Intra-party Factionalism Research Articles

Awakening the sleeping giant? The displacement of the partisan cleavage and change in government-opposition dynamics in EU referendums

This article considers party system effects and change in government-opposition dynamics in EU referendums. Relying on the analysis of party stances, party-voter alignments and campaign dynamics in 12 EU referendums in France, Ireland, Great-Britain and Spain, it shows that EU referendums tend to interfere with traditional party system dynamics in majoritarian democracies. By clearly manifesting a pro-European convergence between incumbent and mainstream opposition parties, they constitute a fertile ground to awake the ‘sleeping giant’ under certain conditions. EU referendums favor the temporary displacement of the partisan cleavage, create recurrent tensions for mainstream opposition parties and consistently reinforce the role played by protest parties. The recurrent intra-party factionalism or the limited mobilizations of pro-European opposition parties in referendum campaigns are thus not so linked with their ideologies or with endogenous factors, but are rather largely induced by their specific party system ‘situations’.

Monopolizing, Mutualizing, or Muddling Through: Factions and Party Management in Contemporary Thailand

In democracies throughout the world, intra-party factions manifest themselves in parties and governments. Formal and informal institutions have, however, proved crucial in managing factionalism. This is especially true in Thailand's emerging parliamentary democracy where the management of factionalism has become a major objective for Thai parties. This study explores factions and factionalism as well as how different types of parties try to manage intra-party dissension especially in the case of Thailand. The findings suggest that management style tends to be a function of a party's organization, with parties which practice a collegial style tending to be the more successful in controlling intra-party cliques over time. At the same time, the most important tools which party leaderships can use to control factions are the careful use of constitutional provisions and manipulation of party finance.

Intra-Party Preference Heterogeneity and Faction Membership in the 15th German Bundestag: A Computational Text Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches

In a broad range of research in comparative politics, political parties are conceptualised as unitary actors with consistent preferences. We depart from this sometimes accurate, at other times overly strong assumption by studying patterns of intra-party heterogeneity of preferences within parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag from 2002–05. For this purpose, we use the Wordscores method, a form of computational text analysis, to estimate policy positions of 453 individual legislators based on plenary speeches. We then study the link between intra-party faction membership and expressed policy positions. We find that there is a limited, but consistent effect of intra-party factionalism in the German Bundestag. According to random effects ANOVA, faction membership determines about 3 per cent of the variance of positions on economic policy in the present study.

Party Factions in Congress

This essay considers the role of intraparty factions in the twentieth-century American Congress. Factions are integral players in Congress that shape members’ preferences, develop policy agendas, and push those agendas on Capitol Hill. In pursuing their objectives, factions will often strive to redistribute power in Congress—sometimes going so far as to change congressional rules to enhance their position. Factions are thus key actors in the creation and destruction of congressional “regimes”—the various structures and practices by which power is concentrated or dispersed in both chambers. The analysis of factions and their strategies takes us beyond the debate about whether parties matter. What happens within the parties at important moments can be as consequential as what the parties themselves do. The activity of factions has profound implications not only for the larger parties in which they reside, but also for the way Congress functions as a whole.

Factions, Parties and the Durability of Parliaments, Coalitions and Cabinets

Did Thailand's multiple parties and factions influence cabinet and coalition durability in the period 1979 to 2001? If so, which one — parties or factions — was the more significant? Taking a Transaction Costs Analysis approach, this article addresses these questions and argues that intra-party factions, as the building blocks of Thai parliamentary politics, have been more important than parties, such that each additional faction in a cabinet triggers a reduction in the longevity of prime ministerial terms and cabinets while affecting the durability of coalitions. Furthermore, while factions tend to shorten parliamentary and cabinet terms, they have the opposite effect on coalition terms. The study suggests that where parties are less cohesive, informal institutions within parties are of considerable importance.

