Catch-all Parties Research Articles

Partisan Politics in Finland

Abstract Traditionally, the Finnish party system has involved a high level of fragmentation yet remarkable stability, consensual decision-making, ideologically broad government coalitions, and mostly modest levels of polarization between parties or voters. These features suggest a limited effect of the party composition of government on economic policy. However, based on studies on close local elections, parliamentary speech, and party manifestos, we argue that the link between party politics and policy outcomes likely plays a role in Finland. Most analyses have examined the extent to which the characteristics of local politicians within the parties affect policy outcomes. These studies show that occupation, education, experience, competence, and residential location of local politicians strongly affect local policies, indicating that, in general, politics matters for policy. We also discuss how consensual national politics may have contributed to the recent success of the populist challenger Finns Party. As a new major player, the party has emphasized the role of sociocultural issues and especially affective polarization, which represents a considerable paradigm shift from the catch-all party policies typical of Finland for many decades. It is thus possible that the link between politics and policy will become more pronounced in the future, motivating further research.

Max Weber meets Silvio Berlusconi’s charismatic parties. The history of a spectacular failure

ABSTRACT Silvio Berlusconi emerged as a central figure in Italian politics following the collapse of the mass-based party system in the early 1990s. As a political leader, he introduced significant innovations in various fields of politics: new campaign methods; a unique leadership style and language; novel coalition strategies, and fresh ideological content. This article focuses on one key innovation: the creation of a genuinely new political party with an original organizational model. Despite the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi’s political parties (Forza Italia and later Popolo della Libertà), there has been little theoretical and especially empirical work devoted to studying them. This paper aims to fill that gap by examining the entire trajectory of Forza Italia from its inception to the present, highlighting its quintessentially charismatic nature in Weberian terms. The first section of the article discusses how scholars have variously perceived Forza Italia – as a personalized/charismatic party, a catch-all party, a franchise party, or a business-firm party. The article then considers the factors that have hindered its institutionalization. In the final section, the paper critically analyses the legacy of Berlusconi’s parties for the stability of the Italian party system and, more broadly, for the quality of democracy in Italy.

New Rightists or Simply Opportunists? The New Right Parties in Power in Latin America and Europe between 2010 and 2019: An Analysis of Their Ideological Dimensions

AbstractThere is a boom in the power of right-wing parties that are becoming government parties in Latin America and Europe. It has been pointed out that these are distinguished from traditional right-wing parties by their common ideology that transcends national contexts, which is why they have been grouped as New Right-wing parties. This article questions whether these parties share ideological themes or whether they are heterogeneous and obey national interests. This study systemizes the New Right-wing parties’ programs and classifies them to answer the question. This corpus is then studied through frequency, network, and principal component analysis. Two conclusions are reached from this. First, these parties agree on issues such as provider States and nationalist claims, and, second, their programs have diverse themes that do not show the formation of an identifiable transnational ideological agenda in their programs. Consequently, grouping these parties as an ideologically homogeneous phenomenon can make invisible the fact that they are parties that adjust to particular demands of their political environment, in a logic that obeys more catch-all parties than ideological and dogmatic parties.

К вопросу о дискурсивных параметрах типологизации политических партий

The newest trends in the development of political parties and their ideologies have caused the emergence of a set of new concepts, such as catch-all parties, electoral-professional parties, cartel parties, firm parties, and parties in power. These concepts are focused on the functions a party performs, and not on the discursive considerations, so, they do not encompass the entire spectrum. For instance, populist and regionalist parties are hard to localize in the given models. On the other hand, such discursive concepts as “niche” parties or “horseshoe” spectrum, as well as the widespread Hans Eysenck’s “political compass”, suggest their own ways to typologize party phenomena. They complement each other but do not form a coherent matrix integrating all the significant elements of party discourses. Intentionally leaving structural-functionalist classifications aside, the authors propose to synthesize the established discursive typologies with some newly-emerged parameters and to localize party actors along such axes as economic agenda (conventionally, right or left), political agenda (conventionally, right or left), the scope of discourse (from “niche” to “catch-all”) and the salience of identity aspects. The latter should be combined with the indication of the loyalty level: ethnic/regional, national, or civilizational. The scope of discourse is found as a result of thematic analysis of party programs/manifestos and the identification of the presence and quantity of significant thematic blocs: economy, security/internal affairs, foreign affairs, education/culture, values/rights. The final matrix is illustrated in the example of the Belgian party system based on expert scaling. The Belgian case is chosen because the Belgian party system contains the entire ideological spectrum inherent in Western Europe and is relatively stable. While proposing the employment of qualitative methods, such as thematic analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and expert scaling, the authors think that it is possible and desirable to further develop the parameters by applying quantitative methods.

