Electoral Base Research Articles

Jean-Marie Le Pen vs. Marine Le Pen : un ‘ethos émotif’ différent ?

This paper examines how the Front National’s electoral victories could be explained, partially, in terms of a new discursive rhetoric adopted by Marine Le Pen. In order to compare rhetorical strategies used by both Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen and their impact on their followers, we use comparable data, which consist of press articles published during the presidential campaigns of each politician and postings by online discussants related to interviews. Using corpus linguistics tools and lexical semantics, we assess how differently both leaders position themselves emotionally and how this emotional positioning is reconstructed within the postings of the viewers. Although no important quantitative difference can be observed in the number of emotion key-words they used respectively, a shift in both politicians’ rhetoric positioning can be observed when analyzing the context in which these keywords are embedded. If Jean-Marie Le Pen focuses on negative feelings towards the Other (anger, resentment), Marine Le Pen promotes a positive ethos (empathy) in order to detoxify the image of her party and broaden her electoral base.

CLASSIFICATION OF SOCIAL PROTEST IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN

The author makes an attempt to classify the political manifestations of social protest in postwar Japanese history. The author identifies five types of politically orchestrated social protest: ideological, socio-class, problem centered, conservative and local. The specificity of concrete forms of protest is analyzed from the points of view of their substance and organization. After the end of the cold war the ideological type of social protest which had earlier played the role of the ideological basis for the consolidation of the left opposition political forces, loses its initial driving force. The aggravating crisis of the traditional corporate model decreases the significance of the social-class protest which had been an instrument of pressure over state power in favor of an active policy in the social sphere/ Also diminishing in the present-day Japan is the conservative protest as a public dissent against the ruling party caused by weakening of its ability to take into acount the interests of specific social minorities that had traditionally been prioritized by state support. Meanwhile the problem-centered and local types of protest are gaining more importance in today’s Japan as they rely on a relatively broad social support. For the opposition parties social protest is nothing more than an opportunity to attract additional votes. Lacking any real chance of coming to power, these parties use mass protest mood for the consolidation of their electoral base. Many voters, disillusioned with the ability of political parties to extrapolate their opinion on the sphere of public policy decision-making, become more and more inclined not to come to the polls at all.

The end of a strategic opening? The BNP's window of opportunity in the 2000s and its closure in the 2010s

ABSTRACTNotwithstanding the endemic failure of extreme-right parties in Britain, the British National Party (BNP) observed a period of electoral growth in the 2000s. After the election of several city councillors nationwide, the BNP experienced an electoral breakthrough in the national ballot of the 2009 European Parliament elections. Yet the BNP's electoral accomplishments dissipated in the early 2010s, fuelling predictions of the party's terminal decline. Within this context, Carvalho seeks to explain the fluctuations observed in the BNP's electoral base in the twentieth-first century by exploring the structure of political opportunities alongside the strategy of the BNP's leadership. Drawing on the convergence thesis and the decline of voting along class lines, he argues that the BNP benefitted from a favourable set of political opportunities in the 2000s, reflecting the decrease in political polarization among mainstream parties, the rise in levels of public distrust, and the intense politicization of the issue of immigration. Despite a general shift to cultural xenophobia, the BNP's leadership remained attached to the ideological traits of neo-fascist parties, including the search for a ‘palingenetic rebirth’ and a national corporatist economic programme. These ideological formulae had important implications for the scope of the BNP's electoral coalition, as Carvalho demonstrates in a review of the secondary literature on the roots of the BNP's electoral support. Consequently, the BNP's electoral growth in the 2000s was the outcome of an interplay between a favourable window of opportunity in British politics and the party's electoral appeal. Carvalho goes on to link the BNP's electoral collapse in the early 2010s with the closing of the aforementioned window after the onset of the financial crisis, a temporary lack of political interest in the issue of immigration, and the formation of the coalition government in 2010.