Partisan Mountains and Molehills: The Geography of U.S. State Intraparty Factionalism

AbstractWe examine whether the geographic distribution of a political party's electoral support affects the divisiveness of statewide primaries. In spite of V.O. Key, Jr.'s (1956) original insight that geography might be a relevant predictor of contested statewide primaries, this hypothesis has received little attention from political scientists. We test Key's hypothesis using data on gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections to identify the effects of electoral geography on the structure of competition in primary elections. We contend that dispersed bases of electoral support greatly increase the costs associated with maintaining party cohesion. Our findings support the theory that a geographically dispersed electorate heightens the potential for intraparty factionalism. These results are robust across several measures of the dependent variable.

Party politics, elite accountability and public participation: Ward committee politics in the Msunduzi Municipality

The paper explores whether ward committees are in fact the non-partisan structures for community participation in local government stipulated by legislation and official policy. Findings from the municipality of Msunduzi suggest that, where they actually function, ward committees are dominated by local political leaders. In most IFP wards and some ANC wards, ward committees are simply extensions of the local party branch, and reflect the pathologies associated with the 'dominant party syndrome'. In other wards there is both more party pluralism and less direct party control, but often intra-party factionalism or local political rivalries dominate the composition and operation of ward committees. In short, ward committees allow for little community voice alternative to dominant ward political leadership.

The incumbency advantage in U.S. primary elections

Using a new data set, we estimate the magnitude of the incumbency advantage in direct primary elections between 1912 and 2005. We find that the incumbency advantage, as estimated by the sophomore surge, was above 4 percentage points in primary elections even in the first decades of the twentieth century. The sophomore surge in primary elections grew to approximately 14 percentage points by the end of 1990s. The growth of the sophomore surge in primary elections occurred at least a decade prior to the growth of the sophomore surge in the general elections. We find some evidence that the structure of intra-party competition may affect the incumbency advantage. Specifically, examining southern and border states, we find that the sophomore surge was significantly smaller in states with persistent intra-party factions.

Party Fabrication: Constitutional Reform and the Rise of Thai Rak Thai

Among the most interesting questions in Thai politics today is how to account for the rise and (until recently) the success of Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai party. This article describes and analyzes some of the factors that contributed to the rise and success of Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai, arguing that neither Thaksin's personal assets nor the effects of the crisis are enough to explain Thai Rak Thai's rise and success. It focuses instead on the 1997 changes to Thailand's constitution. These institutional reforms were crucial because they altered Thailand's political-institutional landscape in fundamental ways. The reforms provided new opportunities and incentives for political actors that Thaksin and his party adeptly took advantage of. The argument presented is that the key reforms that helped pave the way for the rise of Thaksin and Thai Rak Thai were those reforms that helped reduce the number of political parties and that increased the power of the prime minister relative to coalition partners and intraparty factions.

Evolving Toward What? Parties, Factions, and Coalition Behavior in Thailand Today

How important have Thai parties and intraparty factions been in Thailand's fast-evolving democracy? What role do they play today, especially since the enactment of the latest constitution? What has accounted for the fragmentation in Thailand's party systems and coalitions? How did Thai democracy allow for the rise to power of Thaksin Shinawatra? This article analyzes these questions, presents a theory of Thai coalition behavior, and offers some predictions for Thailand's democratic future.

Implementing the Northern Ireland Peace Settlement: Factionalism and Implementation Design

This article uses a theory of intra-party factionalism to explain the partial successes in implementing the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement (hereafter, Agreement) and to explain why stalling has remained the overwhelming characteristic of the process. The theory presents obstacles to implementation as stemming from intra-party conflict between factions adopting strategies that are supportive of, sceptical of or against implementation. It argues that the design of the implementation process-the rules and procedures for sequencing and timing implementation-is critical to overcoming the obstacles presented by intra-group factionalism and to determining the successes and failures of implementation. Where rules and procedures allow for the parallel sequencing and the breakdown of all issues, the strategies of spoiler factions are undermined and implementation can overcome the obstacles presented by intra-party factionalism. 'Insulated' implementation bodies can facilitate the emergence of the sequencing that can overcome such obstacles.