Group Appeals of Parties in Times of Economic and Identity Conflicts and Realignment.

Party-group relations are today characterized by various forms of alignments. These include the persistence of traditional class alignments, the realignment of economic groups due to identity politics and alignments of groups at the centre of identity politics. This study analyses the group-based messaging of parties in relation to these three groups. We argue that, contrary to the catch-all party thesis, positive and negative group appeals of parties are (still) structured by parties' support among social groups and by groups either liked or disliked by their voters. Our argument is tested through a content analysis of election materials in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, combined with survey data. The results indicate that group appeals are indeed shaped by electoral support among social groups and attitudes towards them. Results also suggest that the former effect is present for traditionally aligned economic and identity politics groups, but not for realigned economic groups.

Can a religious-niche party change – or was Kirchheimer right? Analysing the Finnish Christians’ search to become a catchall electoral party

ABSTRACT Small-party persistence is a story in itself, especially when the party in question emerged as an entirely new party, lacked societal rootedness and did not boast any recognisable persons among its founding figures. The particular case is the Finnish Christian League SKL (from 2001 Christian Democrats KD), one of a family of post-Second World War fundamentalist Christian parties in the Nordic region which, over the six decades of its existence, has, unlike its Swedish and Danish counterparts, consistently surpassed the threshold of representation, but only once gained over 5 per cent of the national vote. This article asks firstly: What factors would account for SKL/KD’s persistence as a small party? Secondly, why has SKL/KD remained a small party despite efforts to expand its electoral base? Was Kirchheimer correct that certain types of party simply cannot become catchall parties? Kirchheimer, it is argued, was essentially right: SKL/KD’s ‘nicheness’ has been its greatest electoral strength but also the greatest barrier to electoral growth and significant party change.

Godesberg „in grün“? Ein qualitativer Vergleich der Grundsatzprogramme 2002 und 2020 von Bündnis 90/Die Grünen

Parallel to the rise of the Fridays-For-Future-movement in 2018, the German party “Alliance 90/The Greens” was swept up in a wave of success . The influx of members and the electoral successes achieved are attributed to the professional appearance and moderate stance of the former federal party leaders, Robert Habeck and Annalena Barbock . That the party also has changed some of its basic principles is reflected in the basic principle manifesto of 2020 where it claims that ‘to respect and to protect—change creates hold’ . Over the past three years, the Greens have repeatedly been viewed as a possible new catch-all party . The extent to which this is an accurate classification was examined on the basis of a qualitative comparison between the 2002 and the 2020 basic principle manifestos .

Die Landtagswahl 2021 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – rote Welle an der Ostsee

On September 26, 2021, the eighth state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania took place, in parallel with the federal election . It resulted in a clear victory for the SPD, which governs the state with changing coalition partners since 1994 and was once again able to defend its status as a catch-all party there . A key factor in the SPD’s good election result was the extraordinarily high popularity of its top candidate, incumbent Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig . After the elections, the SPD found itself in a comfortable middle posi- tion and could choose a coalition partner from several options . The CDU, Die Linke and AfD lost significant votes, while Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and FDP re-entered the State Parliament, which for the first time reflected unprecedented diversity with six parties reach- ing representation . The SPD’s great electoral success ultimately meant that, despite a multi- party system in the State Parliament, a two-party coalition of SPD and Die Linke found a solid majority and replaced the grand coalition of CDU and SPD that had been in power since 2006 .

One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

Despite a considerable body of literature on Italian ethnoregionalist parties, scholars of nationalism and regionalism have overlooked southernist parties. This article aims to fill this lacuna by examining Italian southernist parties’ identity and electoral performance from 1945 to 2020. Firstly, it investigates southernist parties according to ideological positioning, autonomist or secessionist nature, and territorial area of origin. Then, by relying on official data, it explores the parties’ electoral performance in national, European, and regional elections. The main findings of the study show that, since the end of World War II, Italian southernist parties: a) have been characterized by a more autonomist rather than secessionist nature; b) have followed the typical patterns of the catch-all party; c) have performed better in regional elections. This article provides preliminary information on southernist parties, paving the way for further research on such political formations.