Bolsa Família or Economic Performance? Determinants of Lula’s Re-election in 2006

This paper investigates the determinants of the outcome of Brazilian presidential elections in 2006, in particular the role of the Bolsa Familia Program and the economic performance in the migration of the electoral base of Lula for less developed regions. Among the usual Lula’s electorate, joining the Bolsa Familia program did not increase the likelihood of voting in this candidate. Among the other voters, this effect was positive. Moreover, higher economic growth only resulted in more votes for Lula among the richest voters. Regarding the elections results, the impact of Bolsa Familia proved to be quite superior than the economic performance. However, neither of the two factors was able to satisfactorily explain the full extent of the observed change in 2006.

A Reappraisal of the Expulsion of Illegal Immigrants from Nigeria in 1983

In recent years, Nigeria has been quietly expelling more and more immigrants from Niger, Mali, Chad and Cameroon. These foreigners – migrant workers or small traders – face the reinforcement of migration control and the blind fight of the government against Boko Haram. Despite its political instability, Nigeria remains a major immigration destination in West Africa. In this article, I analyze the “undocumented” expulsion of aliens in 1983, officially three million people. I argue that the expulsion was due to the economic crisis but also to a nationalist revenge against Ghana and a political calculation of President Shagari. This implies the exclusion of foreigners from the national labour market and the weakening of the supposed electoral base of his opponents.

Social and socio-territorial electoral base of political parties in post-revolutionary Tunisia

By giving a comfortable advance to the Islamist party of Ennahdha (around 37% of the votes), the first free elections of independent Tunisia on 23 October 2011 have taken by surprise most observers. In this paper, we identify the social and socio-territorial bases of major Tunisian parties through combining quantitative analyses at different scales and field surveys in specific localities. Although most interpretations have focused on the cultural modernist vs. conservative cleavage, hence obscuring the class cleavage, our analyses highlight very differentiated socio-territorial electoral bases for the main parties and indicate deep social differences in voting behaviour, especially within cities. In addition, the consensus expressed by most parties about the need to reduce regional inequalities hides very dissimilar voting behaviour in peripheral and core areas. While allowing for a better interpretation of electoral results, our analyses also provide tools to understand possible evolutions within the Tunisian political space.

How party linkages shape austerity politics: clientelism and fiscal adjustment in Greece and Portugal during the eurozone crisis

ABSTRACTDrawing on an analysis of austerity reforms in Greece and Portugal during the sovereign debt crisis from 2009 onwards, we show how the nature of the linkages between parties and citizens shapes party strategies of fiscal retrenchment. We argue that parties which rely to a greater extent on the selective distribution of state resources to mobilize electoral support (clientelistic linkages) are more reluctant to agree to fiscal retrenchment because their own electoral survival depends on their ability to control state budgets to reward clients. In Greece, where parties relied extensively on these clientelistic linkages, austerity reforms have been characterized by recurring conflicts and disagreements between the main parties, as well as a fundamental transformation of the party system. By contrast, in Portugal, where parties relied less on clientelistic strategies, austerity reforms have been more consensual because fiscal retrenchment challenged to a lesser extent the electoral base of the mainstream parties.

A vote at the opera? The political economy of public theaters and orchestras in the German states

Policymakers generally have powerful incentives to attract votes by strategically manipulating public policies, for instance by increasing public spending during election periods or by implementing ideologically valued policies for their electoral base. At first sight, public theaters and orchestras appear an unlikely domain for such tactics. Highbrow culture is elitist and provides few jobs to artists as voters (patronage). However, we argue that policymakers indirectly target a larger highbrow culture-consuming voting public, as this public is more likely to go voting, to actively engage in politics, and to influence other voters' political behavior through political and sociological multiplier effects. We find evidence of such manipulation tactics in Germany, 1993–2010. Artist numbers increase during state-level, and even more during municipal-level, election years (electioneering). More tentatively, leftwing party power increases cultural subsidies and jobs in Eastern states.

