Interparty Competition Research Articles

Mirroring societal shifts: revisiting the ethno-racial, ethno-religious, and ideological foundations of Guyana’s party system

ABSTRACT While scholars have relied on societal cleavages to explain the origins and evolution of party systems in Western democracies, drawing that link in Latin America and the Caribbean has been more challenging. Guyana is an exception to the norm. Its party system has aligned ethnically since independence in the 1960s. The People’s National Congress mostly appeals to the Afro-Guyanese, and the People’s Progressive Party largely draws support from the Indo-Guyanese. However, in recent decades, the country has experienced relevant demographic shifts that force a reconsideration of the predominance of ethno-racial traits as fuelling inter-party competition. We use the AmericasBarometer to examine the individual-level ethno-racial, ethno-religious, and ideological correlates of partisanship from 2010 to 2016. The results indicate that ethno-racial divisions have lost salience as ethno-religious features have become a more prevalent source of partisan attachments. We conclude that the correlates of partisanship in Guyana mirror its broader socio-demographic transformation.

Recorded votes as attention booster: How opposition parties use roll calls and nonrecorded votes for position taking in the German Bundestag, 2017–21

The article investigates roll‐call request and its effects on opposition‐voting behavior. It argues that parties use roll‐call votes (RCVs) as a position‐taking instrument to boost public attention for issues they care about. This argument implies that RCVs are requested strategically but opposition behavior should not differ systematically between recorded and nonrecorded votes. Studying all voting activities of the 19th German Bundestag (2017–21), the analysis shows that RCVs are more likely on high‐salience issues, more important motion types, and to some extent opposition motions. Voting conforms to the position‐taking model as opposition parties are less likely to vote with the government on their own motions and more important motion types. However, opposition behavior does not differ systematically between recorded and nonrecorded votes suggesting that parties act consistently across all votes. Thus, RCVs provide valid measures for studying interparty competition in parliament despite their selective sampling properties.

‘The first, but not the last’: women’s descriptive and substantive representation in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election

The 2021 Scottish Parliament election delivered the most diverse range of MSPs in Holyrood’s history, including a record number of women. We situate the 2021 election within its wider context, evaluating dynamics of party feminisation over time. Drawing on original candidate data and analysis of party manifestos across the main Scottish parties, we assess parties’ substantive appeals to women voters; the integration of different groups of women as candidates, MSPs and leaders; and the adoption and implementation of gender quotas. We find evidence of descriptive and substantive party feminisation in Scotland over time—including increases in both the amount and diversity of party manifesto pledges directed at women voters; improvements in the number and diversity of women selected and elected; and the increasing diffusion of, and inter-party competition over, gender quota measures. Yet we also find that progress has been uneven across parties and that some groups of women continue to be descriptively and substantively under-represented in Scottish politics.

Green electoral performance and national climate change commitment: The conditional effect of EU membership

Does Green party electoral success lead to increased climate change commitment, and if so how? Drawing on a new OECD database on climate change outlays, we probe indirect influence from Green electoral success as mediated by inter-party competition, and direct mechanisms of influence from elected Green representatives. Our headline finding is that EU membership functions as a contextual catalyst for inter-party competition, with EU governing parties responding to Greens’ strong electoral performance by increasing climate change outlays to appeal to environmentally motivated voters. We also find evidence that, both across the OECD cohort and the EU sub-grouping, Green coalition presence is associated with increased climate spending over a political cycle. While direct Green influence through coalition presence is widespread, indirect influence mediated by inter-party competition is conditional on EU membership. Findings fit with literature highlighting systematic difference between EU members’ climate performance, and that of other advanced-industrialised states.

Between Election Rivalry and the Agency Costs of Government: The Effectiveness of Party Competition Across Indian States, 1957–2018

Two dimensions of the intensity of interparty rivalry are used to test the hypothesis that greater interparty competition enhances government efficiency. Using data from a set of 14 large Indian state governments between 1957 and 2018, we find confirmation for two political rivalry hypotheses. The first is that the ex-post size of the first versus second place seat share winning margin is a useful metric of the (in)effectiveness of rival party policing of incumbent spending behavior. The second is the hypothesis that excessive spending by the incumbent governing party is decreased by the expectation of greater election contestability and that contestability is related to the expected effective number of competing parties ( ENPSeats) nonmonotonically. Our analysis suggests that contestability across Indian States reaches a maximum when the incumbent faces an expectation of ENPSeats that is closer to 5 than to Duverger's 2.

