Country Party Research Articles

Pathway to Power: Shifts in Electoral Support for the Australian Labor Party Between the 1966 and 1969 Federal Elections

The House of Representatives election of 2 December, 1972, was a watershed in Australian political history. That election saw the Australian Labor Party terminate the Liberal–Country Party (LCP) Coalition's twenty‐three‐year hegemony and bring to office not only a different type of Labor government but a different prime ministerial style in leader Gough Whitlam. Yet, just six years before, Labor at the 1966 election had suffered a 4.30 per cent two‐party preferred (2PP) swing and the loss of nine seats following Labor's lowest primary vote since 1934. Labor's dramatic reversal of fortunes in just six years therefore remains of enormous historical interest. But, given the 1972 election saw a modest 2.5 per cent 2PP swing to Labor, with the party seizing twelve seats from the Coalition and losing four back to the LCP, the 1969–72 triennium offers little insight into Labor's recovery. In that context, this article, via analyses of House of Representatives election results and public opinion poll data, explores the chronology, demography, and geography of Labor's electoral recovery to argue the 1966–69 triennium remains of far greater value when identifying exactly when, among whom, and where Labor began its pathway to power.

ГАЛУЗЕВА СПЕЦИФІКА МОНОПРОФІЛЬНИХ МІСТ ДОНБАСУ В 1940–1980 ті РР.: ПОЛІТИКО-СТРАТЕГІЧНИЙ АСПЕКТ ФОРМУВАННЯ

The aim of the study is to identify and characterize the main features of the political strategy, determine the formation of the sectoral specificity of the industrial base of the monotowns of Donbas in the 1940s-1980s. The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, integrity and systemic character. The methods used are: retrospective, problematic-chronological, historical-genetic, historical-typological ones. The novelty of the study lies in the attempt to identify and characterize the main features of the political strategy of economic development, which led to the formation of the sectoral specificity of production of city-forming importance in Donbas in the 1940s-1980s period. Conclusions. The formation of the sectoral specificity of the Donbas mono-profile cities from the mid-1940s to the late 1980s period was the result of the low level of political and strategic thinking of the country's party and government leadership in organizing industrial and urbanization processes. As in the previous period (the years of forced industrialization in the 1920s-1930s), the country long-term economic development was based on an extensive model. The main priorities were to ensure the country's defense capability and rapidly demonstrate the benefits of socialist planned economy. This led to increasing use of raw materials from Donbas, construction of numerous city-forming enterprises in the region, mainly in the coal industry, as well as in the fire-resistant, chemical ones. During the period under study, the number of mono-profile cities in the region doubled, compared to the previous one: out of a total of eighty-seven cities in Donbas at the end of the Soviet Union period, about 80% were mono-profile. The genesis of the majority of single-industry cities in this period is associated with the "economic breakthrough" of the mid-1950s - mid-1960s period, planned to quickly reach the levels of highly developed countries. The attempts to improve the economic development strategy and move away from the extensive economic model by the party and government leadership in the second half of the 1960s and at the late stage of the USSR's existence period were not consistent and effective. There was neither diversification nor intensification of city-forming production in the mono-profile cities of Donbas. The narrow sectoral specificity determined negative scenarios for the development of these cities in the following decades. They are mainly related to the reduction of city-forming production due to the depletion of the region's resource potential, structural and economic changes. Developing new strategies for the economic development of the country and the regions, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of formation of the industrial and urban sphere of Donbas, to answer fundamental questions, connected to the reasonability of rebuilding and the possibility of re-profiling such cities.

Non-compliance of the European Court of Human Rights decisions: A machine learning analysis

The paper investigates all (971) non-executed pending leading cases of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) between 2012 and 2020 through Machine Learning (ML) techniques. Drawing on the extant scholarship, our interest on compliance has centred on state level and case level variables. For the identification of important variables, four databases have been used. Each country party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) received 232 distinct factors for eight years. Since we aim to make a parameter estimation for a high-dimensional data set, Simulated Annealing (SA) is employed as feature selection method. In the state level analysis, Support Vector Regression (SVR) model has been applied yielding the coefficients of the variables, which have been found to be important in spelling out non-compliance with the ECtHR decisions. For the case level analysis, different cluster techniques have been utilized and the countries have been grouped into four different clusters. We have found that the states that have relatively high levels of equality before the law, protection of individual liberties, social class equality with regard to enjoying civil liberties, access to justice and free and autonomous election management arrangements, are less susceptible to non-compliance of the decisions of the ECtHR. For the case level analysis, type of violated rights, the existence of dissent in the decision and dissenting votes of national judges for their appointing states affect the compliance behaviour of the states. In addition, a notable result of the research is that if a national judge casts a dissenting vote against the violation judgment of the ECtHR involving the state that appointed him/her, the judgment is likely not to be executed by the respondent state.