A Vote at the Opera? The Political Economy of Public Theatres and Orchestras in the German States

Policymakers generally have powerful incentives to attract votes by strategically manipulating public policies, for instance by increasing public spending during election periods or by implementing ideologically valued policies for their electoral base. At first sight, public theaters and orchestras appear an unlikely domain for such tactics. Highbrow culture is elitist and provides few jobs to artists as voters (patronage). However, we argue that policymakers indirectly target a larger highbrow culture-consuming voting public, as this public is more likely to go voting, to actively engage in politics, and to influence other voters’ political behavior through political and sociological multiplier effects. We find evidence of such manipulation tactics in Germany, 1993-2010. Artist numbers increase during state-level, and even more during municipal-level, election years (electioneering). More tentatively, left-wing party power increases cultural subsidies and jobs in Eastern states.

Protest and project, leader and party: normalisation of the Five Star Movement

This article analyses public perceptions of the Five Star Movement (M5S). Voters’ points of view are examined by studying opinion poll results from a longitudinal perspective. The authors focus on three issues important for the future of the M5S: (1) the need to choose between pursuit of a substantive political project or anti-political protest; (2) perceptions of the party’s ability to govern at local or national level; (3) the relationship between the M5S’s electoral base and its leader. The study reveals that the M5S is a heterogeneous entity, ambivalent in many respects. Public opinion, as a whole, sees it primarily as a movement of political protest. It is also perceived as being better able to govern at a local than at a national level. With the expansion of its support in 2012 and 2013, its electorate came to include citizens whose political outlooks were very diverse. The acquisition of new supporters – most of whom had previously voted for centre-right parties – brought a change in the distribution of the attitudes of its voters with regard to the party’s leader and its relationships with society and politics. At the end of a period in which it has been in public office for some months, the M5S’s image seems to be slightly different compared both to other parties and to its own recent past. The M5S’s controversial institutionalisation process and the normalisation of perceptions of it appear to be progressing in parallel.

Five Stars and a Cricket. Beppe Grillo Shakes Italian Politics

The article focuses on a new political player: the Five Star Movement led by the comedian Beppe Grillo. The party lies at the junction between different organisational models and conceptions of democracy: it combines an online and an offline presence; it has ‘horizontal’ structural elements, but a top-down decision-making process; it is positioned ‘beyond’ ideologies, while its electorate comes from various political families. The work considers the history, message, leader, organisation and electoral base of the movement, as well as the political opportunity structure that facilitated its growth in 2012 and the challenges it faces in the delicate phase of institutionalisation.

Partisan Polarization in American Politics: A Background Paper

Polarization and gridlock are defining characteristics of present‐day American national politics, reflecting the interaction of the Madisonian system's checks and balances with the widening partisan and ideological divisions in the House and Senate. These divisions have coevolved with complimentary changes in electoral politics over the same period in a mutually reinforcing spiral. The partisan, ideological, and policy opinions of American voters have grown more internally consistent, more distinctive between parties, and more predictive of voting in national elections. Party loyalty has increased, ticket splitting has decreased, and winning congressional seats against the local partisan grain has become much more difficult. The congressional parties thus represent increasingly divergent electoral constituencies. Republicans enjoy a structural advantage in the distribution of their regular voters across House districts, so these changes have solidified their control of the House even as their national party grows less competitive nationally. Divided government and polarized politics thus rest on a firm electoral base, and partisan warfare in Washington is unlikely to diminish until voters begin to punish the warriors.

Herman Cain and the Rise of the Black Right

There have always been Black conservatives. Some of the most prominent Black political figures in this country’s history from Booker T. Washington to Condoleezza Rice may be termed conservatives. However, these conservatives were not elected officials. They served in either unofficial roles or were appointed. The rise of conservative Black politicians with an electoral base such as Herman Cain and Allen West is a new phenomenon. At least in theory, such Black conservatives might find a base in the Black community among three constituencies—the Black church, the military, and African and West Indian immigrants. This article explores the likelihood of a mass base among Blacks for the rise of a Black Right. It contrasts the varieties of Black conservatism and gives special attention to the religious views of Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas contrasting them with the prophetic tradition in Black religion of such figures as Martin Luther King and Jeremiah Wright. Ultimately, the extreme individualism and absence of the notion of a linked racial fate distinguish them from the vast majority of Blacks.

The Italian elections of February 2013: the end of the Second Republic?

