Party Change Research Articles

Labor repertoires, neoliberal regimes and US hegemony: what ‘deviant’ Italy tells us of OECD unions’ paths to power

This paper notes the tendency of ‘social movement unionism’ scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic to focus on and prescribe the citizen repertoire as the single most important repertoire of labor for challenging neoliberal globalization. Consistent with liberal conceptions of civil society and theories of participatory democracy, it implicitly dismisses political unionism as a path to labor’s revitalization. It also assumes epochal change and confines neoliberalism to the post-Washington Consensus era. Deviant case analysis of Italian labor’s use oftworepertoires (the citizen and the labor repertoire) and of its two regimes of capitalism (in succession, a post-WWII neoliberal regime and a post-1970 corporatist regime) over the course of the ‘American Century’ gives pause to both these contentions. This study relates labor’s citizen repertoire to the era of US hegemony that promotes changes in party-government that tend to reproduce the image of the archetypically neoliberal American polity: a polity that is devoid of ‘labor’ as a recognized category of the political community, is low in social rights, and, relatedly, is devoid of a party of labor. In this neoliberal political order, labor is perennially locked into the category of ‘citizen’ and reliant on the citizen repertoire. By contrast, the survival of parties of labor in non-US polities during the post-war wave of neoliberalism permitted union movements a routeawayfrom labor-decategorizing orders – political unionism. Now, in the post-Washington Consensus wave of neoliberal regime change, that route is more onerous owing to Third Way changes in parties of labor. The major challenge for labor movements that have experienced regime change to a neoliberal polity is in directing their efforts and even their new citizen repertoire to the task of recapturing parties of labor or to creating new ones – or risk long-term US-style labor decategorization.

An Amphibian Party? Organisational Change and Adaptation in the Brazilian Workers' Party, 1980–2012

AbstractThe arrival of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party, PT) at the helm of the Brazilian federal government in 2003 represented the culmination of a slow and deep-rooted process of party transformation. Attributable partly to the inevitable consequences of the party gradually inserting itself into governmental institutions, and partly to strategic decisions made by the dominant coalition that had controlled the PT since 1995, these transformations significantly changed the organisational features of the party, paving its way to the federal government. This article analyses these processes, and the subsequent changes throughout the Lula government, from an organisational perspective, linking exogenous challenges and the party's genetic model with the strategies consciously adopted by thepetistaleadership.

And Yet It Moves

This article analyzes the effect of parties’ election statements on voter perceptions of party policy positions. It reveals robust evidence that campaign policy announcements do influence party images: As a result of the campaign, party policy brands shift in the direction of the platform. Hence, it challenges the conclusion in Adams, Ezrow, and Somer-Topcu that voters do not adjust their perception of parties’ positions to campaign statements. This article makes a key contribution to our understanding of elections, as it provides empirical evidence that election campaigns are useful for voters to identify changes in parties’ policy preferences. It also opens avenues for further research that the results in Adams et al. had discouraged from, such as analyses of the factors that explain variation in the relevance of campaign statements.

IT TAKES TIME: THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF GENDER QUOTA

We have estimated the changes in parties' behaviour following the introduction of quota regulations in Belgium. We expected to find a curvilinear effect: shortly after the introduction, women candidates would be worse off due to, amongst others, reluctance of the party elite to support women in the electoral contest. But after some time, their situation would improve—we hypothesise—either because parties become more convinced of women's qualities or because of strategic considerations. Our results do show an initial setback followed by a modest increase, but this increase takes longer than we initially assumed.

Change in parliamentary party systems and policy outcomes: Hunting the core

This paper shows that change in party systems within parliaments can lead to major change in policy outcomes. Specifically, we show that policy mobility of parties and fluidity in their parliamentary membership can generate or upset the existence of the policy core as well as determine its location. Our analysis applies to the general case of a multiparty parliament. We then follow up with empirical illustrations that conform to the major types of theoretical dynamics in our analysis, where party change that occurred in parliaments was consistent with attempts to manipulate the policy core.