Catalan Nationalism: Challenges for Spain and for United Europe

The Catalan issue, despite the apparent decrease in tension at the present time, has been on the agenda of the internal political life of the Kingdom of Spain for many years. This problem entered an acute phase in 2017, after the holding of an unconstitutional referendum on independence in the region. This move by Catalan nationalists provoked the largest political crisis in the country in the entire post-Fascist period of its existence. The Catalan issue has become one of the main components of a larger domestic political crisis in Spain, manifested in the destabilization of the country's party and political system. The importance of resolving the Catalan issue is due to the fact that the further existence of Spain as a nation-state within the current borders depends on the stabilization of this conflict. The Catalan issue is of particular importance in the light of the upcoming parliamentary elections in the country in 2023.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear and the Spectre of French Universal Monarchy

ABSTRACT The Anglo–Spanish War of 1739, commonly referred to as the War of Jenkins’ Ear, is generally explained as having been caused by public outrage at the depredations of the Guarda Costas without consideration of European politics. While Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole risked his political life to avoid war with Spain for fear that it would only benefit France and disrupt the British economy, the Country opposition, led by Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, exploited the situation with a maritime vision of empire to bring down the government. This article, however, suggests that Bolingbroke’s Country party was no less troubled by the prospect of French universal monarchy than the Walpole ministry but that they pushed for war with Spain as an urgent precautionary measure. Once France decided to support Spain, they thought it would be extremely difficult and costly to separate them and re–establish the balance of power. They believed that owing to Hanoverian influence on British foreign policy, which culminated in the Anglo–French Alliance of 1716–1731, the Utrecht peace settlement had been significantly distorted in favour of the French, and a French–Spanish alliance was already in sight. Therefore, before it was too late, Spain had to be defeated and Austria befriended again.

Patriots and the Country party tradition in the eighteenth century: the critics of Britain’s fiscal-military state from Robert Harley to Catharine Macaulay

ABSTRACT The distinguished historian Steven Pincus has recently argued that “Patriotism” was a distinctive ideology in the middle of the eighteenth century that indicated “governmental activism” and support for “the British way of governing, grounded in the principles set forth in England’s Revolution of 1688–89.” By contrast, this essay shows that “Patriot” was more commonly used as a generic term for opposition politicians in eighteenth-century Britain. Moreover, for much of the century, the term was frequently associated with a slightly more precise and substantial set of political arguments: those associated with the “Country party” platform. In its eighteenth-century guise, the Country party’s raison d’être was opposition to the growth of executive power since the Glorious Revolution. It was not a party as such but rather an opposition stance and a set of principles which occasionally brought together Tories, Whigs, and independent Country gentlemen as well as self-proclaimed Patriots. In the eighteenth century, “the Country” was especially scathing of the “financial revolution” and the growth of the fiscal-military state in the years after 1688–1689. By its continuous association with the Country party tradition, Patriotism and suspicion of the growth of executive power and government finance were intimately linked.

General “Maize” as One of the Failed Managerial Experiments of N. S. Khrushchev

Goals. Based on the analysis of materials from the Soviet press, scientific publications and a number of other sources, to show the hyperactive activity of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev on the widespread introduction of corn crops in the country, to reveal how ill-conceived and not calculated from a scientific point of view, managerial decisions in an authoritarian political system can lead to serious negative socio-economic and political consequences.Materials and methods. N.S. Khrushchev’s speeches at party congresses, plenums, activists and other forums, party and government resolutions concerning the party leadership of the agrarian sphere of the country were chosen as the basic materials of the work. The main method of working with sources and scientific literature is the historical approach, which is traditional for this kind of research, which allowed us to consider the dynamics of the origins of the “corn epic”, its development and historical finale. In addition, a problem-chronological approach was used, which contributed to the study of specific aspects of the activities of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, which allowed to trace the causes of the origin and development of the campaign initiated by him, but also to draw historical lessons from its deplorable results.Results. One of the negative results of the policy of “universal maize” imposed by N. Khrushchev in the life of the agricultural sector of the country was a deep food crisis. In turn, the total shortage of meat and dairy products and bakery products in most regions of the country, which has become essentially chronic, has shown the complete failure of some managerial experiments of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.Conclusions. Deep unprofessionalism, paternalism, the desire to interfere and direct literally all spheres of the national economy of the country, from space exploration to agriculture — these qualities were inherent in most of the generation of party leaders of the USSR. Khrushchev's unceremonious intervention in the agrarian sphere led to serious negative economic and social consequences, a sharp decline in the party's authority in society, which continued in the following years after his departure from the political arena. In the end, in 1991, it was not so much the foreign and homegrown "enemies of Soviet power" that crushed a huge power, but above all, the inability of the country's party elite to solve the most pressing problems of Soviet people.