The recent Italian elections ended in gridlock, contrary to what most observers expected. The left won in the Chamber but not in the Senate. To make things worse, the result in the Senate made it impossible to form a majority coalition between Bersani’s left and Monti’s centre, which many considered the most likely outcome of these elections. This left the Democratic Party, the winner in the Chamber, with the unpalatable option of having to form a cabinet seeking the support of either the Five-star Movement or Berlusconi. Eventually the latter option prevailed with the formation of the Letta cabinet. There are a number of factors behind this unexpected result. The success of the Five-star Movement is one. Surprisingly it has become the largest party in the country, attracting votes from across the political spectrum and from all sectors of society. The weakness of the Democratic Party coalition is another. It missed the goal of extending its electoral base at a time when the right lost almost eight million votes. Actually, it also lost 3.5 million. Another factor yet is the poor performance of the Monti coalition, which failed to become a competitive actor in spite of the popularity the outgoing prime minister enjoyed until he decided to step into the political arena. Last but not least, a key role has been played by the weird electoral system used for the Senate.

Self-stereotyping as “Evangelical Republican”: An Empirical Test

AbstractThe prominence of evangelical Christians in the electoral base of the Republican Party is a noted feature of recent American elections. This prominence is linked to a key stereotype that saturates public discourse: “born-again/evangelical Republicanism.” The stereotype fuses religious and partisan social group membership to create a composite social label. Using a social categorization approach, which challenges the assumptions and methods of existing research, the present analysis asks whether voters embrace this stereotype in their definitions of self. The article employs confirmatory factor analysis of religious and partisan identity constructs from a national internet survey, the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and finds evidence of the presence of this religious-partisan stereotype in individual self-views, and of the backlash that it has produced, particularly among citizens that are exposed to public discourse on American elections.

Guns, land, and votes: Cattle rustling and the politics of boundary (re)making in Northern Kenya

Livestock raiding among northern Kenya’s pastoralists has changed profoundly in the last decades. Fought with modern weaponry and often extreme violence, raiding is increasingly enmeshed in politicized claims over administrative boundaries, struggles for exclusive access to land, and attempts to establish or safeguard an ethnically homogeneous electoral base. These conflicts are part of Kenya’s troubled politics of decentralization and as such they must be viewed in the context of wider political developments in the country. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in East Pokot and surrounding areas in Kenya’s Central Rift Valley Province, this article demonstrates how livestock raiding emerges as a specific form of violent regulation, a well-adapted, dangerous, and powerful political weapon. THE DEADLY ATTACK ON 42 KENYAN POLICE OFFICERS in Suguta Valley, Samburu District in mid-November 2012 sadly reminds us of the ongoing violence in East Africa’s pastoralist areas. What is probably the most deadly attack on police forces in Kenya’s history is but ‘a drop in the ocean’ compared to the daily suffering of the population in these areas, as a commentator in the Nairobi-based Daily Nation points out. Indisputably, the persistent violence in the pastoral areas in north-eastern Africa has detrimental social and economic effects. *Clemens Greiner (clemens.greiner@uni-koeln.de) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Cologne, Germany. This article has benefited tremendously from the detailed and informed comments of Michael Bollig. I am also indebted to Terry McCabe, Rita Abrahamsen, Nic Cheeseman, and two anonymous reviewers, whose comments were most helpful. 1. BBC News Africa, ‘Kenyan army sent to Samburu to aid ambushed police’ 14 November 2012, (21 November 2012). 2. Rooben Turgo, ‘Police deaths a drop in the ocean compared to villagers killed daily’, Daily Nation [Nairobi], 13 November 2012, (21 November 2012). 3. Dylan Hendrickson, Jeremy Armon, and Robin Mearns, ‘The changing nature of conflict and famine vulnerability: the case of livestock raiding in Turkana District, Kenya’, African Affairs, 112/447, 216–237 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adt003 © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved Advance Access Publication 3 February 2013