FROM TRADITION TO INNOVATION: A STUDY OF RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE PARTIES IN CONTEMPORARY POLAND

The purpose of this article is to systematize and generalize information about the political right-conservative movement in modern Poland. In the course of the study, the potential for support for right-wing parties exists in every society. It can grow due to two groups of factors. The first concerns issues related to the difficult economic situation, the modernization of societies or cultural aspects, which are called demand-related in the literature. The second large group consists of supply factors: factors of possible political success (structure of political opportunities), electoral rules, inter-party competition, the role of the mass media, the structure of political divisions or the role of the winning ideology. Polish right-wing conservatism and nationalism is characterized, both in the past and in the present, by a powerful influence on the social and political life of the Republic of Poland, acting as a fundamental element of the unification of the Polish people. This movement retains its traditional features, which are reflected in the ideology of the Polish ruling party “Law and Justice”, which adheres to a national-conservative orientation with elements of clericalism, maintains close ties with the Catholic Church and organizations close to it. In the period after coming to power (2015), “PiS” slowly but steadily lost its Christian-democratic character and evolved into a conservative political force. This allowed “PiS” to win elections for a long time, and in 2023, it allows it to maintain leading positions in public opinion polls regarding support for political parties. In the field of international relations, supporters of “PiS” operated with judgments that expressed the ideas of nationalism, presenting the Poles as a strong nation that should occupy an important place among other countries. The process of creating right-wing conservative political parties and associations in Poland continues on an ongoing basis. The strengthening of nationalist movements in Poland takes place with the support of the state authorities of the Republic of Poland and is accompanied by a gradual shift of emphasis on controversial historical issues in the direction of nationalist ideology. Despite official Warsaw providing political support to Kyiv in the international arena in connection with the Russian military threat, the authorities of the Republic of Poland have no intention of blocking anti-Ukrainian activities carried out by Polish national-patriotic right-wing movements. This is due to the preparation of the ruling elite for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the tragic events in Volyn in 2023, as well as the parliamentary election campaign. In the future, the activation of radical right-conservative formations on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth may lead to protest actions in Poland, the purpose of which will be the dissemination of information unfavorable to our state in the Polish information space, which will have a negative impact on the formation of the foreign policy vector of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Ukrainian direction.

Reputation as Articulation: Alliance Building of Career Politicians in the Jim Crow South

Studies of political articulation focus overwhelmingly on the role of parties in constructing political identities and group interests, relying on inter-party competition, given a sharp partisan divide. However, where party identification is less salient, local politicians forge alliances from disparate constituencies, cultivating varying political reputations that personify the concerns of distinct groups. By examining Alabama politics in the 1920s, focusing on the dramatically different relations with the Ku Klux Klan and business elites of Alabama’s three senators, we address how politicians generate supportive alliances in the absence of party competition. To this end, we extend articulation theories by examining how political actors—and not only their parties—cultivate support by presenting the concerns of local publics through their electoral persona. Drawing on archival material, we explore how Senators Oscar Underwood, J. Thomas Heflin, and Hugo Black came to represent key interest groups, forging distinct paths to electoral success. An exclusive focus on parties overlooks politicians’ reputation-building as a mechanism of political articulation.

“Don't Say Gay”: The influence of state political factors

AbstractRecently, several states have introduced legislation designed to limit discussion around sexual orientation and gender identification. These types of legislation have been widely referred to as “Don't Say Gay” bills. Three state political characteristics: political culture, interparty competition, and general policy liberalism, which are deeply rooted in the political science literature, were used to examine a state's tendency to introduce or pass “Don't Say Gay” legislation. By using these variables, the state was not viewed in the Democratic/Republican dichotomy but rather by aspects enshrined in the state's political system. Using correlation analysis, the results from this study show that all three state political variables are correlated with introducing or passing a “Don't Say Gay” bill, while binary logistic regression results show that only political culture and interparty competition are statistically significant predictors of a state introducing or passing a “Don't Say Gay” bill.