The Forest and Timber Industry Complex of the USSR in the Strategy of the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–1937): Financing and Siting of Enterprises

The accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan in the timber industry of the USSR turned out to be far from the planned indicators, although they were indicative of a considerable increase in production volumes as compared to the period of the New Economic Policy. The implementation of the forest and timber industry reform in the late 1920s and early 1930s and making the People's Commissariat of the Timber Industry an independent agency of USSR-wide significance made it urgent to reassess the prospects of the industry, especially in terms of construction of new enterprises. The active industrial development of the country and its individual regions has been arousing increased interest among researchers, including the issues of capital investment and new construction. However, many aspects of the problem have not been touched upon, or have been treated superficially. Using the materials of the 1932–1933 industry conferences, the Second Five-Year Plan, and statistical data, the author has conducted an analysis of the problems of financing and siting timber enterprises. The article contains conclusions on the continuity of the policy of the country's party and state bodies with regard to the timber industry: the development of forest resources of the northern and eastern regions of the country remained a priority. The organizational basis for the development of the industry underwent changes. The timber industry and forestry were merged, the main attention was given to timber processing, which allowed to satisfy the domestic demand for timber products and reduce the volume of wood cutting, and to the construction of combined enterprises and large-scale mechanization of the forest resources harvesting area. In the course of the Second Five-Year Plan the growth rate of timber production was quite high, although most of the goals were not achieved.

A passionate partnership: understanding the origins and significance of John Sinclair’s connection with K’gari (Fraser Island)

AbstractThe paper explores the transformation of environmental activist John Sinclair, OA, from a conservative member of the Country Party, through a position of cautious conservationism, to preeminence as a leading environmentalist with some very significant achievements. This paper aims to show some correlations between his work and ideas and major strands of environmental education research. His allegiance to K’gari (Fraser Island) and the way in which he was able to learn from the traditional custodians, the Butchulla people, and other leading environmentalists is described in this paper through his own memoir writing and the viewpoints of informants interviewed by the author. John Sinclair’s profound connection with K’gari, how it was formed and sustained, and its historical and environmental consequences make a remarkable story of a modern citizen turned activist. The development of John Sinclair’s ideas and practice show interesting parallels with the development of both environmental activism and environmental education in Australia. The story has importance in a range of areas connected with environmental stewardship and environmental education.

Tindakan Amerika Serikat Dalam Menarik Diri Dari Paris Agreement Dalam Kerangka Hukum Internasional

This research is motivated by the United States, which withdrew from the Paris Agreement because for the United States, the Paris Agreement is an agreement that weakens the economy. Following Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, this action raises problems that the United States cannot withdraw before 2020. In this case, there needs to be legal clarity in binding the country to global climate protection. The act of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement would undoubtedly be a problem for the countries incorporated in it. In this case, the Paris Agreement continues to run as it should because the United States withdrew using the mechanisms contained in the Paris Agreement. Still, the United States continues to handle climate change because it does not come out of the Convention (UNFCCC). Then in the campaign and carbon trading, the United States should compensate for having left obligations as a developed country party following the Paris Agreement.

Manifestos and ideology: methodological issues and applications to Latin America

Abstract: In this paper we compare the recent dataset of Latin American country party manifestos as coded by the Manifest Project database to other estimations of position on the left-right scale and to another coding of the same documents, discussing their limits and potentialities. The differences found between results offer an interesting opportunity to discuss the method, its reliability, and the validity of the coding scheme and the scales. Our findings suggest that the fragile reliability of the hand-coded content analysis could be circumvented by employing intercoder reliability tests and that users must be cautious when basing conclusions on this project’s results.

