Electoral Coalitions Research Articles

Zmiany w systemach wyborczych państw Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej

Attention should be paid to the constant changes in electoral law in the discussed group of countries. They included the following elements of electoral law: replacement of the hybrid (mixed) system with a proportional system (Bulgaria in 1991), changes in the vote recount formula (Romania in 1992, Czech Republic in 2000), changes in the structure of electoral districts (Hungary in 2011, Bulgaria in 2001, Czech Republic in 2000 and 2002, Slovakia in 1998). Barrier clauses for individual groups and, especially for electoral coalitions, were frequently changed. A special case was the amendment of the electoral law in the Czech Republic in 2000 and in the Slovak Republic in 1998, which ended with rulings of the Constitutional Court (in 1999 in Slovakia and 2001 in the Czech Republic, respectively). Changes in electoral law – almost always – took place in the course of a fight between the parties. In the Czech case in 2000, the Slovak case in 1998 and the Hungarian case in 2011, they were carried out to hinder the alternation of power in the country.

New democracy and centre-right dominance in Greece: a new normal?

ABSTRACT In the parliamentary elections of 2023, the ruling New Democracy (ND) party of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was re-elected triumphantly. ND’s victory marks an unprecedented moment of centre-right dominance in Greece since 1974 and goes against the trend of the so-called ‘crisis of the centre-right’ elsewhere in Europe. This article claims that ND’s strategy under Mitsotakis has been typical of the winning formula of other centre-right parties in Europe in previous decades. Yet, that this formula is now so successful in Greece owes much to the country’s post-crisis context, out of which the Mitsotakis leadership emerged. Given the geopolitical position of Greece and the historical intertwining of the question of its international orientation with major cleavages of domestic politics, the article argues that the success of Mitsotakis draws particularly on a certain form of posturing in foreign and European policy that allows him to reconcile contradictions inside ND’s electoral coalition.

Electoral Coalitions in the Shadow of the Pandemic: Factors of Electoral Support and Changes to Them in the Czech Parliamentary Elections in 2017 and 2021

Electoral Coalitions in the Shadow of the Pandemic: Factors of Electoral Support and Changes to Them in the Czech Parliamentary Elections in 2017 and 2021

Eurocommunism’s contribution to the idea of ???democracy without qualifying adjectives???

Óscar García Agustín talks to Gaspar Llamazares Gaspar Llamazares joined the Communist Party of Asturias in 1981. Between 2000 and 2008 he was the national coordinator of Izquierda Unida (United Left). In response to the rise of the 15M movement, he and others founded Izquierda Abierta (Open Left), with the aim of building a larger progressive coalition. The party remained within Izquierda Unida, but aimed to counteract the weight of the Communist Party within the coalition. In 2017 he co-founded the political platform Act??a (Do it) to give voice to those who did not feel represented by PSOE and Podemos. In 2019, he left Izquierda Unida. In 2023 he was elected as a member of the Oviedo council, representing the electoral coalition Convocatoria por Oviedo, and nowadays he is spokesperson for the coalition. He has written extensively about the left and is a defender of the legacy of Eurocommunism, understood as the defence of socialism and pluralism within the political and parliamentary system established during the Spanish Transition, and as the formation of a large progressive coalition to gradually change the capitalist system.

Distribution of Seats in the New 2021 Czech Government Coalition in Terms of Coalition Theories and Power Indices of Political Parties

This study is theoretically anchored in the office-seeking approach and coalition theory of political science. It is based on the most widespread theories of portfolio distribution in executive and legislative bodies (proportionality, power index, voting weights), and it tests these theories using data related to coalition negotiations in the Czech Republic for the new 2021 government coalition, a case of a surplus majority government. The study investigates the distribution of ministerial positions in the government, the office of President (Speaker) of the Chamber of Deputies, and the chairs of permanent parliamentary committees. The analysis also explores the types of electoral coalitions formed; the SPOLU coalition was a superadditive coalition, while the PirSTAN coalition was only an additive coalition. Grounded in the theory of electoral games, the Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf power indices and the theory of coalition formation are applied in order to analyse the possible minimal winning coalitions that could be formed following the 2021 elections to the Chamber of Deputies.

The Future of Conservatism?

AbstractThe Case for Conservatism is the first report of the Onward think tank's Commission on The Future of Conservatism. It examines present discontents and offers a set of principles for addressing them. It argues that Conservatives need to shift their ideological position away from the economic liberalism of Margaret Thatcher and the social liberalism of David Cameron and adopt a position which is socially conservative and economically interventionist in order to rebuild a successful electoral coalition and an effective programme for government. They seek to re‐found Conservatism on the pillars of family, community and nation, and the obligations of citizenship rather than the freedom of the individual. They provide a distinctive voice on where Conservatism has gone wrong and how it should change, but they may struggle to become the dominant voice shaping the party's future, because the doctrines of economic liberalism still command strong support.

