Democratic Political Parties Research Articles

The New White Flight?: The Effects of Political Appeals to Latinos on White Democrats

One explanation for the post-1965 shift in the vote choice of White Americans posits that it was driven by a shift in the racial imagery of the two major parties. The growing role of Latinos in the Democratic Party has brought new changes in the racial groups associated with the parties. In this paper, I explore whether the increasing attention to Latinos in Democratic Party politics is having an effect similar to that which followed African-Americans political repositioning 50 years ago, and decreasing support for the Party among White Democrats. Drawing on three survey experiments, from two elections, I demonstrate that as White Democrats learn about Democratic outreach to Latinos, they become less supportive of Democrats. This pattern, I find, is driven by the effects that such information has on the racial prototypes associated with each party. All together, these findings point to a new phase of racial realignment in the American political system.

Varieties of Populism in Europe: Is the Rule of Law in Danger?

What the current surge of populism shows is that the rule of law and liberal democracy find themselves in great danger when the breadth of democratic support for their core principles begins to decrease. Both in Hungary and Poland, the populist forces relatively easily undermined the rule of law and democracy, and steered politics in a dangerous authoritarian direction. Ultimately, democratic political parties with credible political ideas and platforms offer the best hope for protection of liberal democracy. As the Western European examples show, as long as there exist credible liberal political platforms, the threat to the rule of law and democracy is not existential. While populists in Western Europe challenge certain liberal values and policies, they lack the capacity to threaten the essence of liberal democracy.

The Australian Right in the “Asian Century”: Inequality and Implications for Social Democracy

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the policy discourse of Australian right-wing governments, exploring how such governments have combined neo-liberal economic policies with social conservatism, populism, cultural nationalism and forms of authoritarianism. It also examines the resulting response of social democratic political parties. As a predominantly Western country situated in the Asia-Pacific region, Australian experience offers interesting insights into the domestic politics of right-wing governments facing the changing geo-political and geo-economic imperatives of the “Asian Century.” Conservative Australian governments have reasserted traditional Anglo-centric national identity and used competition from key Asian countries to further justify market-driven policies, reduced welfare benefits and reduced industrial relations standards. The social democratic Australian Labor Party has responded to right-wing government policy by placing an increased emphasis on challenging social and economic inequality. However, Labor’s own plans for equitable economic growth potentially underestimate the challenges posed by the intermeshing of the Australian and Asian economies and provide insights into the dilemmas that a changing geo-economics poses for Western social democracy more broadly. Meanwhile Australian conservatism is facing not just challenges from its social democratic opponent but also from far-right populist forces critical of globalisation.

Sociálně demokratické strany v ČR, Maďarsku a na Slovensku a jejich pozice k zavedení Evropského stabilizačního mechanismu

The article examines the positions of the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak social democratic political parties on the introduction of the permanent European Stability Mechanism as a means of addressing the economic and debt crisis in the EU. Using the categories of frames used by political parties in relation to the EU (utilitarian and cultural) introduced by Helbling et al., the political parties’ representatives’ speeches and written statements are analyzed. The analysis showed that all three of the parties use similar arguments and they tend to frame their opinions in both utilitarian and cultural terms with the category of “political efficiency” being the most frequent. While the most extensive debate about the issue was in Slovakia as the only Eurozone member of all three given countries, the Hungarian MSzP was able to conceive the topic in a broader context. The similarity of the positions of all three examined parties may indicate an ability of national political parties to constitute one of the key pillars in developing a supranational political system in the EU.

Matteo Renzi: a new leadership style for the Italian Democratic Party and Italian politics

Matteo Renzi’s eruption on to the Italian political scene is now overcoming the inertia of the Italian political system, with a highly personalised leadership style which is challenging the Democratic Party’s (Partito Democratico, PD) organisational model. Renzi’s great innovation on the Italian left is the enforcement of a post-ideological leadership which is able to attract wide support due to a vigorous style of communication and skill in the use of traditional and new media. This article analyses the rise of this new charismatic leadership and the way in which it challenged the traditional organisational model of the PD, and aims to identify the main elements that define it at national and party level.

