Anti-party Sentiment Research Articles

“Parties Are the Supreme Mentors of the Nation”: Appreciations for Parties and Partisanship in China, 1895–1920

Conventional narratives hold that parties are “the orphans of political philosophy” and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a “progressive antipartyism” that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic “machines.” In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the “progressive” type was relatively absent, as there weren’t any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy.

Television Campaigns in the Chilean Constituent Elections: The Negative and Anti-system Discourse in the Success of the Social Movement La Lista Del Pueblo and its Electoral Base

ABSTRACT The People’s List (Lista del Pueblo) was a group of independent candidates united on its anti-party sentiment that successfully participated in the Chilean elections to choose the constituents in charge of writing a new constitution. Based on the framework of negative political campaigns and through a deductive methodology and content analysis, this research looks at the strategy used in their televised spots (N = 357). Likewise, and through the study of the electoral database of this election, made up of 345 boroughs, the electoral bases of the People’s List are established to explore relationships between the television campaign and its results according to political, socioeconomic, and sociodemographic aspects. The findings indicate that this group used the public television spot as a tactic based on an anti-establishment message, which had the purpose of channeling the demands of the social outbreak of October 2019 by promoting anger against the political and economic institutions.

Why do Parties Select Non-Partisan Ministers? The Paradox of Ministerial Selection in Austria

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the bourgeoning debate about technocratic, non-political and non-partisan ministers in party government regimes. At the centre of this study is the identification and analysis of a major paradox – a sizeable number and share of non-partisan ministers operating at the core of an otherwise exceptionally party-centered regime, the Second Austrian Republic, which has widely been considered to mark the epitome of the party state in Europe. The discussion of this phenomenon highlights the importance of particular strategic considerations among political decision-makers that have been largely ignored in the extant literature on ministerial selection and de-selection. We argue that in contexts marked by advanced levels of anti-party sentiment, non-partisan ministers can bring major benefit to the government in terms of legitimacy, popularity and support, and at a rather low cost or risk. As they tend to have few if any party resources of their own, non-partisan ministers can be easily removed whenever deemed politically expedient.

Anti-Party Sentiment on the Internet in the Nine-in-One Election in 2018:Dimension and Source in Big Data

Anti-Party Sentiment on the Internet in the Nine-in-One Election in 2018:Dimension and Source in Big Data

Does Issue Alignment Matter? The Electoral Cost and Reward of Agricultural Representation in Urban and Rural Areas

There is plenty of evidence that legislators think that aligning with voter preferences benefits their re-election. But whether or not legislators are constrained by demand, we have limited knowledge. This article tests whether issue representation in a generally salient field affects legislators’ electoral performance. The analysis uses data from five consecutive Hungarian elections (1994–2010), and investigates the effect of agricultural interpellations on the legislators’ vote shares under varying district demand. The findings indicate that congruence between district demand and legislator action matters when the issue is of great salience, and during times of anti-party sentiments within the electorate. While more interpellations are rewarded in rural districts, MPs can lose a lot of votes by asking agricultural interpellations in an urban area. At the same time, not submitting interpellations in rural constituencies does not result in similar vote loss. The results suggest that for re-election seekers taking action is the way to go only if it is calibrated to district demand.

It’s Not Easy Being Green, White, Red, and Blue: Constituency Representations Versus Electoral Competition in the Wisconsin Green Party

The Wisconsin Green Party, a state affiliate of the US Green Party, is a third party in a two-party system. The US electoral system is not kind to third parties; 1949 was the last time a third party was represented in the US Congress, in the 2016 presidential election, just 1% of voters in Wisconsin voted for the Green Party candidate. Ethnographic fieldwork combined with in-depth interviews for this study finds that the policies and practices of the party may be inhibiting its efforts to grow support and improve its electoral standing. This paper details how the party operates in a narrow window of antiparty sentiment, with the emphasis on the intersection of their four core policy pillars, and party practices of ‘being the message’ serving to deter their two likeliest sources of new support; the logic of constituency representation given primacy over electoral competition. These issues, though currently acting as constraints on the party, potentially however also afford long-term opportunity for the party.