Strategie wyborcze głównych partii opozycyjnych Turcji w okresie rządów Partii Sprawiedliwości i Rozwoju

Electoral strategies of Turkey’s main opposition parties during the rule of the Justice and Development Party This paper aims at analyzing the evolution of the electoral strategies of the main oppositional political parties to the Justice and Development Party, which has been in power since 2002. Assuming that due to the increasing autocratization of Turkey’s political system, the opposition’s options for action remain limited, and any eventual victory depends on the ability to form electoral coalitions, the paper will trace the political path taken by the AKP itself and the political parties opposed to it until the elections in 2023. At the same time, the question will be asked about the reasons for the defeat of the opposition parties in 2023. The basic assumption here is that the internally diversified National Alliance failed to construct a comprehensive programmatic offer capable of attracting voters of the ruling party on a massive scale and at the same time it failed to deliver a sufficiently satisfactory offer to its own electorate.

ETHNOPOLITICAL PROCESSES IN SLOVAKIA (1989-1995)

This article provides the first overview in Ukrainian historiography of the preconditions, emergencу, establishment and initiation of the activities of a political entity representing the Ukrainian population of the Slovak Republic – the Podduklianske Democratic Community (hereinafter referred to as the PDC, original name: Podduklianske Civic Forum). The PDC collaborated with the Regional Government in Prešov, primarily in the socio-economic sphere, and outlined the party’s objectives. The PDC is aimed to address political, economic, social, and national-cultural issues of the Ukrainian population in the Prešov region. At the same time, there is a recognition of the increased political activity of representatives of the Hungarian national minority in Slovakia, resulting in the formation of Hungarian political parties in Slovakia, which emerged immediately after the collapse of the communist regime. It is noted that Hungarian political entities in Slovakia had their representatives in Parliament as a result of the elections in 1990, 1992, and 1994, which allowed them to actively participate in the political life of the state. The positive aspect of the activities of Hungarian political parties in Slovakia was that different party platforms did not prevent them from creating an electoral coalition. It is mentioned that the Roma community was also represented at the level of the Slovak national and regional political arena. However, Roma political parties failed to gain significant electoral support and representation in the Slovak Parliament.

Varieties of participatory institutions and interest intermediation

Although participatory institutions have become ubiquitous in contemporary politics, they often serve such different objectives that viewing the institutions as part of the same phenomenon can produce more confusion than clarity. We argue that participatory institutions can serve distinct and even opposite functions in interest intermediation, and develop a conceptual framework that distinguishes participatory institutions based on 1) what political project they were established to advance, 2) whose participation is channeled into these venues, and 3) how participatory institutions engage participants in the policymaking. We illustrate this framework with cases from Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador. We show that participatory institutions can serve a wide array of political projects that connect citizens to the state in radically different ways, including restructuring state-society relations to empower marginalized groups, increasing civil society influence over policymaking and government oversight, expanding parties’ electoral coalitions, and constraining the influence of disruptive social movements.

Placing the peripheries within Brazil’s rightward turn: Socio-spatial transformation and electoral realignment, 2002–2018

In 2018, far right candidate Jair Bolsonaro came to power in Brazil by building a socially and geographically heterogeneous electoral coalition. A crucial and largely overlooked part of this coalition were the inhabitants of low-income peripheries in large cities in the Southeast of the country. Throughout the 2000s, these voters tended to vote for the left-leaning Workers’ Party in presidential elections, but over the 2010s they shifted electorally to the right. This article maps these shifts and analyses them in relation to major urban, social and institutional transformations. We first present longitudinal electoral data at the scale of electoral zones for the metropolitan areas of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. We then present case studies of two peripheral districts, analysing these in relation to a range of key socio-economic and institutional variables. We argue that the peripheries of both metropolises have been subject to common transformations that influenced electoral behaviour, but that there are important differences between peripheral areas that help to explain the varying strength and durability of the rightward turn at the local scale. In dialogue with the theme of this special issue, we argue that that this kind of sensitive socio-spatial analysis helps to situate and add nuance to theories of ‘revanchist populism’.

Talk Local to Me: Assessing the Heterogenous Effects of Localistic Appeals

Contemporary public opinion in the United States has been characterized by affective polarization and the nationalization of political behavior. In this paper, we examine whether local framing can decrease voters’ reliance on national partisan identities when evaluating their representatives in the United States Congress. Relying on both an experimental study and observational data from senators’ Facebook posts, we find evidence that “talking local” is an effective means for representatives to bypass the “perceptual screen” of partisanship . Candidates who “go local” in their communication style are able to expand their electoral coalition by appealing to independents and outpartisans alike. Observational findings suggest that many politicians, especially those representing competitive districts, are aware of this and “go local” strategically.