Memories of the Crisis

Memories of the Crisis Denise O’Brien (bio) I have been and probably always will be an activist, a person who sees a problem and wants to fix it. It is hard to know where that came from, but it definitely is who I am. Today I farm fulltime on ten acres of land. I raise fruits and vegetables for a sixty member Community Supported Agriculture (csa)—people pay a membership at the beginning of the growing season and then receive a share of the farm’s produce for a specific number of weeks throughout the growing season. My farming extends beyond physical work to include teaching my community about food and nutrition and mentoring eager beginning farmers on the intricacies of farming and farm activism. Throughout my farming career I have been involved with social activism, ranging from raising women’s voices in agriculture to developing policy on many levels to change the abusive dominant model of agribusiness. As I reflect on my lifetime commitment to such advocacy, changing an unfair world to treat people and the earth with dignity and respect, it is apparent that the most important priorities in life are family and community—family being those immediately around me, my husband Larry Harris, my children and now my grandchildren; community being where I live and grew up, the earth, and the world community of agriculture. I have always worked for the public good, a task that has been difficult at times when the pressure is to be inward and, in my opinion, selfish. My activism started with protesting the Vietnam War when I was young and impressionable. The people I was involved with taught me many things about social justice. At the same time I was involved in the “back to the land” movement—seeking refuge in nature from the atrocities of war and the social inequities that spurred the civil rights and women’s rights movements. I was a sponge during this time of my life, absorbing everything [End Page 51] Click for larger view View full resolution On February 27, 1985, nearly fifteen thousand people from twenty states attended the National Crisis Action Rally in Ames, Iowa. Held at the Hilton Coliseum on the Iowa State University campus, the rally focused on developing federal farm policies and strategies in anticipation of the 1985 Farm Security Act. Courtesy of the Farwell T. Brown Photographic Archive, Ames Public Library, Iowa. [End Page 52] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 53] possible and experiencing life to its fullest. This was also an incredibly fun time in my life, meeting people I had never or would never come in contact with living in rural Iowa. All of these experiences came together when I returned to Iowa in the mid-1970s and fell in love with and married Larry Harris, a local guy who decided to change the world by farming organically. Memories of the Farm Crisis My husband Larry Harris and I got married and started farming together in 1976. We were on the way to becoming organic farmers. In 1975 Larry returned to the farm on which he was raised to farm with his father and uncle. I had been living in northern Vermont and had recently returned home to take care of my ailing mother. Larry and I started to farm and raise a family. We took a different path than mainstream agriculture and planted “alternative” crops—strawberries, raspberries, apple trees, and asparagus along with the traditional corn and soybeans. Both Larry and I had been moved by the fuel crisis of the early 1970s and by the establishment of Earth Day. With that in mind we set out to live a simple life of living off the land and deemphasizing consumerism. During the late 1970s and early ’80s we began to meet people through our food-buying club and through Democratic party politics. Within a fifty-mile radius of our farm, we established friendships with people who were interested in politics, farm policy, alternative energy, and organic farming. Not all of us were farmers, but we were seeking to make our world a better place by participating in the democratic process. Our...

Making War Their Business: The Short History of Populist Anti-Militarism

Several historians have recently demonstrated that ideas generated initially by the Populists found their way into Progressive Era reform, New Deal/Great Society liberalism, and even today's Democratic Party politics. The only trouble is that the vast majority of the Populists themselves did not make the journey. Once a bastion of anti-corporatism, support for labor, “women's improvement,” the graduated income tax, and government regulation of the economy, the rural states of the Great Plains and American South became fortresses of what Bethany Moreton has called “Christian Free Enterprise,” with strong anti-statist and socially conservative agendas. A decade ago Thomas Frank noticed this remarkable shift on the Great Plains and wondered “What's the Matter with Kansas?” Despite many new works on the economic impact of the Cold War in rural America, we still do not have a comprehensive answer to his question. In this essay, I examine a contrast that other historians of rural politics have overlooked in large part because it goes beyond economic policy, strictly defined: what Kansans (and residents of other rural, Great Plains states that supported the People's Party) once thought about the role of the United States military and what many believe now. Understanding this striking contrast will lead to understanding more fully the origins of today's “red” state politics. Furthermore, it can highlight more subtle signs that some aspects of Populist anti-militarism may have survived this otherwise fervent shift to the right.