Economy and political distrust: Explaining public anti-partyism in the Czech Republic

Abstract There is little doubt in the current comparative politics literature about the importance of political parties in modern democracies, nor is there any doubt about the centrality of political parties in the democratic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. This holds true for the Czech Republic as well. However, the three most recent general elections in the Czech Republic have shaken the country. Electoral earthquakes are becoming common in the region, and it seems that the Czech Republic is being affected by what has been described in the literature as the decline of political parties. The main aim of the article is to explore sources of public anti-party sentiment in the Czech Republic. The analysis of data from a public opinion survey shows that public anti-partyism can be explained by a perceived lack of political representation that stems from both economic conditions and a feeling of low political efficacy.

Anti-Partyism in German Independent Local Lists: Empirical Insights from a Membership Study

In the past few decades, independent local lists in German municipalities have become serious competitors to political parties. However, despite their widespread presence and success, party researchers have largely ignored this phenomenon. Empirical evidence concerning the attitudes of their members towards political parties is rare. Thus far, it remains unclear whether their self-described image as non-parties or anti-parties is restricted to the sphere of local politics or accompanies a general rejection of parties in federal politics. First, the article conceptualises anti-partyism and proposes an analytical distinction between their intensity and related political level. It then analyses the consequences of different patterns of local politics and group characteristics as well as individual determinants to explain the degree of anti-party sentiment. This study improves our understanding of independents and whether they promote party democracy or are a product of political dissatisfaction. Based on a cross-sectional postal survey, multi-level regression models are used to test the hypotheses. The results show that anti-partyism is particularly strong towards party politics at the local level, whereas the general legitimacy of party democracy is not questioned in federal politics.

English and French Influences on German Party Theory Before 1848

Was there a general anti-party sentiment in 19th century German political thought? The paper argues for a revision of this long-standing prejudice in favour of a more benign view on the <em>Vormärz</em> (<em>pre-March</em>) concept of political parties. It shows how the influence of English (and to some extent) French constitutional practices and political thought led German writers to an elaborate theory of political parties as early as at the eve of the 1848 German revolution. The findings are based on a broad analysis of more than 250 text sources originating from 1815 to 1848.

Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War ed. by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith

