Largest Party In Parliament Research Articles

Competing narratives in the Swedish 1929 deposit insurance-debate

In early April 1929, eight Swedish savings banks were declared insolvent and closed due to economic crimes committed by some of their founders. After the crash, the Swedish parliament entered into a month-long debate over whether the state should cover some, all, or none of the losses of the 88,000 depositors of the failed banks. The two main parties, the Right Party, in government, and the Social Democrats, the largest party in parliament, developed competing narratives about the causes of the crash, the motives for state intervention, which depositors should be helped, and with how much public money. This paper provides the first account and analysis of this political debate, which ended with a decision for the state to provide an informal, partial, one-time deposit guarantee. The case is unique in Swedish banking history and demonstrates the importance of analysing policy makers’ narratives to understand state intervention in banking crises.

Anwar’s long walk to power: the 2022 Malaysian general elections

ABSTRACT The 15th Malaysian General Elections (GE15), the first since the Covid pandemic lockdown, were supposed to bring back political stability, after three different prime ministers since 2018. The results were inconclusive with no single coalition winning the bare minimum to form a government. The King then asked Anwar Ibrahim to form a new government. The biggest surprise was the rise of Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS), which became the single largest party in Parliament. Another surprise was UMNO supporting Anwar to be prime minister. The role played by the King and the Malay rulers raised questions about the state of constitutional monarchy in Malaysia. PAS’s victory will have a profound impact on Malaysia’s reputation as a moderate Islamic country and will accelerate the trend towards Islamic identity politics.

Luxembourg: Political Developments and Data in 2021

Luxembourg politics in 2021 was again largely determined by the evolution of the Covid‐19 pandemic and its response by public authorities, with an easing of restrictions which was followed by the adoption of stricter measures due to the emergence of the Omicron variant. This sequence caused an outcry in the population, with protests that sometimes became violent. The three‐party coalition government was also shaken, at the end of the year, by the decision of three of its ministers to resign from their position. After changes of ministerial personnel within The Greens/Déi Gréng delegation in previous years, this time the turnover (set to become official in 2022) concerned the Socialists/Lëtzebuerger Sozialistesch Aarbechterpartei and the Democratic Pary/Demokratesch Partei. But 2021 was also a particularly difficult year for the historically dominant party of the Grand Duchy, the Christian‐Social People's Party/Chrëschtlech‐Sozial Vollekspartei, in opposition since 2013, but still the largest party in Parliament, as it saw its leader forced out of office.

“Shame on the church of Sweden”: Radical nationalism and the appropriation of Christianity in contemporary Sweden

During the last decade, the populist radical nationalist party, the Sweden Democrats (SD), has gone from being a minor party to become Sweden’s third largest party in parliament. In this article, the author shows how the category of Christianity has come to play a pivotal role in the party’s political identification. Drawing on Ernesto Laclau’s analysis of populism, the author argues that Christianity should be understood as a projection surface for fantasies of an ethnically and culturally superior homogenous nation vis-à-vis constructed national others. In a populist logic, Christianity has thus become a way to distinguish the SD from its articulated external (e.g., Muslims, immigrants) and internal (liberalism, feminism) political foes. By appropriating Christianity, the SD articulates itself as the guardian of true Christianity, the future savior of a Church allegedly hijacked by external and internal foes, and in the long run, the Swedish nation.

Pakistan in 2018

Parliamentary elections in July 2018 brought the right-wing Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaaf, headed by former cricketer Imran Khan, to power. The PTI finished short of the 137 seats needed to form a government. But it emerged as the single largest party in parliament. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for owning assets disproportionate to his income.

The Decline of the Hegemonic Party System in Indonesia: Golkar after the Fall of Soeharto

The fall of Soeharto in 1998 marked the end of the hegemonic party system in Indonesia. While Golkar ceased to be a hegemonic party, it not only survived but emerged as the second largest party in the 1999 elections and the largest party in the 2004 elections. Post-Soeharto Golkar differs from the Golkar of the New Order period not only in its electoral strength but also in its structure, leadership, and relations with Islamic groups and the government. Golkar has become more democratic as voting rights have been given to local representatives. While the military's influence has declined if not disappeared, the strength of bureaucrats and big businesses is increasing. While Golkar has embraced Islamic elements, it has also retained its Pancasila ideology. As the largest party in parliament, it has tremendous influence, yet supports a non-Golkar president. The most conspicuous development in post-Soeharto Golkar is the emergence of factionalism that may weaken it.

The parliamentary and executive elections in Switzerland, 2003

The 2003 elections were among the most momentous in Switzerland’s recent history. As the country is renowned for its political stability, the changes brought about by the elections constituted a minor revolution. The broad ten-year trend towards polarisation continued, with further gains for the right-wing and left-wing parties. Among them, those performing better were the ‘newer’ parties in the shape of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC) – formerly a Protestant agrarian party, now a New Right party – and the Greens (GPS/PES). The SVP/UDC emerged as the clear winner, becoming the largest party in parliament and increasing its representation in government. However, in terms of votes and seats, the SVP grew less between 1999 and 2003 than over the previous four years. The main losers were the centrist Christian-Democrats (CVP/PDC) and the centreright Radicals (FDP/PRD) whose electorate was further eroded. Moreover, the CVP/PDC lost out significantly in the executive elections. Although the results were not dramatic in terms of the composition of Parliament, they had a fairly radical impact on the make up of the executive. The system has coped smoothly with these changes and is unlikely to undergo a sharp change of direction in the near future. But their long-term effects may significantly alter the way the Swiss political system works.