ЛЕВЫЙ И ПРАВЫЙ ПОПУЛИЗМ В ИСПАНИИ В УСЛОВИЯХ ПЕРЕСТРОЙКИ ПАРТИЙНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ: "ВОКС" И "ПОДЕМОС"

For many years, right-wing populism was considered irrelevant in Spain. The recent success of the Vox party, first at the regional and then at the national level, is clear evidence that the transformation of the Spanish party system continues. Moreover, right-wing and left-wing populism (represented respectively by the Vox and Podemos parties) coexist today in the context of its increasing fragmentation. The article attempts to answer the question why two types of populist parties emerged in Spain, what are the key differences between them and what place they occupy in the country's party system. The research intention involves identifying the main characteristics of right and left populism based on the analysis of the latest scientific literature and the subsequent assessment of the prospects of the Vox and Podemos parties. The factors of their electoral successes are determined; it is assumed that the territorial factor plays a special role in the differentiation of Spanish populism. The study uses the methods of comparative analysis and social constructivism, and populism itself is considered within the framework of an ideational approach. Based on the results of the study, the characteristics of left and right populism in Spain were determined on the example of the Vox and Podemos parties. It was concluded that the case of Spain is of particular interest in the European context, as it allows one to study the electoral successes and prospects of both left and right populists. The role of the territorial factor in delimiting left and right populism was emphasized.

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

The electoral regions of Mexico in the context of fundamental transformation of the country's party system

The electoral geography of the countries of Latin America remains a poorly studied topic. The article analyzes the evolution of the party system in Mexico and the factors that allowed the left-wing party MORENA in 2018 to take a leading role in Mexican politics. The attention was paid to the electoral strategy of MORENA and the role of the personality of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in it. The main focus of the article is on the analysis of the geographical features of the results of the election of deputies of Congress in 2018 and their comparison with the results of the 2000-2015 elections. Based on electoral statistics, the author highlights the electoral macro-districts of Mexico formed in the first two decades of the XXI century and concludes that they are stable, which reflects the continuity of the electoral behavior of their population. The author comes to the conclusion that the electoral campaigns in Mexico are significantly personalized, and that the «north-south» and «rural-urban» electoral gradients that are most important for the Mexican political system have survived even in the face of the defeat of traditional parties.

The political in the technical: understanding the influence of national political institutions on climate adaptation

ABSTRACT A growing body of research shows that local and international institutions as well as party politics affect climate adaptation. Yet few studies have considered the role of political institutions at the national level. Comparative political institutional theory argues that a country's party system, executive-legislative arrangement, and electoral rules affect elected officials’ incentives and behaviour. This study utilizes this theory to explain how Chile's national elected officials responded to the country's extreme drought in 2010–2015. Results indicate that ideologically distinct alliances, a strong president, and legislators’ competing incentives to cater to different interests resulted in adaptive policy solutions that only partially addressed the shortcomings that drought exposed. The findings of this study show how politics can underlie technical decision-making on climate change, help to account for the continued inadequacies of Chilean water reform even in the face of new climate extremes, and demonstrate the utility of the comparative political institutional lens for explaining national strategies for climate adaptation. Applying this lens to other country cases and climatic events will advance knowledge on how differences in electoral incentives and policy processes systematically shape climate adaption policy.

The Ukrainian context of the 2019 election campaigns in Poland by the European Parliament and the Sejm and Senate

The authors assume that the results of the 2019 elections in Poland to the European Parliament and the Sejm and the Senate influence not only the transformation of the country's party system and its socio-political development in the coming years, but also the place and importance of Poland's interstate relations with Ukraine in general and specific problems of large-scale Ukrainian labor migration to Poland in particular. The completion of the elections to the European Parliament of the 9th cadence actually gave rise to the election campaign to the Sejm and Senate of the Xth convocation. The predominant practice of most political parties has been to provide candidates of Ukrainian descent or immigrants from Ukraine (despite even a minimal number of them against the background of the Ukrainian national minority and newly naturalized citizens of the Republic of Poland) for the most part, starting places in the relevant regional party lists. Despite the noticeable growth of broad Ukrainian subjects since the fall of 2013, first in Polish foreign and then domestic politics, this has not, however, been reflected in a corresponding quantitative and qualitative conversion following the 2019 elections to the European Parliament and the Sejm and Senate of the Republic of Poland. The 2019 elections, among other things, draw attention not only to the place and role of the Ukrainian national minority in the political life of Poland, but also to indicate the political participation of Polish citizens from among the new migrants of the 1990s – 2010s, in view of the growing the extent of naturalization as Polish citizens of our country of origin, and the differences between different socially active environments of Polish citizens of Ukrainian descent. Internal processes among politically active Ukrainians in Poland who have the right to vote allow us to speak of a departure from the prevailing sympathies with the Civic Platform over the decades in favor of new left-wing political projects. Keywords Poland, election campaign, European Parliament, Sejm, Senate, Ukrainian context.