Only game in town? the persistence of competitive authoritarian regimes in modern Turkey

ABSTRACT Why do so many regimes remain competitive authoritarian? This article argues that institutional path dependence explains the persistence of competitive authoritarian regimes in which electoral competition exists, but is unfair. The weakness of institutions regulating free and fair interparty competition, like multi-candidate elections, a constitution and statutes safeguarding fundamental rights, and intraparty competition, like intraparty democracy, is path-dependent and self-reinforcing. In settings where competition is partly free and fair, ruling elites have an incentive to combine democratic and undemocratic laws and policies to defeat counterelites and neutralize intraparty competitors. The likely long-term outcome is a vicious cycle of limited democratization, competitive authoritarian regime formation, and competitive authoritarian regime consolidation. I assess the argument by tracing the historical trajectory of reforms on constitutionalism, civil liberties, and multi-candidate competition in post-1950 Turkey, where the limits on interparty and intraparty competition have been reproduced in remarkable historical continuity.

Политические партии ФРГ на современном этапе

The topic of the paper is research on the relationships among the political parties of the FRG after the federal election for the 20th German Bundestag (2021). The purpose of the research is to study the factors that determine the development of the German party system at the present stage. The research objectives are as follows: the analysis of the balance of forces between governing and opposition parties after the election for the Bundestag; the explication of the factors of stability and conflictogenicity within the governing coalition; the characteristic of the results of the 2022–2023 regional elections as an intermediate result of the interparty competition; and the study of the present political potential of the parliamentary opposition. The research resulted in the identification of the specific features of the interparty distribution of power during the current legislature period; the description of the scenarios within the governmental coalition as well as amongst the Parliamentary opposition; the explication of the reasons for instability and potential risks for the existing government; and the analysis of factors that stabilize the actions of the latter and ensure the government against possible disintegration or collapse. The conclusions of the research are as follows: the major domestic factor in the preservation of the governing coalition is the weakness of the SPD’s key competitor – the CDU/CSU Union – which does not allow the latter to offer a real political alternative to the government in power. The intermediate results of the activities of the governing coalition testify to the existence of a tension amongst the coalition members. This refers especially to its minority partners – Alliance 90 / The Greens and FDP which are balanced by the Social Democrats. The results of the 2022–2023 regional elections became important indicators of their political influence for the German political parties. Examining these results through the prism of competition between the “people’s parties” – CDU and SPD – leads to the conclusion that their competition proceeded with varying success. The Greens turned out to become the absolute winners of those regional elections. The political well-being of the opposition parties vary. The CDU/CSU Union is undergoing the stage of reconstruction and gradual gain in its public impact. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is also gaining in popularity. The Left Party is undergoing a structural crisis and the ways of the crisis resolution found by the party will determine its further existence and the place within the German party system.

АНАЛИТИЧЕСКИЙ ПОТЕНЦИАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ РЕГИОНАЛЬНЫХ ПАРТИЙНЫХ СИСТЕМ В СОВРЕМЕННОЙ РОССИИ (по материалам электоральной кампании 2022 г.)

Regional party systems in modern Russia are analyzed in terms of the methodological tools of political science. The concepts of nationalization/regionalization of party system enable the authors to reveal the tendencies of inter-party competition transformation within the sub-national dimension of political system on the electoral data of 2022.

Stock markets and economic uncertainty: Roles of legislative sessions and coalition strength

Legislative sessions constitute a critical component of the Westminster Parliamentary system, in a country like India. They play a crucial role in important policy decisions that have ramifications for the corporate sector's cash flows, leading to changes in stock price and volatility. Using data from India, we find that legislative session meetings influence stock price volatility, and the effect is inversely proportional to the strength of the ruling coalition government. These findings advance the theories of intraparty portfolio allocation and partisan trust discrimination in representative democracies based on intraparty and interparty competition in a ruling alliance. Our findings suggest that political competition reflected through government strength in legislative session meetings shapes the mechanism of economic uncertainty, i.e., the foundation of asset price volatility. We draw implications for the conduct of parliamentary business as well as stock investment strategy.