The Model of the Family and Family Upbringing Propagated By the Local Press of the Greater Poland Region in the Second Republic of Poland

During the interwar period, local press played a major role in the socio-cultural life of the local communities in the Greater Poland region.
 With the high number of periodicals, the local press had a substantial influence on the socio - cultural life and education in the towns and cities of the region. It played a major educational role. It had an educational influence on the local communities, because the periodicals propagated models and forms of social and family life among them. The political and ideological stance of most of the periodicals was clearly defined as Catholic and national, therefore, the models of social activities that they promoted were consistent with this worldview. In consequence, the press propagated educational principles and ideas on upbringing, models of the family, a wife - mother, a husband - father, and children compatible with Catholic Social Teaching and the ideology of National Democratic political parties (Stronnictwo Narodowe [National Party], Narodowa Demokracja [National Democracy]).
 The model of the farmers’ families and those of the Middle Class was consistent with the clearly defined National Democratic ideology prevalent among the members of the local communities of Greater Poland, with its deep-rooted Catholicism, and with the experiences (characteristics, qualities) that became established in the times of the Partitions of Poland.

Towards a new history of Christian Democracy

Political thought grouped under the rubric ‘Christian Democracy’ is often considered as profoundly unoriginal and as the product of politicians and party activists (rather than political philosophers). This note puts forward the argument that there is an important—and in parts original—body of thought responding to the challenge of how to reconcile Christianity and modern democracy in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. In rather schematic fashion it then traces three strategies for finding a place for Christianity—and Catholicism in particular—in the modern democratic order: the idea of creating or re-creating a Christian demos; the notion of constraining the demos through recognizably Christian institutions; and, lastly, Christian Democratic party politics. Apart from a research agenda, the article then suggests some lessons from this history, especially for thinking about the relationship between Islam and democracy.

Book Review: What Democrats Talk About When They Talk About God: Religious Communication in Democratic Party Politics, edited by David Weiss

What Democrats Talk About When They Talk About God: Religious Communication in Democratic Party Politics. David Weiss, ed. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 221 pp. $70.00 hbk. $29.95 pbk. $28.99 eBook.In the 1980s and 1990s, Democrats faced a challenging dilemma. They felt their record and stands relating to poverty, human rights, civil rights, and various moral issues were in line with the thinking of many Americans. Yet they remained fairly silent on matters of religion, while Republicans, led by the likes of the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, had become very vocal, well organized, and assertive. This probably hurt Democrats politically in a nation populated largely by Christians.Electoral defeats at the hands of Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, and Newt Gingrich seemingly helped spur Democrats into action, thanks in part to Reverend Jim Wallis, founder of the Christian activist organization Sojourners and author of a best-selling book, God's Politics. Wallis argued that religion, with its calls for social justice, was relevant to politics, so pols should not hide their faith under a barrel.This thin volume by David Weiss, who teaches at Montana State-Billings, contains essays by sixteen scholars, most of them rhetoricians, focusing largely on what Democratic politicians have had to say about religion during their campaigns and terms in office. Chapters on Thomas Jefferson's seminal ideas about freedom of religion and separation of church and state-and about the efforts of Falwell and Robertson, as well as religious extremists such as the Reverends Johns Hagee on the right and Jeremiah Wright on the left-are followed by sections on past presidents and presidential hopefuls, Barack Obama, and two noteworthy state-level candidates, Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia and Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota. The latter was the first Muslim elected to Congress.Obama merits three chapters, each dealing with textual analysis of a particular speech. In 2006, he gave the keynote address at a Call to Renewal conference organized by Wallis. In his widely heralded keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama expressed four basic charges to politicians by philosopher Cornel West. These were discernment (of the present in light of the past), empathy (with others not specifically in agreement with or related to oneself), tracking hypocrisy (differences between proclaimed principles and actual deeds), and hope (believing we can make a difference). Also, the president-to-be stressed inclusiveness as an ideal.Finally, in a 2009 commencement address at Notre Dame University, the president invoked the idea of church as a crossroads for diverse people. And he endorsed Wallis's idea of conservative radicalism. Unfortunately, he said, Republicans and Democrats had tended to oppose each other uncompromisingly on basic principles- for example, the right of the mother to control her body versus right to life of the unborn fetus. Wallis had called for pragmatic solutions based on agreement about an underlying point: that abortion is basically bad and should be minimized. Poverty leads many women to feel compelled to seek abortions, and reducing poverty should reduce this need while still allowing a woman's right to choose.Tim Kaine's 2005 victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race reflected an insightful approach to campaigning, according to Penn State University doctoral student Sara Ann Mehltretter. …