The role of Political Opposition in the Era of Turkish Justice and Development Party

The political opposition in Turkey, since the founding of the Turkish Republic, has faced a real crisis, as it has not been able to achieve its goals and perform its functions in the required manner, due to the deep-rooted cultural and historical orientation among members of Turkish society, which is a lack of criticism of the authority and the government. Since 2002, with the arrival of the Justice and Development Party to power, the political opposition has not succeeded in changing the ruling party since it came to power until now, despite resorting to taking many pressure means such as organizing peaceful demonstrations, criticizing the government’s policies in Parliament, and exploiting the poor economic and financial conditions. And criticizing the presence of Syrian and Afghan refugees in Turkey. But with the change of the country’s political system and the start of the new presidential system since 2018, a clear change appeared in the mechanism of action of the opposition parties, according to this new system, the need to form electoral coalitions in order to reach power due to the inability of political parties to obtain percentages that guarantee them Winning the presidential and parliamentary elections. In addition, the opposition parties were able to achieve an important victory in the local elections that took place in 2019, as the opposition parties' candidates won the presidency of major municipalities such as Istanbul and Ankara. This step encouraged the opposition forces to work to unify their discourse and increase the percentage of coordination among them. In light of these developments, the Six-Party Table was formed by six opposition parties. Despite all these developments and the important steps taken by the opposition parties, the capabilities and means in the hands of the Justice and Development Party and its ally, in addition to the charisma of the personality of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, must be taken into consideration in the upcoming elections.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РОЗВИТКУ ОПОЗИЦІЙНИХ ПАРТІЙ В ЯПОНСЬКІЙ ПАРТІЙНІЙ СИСТЕМІ НА СУЧАСНОМУ ЕТАПІ

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the development of opposition parties in the context of transformation processes in the party system of Japan at the present stage. The author characterizes the peculiarities of the formation of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after the reform of the electoral law and the establishment of a mixed electoral system in Japan in 1994. The author identifies the miscalculations of the DPJ's activities during the period of its stay in power, in particular, the causes and peculiarities of the development of centrifugal tendencies in the Democratic Party since 2017. The key factors of the success of the right-wing populist "Japan Reform Party" in the 2012 House of Representatives elections are outlined. It is concluded that one of the main reasons for the divergence in the political programs of the leading parties is the attitude to the pacifist Article 9 of the Constitution. Based on the analysis of the results of the elections to the lower house of parliament in 2017 and 2021, and to the upper house of parliament in 2019 and 2022, the election manifestos of the main political forces are characterized. Attention is focused on the phenomenon of the electoral coalition, which was formed by the left-wing opposition forces. The author concludes that the modern Japanese opposition is characterized by the absence of any basis for cooperation between the right and left poles of the opposition forces. The author outlines, on the one hand, the prospects for the potential formation of a temporary coalition between the ruling bloc and the right-wing opposition center to pass certain bills, including constitutional amendments, and, on the other hand, the impossibility of consolidating the left-wing center of the opposition in the near future. Key words: party system, party, elections, opposition party, right-wing populism.

Playing the Identity Card: from Brexit to Culture Wars

Recent academic and media interest has focused on the emergence of identity-based politics in the British political landscape, with the identity divide appearing as a new structuring factor, as blatantly exposed by the Brexit referendum. This article focuses on the ability, and the growing propensity, of British right-wing political parties to play the identity card, to press this very button and activate identity conflict as a mobilizing factor, by opposing groups on grounds of social and cultural values, such as national identity and immigration, beyond traditional dividing lines such as economic redistribution. The aim is to explore how identity has been repeatedly mobilized by the right in recent years for electoral purposes, and with what effects. This begins with the UK Independence Party’s success in activating the identity divide and mobilizing identity conflicts in the years before the referendum. The second section focuses on how this mobilization of identity extended to the mainstream right and how the Conservative party reclaimed the identity card following the referendum, as the identity divide reshaped British politics and restructured party competition and the political parties' electorates. Finally, the third section explores how part of the right has been deliberately stimulating “a culture war” narrative in an attempt to maintain the identity divide holding together the Conservative 2019 electoral coalition of socially conservative voters. This raises the question of the potential impact of such a polarizing strategy, not only on the electorate and on wider social cohesion, but also on the Conservative party itself.

