policy agenda of the main parties is generally clear: less central control and more freedom for local decision making. This most will welcome.

Election Coverage - New Directions for Public Broadcasting

Previous research has suggested that public broadcasters in Europe have traditionally approached and covered election campaigns in a cautious and reactive way, often adhering to the official party agendas. Based on interviews, newsroom observations and content-analytic indicators, the 1998 national and 1999 European election campaign coverage of the Dutch public broadcaster was investigated. Newsroom observations and interviews with reporters and news executives revealed an increasingly proactive and selective editorial approach to election campaigns. The analyses showed that the two elections were approached similarly, but given different priority in the news. The content analysis showed a decrease in the amount of election coverage and a more analytic and interpretative journalistic spin on election stories compared to earlier elections. The implications of the results are discussed in the light of changes in political communication and the increasingly competitive environments in which public broadcasters are challenged to operate.

‘Beyond Left and Right’: The New Partisan Politics of Welfare

The ‘new politics of the welfare state,’ the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries' capacities to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and institutions play a prominent role in accounting for cross‐national differences in leaders' abilities to diffuse responsibility for divisive initiatives. One important omission from the ‘new politics’ literature, however, is a discussion of partisan politics. ‘Old’ conceptualizations of the political right and left are implicitly taken as constants despite radical changes in the governing agenda of many leftist parties over the last decade. Responding to this oversight, Castles (1998) has recently probed the role of parties with respect to aggregate government expenditures, only to concludethat parties do not matter under ‘conditions of constraint.’ This article contends that parties are relevant to the ‘new politics’ and that, under specified institutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive. In some notable cases the left has had more effect inbruising the welfare state than the right. One explanation for these cross‐cutting tendencies is that parties not only provide a principal source of political agency, they also serve as strategies, thereby conditioning opportunities for political leadership. By extension, they need to be situatedwithin the ‘new politics’ constellation of blame‐avoidance instruments.

The party agendas in the 1992 Taiwan legislative election a content analysis of the Television Political party Advertisements (TPPA)

With a research design that combines a content analysis of the 1992 Television Political Party Advertising (TPPA) and a public opinion survey, this study not only examines the issue agendas of the two major political parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their political ads, but also investigates the match between the public agenda and the party issue agendas in the 1992 legislative election. In addition, the types of, and appeals and semantic frames in, the political ads were analysed. Study results showed that ‘single issue theory’ was reflected in the Taiwanese television political ads. Both the KMT and the DPP put emphasis on only just a few issues rather than a plethora of issues. The KMT agenda was found to match the public agenda better than did the DPP agenda. However, the DPP performed better than the KMT in terms of the campaign strategy of their political advertising. Like most incumbents, the KMT favoured positive ads and the DPP, like most opposition part...

Who sets the agenda? Party and media influences shaping the campaign agenda in Germany

Abstract This paper reports the findings of recent research on party and media influences on the development of news agendas. In the 1987 election campaign, the government parties came out as clear winners in the struggle over the media agenda. They succeeded in placing their issues on the media agenda by leading a particularly media‐adequate election campaign with the media events timed and staged in such a manner that they were continuously present on television with their parties’ activities and statements. The commercialization of the German broadcasting system did not lead to the commercialization of campaign coverage following the American pattern in the 1987 election campaign. The portrayal of the election campaign in the news remained very much issue‐driven in the PBS as well as in the new private channels. But, in contrast to the PBS channels, the private stations did not follow the party agendas.

Television News and the `Third Force' in British Politics: A Case Study of Election Communication

Small or new political parties may be specially dependent upon media attention and a country's election communication arrangements may have an important impact on a new party's recognition-gaining chances. This article focuses on the response of Britain's broadcast media to the SDP-Liberal Alliance, drawing on a content analysis of television news coverage of the 1983 general election campaign. A number of variables are used to assess the coverage of the parties including: the prominence of stories; the amount of `soundbite' material from party spokespersons; the proportion of party-initiated versus media-initiated stories; reporters' commentary; and key visuals. Party and media agendas are also compared. This case study suggests that Britain's election communication arrangements presented both advantages and disadvantages to the `third force'. In conclusion, a number of factors are identified as important to future research on the amenability of political communication systems to small or new political parties.

More Order Than Progress? The Politics of Brazilian Positivism

IN BRAZIL, THE RISE OF SCIENTISM AS AN IDEOLOGY IN THE 1870s was part and parcel of a changing social setting. The great war with Lόpez's Paraguay, a big financial burden and no easy victory, laid bare several bottlenecks in economy and society. By the end of the conflict, comprehensive claims for modernization had entered the agenda of new political parties, reformist, liberal and republican. In the huge post-bellum tropical Empire (1870–89) a protracted poIitical struggle for the abolition of slavery, mounting pressures from urban groups claiming a number of liberal reforms, and the growth of umilitarynrest (the ‘Military Question’, 1883–86) tended to dovetail, thereby threatening the monarchy. Intellectually as well as politically the halcyon days of peaceful monarchic rule (1845–68) were gone. The liberal-conservative compromise was doomed. Its would-be philosophical expression – the pious eclecticism of Cousin's Brazilian disciples – began to falter under the combined assault of readers of Darwin and Renan, Spencer and Haeckel – and, last but not least, Comte.