EU accession and party competition in post-communist Romania

This paper examines the impact of the EU on party competition in post-communist Romania by testing Robert Ladrech’s model for the Europeanization of Central and East European party systems. It argues that, although it certainly holds true for a variety of post-communist cases, Ladrech’s model has a very limited explanatory power in the Romanian case after accession, for two reasons. First, the post-accession period has seen further institutionalization of the party system through the gradual disappearance of the extreme-right from within the ranks of parliamentary parties, and through increased competition between established parties on the centre-left and the centre-right of the political spectrum. Second, there has been little change in parties’ stances on European integration. Thus, Romanian formations’ consensus on the benefits of EU membership has continued to exist in the period after accession, while conflicts over the EU’s socio-economic acquis, such as those emerging in Poland and the Czech Republic, have failed to materialize. The main explanation for this situation is the fact that Romania continues to be subject to monitoring in the form of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism, which has essentially extended the EU’s conditionality into the post-accession period. Given continued monitoring by the European Commission, the distinction between the impact of the EU before and after accession is therefore less clear-cut in Romania’s case than in the case of other post-communist EU member states.

Independent Spending in State Elections, 2006–2010: Vertically Networked Political Parties Were the Real Story, Not Business

This article examines independent spending in state elections before and after the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC. We find that the decision did not have much of a direct effect on business spending, despite public expectations. Increases were higher in the aggregate in states that prohibited corporate spending before the decision. However, the major growth was not in the business or labor sectors, but in the network organiza- tions of political parties - and most particularly the national organizations of state elected and party officials. Contrary to some contemporary views, these developments cannot be understood as a displacement of within-state money from parties to interest groups. Instead, national party organizations were oper- ating across state lines, deciding whether to contribute to formal party com- mittees or their party allies as local circumstances might dictate. This complex movement of money belies any theorizing that would treat a decline in the pro- portional role of formal party spending as equivalent to a zero-sum increase in the non-party power of interest groups. Rather, we see the pattern of independ- ent spending as part of a larger story of change in American political parties. These changes now include vertically networked parties operating across levels of jurisdiction, alongside the horizontal networks receiving attention in recent scholarship.

El culo en el cancionero de tradición popular. Escatología y obscenidad en contextos festivos liminares

The scatological and obscene folk songs concerning the ass raise the pleasure of the low (subverting the morality and the conventions) and simultaneously degrade and deform the corporal, looking for a utopian and animal equality. This festive, grotesque and ambivalent logic suggests not only the double aspect of the carnal and material (dirty and sinful, but also source of life and fertility), but the eternal battle of opposites, which should activate the cosmic wheel of birth, death and resurrection. Precisely in contexts of liminality and transit —changes of season, bachelor parties and other rites of passages— appears this archaic and ambiguous vis comica, according to a cyclic and bipolar conception of time in which not only seasons, earth and plants, but also the body is hold to a constant and always incomplete metamorphosis.

The Conservatives since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. By Tim Bale. Oxford University Press. 2012. xii + 372pp. £55.00.

The Conservatives since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change. By Tim Bale. Oxford University Press. 2012. xii + 372pp. £55.00.

Does Public Opinion Respond to Shifts in Party Valence? A Cross-National Analysis of Western Europe, 1976–2002

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that, in addition to policy positions, parties’ electoral support is also affected by their character-based valence attributes such as competence, integrity, and unity. Thus far, however, research into the effects of parties’ character-based valence attributes has not examined how such party attributes affect public opinion. The article examines whether changes in parties’ character-based valence attributes motivate shifts in public opinion – specifically, whether public opinion shifts leftwards when right-wing parties’ character-based valence attributes suffer relative to leftist parties, and vice versa. It presents the results of pooled time-series analyses of the relationship between parties’ valence attributes and shifts in public opinion for nine European polities. The findings suggest that changes in parties’ character-based valence attributes do motivate shifts in public opinion as hypothesised, and the effects are substantively large. These findings have implications for party strategies and for our understanding of the factors which shape public opinion.