Implementing the Northern Ireland Peace Settlement: Factionalism and Implementation Design

This article uses a theory of intra-party factionalism to explain the partial successes in implementing the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement (hereafter, Agreement) and to explain why stalling has remained the overwhelming characteristic of the process. The theory presents obstacles to implementation as stemming from intra-party conflict between factions adopting strategies that are supportive of, sceptical of or against implementation. It argues that the design of the implementation process-the rules and procedures for sequencing and timing implementation-is critical to overcoming the obstacles presented by intra-group factionalism and to determining the successes and failures of implementation. Where rules and procedures allow for the parallel sequencing and the breakdown of all issues, the strategies of spoiler factions are undermined and implementation can overcome the obstacles presented by intra-party factionalism. 'Insulated' implementation bodies can facilitate the emergence of the sequencing that can overcome such obstacles.

Implementing the Northern Ireland Peace Settlement: Factionalism and Implementation Design

This article uses a theory of intra-party factionalism to explain the partial successes in implementing the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement (hereafter, Agreement) and to explain why stalling has remained the overwhelming characteristic of the process. The theory presents obstacles to implementation as stemming from intra-party conflict between factions adopting strategies that are supportive of, sceptical of or against implementation. It argues that the design of the implementation process-the rules and procedures for sequencing and timing implementation-is critical to overcoming the obstacles presented by intra-group factionalism and to determining the successes and failures of implementation. Where rules and procedures allow for the parallel sequencing and the breakdown of all issues, the strategies of spoiler factions are undermined and implementation can overcome the obstacles presented by intra-party factionalism. 'Insulated' implementation bodies can facilitate the emergence of the sequencing that can overcome such obstacles.

Green Party Factionalism: The Case of the Federation of Ecologists Alternatives, Greece

To date, the Federation of Ecologists Alternatives (FEA) is the only Greek green party to have achieved representation in Parliament. Based on written accounts of the period and in-depth interviews with the main protagonists, this article offers a theoretical explanation of FEAs short-lived trajectory (1989–92), describing it as a case of ‘primordial factionalism’: a case of intra-party factionalism stemming from externally imposed stresses rather than any internal debate about ideological purity (the classical Realo/Fundi conflict). The article maintains that in such cases, it is highly probable for an emerging green party to disintegrate during its formative period, thus adding a new perspective to classical green party factionalism theories.

Presidential Address: Southern Parties in State and Nation

One-half century ago, V. 0. Key, Jr., published his masterpiece, Southern Politics in State and Nation. Key's analysis of the failure of democracy in the South must count as one of the great achievements of our discipline. His explanation is rich and complex. Certainly the anti-liberal basis of society in the midtwentieth-century South was crucial-"Whatever phase of the southern political process one seeks to understand, sooner or later the trail of inquiry leads to the Negro," he wrote (1984[1949], 5). But it was not only that the South was an illiberal society, what really mattered was that the South was also non-democratic. The failure of democracy can be traced to the absence of party competition and, according to Key, the consequent failure of a coherent and organized party system to emerge. His explanation is that the lack of organized partisan competition to win the support of the great body of the people, as James Madison might have put it, by itself accounts for the failure of democracy. In this account, therefore, if only there was regularized competition, there would be organized parties, and if only there were at least two organized political parties, democracy would inevitably follow. A cottage industry then arose to study, first, the possibility of partisan realignment in the South (e.g., Converse 1966; Phillips 1970), subsequently it sought to assess the inroads Republicans were making in their ability to compete in the South (e.g., Beck 1977; Black and Black 1987), and most recently that industry turned to examine the culmination of the process, ending with a fully competitive (perhaps even dominant) GOP in the South (e.g., Aistrup 1996; Black 1998; Lamis 1990). The attraction of this stream of research is understandable. These are scholars considering whether trends are pointing toward sustained, organized partisan competition. If that were to be so, we would then conclude that the full flowering of democracy would at last be expected to appear in the South.

