Conservative Political Parties Research Articles

International Travel and Coronavirus: A Very Early USA-based Study

ABSTRACT Tourism and politics are symbiotic. This research, conducted before the impacts of COVID-19 were evident to most Americans, provides insight into the influence one’s political persuasion has upon their view toward travel issues related to the disease. The key finding: political tribalism was highly evident, with Republicans, the more conservative USA political party, significantly more supportive of closing the country’s borders to those visiting from places where the virus was apparent than were Democratic respondents. Republicans were also considerably less supportive of governmental financial support to hospitality and tourism providers negatively impacted by the then evolving pandemic. Documenting this early glimpse is valuable, helping us better prepare for similar episodes that may follow by depoliticizing actions that are based on health science.

УКРАЇНСЬКА НАРОДНА ГРОМАДА – ОРГАНІЗАТОР ДЕРЖАВНОГО ПЕРЕВОРОТУ 29 КВІТНЯ 1918 р.

The article analyzes the reasons for the emergence, the main provisions of the political program and the activities of the Ukrainska Narodna Hromada. The Ukrainska Narodna Hromada emerged in Kyiv at the end of 1918. Pavlo Skoropadsky initiated its creation. In his opinion, it should have become the focus and center of the opposition and unite all those dissatisfied with the policy of the Centralna Rada. From the very beginning, the Hromada aimed to prepare for the overthrow of the Centralna Rada and the introduction of strong government in the country. The Hromada included representatives of conservative political parties – the Soius Zemelnykh Vlasnykiv, the Ukrainian Democratic-Agricultural Party, the All-Russian Party of Cadets, as well as soldiers of the 1st Ukrainian Corps and members of the Vilne Kozatstvo, personally associated with P. Skoropadsky. The program of the Hromada was developed, which outlined such issues as rights and freedoms of citizens, forms of government, ways to solve agricultural and labor issues, state language, financial and tax policy, development of transport and roads, education, court, health care. In content, the program is close to the party program of the Cadet Party. Having prepared and carried out a coup d’etat, the Hromada at the same time laid the ideological and theoretical foundations of the domestic political course of the future Ukrainska Derzhava. Its most active members participated in the hetman’s governments, forming the main directions of state policy.

The German Right, 1918–1930: Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy by Larry Eugene Jones

Reviewed by: The German Right, 1918–1930: Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy by Larry Eugene Jones Barry Jackisch The German Right, 1918–1930: Political Parties, Organized Interests, and Patriotic Associations in the Struggle against Weimar Democracy. By Larry Eugene Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xx + 636. Cloth $140.00. ISBN 978-1108494076. Larry Eugene Jones's remarkable study of the German Right in the Weimar Republic constitutes an authoritative English-language history of this tremendously important and consequential subject. Based on a vast array of source material compiled over years of research from over thirty different public and private archives, as well as hundreds of other sources, it is hard to imagine another scholar matching the erudition that Jones offers his readers on this subject. [End Page 616] A basic question lies at the book's core: why did a conservative, non-Nazi political party fail to emerge in the Weimar Republic as a viable alternative to the eventual triumph of the Hitler movement? In answering this question, Jones focuses much of his attention on the German National People's Party (or DNVP), the largest and most successful of several conservative political groups in this era. Jones is hardly the first scholar to devote attention to this party. However, his particular contribution explains in detail the larger political universe in which the DNVP operated and shows convincingly why it ultimately failed to assume the mantle of political leadership on the German Right. In studying this broader context, Jones also provides detailed insights into other economic interest groups, radical nationalist and patriotic associations, and a wide range of social and cultural forces that shaped the party's development. Jones clearly stakes out his argument in the introduction: the disunity of the German Right was an essential political factor in the Weimar Republic's collapse and Hitler's ultimate success. He pursues this argument consistently throughout the book's eighteen main chapters and the epilogue. This thesis takes issue with earlier studies stressing stronger lines of continuity between Germany's established political Right and the upstart Nazi movement. As Jones makes very clear, substantial divisions existed both within the DNVP and among the wide array of groups that orbited within the bizarre galaxy of right-wing politics. This disunity made the formation of a stable and long-term conservative political party, one that might have blunted the popular appeal of Nazism later in the 1920s, very difficult indeed. This failure had much to do with the DNVP's inability to resolve a fundamental dilemma. Jones details how the party gained increasing popular support in the republic's first years by stridently opposing government policies that allegedly threatened Germany's national pride and honor. However, after the party's electoral success in the 1924 elections, its leaders faced growing pressure to join a national government. This forced a shift from the comfort of angry opposition to the distinctly more challenging task of shaping government policy and working with other political leaders to advance a broader agenda based on political compromise. The DNVP's participation in two national governments in 1925 and 1927 laid bare its basic inability to move successfully from the national opposition to an effective and popular ruling party. Jones recounts in remarkable detail how key conflicts within the party and between the party and its associated interest groups further undermined the DNVP's development as a unified, popular political force. One of Jones's real strengths is his ability to tease out the often obscure and complex connections between various groups and personalities on the right-wing scene and to explain how their individual actions and views affected the larger political destiny of the German Right. Jones demonstrates that the DNVP's leadership constantly faced various political, economic, cultural, and nationalist factions that sought to push and pull the party in multiple directions to pursue their own agenda. While this is certainly a feature of any modern political [End Page 617] party, the range of interests connected to the DNVP made reaching consensus nearly impossible. For example, could the party effectively represent the economic interests of small farmers, industrialists, shopkeepers...