The Effect of Electoral Systems on Fluid Party System in sub-Saharan Africa

The article, based on a literature review, examines the impact of electoral systems on the fluidity party system in sub-Saharan Africa. Most authors identify institutional and social factors influencing the change in party systems. At the same time, they use the indices Laakso and Taagepera and Rae to operationalize variable parties. However, there is a lack of research in the literature on electoral systems regarding its impact on stability or change of interparty competition patterns. This is due to, firstly, the relative novelty of the recently developed index of fluidity, and secondly, the desire of scholars to use already widely tested, established measures of measurement. We believe that, in contrast to previous studies, where the unit of analysis is the party and not the party system. The Index of Fluidity will allow us to predict how majoritarian or proportional systems and WGI scores will affect the structure or fluidity of party systems in 49 sub-Saharan African countries. The results of study indicate that the changes taking place in electoral systems have significantly affected the fluidity of party systems. The results of the study indicate that measures of WGI and ethnicity negatively affected fluidity of party systems in 49 sub-Saharan African countries. This suggests that the more unstable the party system, the more ineffective the government becomes. Whereas the results of the main hypothesis indicate a statistically significant effect of changing electoral systems on the fluidity of party systems. In other words, the more often political reforms are carried out in the electoral sphere, the higher the indicators of instability of party system, which, according to the typology of party system of Sartori, will change either radically from one-party to polarized pluralism or atomised party system or slightly from one-party to hegemonistic or predominant.

Ideologies, Power and the Politics of Punishment: The Case of the British Conservative Party

AbstractRecent scholarship has underscored the limitations of a theoretical repertoire that reduces the politics of punishment to debates over punitiveness, neoliberalism or penal exceptionalism. In this paper I argue that greater understanding of the dynamic interplay between ideologies and power can provide a richer account of the complex and contradictory landscapes of contemporary penal politics. I seek to show that political parties occupy a prominent position within representative systems of government and this mediating role, at the intersection between ideology and power, is closely associated with the production of penal policy outcomes. Reflecting upon the recent history of the British Conservative Party, I conclude that the politics of punishment is shaped, not only by inter-party competition (and consensus), but the dynamics of intra-party conflict.

“Tell me who your political boss is and I will tell you who you are:” patronage and public employment in Colombia

ABSTRACT Patron–client relations have accompanied the historical development of societies for decades. In recent times, they have adapted to fundamental transformations in the modes of capital accumulation and government. The current context of global labor flexibility and instability, as well as increasing inter-party competition for access to power, has provided new opportunities for the development of these relationships. In this context, one of the most contested arenas is public employment. Thus, this article reconstructs the modus operandi of the patron–client relationships that take place in a local public entity, from the perspective of the clients involved in such relationships. For this purpose, 70 in-depth interviews were conducted with employees of a public agency in the municipality of Santiago de Cali (Colombia). This study yields interesting results about the way in which the processes of labor deregulation and downsizing of the Colombian state have favored the functioning of patronage systems. It also describes the effects that these systems have had on the functioning of public agencies.

Strategies of the Party Selectorate: The Two-Level Game in District Selections in Germany’s Mixed Member Electoral System

The article investigates how the opportunity structure and contextual factors influence the selectorates’ strategies in the process of candidate selection. The article argues that these strategies are an under-researched but important explanatory and dynamic link between the parties’ goals and context factors of candidate selection on the one side and the adopted selection criteria and the outcome of candidate selection on the other side. Based on a mixed-methods design, the study scrutinizes the selectorates’ strategies at district selections in Germany’s mixed-member electoral system. The analysis reveals that the local selectorates adopt the traditional inward oriented selection criteria to find the best candidate for the local party branch if the district seat is safe for the party. If, however, the seat is not safe, the selectorates prioritize the electoral goal over the local party organizational goal and strategically adapt the selection criteria to the opportunity structure. By considering both local inter-party competition and regional intra-party competition, they either take up a local voters’ perspective or anticipate the selection criteria of the state party lists in order to increase the chances for a seat in parliament. Thus, due to the mixed-member electoral system, the prevalence of dual candidacies, and decentralized candidate selection methods, intra-party selection in German districts is a two-level game.

