Party Change Research Articles

The Iceberg and the Titanic: Electoral Defeat, Policy Moods, and Party Change

Multiple factors can be offered to explain the Labour victory, and Conservative defeat, in the 2001 British general election. Here we pursue one of the most interesting explanations offered by a modified Downsian model of party competition. Part I of this paper builds on Stimson's (1991) rational choice theory of policy mood cycles and considers how this framework can be applied to the context of British elections. Part II discusses measures of ideological change at mass and elite levels, focusing on two issues at the heart of British party politics: tax cuts v. spending and European integration v. independence. Evidence is drawn from the 2001 British Representation Study (BRS), involving 1000 parliamentary candidates and MPs. Comparisons are made with the British Election Studies (BES). Part III lays out the evidence. The study comes to three main conclusions: (i) on the key issues of public spending and Europe, Labour politicians remained close to the center-ground of Westminster party politics, along with the Liberal Democrats, with the Nationalist parties further towards the left, while the Conservatives remained with clear blue water on the far right; (ii) as a result of this pattern the Conservatives were the party furthest away from the median British voter; and (iii) one reason for this pattern was selective perception, so that Conservative politicians missed the target. The conclusion discusses the reasons for this phenomenon, the implications for the future of British party politics, and the broader lessons for why parties fail to learn and adapt in the face of the repeated electoral defeats.

Organization and Labor-Based Party Adaptation: The Transformation of Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective

This article examines the capacity of Latin American labor-based parties to adapt to the challenges of economic liberalization and working class decline. It presents an organizational approach to explaining party change, highlighting the ways in which informal and weakly institutionalized structures may contribute to party adaptation. It argues that loosely structured labor-based parties, such as many mass populist parties, possess a distinctive advantage in adapting to environmental change. Though a source of inefficiency and even internal chaos, populist legacies such as fluid internal structures, nonbureaucratic hierarchies, and centralized leaderships yield a high degree of strategic flexibility. The argument is applied to the case of the Argentine Justicialista Party (PJ), a mass populist party that adapted with striking success to the socioeconomic changes of the 1980s and 1990s. The weakly institutionalized nature of Peronism's party-union linkage facilitated the dismantling of traditional mechanisms of labor participation, which resulted in the Pj's rapid transformation from a labor-based party into a predominantly patronage-based party. At the same time, the Pj's nonbureaucratic hierarchy and weakly institutionalized leadership bodies provided President Carlos Menem with substantial room for maneuver in developing and carrying out a radical neoliberal strategy that, while at odds with Peronism's traditional program, was critical to its survival as a major political force. The conclusion places the Peronist case in comparative perspective by examining the cases of five other Latin American labor-based parties.

Evolving or conforming? Assessing organisational reform within European green parties

This article provides a comparative analysis of organisational change within three European Green parties. By utilising an adaptation of Harmel and Janda's party change model, the author identifies the key factors impacting upon processes of organisational change within the Greens. It is argued that these changes reflect a process of evolution within the Green parties during which they have attempted to maintain a commitment to key ‘green ‘ goals and objectives whilst also seeking to become effective competitors within European party systems.

Party Realignment and Voter Transition in Italy, 1987-1996

Between 1987 and 1996, the Italian party system experienced a major realignment. The political alternatives that dominated the postwar period dissolved, and new party and voter alignments emerged. This analysis employs a recently compiled data archive and a new ecological inference technique to examine voter transitions during the period. The disintegration of the ruling party coalition and the appearance of new party alternatives from the center of the analysis. The research highlights the importance of nonvoters, a relatively recent phenomenon in Italian elections, as a precursor of pending party change as well as holding the key to a resolution of the current flux. The new ecological analysis technique generates more robust results than previous techniques and also avoids the pitfalls of survey research.

Realignment and party revival: understanding American electoral politics at the turn of the twenty-first century

Preface Introduction: Realignment and the Revival of Parties A Century of Presidential Elections: From of to System of '96 The Democratic Party as a Multifactional System, 1896-1964 The Republican Party as a Bifactional System, 1896-1964 Ideological Polarization and Party Change: Realignment of the Factional Systems, 1964-1972 Party Decay and the New Nominating Politics, 1972-1980 Ideological Polarization and the Two-Tier Party System: Split Ticket Voting, Divided Government, and Realignment in American Politics Race and Class in the Post-New Deal Order Realignment and the Study of American Elections Conclusion: The Party System and American Democracy in the Twenty-First Century Epilogue: The Y2K Election

Validating Party Policy Placements

Textual analyses of party and government programmes open up exciting possibilities for the investigation of policy and operationalization of theory. This Note focuses on the validity of the resulting estimates, particularly of the massive policy time-series assembled by the Manifesto Research Group (MRG) of the European Consortium. These are important not only for the policy measurements they provide for fifty post-war democracies, but also from the point of view of validating other codings of texts, especially those deriving from computerized analyses. No other validating standard is available for any but a handful of post-war elections – certainly none other that so unambiguously measures policy preferences as opposed to actual party behaviour and which itself has been so well established by extensive use. Ian Budge, David Robertson and D. J. Hearl, eds., Ideology, Strategy and Party Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Data-collection continues under the direction of H-D. Klingemann and Andrea Volkens of the Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin under the title of the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) and now covers fifty countries.