The evolution of the party model in Turkey: from cadre to cartel parties?

ABSTRACT This article has two major aims. First, it sketches out the party model change in Turkey. Second, it highlights how the AKP’s authoritarian turn has affected its model of organization. On the former, it argues that the cadre parties of the early republic tended to turn into the mix of class-based mass parties and catch-all parties in the post-1960 period. The mass party tradition was maintained among ethnic and religion-based parties in the post-1980 period while social democrat parties, as well as centre-right parties, mixed catch-all and cartel party characteristics. On the latter, we argue that the AKP’s authoritarian drift has very well been reflected upon its organizational model which shifted from the combination of a mass party and catch-all party to a mixture of cadre and electoral-professional party models.

PRAGMATISME DALAM KANDIDASI CALON ANGGOTA DPR PARTAI NASDEM PADA PEMILU 2019

This study discusses pragmatism in the process of candidacy for DPR members carried out by a political party, namely the NasDem Party in the 2019 Election. As is known, the NasDem Party is still a new party, but was able to gain a significant increase in votes. Departing from Purbolaksono's research which categorizes the NasDem Party as a catch-all party type, and refers to several expert definitions and previous research on pragmatism, this paper describes how pragmatism occurs in the candidates for legislative members from the NasDem Party. Using the analytical descriptive method, this research begins with a description of how the Nasdem Party's candidacy was carried out, then continued by an analysis accompanied by field facts that support the author's analysis. The findings of this study are that pragmatism in the NasDem Party's candidacy process occurs in 4 (four) forms, namely 1) an open recruitment system that provides opportunities for candidates who change parties before the candidacy process; 2) ideology that is no longer the main thing in the candidacy process; 3) the use of profit and loss logic in the candidacy process; and 4) the existence of a screening process (without going through the Bacaleg program) for legislative candidates who are considered to have the potential to gain votes.

Testing the Spatial Voting Theories on a Computational Model: A Demonstration of the Polarizing Influence of Directional Voting

This study proposes a Gaussian utility function for the proximity theory so that it only describes the variation of party affinity of the voter with the ideological distance from the party. Eliminating the repulsive portion of its currently adopted utility function distinguishes the proximity theory from the directional theory. Instead of trying to fit actual voting behavior to either utility function, the functions are tested on an idealized computer model of the voters’ opinion space to test their suitability. By testing varying linear combination of the utility functions of the two theories, optimum locations of parties are found that will maximize the average value of the combined voter utility function. Results indicate that catch-all parties with large voter bases choose locations near the neutral center, but increasing the contribution from the directional utility function pushes the parties further away from the neutral center. These findings support the observed relationship between ideological polarization and the directional voting tendency. The conclusion is that a linear combination of the two utility functions appear to be more suitable to explain idealized voter behavior. Keywords: spatial voting, proximity theory, directional theory, computational model, optimization DOI: 10.7176/JSTR/6-02-04

Ireland's Foreign Relations in 2019

Author’s e-mail: donnacha.obeachain@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 255–294 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.16 INTRODUCTION This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year. ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT On 24 May 2019 Ireland, along with twenty other EU member states, voted in elections to the European Parliament, the ninth such occasion since a direct vote Ireland’s Foreign Relations in 2019 Donnacha Ó Beacháin School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 256 Irish Studies in International Affairs to the assembly was introduced in 1979.1 Different visions of Europe competed in this election. After the Second World War, catch-all parties had helped move Europe from the extremes to the centre and created strong welfare states. Globalisation had eroded the guarantees and expectations of what the state could provide and produced a large cohort of economically vulnerable citizens susceptible to those offering easy solutions. In recent years populists had taken votes from the left and the right. UKIP and the Brexit Party in Britain were examples of this phenomenon, as they succeeded in attracting supporters from both the Conservatives and Labour. To accommodate the Brexit vote, the European Parliament voted in February 2018 to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 on the basis that the UK would withdraw from the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, two years after triggering Article 50. However, as the British government had sought an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019 the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of MEPs remained as it had been in 2014. Ireland’s allocated number of seats in the European Parliament would increase from 11 to 13 but two of these MEPs would be able to take their seats only after Britain had left the EU. Despite being an election to one parliament, there remained major differences in how each member state conducted its affairs. In ten member states, including Ireland, candidates had to be at least twenty-one but for the majority (fifteen) the minimum age was eighteen. In Romania the requirement was 23, while in Greece and Italy one needed to have reached the relatively elderly age of twenty-five before being eligible to run. Ireland was one of four members (Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic being the others) that did not allow citizens to vote outside the state while in Estonia one could e-vote from­ anywhere in the world. Most member states voted for the EU parliament as single entities but five mapped out regional constituencies. Belgium had three constituencies, defined along language lines. The others were all geographical: thirteen in Poland, twelve in Britain, five in Italy and three in Ireland. Given that...