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue.The dark side of the Chinese economic miracle MARINA LEWYCKAScattered Sand: The Story of China's Rural Migrants, by Hsiao‐Hung Pai.Neoliberalism yesterday and today (and tomorrow?) Gianfranco PasquinoBourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear. From Absolutism to Neo‐Conservatism, by Marc Mulholland.Masters of the Universe. Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics, by Daniel Stedman Jones.The death of civility Richard KuperOccupation Diaries, by Raja Shehadeh.The not‐so‐new economy of the WWW Maurice WalshMisunderstanding the Internet, by James Curran, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman.The ever‐changing Conservatives? Richard BriandThe Conservatives since 1945: The Drivers of Party Change, by Tim Bale.Inequality is bad for growth Paul AuerbachPlutocrats. The Rise of the New Global Super Rich, by Chrystia FreelandSurviving the Gulag Geoffrey RobertsThe Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin, by Stephen F. Cohen.Promises, promises: hyping the new biology Brian ButterworthGenes, Cells and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology, by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose.

Party novelty

In this study, I propose a more differentiated conceptualization of party novelty that shifts from the age of party, and viewing newness in terms of organizational youthfulness (how close to birth, how far removed from death), to something more complex, i.e. the ‘newness’ of party leaders, programmes, names, etc. Thus, this concept supplements the understanding of novelty in strictly organizational terms proposing to consider also other elements. I call it a ‘thick’ conceptualization of party novelty. I argue that, in a given electoral cycle, any party is new to some degree. I propose to measure party novelty considering changes of party attributes and changes of party structural affiliation. I present the Party Novelty Database, which records changes in national parties participating in the EU parliamentary elections from 1989 to 2009. I show that party novelty exists and varies. In more than 80 percent of cases, parties changed themselves in various ways and to varying degree, with Italy and France showing the highest levels of novelty and Finland and Sweden the lowest over the period considered. In conclusion, I suggest the ways in which the concept and the measure of party novelty can be used to explain political phenomena.

Conclusion: reassessing the relation between religion, political actors, and democratization

This conclusion places the main findings of the special issue in a wider theoretical context. First, it examines the types of impact on democratization processes that different religiously oriented parties have, highlighting how the progressive and the conservative types are more favourable to democratization. Conversely, the religious nationalist and the fundamentalist types have a more detrimental influence on democratization, although the latter can evolve into a conservative party under specific circumstances. Second, there is a critical re-examination of the moderation through inclusion thesis, whose validity is problematised. Finally, the conclusion deals with the issue of party change and evolution from one type to another, providing a typology that is fluid and allows for parties to move across categories.

Minor organizational change in Green parties

A source of the strength of Green parties has been their willingness to realign their distinctive organizational characteristics to suit the external environment, with the effect of pushing such organizations closer to a more conventional party type. Major organizational adaptations by Green parties have been much studied but only scant attention has been paid to the cumulative effects that ‘minor’ change renders to such parties. This article examines the impact of minor organizational change through an analysis of one of the oldest statewide Green parties in Australia. It finds that minor organizational changes exert a subtle but equally powerful force in moving such parties away from their amateur status to a more professional party type, even in the absence of reform to historical party structures.

The Genetic Origin of the CDU and its Developmental Path to a Catch-All Party

This article identifies the impact of the ‘genetic’ origin of the CDU on its transformation into a catch-all party and tests the hypothesis of a convergence of paths towards the catch-all party. Was there a path specific for the Christian Democratic Party strand in Western Europe, which has been so far neglected by party theory? By applying a periodisation, the initial status of the CDU after its foundation, the development of this initial path and its impact on the transformation to the catch-all party model are outlined in the article. The results challenge the convergence hypothesis showing that the historical path of one party family may bring about a specific pattern of party change. The evolutionary path of the CDU with its strong continuities from the Centre Party started out differently to the ideal-type path. The long-term impact of this path produced a specific variety of party that was less centralised, less professionalised and less democratically rooted than the model implies. Thus party theory needs more explicitly to separate the path of the Christian Democrats from the ideal-type evolutionary path or paths of any other party family.