Bolsa Família and the Shift in Lula’s Electoral Base, 2002–2006: A Reply to Bohn

In a recent article published in the Latin American Research Review , Simone Bohn analyzed electoral results and survey data from Brazil to contest several theses concerning the reelection of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2006. In particular, Bohn asserted that beneficiaries of Bolsa Familia, a conditional cash transfer program that was reaching eleven million families at the time of the 2006 election, were already supporters of Lula in 2002, and therefore the program could not have contributed to the change in Lula’s constituency between his election in 2002 and his reelection in 2006. We show that these claims are based on voter recall data collected between nine and fifty-seven months after the elections, and that these data grossly overestimate actual electoral support for Lula—probably as a result of well-known reporting biases. Reanalysis of Bohn’s data as well as analysis of more reliable surveys suggest that there were indeed significant changes in voting patterns between 2002 and 2006, and that Bolsa Familia did play an important role in the 2006 elections. Resumo: Em um artigo recentemente publicado na LARR, Simone Bohn analisou resultados eleitorais e pesquisas de opiniao brasileiras para questionar diversas teses sobre a reeleicao do Presidente Lula, em 2006. Em particular, Bohn afirma que beneficiarios do Bolsa Familia, um programa de transferencia de renda que alcancava 11 milhoes de familias no ano da eleicao, ja tinham sido eleitores de Lula em 2002, e que portanto, o programa nao pode ter contribuido para a mudanca na composicao do eleitorado de Lula entre sua primeira eleicao em 2002 e reeleicao em 2006. Neste artigo, mostramos que tais afirmacoes se baseiam e declaracoes de voto feitas entre 9 e 57 meses depois das eleicoes, e que os resultados destas pesquisas de opiniao dramaticamente superestimam o apoio eleitoral de Lula. A re-analise do dados de Bohn, bem como a analise de pesquisas mais confiaveis sugerem que houve mudancas significativas nos padroes de votacao para Lula entre 2002 e 2006, e que o Bolsa Familia teve sim impacto nas eleicoes de 2006.

現代大都市における改革派首長の支持構造

In recent years, modern radical leaders have been elected in some representative metropolitan municipalities in Japan, such as Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama, and Nagoya. This article studies a case of Nagoya city, and analyses radical reformist mayor's electoral base. As a result of analysis of survey data, we obtain some empirical findings. (1) The effect of basic social categories is not so strong, but young voters tend to approve Kawamura's job. (2) Not only supporters of Democratic Party, but also active non-partisans approve Kawamura's job, and voters' reformist identity is also significant for job approval. (3) Political organization members and government sector workers don't approve Kawamura's job. In modern Japanese cities, the system has weakened which enables parties to get voters' support through various groups and organizations. A large number of urban voters often demand political reform. This article shows the social base of today's urban political antagonism.

The Electoral Behavior of the Poor in Brazil: A Research Agenda

Some deem the Bolsa Familia program (BF) in Brazil to be a quintessentially clientelistic tool, thought to have produced colossal sociodemographic transformations in the base of support of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, particularly in the 2006 election. An earlier article (Bohn 2011) maintained that significant changes in Lula’s electoral base took place prior to his reelection; other social policies, such as the Beneficio de Prestacao Continuada, contributed significantly to the changes in Lula’s camp; and, most important, that the link between the receipt of social benefits and vote is less straightforward than those who view Bolsa Familia as a clientelistic program assume it to be. This work addresses some of the criticisms that the article received and reinforces the need for further research that uses individual-based data to disentangle the complexity of the electoral behavior of the poor in highly unequal societies.

Labour after New Labour: Escaping the Debt

Overcoming the limits of the New Labour project requires both a re-examination of its strengths and weaknesses relative to those of Old Labour, and a serious reflection on the content of the Miliband–Poulantzas debate that established the international reputation of the present leader's father. From both sources, it is clear that this generation of Labour leaders need to turn party policy deliberately leftwards again, and to engage in a progressive hegemonic campaign in support of that shift prior to the next election. For only if Labour returns to office with an electoral base mobilised to support a fundamental resetting of power can the party ever hope to escape the ‘dull logic of Labourism’ so criticised by Ralph Miliband and his academic followers. The thesis of this article is that now is the time for one generation of a famous Labour family to disprove the pessimistic thesis of its earlier generation.