New labour and Thatcherism: political change in Britain

Preface to the Paperback Edition Preface and Acknowledgements Exploring Political Change Beyond the Thatcher Decade: The Politics of 'New' Labour The Politics of Thatcherism Explaining Thatcherism: Project and Process Modernisation: The Transformation of the Labour Party How and Why Parties Change: Identifying Environmental Contexts Party Competition Driven Party Change: The 'Politics of Catch-Up' A Theory of Consensus Politics Thatcherism and the Reinvention of Labour Notes Bibliography Index

The Labour Party: a centenary history

The Labour Party presents the latest thinking on the evolution of the Party during its first century. Trade unions, the parliamentary party and Labour's electoral strategy are considered alongside broader policy areas such as international relations and welfare. The process of modernization and change in the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair is discussed in many of the chapters, which combine work from contemporary historians, political scientists and sociologists. This book is a unique opportunity both to celebrate and to assess critically the Labour Party's role in shaping the events of the twentieth century. It brings together academics from a variety of disciplines to examine the history of the Party's development and its impact on Britain in the 1900s. Contributions include commentaries and analyses from former Labour leaders, cabinet ministers and backbench MPs.

Alternances politiques et transformations du champ de l'information en France après 1981

Political alternation and changes in the field of information in France after 1981 Philippe Juhem This article wants to assess the effects of the changes in the left parties' political offer as soon as 1981 and chiefly from 1983 onwards and the « first stringency measures », upon the tranformation of the then considerd « of the left » newspapers' editorial line (Liberation, Le Matin de Paris, Le Monde). By modifying the indissociable political and commercial strategies the « left » papers were able to adopt and by initiating the process of the privatization of television, the arrival of a socialist government contributed to weakening the hold of political concepts over the journalistic comments, thus favoring a rather commercial policy. The evolution, however, of the « left » parties' political offer and the process of relative neutralization of the newspapers also contributed to modifying the opinion one might have about political struggles. The phenomenon known under the term of « decline of ideologies » whose effects can be seen both in the increasing scarcity of actors supporting the « left » parties' traditional views and the weakening of the actors' propensity to give them credit, is far from constituting an autonomous historical process, stemming from nobody knows which collective « new awareness » and -appears to be, on the contrary, the resuit of the ordinary working of the political game. Thus in 1981 the alternative government not only caused a reorganization of the public powers but also brought about the lasting modification of the agents' political beliefs and points of view.

The rise of neo‐liberal revolution in Britain: Thatcherism in the British conservative party

Recent theories of party change have emphasized interaction between political parties and their environment Employing this notion of interaction, this article has attempted to provide a more systematic analysis of the rise of Thatcherism in the British Conservative Party. It has demonstrated that while socio‐economic changes provided a primary source of the ideological change, there were internal processes within the party that perceived environmental pressure from the socio‐economic changes and actually pursued the task of the ideological change. First, environmental change in the socio‐economic arena provided an initial cause of the rise of Thatcherism in the British Conservative Party. Second, electoral defeats also played a significant influence in the rise of Thatcherism. Third, a replacement of party leadership was another significant intervening impetus of the ideological change.

Hopf bifurcation in multiparty political systems with time delay in switching

A model of a political system with three political parties and a group of nonaffiliated voters is considered. The model consists of four coupled ordinary differential equations in which members of the third party change allegiance and after a time delay become an active member of one of the other parties. Equilibrium and stability analysis are carried out. Taking the time delay as a bifurcation parameter, it is shown that a Hopf bifurcation can occur.

Devolution and party change: Candidate selection for the 1999 Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly elections

The article analyses the candidate selection procedures of each of the major parties in the run‐up to the 1999 Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections, assessing the extent to which they reveal developments in party democratisation and decentralisation on the one hand, and evidence of countervailing central control on the other. Procedural innovations achieved greater openness in candidate nomination and gender balance in candidatures but developments in democratisation were contested and evidence of decentralisation was mixed. Surveys of candidates reveal a perception in the Labour Party that there was too much central influence, although its implications differed in Scotland and Wales. There were perceptions of unfairness and lack of internal democracy in the other parties as well, suggesting in particular a contradiction between central influence in all of the parties’ approaches to list selection and candidates’ expectations of such influence diminishing. Devolution, therefore, released tensions in all parties.

Equivocation and the Rhetoric of Modernization

The process of change in the British Labour Party (from 1983 to 1997) has been widely referred to as one of modernization. In this article, the rhetoric of modernization was examined in the context of Bavelas et al.’s theory of equivocation (as modified by Bull et al.). Five televised political interviews with Tony Blair from the 1997 General Election campaign were analyzed. Blair equivocated to questions about modernization, which created an avoidance-avoidance conflict, and replied to those that did not create such a conflict (phi = .87, p < .001). It was argued that this rhetoric of modernization can be seen not only as a form of equivocation but also to have distinct political advantages by promoting a highly inclusive social identity for New Labour. It is concluded that such strategic advantages of equivocation are not adequately represented in existing theory.