Salafis in parliament: Democratic Attitudes and party politics in the gulf

This article explores how political participation affects the attitudes of Kuwait's and Bahrain's Salafi parliamentarians towards democracy. In comparing the two states' Salafi parliamentary blocs, this study reveals that neither political inclusion nor ideology uniformly dictates either bloc's democratic sentiments. Instead, political incentives, as shaped by their state's unique political environments, colors and contrasts both blocs' democratic attitudes and policies. Like their liberal rivals, Salafi parliamentarians are susceptible to the rewards and realities of political power.

Population-based study of attitudes toward posthumous reproduction

To measure public attitudes toward posthumous reproduction. Cross-sectional study. Electronic survey. A total of 1,049 men and women living in the United States between the ages of 18 and 75 years. Multiple-choice questionnaire. Descriptive statistics regarding support for posthumous reproduction, such as regarding emergency harvesting of gametes, and attitudes toward consent; multivariable analyses of demographic and personal experiences associated with support for posthumous reproduction. Results showed that 47.8% supported and 31.1% opposed retrieving gametes from men, and 42.7% supported and 35.9% opposed retrieving gametes from women. The remainder was undecided. Among supporters, 69.8% believed prior consent from the deceased was required. Support was positively associated with younger age, higher education, higher income, Democratic political party affiliation, history of infertility, and currently attempting conception. Gender, religion, race, and region of the country were not associated with support. Organ donors and those who support IVF were more likely to support posthumous reproduction (odds ratio [95% confidence interval] 1.68 [1.19-2.38] and 12.30 [6.56-23.04], respectively). Most respondents were initially unfamiliar with posthumous reproduction. Almost 50% of the general population support posthumous reproduction in men and women. The majority favored prior consent from the deceased. These data caution against emergency gamete harvesting without prior consent.

Beyond the chains that bind: the political crisis of unions in Western Europe

The dynamics of neo-liberal restructuring have generated serious tensions in the institutional alignments between social democratic political parties and labor unions in Western Europe. This article explores the origins, development and consequences of the resulting political crisis through a detailed analysis of the institutional alignment of parties and unions in Sweden, Germany, UK and France. The authors reject the argument that the changing contours of the party-union nexus can be understood solely on the basis of a rational choice analysis of labor movement actors in favor of an account that also highlights the importance of historical path dependency and ideological orientation. The resulting complexity of union responses to the crisis of the party-union nexus is explored through the construction of a typology that charts union reorientation along the dimensions of accommodation with, or resistance against, neo-liberalism and within and beyond the national political context.

What Democrats Talk About When They Talk About God: Religious Communication in Democratic Party Politics

What Democrats Talk About When They Talk About God: Religious Communication in Democratic Party Politics

Democracy and Distrust

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of “counter-democracy” through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and “contentious politics.” The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Democracy and Distrust

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of “counter-democracy” through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and “contentious politics.” The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Democracy and Distrust

Pierre Rosanvallon is one of the most important political theorists writing in French. Counter-Democracy: Politics in an Age of Distrust is a book about the limits of conventional understandings of democracy. Rosanvallon argues that while most theories of democracy focus on institutionalized forms of political participation (especially elections), the vitality of democracy rests equally on forms of “counter-democracy” through which citizens dissent, protest, and exert pressure from without on the democratic state. This argument is relevant to the concerns of a broad range of political scientists, most especially students of democratic theory, electoral and party politics, social movements, social capital, and “contentious politics.” The goal of this symposium is to invite a number of political scientists who work on these issues to comment on the book from their distinctive disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane (review)