Ireland's Foreign Relations in 2019

Author’s e-mail: donnacha.obeachain@dcu.ie Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 31 (2020), 255–294 doi: https://doi.org/10.3318/ISIA.2020.31.16 INTRODUCTION This article examines aspects of Ireland’s foreign relations in 2019. It begins with a synopsis of elections to the European Parliament, which took place in May, assessing the broad European trends and how the elections played out in Ireland. We then examine the Brexit negotiations process, particularly the impact of Boris Johnson’s rise to the British premiership. The article also assesses the significance of the Westminster election vote in Northern Ireland, which many considered a proxy for a referendum on Irish unity and which produced for the first time a greater number of nationalist than unionist MPs. The review then appraises relations between Scotland and Ireland as a bilateral review was launched to examine how the two countries might cooperate over the succeeding five years. Relations between Ireland and Russia are then surveyed, particularly Tánaiste Simon Coveney’s visit to Russia, the first bilateral meeting between foreign ministers since Ireland chaired the OSCE in 2012 and coming one year after both countries expelled each other’s diplomats as a result of the poisoning of military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter. Subsequent sections are devoted to relations with Armenia and Turkey while the visits of Donald Trump and Mike Pence provide opportunities to reflect on the rapidly changing interactions between Ireland and the United States. Before concluding, the article contains a brief section devoted to those significant figures in Irish and international affairs who died during the year. ELECTIONS TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT On 24 May 2019 Ireland, along with twenty other EU member states, voted in elections to the European Parliament, the ninth such occasion since a direct vote Ireland’s Foreign Relations in 2019 Donnacha Ó Beacháin School of Law and Government, Dublin City University 256 Irish Studies in International Affairs to the assembly was introduced in 1979.1 Different visions of Europe competed in this election. After the Second World War, catch-all parties had helped move Europe from the extremes to the centre and created strong welfare states. Globalisation had eroded the guarantees and expectations of what the state could provide and produced a large cohort of economically vulnerable citizens susceptible to those offering easy solutions. In recent years populists had taken votes from the left and the right. UKIP and the Brexit Party in Britain were examples of this phenomenon, as they succeeded in attracting supporters from both the Conservatives and Labour. To accommodate the Brexit vote, the European Parliament voted in February 2018 to decrease the number of MEPs from 751 to 705 on the basis that the UK would withdraw from the EU as planned on 29 March 2019, two years after triggering Article 50. However, as the British government had sought an extension of Article 50 to 31 October 2019 the allocation of seats between the member states and the total number of MEPs remained as it had been in 2014. Ireland’s allocated number of seats in the European Parliament would increase from 11 to 13 but two of these MEPs would be able to take their seats only after Britain had left the EU. Despite being an election to one parliament, there remained major differences in how each member state conducted its affairs. In ten member states, including Ireland, candidates had to be at least twenty-one but for the majority (fifteen) the minimum age was eighteen. In Romania the requirement was 23, while in Greece and Italy one needed to have reached the relatively elderly age of twenty-five before being eligible to run. Ireland was one of four members (Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic being the others) that did not allow citizens to vote outside the state while in Estonia one could e-vote from­ anywhere in the world. Most member states voted for the EU parliament as single entities but five mapped out regional constituencies. Belgium had three constituencies, defined along language lines. The others were all geographical: thirteen in Poland, twelve in Britain, five in Italy and three in Ireland. Given that...