Southern Parties and Elections: Studies in Regional Political Change.

Southern politics has changed dramatically during the past half century. While new developments have touched virtually every aspect of the region's politics, change has been especially marked in the South's political party and electoral systems. Southern Parties and Elections explores the contemporary developments in party realignment and examines the relationship between regional party change and electoral behavior and the larger patterns in national politics.

The Public Sphere and Party Change: Explaining the Modernisation of the Australian Labor Party in the 1960s

The Public Sphere and Party Change: Explaining the Modernisation of the Australian Labor Party in the 1960s

Party Strength, Party Change and Policy-Making in the American States

This research tests the effects of changing party strength on the representativeness of policy-making in American state legislatures. Building upon research initially presented by Robert Erikson, Gerald Wright and John McIver, it shows that Democrat-dominated state legislatures produce public policies that are more liberal and more consistent with the ideological positions of their constituents when they are faced with increased Republican party success in winning elections. Democrats whose majorities are eroding respond by producing policies consistent with the demands of their core constituents, while those who do not face lessened strength are able to drift right in their policy-making. A similar result holds in the few cases in which Republicans dominate state legislatures: increased Democratic strength leads them to respond by enacting more conservative public policies. Where neither party dominates, results indicate that policy outputs are what would be expected by the well-developed median voter model: they approach the middle ground. Data for the analysis represent 46 American states and are centered on 1980, and models are estimated using ordinary least squares regression.

Candidate-Centered Sources of Party Change: The Case of Pat Robertson, 1988

The contemporary presidential nomination process is widely criticized for contributing to the candidate-centered nature of American politics. In particular, candidates mobilize their own followings during the nomination stage, which contributes to factionalization and divisiveness within the party. While the critics have a point, we contend that these qualities of presidential nominations may also contribute to party responsiveness and change. Insurgent candidates like. Pat Robertson are especially likely to attract underrepresented interests and mobilize them into nomination campaign activity. We show that this nomination-stage mobilization tends to carry over and spill over into the general election stage, both in the party's campaign for president and in U. S. House campaigns. Robertson's candidacy had extraordinary potential to change the Republican. Party because his supporters were very different from supporters of other candidates, and a large proportion were newcomers to active involvement in th...

Passages to the presidency: from campaigning to governing

The standard view of the transition is based on a distinction between campaigning and governing, with election day as the marker: campaigning before, preparing to govern after. Yet changes are blurring the distinction between the two activities. The Clinton transition in 1992 is the watershed case. Dubbed the worst for failing to meet many of the standard tests, Clinton and his aides, nevertheless, were attuned to a campaigning style of governing that was fine-tuned after the 1994 mid-term election. Future transitions will be judged by a revised set of expectations. The conventional rules will be supplemented by tests that account for campaigning as integral to governing. What is called the permanent campaign is upon us. Presidents in the 21st century will prepare to govern more publicly from the start, anxious to establish and enhance their status in a more communal style of governing. This book considers the critical ten weeks of transition for recent party changes in the White House (Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton) and signals a pivotal change for the future. Charles Jones identifies the conventional expectations for an effective transition in regard to such topics as dismantling the campaign, connecting with Congress, establishing a theme, and relating to the press.

The Decentralization of Industrial Relations: The Swedish Case in Comparative Perspective

In many countries there has been a move towards more decentralized labour market systems in the 1980s and 1990s. This process has been particularly notable in Sweden. This study analyses the origins of the Swedish decentralization from a historical and comparative perspective. The main emphasis is on ideological motives, linked to a shifting balance of power. The more decentralized Swedish industrial relations become, the greater the likelihood that the power relations between the two main parties change in the employers' favour. Even if internationally determined changes in the organization of work are important, changes in industrial relations still seem to be very much a question of a struggle between the different interests of employers and employees.

Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948-1994

Forty Lost Tears is a penetrating analysis of the bleakest period of South African history: the long and violent reign of the National Party began with D. E Malan's surprise victory in the 1948 election and persisted until E W. de Klerk's concession of power and South Africa's first democratic election in 1994. Building on the author's earlier work on Afrikaner nationalism, this pioneering work explores the ongoing conflicts inside the National Party in the context of the broader political struggles of South Africa and the apartheid state.Exhaustively researched and fully illustrated with contemporary photographs and cartoons, Professor O'Meara's study analyzes the nature and functioning of the apartheid economy, the role of big business and foreign governments, military strategy, the evolution of Afrikaner literature, and the National Party's changing relationship with the Afrikaner Broederbond.Forty Lost Years is more than a compelling history: Dan O'Meara offers unique and subtle insights into questions of how the past both shapes the present and limits the future.