Reviewed by: Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War ed. by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith Michelle Orihel (bio) Keywords Whig, Politics, Voting, Democracy, Political parties Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War. Edited by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Pp. 304. Cloth, $49.50.) In Practicing Democracy, Douglas Bradburn observes: “American historians have overwhelmingly been Whig historians” (26). The phrase “Whig history” originated in Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History, published in 1931. Whig historians used the past, Butterfield argued, to explain and sanction the triumph of liberal democracy in nineteenth-century Britain. By orienting their studies toward that achievement, historians failed to understand the past on its own terms. In the United States, Whig history manifests itself in the democratization model of development. This model presents the nation as democratizing steadily over time, with democracy encompassing free elections, an expanding electorate, and a two-party system. Andrew Robertson contends that historians of nineteenth-century American politics have especially adopted a Whig perspective (99). Many historians search for the roots of democracy in the early republic, and trace its rise from Thomas Jefferson to Andrew Jackson or Abraham Lincoln. The ten essays in this compelling new volume edited by Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith challenge that Whig trajectory. While Whig histories chart a linear path to democracy, the essays in Practicing Democracy present case studies of uneven development, improvisation, and instability. John L. Brooke conceptualizes historical time as “lumpy and punctuated” rather than “smooth and continuous” [End Page 155] (75). Similarly, Robertson depicts a “tortuous trajectory” of development, one in which “democratic ideology and practices ebbed and flowed” (99). Political participation also varied by ethnicity, sex, race, and class. Irish and German immigrants in New York City, Tyler Anbinder finds, remained largely disengaged from controversies like the Kansas–Nebraska Act that polarized Americans in the 1850s. Instead, immigrants focused on local issues such as schooling that affected them directly. Reeve Huston further stresses “the geographic and temporal unevenness” of democratic practices (55). Illustrating these variations, Daniel Peart demonstrates that during the Era of Good Feelings voter turnout was much higher in Illinois, a frontier state that lacked organized parties, than in Massachusetts, a state where partisanship persisted. This conclusion challenges the standard interpretation of that era as one of political apathy in which partisanship subsided. The era, Peart claims, should be called “the Era of Experimentation,” a label that applies to early republic politics in general (138). Graham A. Peck also highlights this political improvisation. A rapid turnover in officeholding in Illinois, he argues, gave voters numerous opportunities to elect new representatives. In constant dialogue with voters, politicians changed positions on issues to “reflect voters’ interests and judgments” (145). He concludes that the historical category “Second Party System” fails to convey that dynamism. Yet, many historians remain attached to the “Party System” concept, arguing that competitive political parties fueled democratization. Americans inherited this obsession with a two-party system, Bradburn argues, from early modern England: “The men who built the first party politics in the United States were ideological Whigs whose histories of England were filled with sharp dialectical fights between advocates for prerogative power and martyrs for liberty,” from the Parliamentarians and Royalists of the Civil War to the Whigs and Tories thereafter (40). This legacy, Bradburn maintains, shapes “the way too many American historians still write the history of their country” (41). Whig historians begin their inquiries with the two-party system, and then look backward to explain its origins and development. In his study of the movement to consolidate the city and suburbs of Philadelphia in 1851, Andrew Heath stresses that looking backward can be deceptive. Previous historians have seen consolidation as foreshadowing the urban machine politics of the late nineteenth century, but Heath argues that if one “look[s] forward from [End Page 156] . . . 1851, . . . the rise of boss rule does not seem preordained” (224). Instead, the consolidation movement reflected the reform and anti-party sentiments of elite Philadelphians in the 1850s, a group more...

Selecting the leader, Italian style

ABSTRACTThis article examines the promotion of open and direct procedures for selecting party leaders by focusing on the case of Italy. These inclusive procedures are presented as adaptive strategies adopted by political parties to deal with the deep-rooted anti-party sentiments that are spreading among citizens, and to enable them to re-connect with their own supporters, regardless of whether they are formally enrolled in the party or not. Even though these inclusive approaches serve to enhance the party’s image, their impact on the party organisation is often overlooked. In this regard, scholars have argued that the involvement of party members or external supporters in key decisions, such as candidate selection by primary elections, could lead to a weakening of the party organisation in favour of the strength of the party leader. This issue has to be carefully taken into account, especially in light of the personalisation of politics characterising Western democracies. Open approaches to selection of the party leader produce strong, direct connections between selectors and the candidates for party office, but they endanger the cohesion of the party organisation, diminish the role played by the party in central office and marginalise the party on the ground, whose voice is absorbed into a larger selectorate mainly composed of non-members. Taking the Italian Democratic Party (PD) as a case study, this article aims to understand the extent to which the introduction of such inclusive methods may affect the party organisation, by looking at the capacity of the party to mobilise supporters within and outside the party, and by looking at the relationship between the party and its members.

Party Voters Gone Astray: Explaining Independent Candidate Success in the 2009 European Elections in Estonia

While independent candidates rarely perform well in party-centered systems, a genuinely independent candidate attracted a quarter of the nationwide vote in the 2009 European Parliament elections in Estonia. This study uses data from the Estonian case to address the question of why voters vote for independents. It develops and tests two explanations: the first construes mass vote for an independent candidate as a manifestation of anti-party sentiment, while the second argues that voting independent constitutes a variation on the familiar theme of punishing the incumbents in second-order elections. The results lend strong support to the latter explanation, suggesting that voting independent constituted a low-cost strategy for punishing the incumbents in a context where strong socio-political cleavages inhibited vote-switching to the opposition.