Positioning Ideologi Partai Politik Dalam Pembentukan Koalisi Indonesia Adil Makmur Pada Pemilihan Presiden Tahun 2019

This article analyzes the ideological positioning of political parties in the formation of the Indonesia Adil Makmur Coalition in the 2019 Presidential Election. Democracy has brought political parties in the political electoral. In 2014 the dynamics of political parties in Indonesia before and after the Presidential Election were interpreted as manifestations of the office-seeking coalition model. The characteristics of the office-seeking coalition model are fluid and not permanent. This seems to justify a practical political adage which states that in politics there are no eternal friends or enemies, what is in the interests of servants. The 20% presidential threshold has resulted in political parties having to form coalitions to support candidates in the Presidential Election in 2019. The method used in this study is media analysis and literature studies. The results of the analysis indicate that the coalition of political parties in the 2019 Presidential Election is a must for political parties. The emergence of the catch-all party shows pragmatism and shifts the ideology of political parties in building the coalition. This proves the lack of commitment and weakening of the ideology of political parties from time to time. Political parties focus more on getting a share of power. From the explanation above, it can be concluded that ideology cannot be used as the absolute preference of the coalition of political parties. Because it is proven that the composition of the coalition is not always formed on the basis of ideology. This explains that the formation of coalitions is the basis of political interests that are non-ideological or office-seeking to get a share of power.

Conservative Women in Germany and Japan: Chancellors versus Madonnas

AbstractDespite many similarities between them, the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have represented women in parliament at different rates. This article argues that differences in party organization, electoral system rules, and left party strength interact to explain the varying levels of representation of conservative women in parliament. The CDU's corporatist structure allowed it to represent diverse interests and successfully respond to challenges for female support from the left. As a result of a weaker left party challenge and a classic catch-all party organization, the LDP's attempts to incorporate women have been less extensive and largely symbolic.

Two Germanys? Investigating the Religious and Social Base of the 1930 Nazi Electorate

ABSTRACTBy applying data from the 1930 Reichstag election we test whether the German National Socialist Worker’s Party (NSDAP) was a workers, bourgeois, or a catch-all party. We argue that the degree to which the different groups in society voted NSDAP is dependent on the proportion of Protestants and Catholics in their respective Kreis. We build on two important works on the Nazi electorate, Jürgen Falter’s Hitlers Wähler (1991) and King et al. (2008). We specifically make one important change to Falter and King et al.’s models whereby we include new social groups in our study of the interaction between religious affiliation and social groups as an explanation of the Nazi vote. Similar arguments have been made by other historians, yet this has not been tested on data for the whole of Germany until Falter’s work in 1991. We find significant explanatory power in the interaction between religion and social groups on the propensity to vote for the Nazi party.

Die bayerische Landtagswahl vom 14. Oktober 2018: Signal für nachhaltigen Wandel auch im Bund?

The outcome of the election marks a deep shift not only in Bavarian politics but also corresponds to Germany’s ongoing restructuring of its electorate and the changing configuration of its party system at large: (1) The two catch-all parties suffered dramatic losses of more than ten percentage points; the conservative CSU lost its parliamentary majority in the state legislature, tallying less than 40 percent, the social-democratic SPD even less than ten percent of the total vote . (2) The voting behaviour is characterised by high volatility and processes of polarisation, caused by growing cleavages between town and country, between the generational as well as religious divides and the ongoing occupational differentiation in the electorate . Ideologically, these divides correlate with liberal and cosmopolitan mind-sets and (post-)modern urban lifestyles, the main electoral base of the Green party, on the one hand versus the more conservative and traditional rural electorates on the other . Their influence on the newly formed coalition between the CSU and the “Free Voters” will be more pronounced, while the populist and in part anti-pluralist electorate rallies behind the right-wing AfD . (3) In Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse, the Green party has now replaced the SPD as the main electoral contender of the Christian-democratic parties; it remains to be seen whether their electoral fortunes can be extended to the northern and eastern parts of the country in the near future .

Die Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament 2019: drei Ursachen für die Transformation im europäischen Parteiensystem

The results of the European Parliament elections 2019 are a reflection of a longer-term transformation in the European party system, whereby (left-)liberal and right-wing forces are gaining votes at the expense of traditional centre-left and centre-right catch-all parties. This contribution highlights three societal reasons for this transformation: a new cleavage between inclusion and exclusion which gains importance with respect to the left-right cleavage, changes in the structure of public communication, and the catalytic effect of the European crises of the last years.

Party Membership and Activism in a New Democracy: Evidence from the Portuguese Case

ABSTRACT 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.