Problematizing Canadian exceptionalism: A study of right-populism, white nationalism and Conservative political parties

The myth that Canada has resisted the “West’s populist wave” persists despite evidence that demonstrates otherwise. This article traces how the assumption that Canada has avoided the rise of right-wing populism and white nationalism is tethered to the fiction that Canada has been a raceless society. After briefly reviewing the myth of racelessness and the history of right-populism in Canada, the article explores how the Reform Party of Canada conceptualized “the people” in racialized terms. This article examines how the Conservative Party of Canada’s appeals to symbolic “diversity” and denial of systemic oppression have enabled more overt forms of racism. By examining the recent rise of hate crimes, this article makes the case that a direct link can be traced between the Conservative government’s seemingly neutral discourses about the preservation of Canadian “heritage” and “common values” and the re-emergence of right-wing populism and the re-emboldening of white nationalism in Canada. El mito de que Canadá ha resistido la “ola populista de Occidente” perdura a pesar de que se puede demostrar lo contrario. Este artículo expone que la aceptación generalizada de que Canadá ha evitado el auge del populismo de derechas y del nacionalismo blanco está unida a la ficción de que Canadá ha sido una sociedad sin razas. Tras repasar brevemente el mito de la ausencia de razas y la historia del populismo de derechas en Canadá, el artículo explora cómo el Partido Reformista de Canadá conceptualizó “el pueblo” en términos racializados, y examina cómo las apelaciones del Partido Conservador de Canadá a la “diversidad” simbólica y su negación de cualquier opresión sistemática han permitido formas más abiertas de racismo. Al analizar el aumento reciente de crímenes de odio, el artículo argumenta que se puede hallar un nexo directo entre el discurso aparentemente neutral del gobierno conservador sobre la defensa del “patrimonio” y los “valores comunes” de Canadá y el resurgimiento del populismo de derechas y el reforzamiento del nacionalismo blanco en Canadá.

Amidst backward-walking somnambulists

This Currents section provides accounts of Britain’s exit (Brexit) or departure from the European Union (EU)—a decision based on a closely won referendum in June 2016, and declared in January 2020 by the Conservative political party. With few exceptions, the views and experiences of those excluded from dominant narratives of “the people” have not been substantially considered in mainstream nor indeed anthropological debates. Contributors to the section offer (auto)ethnographic perspectives on the legacies and implications of empire, nationalism, racism, cultural diversity, gender, and generational divides made explicit in Brexit phenomena. They range from the trolling of women of color, the repercussions of race and racism in academia, culturally diverse perspectives on resilience, the experiences of those from the European mainland who work in England, and views on the English from a former colony and now EU country, the Republic of Ireland.

Stigmatising attitudes towards people who inject drugs, and people living with blood borne viruses or sexually transmissible infections in a representative sample of the Australian population.

Stigma has significant detrimental health outcomes for those affected. This study examined socio-demographic characteristics that were associated with stigmatising attitudes among the general population towards people who inject drugs, and people living with blood borne viruses or sexually transmissible infections. Questions were included in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (total sample = 1,001). Attitudes towards each of the target populations were measured by 5-item stigma scales. Bivariate analyses and multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify socio-demographic characteristics associated with stigmatising attitudes. Knowing a person affected by a stigmatised attribute was associated with reduced stigmatising attitudes, while voting for a conservative political party was associated with increased stigmatising attitudes. Age, gender, education, income, and marital status were each related to some stigmatising attitudes. Results also highlight differences between attitudes towards a stigmatised behaviour (i.e., injecting drug use) and stigmatised conditions (i.e., blood borne viruses and sexually transmissible infections). Identifying socio-demographic characteristics that are associated with stigmatising attitudes may have global implications for informing stigma reduction interventions, in order to promote positive health outcomes for affected communities.