When Preferential Voting Really Matters: Explaining the Surprising Results of Parties in Electoral Coalitions

Preferential voting in a proportional list system is an essential means by which voters can significantly influence which particular politician will represent them. However, preferential voting takes on a new dimension when several parties run on the same list as a coalition. In this case, the intra-party competition may become inter-party competition, where one or more parties may gain significantly from preferential voting at the expense of their partners. Despite this, research on this topic has been significantly neglected. Using the case of the 2021 Czech general election, where two newly formed electoral coalitions (SPOLU and PIRSTAN) run, we examine the nature of preferential voting in this different context of electoral coalitions. In the first part of the analysis, when we analyzed the characteristics of all candidates of both coalitions, we first confirmed that the candidate effect commonly observed in the case of conventional candidate lists also exists in this context. At the same time, we found that the candidate effect (through the adequate distribution of influential characteristics across parties in a coalition) can also affect the inter-party competition (as was the case of the PIRSTAN coalition). In the second part of the analysis, we found that in the context of electoral coalitions, party characteristics can also have a substantial effect on preferential voting (as was the case of the SPOLU coalition). Thus, both of these categories of effects can exist in the case of coalition lists, and both can affect inter-party competition. Nevertheless, future research is needed to confirm whether these findings are generally valid or whether the Czech case is somehow deviant. Existing research on this topic does not allow for a comparison.

Not the Far-Right Only: Which Parties Occupy the Niche of Cultural Protectionism in the EU Countries?

In the 2010s many moderate parties in Europe began to use the agenda of the far-rights, competing with them on the same field. This article is devoted to the problem of inter-party competition in European countries amidst the rise of far-right parties. We also intended to check if the far-right profile is the same for all EU countries. To achieve the goal of the study, we used two databases on party positioning - MARPOR (Comparative Manifesto Project) and CHES (Chapel Hill Expert Survey). The study revealed that the consolidated family of the far-rights exists only in the countries of North-Western Europe, while in the countries of East-Central Europe the agenda of the far-rights is less consolidated and regionally heterogeneous. The mainstream competitors of the far-rights included mostly conservatives in North-Western Europe, and various parties, including the Social Democrats, in East-Central Europe. The study confirmed the hypothesis about the serious influence of the far-rights on mainstream politics. At the same time, it questioned the traditional approach which attributes the far-right profile only to far-right parties and ignores both regional differences and the factor of spatial competition.

Inter-Party Competition, Public Electoral Pressure, and Democratic Strength: Refining Political Explanations of Incarceration Trends in the U.S., 1980 – 2010

The purpose of this research is to advance the politics of mass imprisonment literature by testing and specifying the macro-explanations of the state-level incarceration change in the United States (U.S.) between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, I account for mechanisms of inter-party competition and public electoral pressure neglected in prior research. To accomplish this goal, I utilize random coefficient models designed to control for repeated annual measures of state-level data that overwhelm traditional analytic techniques. Findings suggest that violent crime, partisan affiliation of state legislators and governors, probation rates, citizen ideology, marijuana decriminalization, and recidivist-focused laws are associated with incarceration as hypothesized, as well as the African American presence net of crime and socioeconomic disadvantage. Contributing to the theoretical debates on democracy and punishment, this paper demonstrates that inter-party competition and public electoral pressure amplify incarceration in the context of Democratic Party dominance, where no liberalizing effects of competition were found. I conclude that legal and extralegal factors are associated with incarceration and suggest that the public did not oppose criminal justice expansion via democratic feedback mechanisms, so both penal populism (Pratt, 2008) and popular punitivism (Campbell et al., 2017) are valid interpretations of imprisonment politics during the analyzed period.

Seizing the moment: Regional opportunity structures and Wallonia’s temporary veto of the EU–Canada bilateral trade agreement

ABSTRACT Constitutionally, Belgium represents the most extreme case of regional entities wielding power over EU external trade policymaking. Formally, the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels regions can wield veto power over Belgian positions. Yet, only once has a Belgian region actually made use of this capacity, when Wallonia temporarily blocked the conclusion of the EU trade agreement with Canada in 2016 (CETA). We show that political actors – legislative and executive – could only activate this constitutional possibility in conjunction with other necessary conditions: a high degree of societal mobilization and, above all, inter-party competition across different levels of government. As the Walloon Parti Socialiste seized the moment, it reinforced the paradox of weakness and strengthened the EU’s trade bargaining power towards Canada. We finish by discussing the spill-over effects of the 2016 CETA episode into the shaping of future EU trade policies, as well as into future intra-Belgian EU policymaking.