Anti-party sentiment among young adults

The study seeks to explore antipartyism in Western Europe. Particularly, it focuses on the extent to which the young adults differ from their elders in terms of trust in parties in fourteen West European countries. Pooled data, based on the European Social Survey 2006/2007, is employed and analyzed by means of ordinary least squares multiple regression. The other socio-economic background variables of the model, as well as the political background, interpersonal trust and the country of origin, are controlled in order to isolate the effect of age. The analysis shows that trust in parties of 18–30 year olds is, on average, significantly higher than in the rest of the population which contradicts the assumptions of the post-modernization theory and the empirical fact that electoral participation among West European young adults is constantly decreasing. Thus, the article suggests that antipartyism and political participation should be seen as distinct processes at different birth cohorts and perhaps also at different stages of the lifecycle.

“Let A Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840 (review)

Let A Common Interest Bind Us Together: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775-1840. By Albrecht Koschnik. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007. Pp. 384. Cloth, $45.00.)Reviewed by Gerald LeonardIn 1840, Martin Van Buren charged that the nation's incorporated volun- tary associations, like so many of its business corporations, were agents of aristocracy. By some mysterious law of their nature, these organizations seemed always to resist the will of the people.1 Van Buren's tone reflected some befuddlement, but this mastermind of democratic organization did not slow down to consider the reasons why literary and benevolent societies were so dominated by Whigs, federalists, and other contemnors of democracy. Nor have historians closely considered the connections between, on the one hand, the first stirrings of mass organization and, on the other, the birth of the private associations that equally defined early republican civil society. Although historians have certainly been aware of the partisan leanings of so many of the voluntary associators, Albrecht Koschnik's valuable new book on early national Philadelphia brings these connections into sharper focus.Koschnik's story is a neat one. Demonstrating (like many before him) the general hostility to that persisted from the Revolution through the early 1800s, Koschnik nicely conveys the post-Revolution worry that any political organization outside the government contained the seeds of more revolutions. This hostility to political organization made it easy for Federalists to undermine the Democratic Society of Philadelphia (and its counterparts in other American cities). The Society arguably embodied the first instance of what might be called formal organization in Pennsylvania, and Federalists easily made the charge of revolutionary tendencies stick, thanks especially to the Whiskey Rebellion. Even though Pennsylvania had itself been a notorious hotbed of factionalism for decades before the Revolution, antiparty sentiment helped drive one voluntary organization after another out of business in the 1 780s and 1790s. But the abortiveness of formal organization did not deter organization altogether. Rather, it left a void that would be filled by extrapolitical voluntary associations, organizations that avowed charitable or other civic purposes and avoided electioneering, but frequently carried marked partisan identities.The Tammany Society, for example, left Republican electioneering to the temporary committees that emerged as elections approached, but it regulated its own membership by a test of political character. It served the Republican cause by building a year-round fellowship of active democrats (many of whom would, of course, participate in the temporary electioneering committees as well). The Federalists, for their part, created a series of equivalent organizations, culminating in the Washington Benevolent Society of 1811. It was the Federalists who pioneered the notion that these organizations should chiefly pursue charitable purposes or other civic goals, like the establishment of libraries and other cultural institutions. At the same time, there was no doubting that these organizations fostered Federalist cohesion and influence in a way analogous to the Tammany Society and other Republican-oriented organizations.Koschnik's story supplies welcome detail and texture to the now dominant understanding of early competition: that the competition between Federalists and Republicans fell well short of constituting a party system even as it rested on significant advances in organization. At the same time, Koschnik suggests that the antipartyist tradition supplies a major part of the explanation for the emergence of extrapolitical voluntary associations. …

Party Politics and the Media in Indonesia: Creating a New Dual Identity for Golkar

In 2004 the Golkar Party re-emerged as the strongest party in Indonesia when it returned to the top of the voting tally in the 2004 general election. One of the reasons that have been widely overlooked in explanations of the election results is the increasingly influential role of the media. This article will close this gap and argue that the media has directly contributed to Golkar's good electoral performance in 2004 as it helped the former regime party to communicate a major image change to the general public. As this article will demonstrate, Golkar transformed itself between 1999 and 2004 from a party that was almost exclusively associated with the New Order to a party with a dual identity, somewhere between nostalgic status quo sentiment and modern democratic ideas. This new identity has helped the party to maintain its electoral appeal in the face of increasing anti-party sentiment in Indonesia.