Political Parties and Policy Change in Canadian Agricultural Marketing Institutions

ABSTRACT Examining issue politicization of regulated marketing in Canadian agriculture, this article investigates factors affecting political parties’ strategies in response and the ensuing consequences for policy change. It argues that parties adopt a politicization strategy when doing so advances both their ideational and electoral goals. Politicization strategies of Canadian parties are also affected by territorialism’s impact on their capacity to align their ideational and electoral goals. When territorialism has favored conservative political parties, they have pursued politicization strategies associated with paradigmatic reforms. When issue politicization transcends regions, national office-seeking parties have adopted depoliticization strategies associated with first- and second-order policy change.

Модернизация политической системы современной России: развитие консервативных и национал-патриотических проектов

Modern conservative political and legal changes in the state system of Russia, enshrined in the amendments to the Constitution, determine the need to study and evaluate the directions and ways of further socio-political development of the country and society, which characterizes the relevance of the topic. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the search and evaluation of modern political forces, foundations and concepts that determined the general logic, ideology and vectors of modern political and legal changes in the country. The stud-ied national-patriotic and conservative concepts and political actors have created the basis for the mod-ernization of the state management system based on the search for a balance between protective ideas and liberalism. The paper analyzes the main amendments to the Constitution of Russia, as well as the conditions and factors of the functioning of the socio-political system in the country. The basic ideological approaches to ongoing political and legal changes in the state management system are also examined, the key vectors of modernization of the political system of Russia are studied. The study, based on methods of comparing and analyz-ing documents, describes the key areas of political and legal modernization of the country in the direc-tion of strengthening the positions of conservatism and national patriotism, which today creates the conditions for the development of protective con-cepts and conservative political parties and move-ments. Within the framework of systemic and pro-cess approaches, the potential of implementing na-tional-patriotic programs for the development of the state in conjunction with the liberal-democratic ba-sis for the functioning of the political system of the country has been investigated. The authors analyze the prospects for the modernization of the political system of the country towards national patriotism and conservatism, as well as recommendations on the formation of balanced conditions for the func-tioning of Russian socio-political system in condi-tions of external instability and the growth of for-eign challenges and threats.

Activist Feminism in Turkey, Represented Through the Caricatures of Bayan Yanı Magazine

In Turkey, under the governance of a conservative political party, Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) since 2002, religion and conservatism has been relentlessly promoted. Both government officials and their supporters have been expressed sexist and discriminatory discourses against women keenly and frequently, causing various incidents and public outcries. Bayan Yani, being the first and only women led caricature publication in Turkey, has been widely covering the gender related, socio-political issues, since its first appearance on the market, in the early days of March 2011. This article aims to explore the way in which gender related socio-political issues, whether on the part of individuals or a more collective activist engagement, are debated in this particular publication, revealing the depiction of feminist activism and tensions surrounding women’s everyday experiences of gender in Turkey.

Discrimination based on political beliefs: A field experiment on the freedom of assembly

Public officials have been shown to discriminate against citizens based on race and gender. We suggest that bureaucrats also discriminate based on political beliefs that citizens reveal to them. We support this argument with evidence from the application of freedom of assembly rights in the context of gay marriage. We confront German city administrations with requests about the organization of a political rally and randomize the underlying political belief and cause: the promotion of or opposition to same-sex marriage. We find that none of these causes receives discriminatory treatment per se. Instead, further explorative, yet theory-guided, analysis indicates that the cultural and political environment within which bureaucracies are embedded determines which of the two requests receives worse and less helpful answers. I.e. the treatment effect seems to be moderated by the local prevalence of Catholicism and the strength of sexually conservative political parties that oppose same-sex marriage.