On a Short Leash? Sub-National Party Positions between Regional Context and National Party Unity

Do sub-national parties reproduce the programmatic orientation of the party as a whole? Or are they able to adjust their programmatic orientation to their sub-national electorate? I seek to answer these questions based on the policy positions of German sub-national parties and survey data on voters' positions. Referring to these very similar parties – which all have to commit themselves to certain policy positions in the run-up to state elections – allows for a controlled analysis of sub-national parties' autonomy. The analyses reveal that the regional context does play a role; voters' preferences and the unemployment rate appear to influence the dynamics of party positions. However, the results also show that regional branches of the same party change their positions in a similar way and also seek not to distance themselves too far from the national party line. This indicates that German sub-national parties appear first and foremost to be regional party branches of national parties.

A ARTE DE FESTEJAR: DA ALTERNÂNCIA DA FESTA E DE SUAS EXPRESSÕES MATERIAIS

This article analyzes material expressions of festivities traditionally held by members of a brotherhood of the rosary in the state of Minas Gerais. Themes such as creation , performance , and materiality pervades this article , which is based on the Maussian notion of social life seasonality , especially to think of party changes interpreted in their material expressions .

Why Do Parties Change Position? Party Organization and Environmental Incentives

What motivates parties to change their positions? Earlier studies demonstrate that parties change their position in response to environmental incentives, such as voter shifts. Yet, this work also suggests that parties differ in their responses. What accounts for this variation? We argue and empirically substantiate that differences in party organization explain the divergent responses of parties to environmental incentives. By means of a pooled time-series analysis of 55 parties in 10 European democracies between 1977 and 2003, this study demonstrates how the party organizational balance-of-power between party activists and party leaders conditions the extent to which environmental incentives (mean voter change, party voter change, and office exclusion) drive party-position change. The study’s findings have important implications for our understanding of parties’ electoral strategies as well as for models of representation.

Explaining Hamas's Changing Electoral Strategy, 1996–2006

Hamas, the most influential Islamist party in the occupied Palestinian territories, replaced its strategy of electoral boycott in 1996 with participation in 2006 – a change that is not explained in the literature. Assisted by theories of party change, the article seeks to fill this gap. The article demonstrates that the move from boycott to participation can largely be attributed to a change of dominant coalition. In line with the theoretical assumptions, environmental challenges and shocks altered the power–balance within Hamas, robbing the coalition dominating at the time of the boycott of its power and allowing a new faction to obtain dominance. This new dominant faction saw political participation as a legitimate avenue to pursue Hamas's cause, and its rise to power secured the change of strategy and participation in the 2006 elections.

Religious parties

The saliency of religious parties in recent democratic consolidation processes forces the discipline to reconsider key questions on party change: Under what conditions do (radical) religious parties moderate? Is their mere inclusion in the democratic process enough to result in their moderation? If so, exactly what mechanisms are at work here? What roles are played by intervening variables such as coalition politics and electoral systems? And if this is not the case, what other variables may explain the movements of religious parties along the axis between moderation and radicalization? Does religion itself play a role? In the endeavor to answer these and related questions, this introduction to the Special Issue on Religious Parties initially provides some conceptual clarifications and offers an overview of the relevant literature. It is followed by a list of conditions under which the development and shift of religious parties towards ideological and behavioral moderation may be expected. The argument posits that the democratization of the political system and inclusion in electoral competition are not the sole determining factors. Inclusion, indeed, seems to be neither a necessary nor sufficient condition. The four case studies presented after the introduction (by Carolyn Warner, Michael Buehler, Steven T. Wuhs, and Sarah Wilson Sokhey/Kadir Yildirim) analyze this in more depth by working diachronically and across parties of different religions. The first article revisits the development of Catholic parties in Italy, while the following set examines religious parties in the third- and fourth-wave democracies of Mexico, Turkey and Indonesia, and in Egypt, which has still not reached the status of a constitutional democracy.