Electoral Rules, Career Ambitions, and Party Structure: Comparing Factions in Japan's Upper and Lower Houses

cross-temporally. Taking advantage of this natural experiment, we derive and test six specific hypotheses. Our most robust findings are that the rate of factional affiliation varies directly with the level of intraparty competition induced by these different regimes and that Upper House members with cabinet experience are more likely to be factionally affiliated than those without. We also find that smaller factions died out sooner in the Upper House and that the distribution of factional strengths was more skewed there. he literature on party systems contains two central themes. The first is that the number and characteristics of parties can be traced to the incentives produced by electoral rules (Duverger 1954; Taagepera and Shugart 1989; Cox 1997). The second is that party systems emerge as by-products of social cleavages (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). Debate over the source of intraparty factions follows a similar pattern, with some stressing electoral incentives while others point to cultural predispositions. Although recent analyses (Ordeshook and Shvetsova 1994; Amorim Neto and Cox 1998) attempt to control for cleavage structures in assessing the impact of electoral rules, they can do so only with relatively crude indicators, such as the effective number of ethnic groups. Fortunately, countries with bicameral legislatures produce natural experiments that provide superior means of controlling for differing cleavage structures. Elections for two separate legislative chambers in the same country at the same (or nearly the same) time better allow us to see the impact of electoral rules, since social cleavages-and other country-specific factors, such as political culture-are held constant. Candidates and parties should adapt to the particular electoral niches created by the rules for each house and-insofar as those niches differ across chambers-the number, size, and internal organization of parties should differ as well. In this paper, we examine variation in the number and characteristics of party factions. We focus on Japanese politics, specifically on the longdominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), whose factions have been much studied but with little attention to the explanatory leverage provided by bicameralism. If different electoral rules can create different incentives for the formation and sustenance of intraparty factions-a key contention of many recent studies of Japanese elections-then intercameral differences in electoral rules ought to produce different factional structures in

Party Organization and Activism in the American South.

Much of the recent scholarship about American political parties has attempted to assess the condition of the party system. Are parties becoming increasingly obsolete? Have they forfeited the functions they traditionally performed? Or have they adopted a different role in the political system such that their achievements have gone unrecognized? In short, are American political parties in decline, resurgence, or what? Using information gathered from local party officials in the eleven southern states, the authors examine such key data as who becomes involved in local party organizations and why; how parties recruit and retain workers; what ideological and issue orientations motivate these activists; how intraparty factionalism affects local party organizations; and what connection exists between the party organization and its external environment.

As a Matter of Factions: The Budgetary Implications of Shifting Factional Control in Japan's LDP

For 38 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) maintained single-party control over the Japanese government. This lack of partisan turnover in government has frustrated attempts to explain Japanese government policy changes using political variables. In this paper, we look for intraparty changes that may have led to changes in Japanese budgetary policy. Using a simple model of agenda setting, we hypothesize that changes in which intraparty factions control the LDP affect the party's decisions over spending priorities systematically. This runs contrary to the conventional wisdom expressed in the voluminous literature on LDP factions, which asserts that factions, whatever their raison d'etre, do not exhibit different policy preferences. We find that strong correlations do exist between which factions comprise the agenda-setting party mainstream and how the government allocates spending across pork-barrel and public goods items.