La represión de las <em>masas</em>. La prensa y la securitización del disenso juvenil en España

En este artículo analizamos los discursos de periodistas y columnistas conservadores, críticos con el movimiento 15M, que escribieron piezas en este sentido entre el 16 de mayo y el 30 de septiembre de 2011. Estas piezas fueron publicadas en tres periódicos diferentes: Abc, Libertad Digital y La razón. Defendemos que el esfuerzo de estos periodistas por denigrar al activismo ha de ser visto como una forma de represión de la protesta; la prensa, así, puede desarrollar mecanismos discursivos hostiles que se insertan en una estrategia más amplia de represión de la juventud. En esta estrategia, la prensa conservadora se alía con la policía y con partidos políticos también conservadores para ‘securitizar’ la protesta. El examen de la participación de la prensa española en la represión revela sorprendentes paralelismos con una visión del mundo que se creía ya muy superada: en particular, los periodistas y columnistas conservadores han resucitado la ‘psicología de las masas’, es decir, aquella popular teoría que resumía las ansiedades de la clase intelectual contra el activismo de la clase obrera.

“Forest property rights under attack”: Actors, networks and claims about forest ownership in the Swedish press 2014–2017

Sweden is a leading country in governance of property rights, according to global assessments, but Swedish landowners currently argue that their forest property rights are being eroded. Thus, the aim of this article is to investigate when and why the current debate on forest property rights came about, and its resemblance to discussion in an ‘echo-chamber’. This refers to an arena in which information is accessed from limited sources and a small number of actors with ideological homogeneity may exert substantial influence and reinforce established opinions. Hence, it may spread disinformation, increase polemic tensions, and hamper deliberative policy processes in society. We assess the resemblance by identifying where the issue is debated in printed news media, the active actors, the interests they represent and how they problematize property rights, i.e. the claims they make and the claims’ homogeneity. Our results show that the debate has intensified in recent years, but several issues are not new. The debate is mainly limited to the Swedish rural business press and rural conservative press. Moreover, the main claim-makers are representatives of land and forest owner organizations, and members of agrarian and conservative political parties, which have close organizational and individual connections, thereby forming a metaphorical ‘chamber’. The ‘echo’ consists of repetitive claims about withdrawal and management rights, with no efforts to examine and contextualize complex aspects of private property rights in a changing society. The debate about forest ownership in an echo-chamber is problematic in several ways. It hampers efforts of claim-makers in the chamber to reach out, undermines current systems’ legitimacy, and locks important questions about sustainable forestry and property rights into a narrow societal sphere.

Towards conservatism? Party politics in Slovakia at the end of the 2010s

The Slovak political system has changed rapidly since the Republic’s formation in 1993. Today the number of ideologically conservative political parties is rapidly rising. This article clarifies some aspects of recent party-political developments in Slovakia. To provide an overview, only the most important social milestones have been taken into account. Specifically, the 2015 referendum on the protection of the ‘traditional family’, the mass civic protests that erupted in 2012 and 2018, and the business–mafia–political connections that have been exposed will be discussed.

Евангелизация как политический мобилизатор в латиноамериканской политике и возрождение консервативных правительств

Evangelicalism has experienced a rapid increase in Latin America the last four decades at the expense of Catholicism, as believers look for a more personal relation with God, a more practical religious life and detaching from the institutionality the Catholic Church represents. Due to the nature of Evangelicalism, believers started to get involved into the political life of their countries. The author analyses the use of discursive elements of Evangelicalism by conservative parties in Guatemala and Brazil to gain political power. Such phenomenon is reciprocal as Evangelical leaders take advantage of the exposure and reach they will get once conservative politicians gain power. The goal of the author is to visibilize the existing alliance between the Evangelical communities and conservative political parties in Latin America and the effects it has on secular democracies. The author gets to the conclusion that Latin American secular democracies that allow the participation of resourceful religious institutions or individuals in the political life risk the continuation of the secular democratic state

Public perception of energy transition in Korea: Nuclear power, climate change, and party preference

Since President Moon Jae-in took office in May 2017, South Korea has been embroiled in a major social controversy about energy transition. The president's pledge to transition toward renewable energy represented a dramatic change in Korean energy policy, which has been focused on nuclear and coal-fired plant expansion policies since the 1970s. This study examines public perception of energy, with focus on the relationship between nuclear power and climate change as well as party preferences, based on a nationally representative survey of Korea. The survey data shows that the risk-risk tradeoff strategy, reframing nuclear power generation as a way to mitigate the risks of climate change, seems to be ineffective in Korea. Furthermore, nuclear power represents the values of the elderly, materialists, developmentalists, and conservative political parties. These results suggest that Korean energy policy is a very political issue rather than a strictly scientific or economic one. Therefore, this issue should be deliberated through a democratic process.