An Analysis of the Group Bases of British Politics: 1983–2019

Abstract In this paper, we address two questions: (i) what were the group bases of the British electoral coalitions? And (ii) how have these group bases of support changed in the past decades? We determine which social group memberships significantly influence vote choice by using British Election Study data. We then incorporate demographic data to measure how many votes each social group contributed at each general election from 1983 to 2019. We find that the Labour Party has been obtaining fewer votes from union members and manual labourers, primarily due to shrinking group size and declining turnout. Yet, it is attracting more support from university graduates and ethnic minorities—groups growing in relative size. The Conservatives attract more votes from whites, homeowners and Anglicans. These groups are shrinking as a share of the population, but turn out at rates higher than the national average. Overall, our analysis reveals the changing cleavage structures in British politics.

Electoral Institutions and Identity Based Clientelism in Jordan

In contexts where social cleavages are universally salient, how can political alliances across social identity groups be forged? A wealth of research examines the effects of either electoral rules or social identity on electoral behavior, but the interplay between these two factors is understudied. This article leverages original datasets of tribal voting coalitions, parliamentarian constituent casework logs, and a national survey in Jordan to demonstrate how institutions interact with social identity to shape distributive politics. Within single non-transferable vote districts (SNTV), representatives win their seats based on tribal support and practice tribal favoritism in service provision. On the contrary, elected officials in single member plurality districts (SMDs) cobble together more diverse coalitions to win their seats and distribute state benefits more evenly between in-group and out-group members. Bolstering these findings, data from a 2014 nationwide survey show that a history of having tribal connections with parliamentarians’ augments voter turnout in SNTV districts, whereas it has no relationship with voter turnout in SMDs. This article offers an understanding of why politicians build electoral coalitions and distribute clientelistic benefits within or across social identity groups with important implications for the consideration of electoral institutional design in developing countries.

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Opposition politique et lutte pour la conquête du pouvoir d’état en République Démocratique du Congo. Diagnostic d’un tigre en papier de la démocratie congolaise

"The political opposition in Democratic Republic of Congo reamins less studied in studies on the dynamics of democratic transition in this country for two reasons. It is about the omission of this component in the constitutionalist process after independance and the long duration of military government come to power by coup or armed insurrection. Consequently, this article proposes to operate three variables to study congolese political opposition. Institutional determinants (related to the party system, methods of voting systems), the legal expression of the opposition and finaly, the nature and charisma of congolese opposition leaders. Anyway, the congolese political opposition has its origins in an intra-party struggle to evolve into an inter-party oppositon in its fight for the conquest of state power. It remains true that on the three democratic experiences relating to the presidential elections, the congolese political, by forming electoral coalitions, managed to beat the ruling party once in the presidential elections. Nevertheless, the strategies of this opposition remain limited in terms of effectiveness because of the nature of the parties that compose it, political transhumance, the ego between its leaders in a political system combining victory in the presidential and legislative elections to govern without alchemy of cohabition. Keywords: opposition, struggle, conquest, power, DR Congo "

Electoral coalition signals and voter perceptions

AbstractHow do electoral coalition signals affect voters' perceptions of party positions and coalition behavior in parliamentary democracies? Scholars have found that coalition signals can influence how voters view policy positions of parties. Extending research on the impact of government coalition participation on voter perceptions, a recent study found that Spanish voters update their perceptions of party positions when they receive a signal that a party joined an electoral coalition, believing it to be farther to the left (right) if the signal was of a left- (right-)leaning coalition. That study also found, in agreement with the literature, that electoral coalition signals lead to expectations of future coalition behavior. Much of the literature on electoral coalitions focuses on parliamentary democracies in Europe that use proportional representation. Since the effects of electoral coalitions might vary across contexts, we conduct a similar survey experiment in Japan, a parliamentary democracy that uses a mixed electoral system with an important disproportional component. We find no evidence that electoral coalition signals affect how Japanese voters view the ideological positions of parties, a result that matches a similar analysis conducted in Sweden. However, some coalition signals – if they contain new information – do increase Japanese respondents' expectations that certain coalitions are more likely to form in the future.

‘India @75: Religion and Citizenship in India’

As India celebrates 75 years of independence, fresh questions are being raised about who is an Indian. This essay introduces a special section of Studies in Indian Politics which puts forward answers to this question considering recent tectonic changes in India’s political climate and party system. We outline how religion is being increasingly adopted as a filter through which citizenship is decided—both in formal, legal terms as well as in informal terms. The special section delves deeper into this terrain, exploring several critical themes: de jure changes to India’s citizenship regime, the relationship between Hindu nationalism and liberal democracy, the judiciary’s role in adjudicating religious disputes, the Muslim community’s response to recent policy shifts and the changing nature of electoral coalition building. Taken together, the articles in this section represent a signal contribution to ongoing debates in India—and elsewhere—on democracy, nationalism and inclusion.