Reviewed by: Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane Cathy Rodabaugh (bio) Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln: The Political Odyssey of James Henry Lane. By Ian Michael Spurgeon. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Pp. 291. Cloth, $42.50.) In 1879, the Kansas state legislature considered a bill to fill the state's two spots in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol with likenesses of [End Page 347] John Brown and James Lane. Neither man was eventually so honored. The choice of Brown was overwhelmingly popular among Kansans, but ultimately he inspired too many polarizing passions for touchy politicos of the period.1 If Ian Spurgeon's Man of Douglas, Man of Lincoln is correct, despite Lane's indisputable impact on events in Bleeding Kansas, Lane's personality and powerful political enemies probably contributed to his rapid fall from grace in the national memory. Spurgeon admits up front that James Henry Lane was a "notorious" antebellum politician and "tragic figure of territorial and Civil War Kansas" (1). As the free-state movement's military commander, he often itched restlessly for action, but was also given to grandiose gestures and theatrical speeches, the latter aiding his rise to become Kansas' first U. S. senator. The book's title alludes to the main controversy surrounding Lane—what Nicole Etcheson calls his apparent "chameleon-like" willingness to change political views.2 Raised an ardent Democrat, in 1854 Lane was a U.S. senator from Indiana, Stephen Douglas ally, and supporter of the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Arriving in Kansas Territory in 1855, he quickly promoted himself as a leader in the developing free-state movement, which Spurgeon ably demonstrates did not require Kansas men to alter alliances to national political parties. The movement grew in national importance the more it resisted Kansas' new pro-slavery government and legislature, installed as the result of Missourians crossing the border to vote. Examined on the face, Lane's fairly typical Northern Democrat free-soilism appears to have morphed into aggressive free-statism, and then pro-Lincoln and later radical Republicanism, eventually shifting yet again to support for conservative Andrew Johnson. Without the benefit of a Lane memoir, some biographers accuse Lane of operating primarily out of opportunism and self-promotion. Correcting this miscalculation of [End Page 348] Lane is Spurgeon's main goal. While acknowledging Lane's sometimes shocking behavior and savvy political maneuvering in service of his own ambitions, Spurgeon insists scholars have largely missed the explanation for Lane's shifting political alignments—an unwavering loyalty to "old-line Democratic principles, including popular sovereignty" (17). Man of Douglas joins a rash of recent books on Lane, perhaps an indication that antebellum actors on the Kansas stage long overshadowed by Brown now benefit from a resurgence of interest. Spurgeon's book promises to be the most useful, given its sound scholarship and portentous chronological range—from Lane's 1854 migration from Indiana to his 1866 suicide. By comparison, Robert Collins's Jim Lane lacks Spurgeon's deep reading of political events in Kansas and Washington D.C., while Bryce Benedict's Jayhawkers is primarily a military history of the Civil War regiments from Kansas under Lane's command, the so-called "Lane Brigade."3 Ironically, the strength of Spurgeon's book—its close political analysis and tight chronology—is also its primary weakness. In Minerva-like fashion, Spurgeon's Lane almost leaps to life fully formed and armored in Democratic Party ideology, poised to march onto the contentious stage of antebellum partisan politics. The influences of Lane's background, family, or earlier experiences receive scant attention, when remedying this flaw would not have rendered this 291-page book overly long. For example, Spurgeon does not tell readers that the year of Lane's birth, father Amos moved the family back to Indiana after a self-imposed exile to Kentucky, purportedly the result of political persecution for his fervent support of Democratic Party politics.4 While Spurgeon briefly acknowledges the "deep passion" (20) for the party Amos Lane instilled in his son, he misses an opportunity to analyze Lane's later struggles over party loyalty in the context of early...

The Impact of Political Fund Regulations on the Development of Democratic Party Politics in Korea

The Impact of Political Fund Regulations on the Development of Democratic Party Politics in Korea

Bipartisan: USA Blending with America the Beautiful!

Bipartisan: USA Blending with America the Beautiful!