Doctrinaires and syndicalists: Representation, parties and democracy in France1

This article seeks to explore debates in France concerning representation and the place of political parties within the democratic process. It does so firstly by exploring the anti-party logic that derives from what Pierre Rosanvallon has characterised as a political culture of ‘generality’. However, in order further to explore the character of antiparty sentiment in France, the article focuses upon two bodies of thought associated with the doctrinaires during the periods of the Restoration and July Monarchy and the French syndicalist movement at the turn of the 20th century, both of which placed themselves outside this political culture. Both displayed a deep distrust of universal suffrage and of the political process, and a preference for the claims of capacity over those of number. The article concludes by assessing the validity or otherwise of these criticisms of the role of political parties within democracy.

State party funding and patronage in post-1989 Poland

The level and scope of state financial support for Polish parties have expanded progressively since 1989, making it the main source of income for a number of them. This becomes even more evident when one considers the allowances paid to party-based parliamentary caucuses and individual parliamentarians. Appointments to state and quasi-state bodies also appear to be an important source of patronage for Polish parties. The Polish party funding regime and state patronage opportunities clearly favour ‘insiders’ and have centralized power in party leaderships. However, the Polish party system remains too unstable to conclude that a ‘cartel’ of privileged insiders is emerging, while increases in state party funding have, at most, simply reinforced existing trends in terms of party leader orientation and popular anti-party sentiment.

Antipartyism and Third-Party Vote Choice

The effect of antiparty sentiment on voting behavior is examined comparatively using recent individual-level electoral survey data from Canada, Britain, and Australia. The author distinguishes two dimensions of antipartyism: the rejection of traditional major-party alternatives (specific antiparty sentiment) and of political parties per se (generalized antiparty sentiment). He argues that disaffected voters in these countries are attracted to third or minor parties and support them to voice antiparty sentiments. The results show that in general, third parties benefit from specific antiparty sentiment at the mass level. The rejection of party politics per se, in contrast, brings citizens to abstain, unless some third parties—antiparty parties such as the Reform Party in Canada and One Nation in Australia—electorally mobilize generalized antiparty feelings. The results also indicate that compulsory voting in Australia affects disaffected voters’ behavior; in particular, those who reject all party alternatives would be more likely to abstain if they had the choice.

Democratic phoenix: reinventing political activism

Conventional wisdom suggests that citizens in many countries have become disengaged from the traditional channels of political participation. Commentators highlight warning signs including sagging electoral turnout, rising anti-party sentiment, and the decay of civic organizations. But are these concerns justified? This book, first published in 2002, compares systematic evidence for electoral turnout, party membership, and civic activism in countries around the world and suggests good reasons to question assumptions of decline. Not only is the obituary for older forms of political activism premature, but new forms of civic engagement may have emerged in modern societies to supplement traditional modes. The process of societal modernization and rising levels of human capital are primarily responsible, although participation is also explained by the structure of the state, the role of agencies, and social inequalities.

Plus ça change … ? Anti-Party Sentiment and Electoral System Change: A New Zealand Case Study

Anti-party sentiment tends to be seen as a relatively recent problem for the world's democracies. Evidence from our case study, however, suggests that all its familiar symptoms were present years ago, and that they tend to fluctuate with time and chance. Therefore, while institutional reform may help to alleviate what is essentially a chronic problem punctuated by acute episodes, it is unlikely to offer a cure. Both the proponents and opponents of electoral system change in other Commonwealth countries are likely to find that it probably will not make things worse, but it may not make them very much better.