Irish Party System after 2011: Change or Revolution?

Until recently the Irish party system has been considered as very stable. It was dominated by two rival conservative political parties, which only in the 1990s allowed the possibility of forming coalition governments with other parties. In 2011 there was a historical change – for the first time since 1932 Fianna Fail lost the parliamentary elections with the worst result in history. However, the classical parameters of the dynamics of party systems did not adequately reflect this transformation. In the article, we argue that without taking into account significant socio-cultural changes, the method of system analysis, focused on data obtained on the basis of election results, remains an insufficient tool to describe the Irish party system. We reconstruct the most important events related to the evolution of this system between 2011 and 2016 and try to answer the question of how relevant political parties reacted to changing patterns of competition.

Comparing British and American conservatisms through the prism of African development

ABSTRACTConservatism and conservative party politics in Britain and America is associated with neo-colonial attitudes, including pursuit of national interests ahead of post-colonial development. Based on interviews conducted in Washington and London with actors involved with African development, this article examines comparative shifts in conservatives’ engagements from the late Cold War era to the G. W. Bush and Cameron governments. Greater ideological heterogeneity and distinctiveness among American conservative interests groups, combined with a bureaucratic environment in the US allowing more direct channels for ideological input into policy, results in a more clearly conservative stamp on Africa policy in the US than in Britain where ideological lines on development have become more blurred since the 1997 New Labour election victory and the creation of the Department for International Development.

Understanding Regulatory Innovation: The Political Economy of Removing Old Regulations Before Adding New Ones

During the last decade, governments have shown increasing interest in curbing the growth of regulation by requiring that one or more regulations be removed before a new regulation can be added. We provide a comprehensive review of this innovation in regulatory policy. There are three main conclusions that flow from our analysis: First, while some governments claim this policy has made regulatory agencies more sensitive to regulatory costs, none of the countries we review has demonstrated that this policy innovation has actually led to improvements in economic efficiency. Second, all of these policies are implemented in conjunction with a requirement related to the economic impact of regulations. Typically, the economic requirement is that the costs associated with the new regulation be less than the costs associated with the regulations being removed. For existing applications, these costs have been defined narrowly, and they do not provide a good measure of the full social costs of a policy. The US appears to be adopting a markedly different approach that will consider both economic costs and benefits. Third, we find support for the hypothesis that centrist or conservative political parties are more likely to implement these policies. We argue that the requirement to remove one or more new regulations before adding a new regulation is best understood in terms of symbolic politics.

It’s only natural: conservatives and climate change in Australia

ABSTRACTWith near consensus over the causes of climate change among scientific experts, only two-thirds of Australians believe that most scientists are in agreement. Ninety per cent claim climate change is occurring, yet almost one third claim climate change has ‘natural‘ causes. Women, ’global citizens’, those who mainly consume public broadcast news and those with high self-assessed knowledge of climate change are most likely to believe that climate change is occurring and has mainly anthropogenic causes.As in other advanced industrialised countries, political divisions over the causes of climate change run deep in Australia. Australians who identify with conservative political parties are far more likely than those aligned with other parties to reject anthropogenic climate change, with conservative men, those living in rural areas, and on the right of ideological spectrum most likely to believe climate change is happening, but has mainly ‘natural’ causes. Politically conservative Australians remain sceptical of the risks of climate change, although even the majority of conservatives believe that climate change will seriously threaten the lifestyles of the next generation.

Flying the flag for neoliberalism

The author looks, in the light of the June 2016 EU referendum vote in the UK, at the apparent rupture between Eurosceptic nationalists and transnational neoliberal elites, examining also the interlinked decline in support for Social Democratic and Conservative mainstream political parties. She examines how ultra-nationalism plays out in different parts of the EU at a time of retrenchment, austerity, terrorism and insecurity – to fortify conservatism as well as neoliberal forms of governance based on new forms of surveillance. Nationalism, racism and the political Right are discussed in terms of the EU’s uneven development – between core (ordoliberal Germany) and periphery – and Europe’s legacy of authoritarianism and fascism, evoked today through the politicisation of memory and a stress on national victimhood and the Muslim enemy within. While some national elites draw on rightwing authoritarian traditions, nationalism can also prove advantageous to neoliberal transnational forces. For in grossly unequal and socially volatile societies, rejecting austerity in favour of protectionism, only a more commanding and authoritarian state can finalise the necessary transition from nation state to market state.