"The Grave of All My Comforts": William Pitt Fessenden as Secretary of the Treasury, 1864-65

"The Grave of All My Comforts": William Pitt Fessenden as Secretary of the Treasury, 1864-65 Robert Cook The Union cause had reached its nadir by the summer of 1864. In the field. Gen. Nathaniel Banks's Red River campaign had proved a disaster; Sherman was stalled on the road to Atlanta; and the Armies of the Potomac and Virginia had ground their way to a stalemate on the bloody Eastern front. At home public concern forthe appalling casualty rate increased, and striking workers continued to vent their frustration at declining real wages. Although Northern inflation was less serious than its Southern variant, gold stood at 270 at the beginning of July—testimony to the depressing military situation and, in the view of many Americans, to the evil machinations ofdisloyal speculators.' With the prospects ofaDemocratic victory inNovember and anegotiatedpeace farfrom negligible, the ruling Republican party was in disarray. A majority of congressional Republicans voted for the Wade-Davis bill as an alternative to President Lincoln 's plan ofReconstruction, and not a few ofthem endorsed the scathing tone ofthe subsequent Manifesto. Intense intraparty factionalism persisted in spite of a general awareness among Republican leaders that Lincoln would have to be the party's standard bearer at the forthcoming election. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P Chase remained the focal point for much of the anti-Lincoln sentiment within the union organization. In June Chase found himselfat odds with the president over a New York patronage appointment and, not for the first time, offered his resignation. To his chagrin, Lincoln accepted. Chase's constant sniping had finally convinced the president that his radical cabinet colleague must go. Besides, he needed the support of moderate New York Republicans who had long been seeking to erode Chase's influence in their state.2 I wish to thank my colleague, Richard Carwardine, for his comments on a draft of this paper. 1 Charles A. Jellison, Fessenden ofMaine: Civil War Senator (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1962), 183. Civil War History, Vol. xu. No. 3 © 1995 by The Kent State University Press WILLIAM PITT FESSENDEN209 The dismissal of Salmon Chase caused consternation in the country at large, and Lincoln cast around somewhat desperately for a successor. His first choice as finance minister was "Pot Metal" David Tod, a committed hard money man from Ohio. When Tod declined the appointment, the president initially thought about another Ohioan and then opted to nominate William Pitt Fessenden, a prominent United States senator from Maine, for the vacant post.3 Fessenden had been a member of the U.S. Senate for over a decade.4 His early political career as an antislavery Whig had been built on the base of a lucrative legal practice in the commercial city of Portland and a judicious marriage to the daughter of a wealthy local merchant. Although the strength of Maine's Jacksonian backcountry did much to thwart his political ambitions during the 1840s, Fessenden was elected to the Senate in January 1854 by a coalition of antislavery and antiliquor forces in the state legislature. Once in power he quickly proved himselfto be one of the South's staunchest opponents in Congress. An expert parliamentarian and accomplished debater , he set his face against compromise during the winter of 1860-61 and, after the withdrawal of slave-state senators, was appointed chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, which was soon to play a major role in the bitter struggle for national survival. Although Secretary Chase was the prime mover behind the innovative financial measures introduced during the first three years of the war—most notably several issues of legal tenders and the creation of a national banking system—it was Fessenden, the closest approximation to a Senate majority leader during the war years, who piloted this often controversial legislation through the upper house.5 A proponent of financial orthodoxy, he did not always concur with the bills he was required to champion. In early 1 862, for example, he made it clear that he did not approve of the legal-tender clause ofChase's currency bill, but the argument of wartime necessity induced him to vote for the measure. Convinced that "the safety of the...

Leaders, rank and file, and constituents: Electoral reform in Colombia and Venezuela

Pressures for electoral reform can be expected in closed-list electoral systems that concentrate power within the hands of party leadership, as in Venezuela, or, at the other extreme, in those which encourage intraparty factions, as in Colombia. Reforms occur when relations among party leaders, rank and file, and constituents become skewed to the detriment of governmental accountability and ability to address serious policy problems. Reforms in Venezuela include the adoption of a Swiss-style panachage system for municipalities and a German-style system for the Congress, although the latter is likely to function differently in Venezuela's presidential system than in a parliamentary system. In Colombia, a constitutional convention was elected in 1990 on a basis of nationwide representation in order to circumvent the existing Congress and implement reforms. The experiences of these countries offer lessons for other developing democracies, with specific reference made to the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.