Men of Little Faith: The Country Party Ideology in Britain and America

This article revisits the debate about the British eighteenth-century “Country Party” ideology and its influence on America. It points out that the Country Party tradition could best be understood as a libertarian resistance movement against the modern state. The article remedies the misrepresentations of the Country Party economic philosophy as feudal, agrarian, or anticapitalist. It reconceptualizes it as a philosophy of proverbial “men of little faith,” skeptical not of progress and modernity as such, but of the mercantilist regime created by the Walpole in England and emulated by Hamiltonian nationalists in America. The political and especially the economic philosophy of the British Country Party is compared with the Anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian doctrines in America, and the conclusion is reached that the Country Party thinkers and pamphleteers of both countries were not the slaves of romantic visions and republican “virtues” but the followers of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean-Baptiste Say.

Public Submissions on the Uganda National Biotechnology and Biosafety Bill, 2012 Reveal Potential Way Forward for Uganda Legislators to Pass the Bill

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an internationally binding instrument addressing issues of biosafety. Biosafety refers to the need to protect human health and the environment from the possible adverse effects of the products of modern biotechnology. Accordingly, all countries to the convention are required to put in place regulatory mechanisms to enhance the safety of biotechnology in the context of the Convention’s overall goal of reducing all potential threats to biological diversity, while taking into account the risks to human health. Therefore, each country party to the convention has its own procedures to enact laws to guide the safe use of biotechnology. In Uganda, the process involves the drafting of the bill by the first parliamentary counsel, approval by cabinet, first reading at the parliament, committal to the responsible parliamentary sessional committee, tabling of the bill for public hearing, consultations, and final approval. In Uganda, the Committee on Science and Technology is responsible for the Biosafety Bill. In March 2013, the Committee tabled the bill for public hearing and submissions from public institutions. There were comments supporting the passage of the Bill and comments in objection. The reasons for objection are mainly due to precaution, speculation, lack of knowledge about biotechnology and biosafety, and alleged influence from biosafety entrepreneurs. This article reviews these public views, revealing controversy and possible consensus to pass the bill.

YEMEN AND THE HUTHIS: GENESIS OF THE 2015 CRISIS

This article gives a comprehensive overview of the genesis of the current crisis in Yemen, from the pre-1990 situation to the March 2015 airstrikes on Yemen by Saudi Arabia. The author dissects the country's party politics, the Yemen Spring, the north-south divide, and the development of Huthi power from a regional insurgency in the early 2000s to being able to launch a full coup in February 2015. He also discusses the long-term impact of the crisis, including economic collapse, the impact on oil production, the terrorist threat, and the prospects for foreign intervention.

Students, ZAPU, and Special Branch in Francistown, 1964–1972

This article is not about a specific country or political party; it is about the process by which young men – some already established freedom fighters, others wanting to join the struggle – manage to cross borders and go on to another country to be mobilised or trained to infiltrate the country from which they came. At the district headquarters in Francistown, Botswana, the interaction of seasoned cadres, students, and Special Branch interrogators constituted a middle ground for a few years, a space of interaction between states and liberation movements that was reinforced by the illegal status of Rhodesia. During interrogations at Francistown, ideas about guerrilla struggle and who should participate in it were exchanged, mediated and established. These ideas did not have a one-to-one correlation with events in the guerrilla struggle; they developed over time and in fits and starts, as young men seeking to go on to Zambia for guerrilla training honed their stories, and Special Branch interrogators drew on their experience to decide which claims were legitimate and which were not. A close examination of the processes and procedures in the middle ground of Francistown adds another dimension to the history of national liberation movements in the region: it shows the mechanics of border crossing, who can cross, who can stay, and who can be sent on for guerrilla training.