Demythologising the Czech opposition agreement

For many observers of the Czech political scene, 8 July 1998 was confirmation of their worst fears. It was then, two weeks after parliamentary elections, that the largest party in parliament, the Czech Social Democratic Party (CˇSSD), announced that it had signed what came to be known as the ‘opposition agreement’ with the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the second largest party in parliament. The agreement stated that ODS would allow CˇSSD to govern alone as a minority government. In return, ODS would receive a number of parliamentary posts and the two parties would together adopt several constitutional amendments.The reaction of Czech political scientists and commentators was almost unanimously negative. President Va´clav Havel called the alliance ‘unholy’. The head of the Christian Democratic Union (KDU-CˇSL), Josef Lux, believed the agreement to be unconstitutional and vowed to contest it in court. Commentators even likened it to the communist-era national front governments. More specific criticisms focused on its negative consequences for stability, democracy and the fate of important social and economic reforms. Even at the end of its four-year run, political observers remained almost as negatively disposed to the agreement as they were at the start.

The 1998 German Federal Election

The federal election held in Germany on 27 September 1998 marked the end of the Kohl era. It was one of the closest-fought postwar elections, which made the result difficult to predict and the election evening extremely exciting. In the event the ruling Christian Democrats recorded their worst result since 1949, a sitting federal chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was voted out of office for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic and the main opposition party, Germany's Social Democrats, became the largest party in parliament for only the second time since the war.

Turkey: return to stability?

Since the mid-1990s, Turkish domestic politics have all too often been plagued by a chaotic atmosphere. The most direct origin of this is to be found in the December 1995 parliamentary elections, which did not lead to any obvious governing coalition; quite to the contrary, a number of alternatives were possible, of which the majority were eventually attempted. As is by now well known, the largest party in the parliament became the pro-Islamist Welfare party (Refah Partisi, RP) which however received a mere 21 per cent of the votes, far from a majority. This one-fifth of the ballot, with the Turkish electoral system favouring large parties and the parties that do well in the Anatolian countryside, actually gave the RP 158 out of 550 seats in the new parliament, or almost a third of the seats.' By contrast, neither of the two parties of the democratic right which had dominated the last decade's Turkish politics managed to achieve a leading position - actually neither of them managed to supersede the other. Former Prime Minister Tansu Qiller's True Path Party (DYP, Dogru Yol Partisi) received a larger number of seats in the parliament than Mesut Yllmaz' Motherland Party (ANAP, Anavatan Partisi), but the ANAP had a higher number of ballots cast for it than had DYP.2 Hence both parties could still claim to represent the majority of the democratic right, something which further complicated their uneasy coexistence. This was particularly troubling for the political scene as before the elections speculations had been under way regarding a merger of the two parties under whichever would win the elections. It should be noted, nevertheless, that both parties received around 20 per cent of the votes each. Hence while the RP may have become the largest party in parliament, it is incorrect to speak of a 'triumph' of Islamism in the elections.3 The major political faction was still by far the democratic right, as it has been during virtually the whole history of the Turkish republic. Together the two democratic right parties received the support of over 40 per cent of the electorate, which would be well enough for a stable majority in the Turkish electoral system.4

Who Voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party?

The electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a right-wing religious party, in India's 1991 national elections has often been attributed to the rise of Hindu religious sentiments. After the 1991 elections the BJP emerged as the second largest party in Parliament and captured almost a fifth of the votes cast. There is little in the way of substantive evidence, however, that Hindus have either become more religious or that they were willing to express their religiosity more politically only in the 1990s. This Note claims that the BJP was electorally successful on account of its ability to forge a coalition between religious groups and the middle classes. The BJP, an advocate of a mixed economy in the 1970s and Gandhian socialism in the early 1980s, emerged in the 1990s as an ardent critic of state intervention. It was this programmatic shift which enabled the BJP to garner the support of the middle classes, who were ‘mobilizable’ because of their growing disaffection with the political and economic policies pursued by the Congress party. The electoral success of the BJP hence lay not in mobilizing only the ‘religious’ but in its ability to put together a viable coalition between religious Hindus and those disaffected by excessive political intervention in the economy.

India: Fragmentation Amid Consensus

India: Fragmentation Amid Consensus Pratap B. Mehta (bio) In the wake of the general elections of April and May 1996, the Indian political scene presents a paradoxical combination of party fragmentation amid ideological consensus on major matters of policy, especially in the economic realm. The elections marked a watershed in that the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party in Parliament for the first time, while the long-dominant Congress party sank to a historic low of 28 percent of the popular vote and went from 274 to 139 seats in the 545-member lower house. A governing coalition known as the United Front took over after it became clear in late May that a scheduled vote of parliamentary confidence would bring down the just-formed cabinet of BJP leader and prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The United Front, led by Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda (former chief minister of the southwestern state of Karnataka), is a collection of 13 parties united only in their desire to keep the BJP out of power. The 1996 results continue trends that were apparent to attentive analysts of the 1989 elections, which propelled the National Front coalition government of V.P. Singh to power with the support of the BJP and two communist parties. The 1996 outcomes are similar to the results that might have flowed from the 1991 elections, had there not been an outpouring of voter sympathy for the Congress party after its leader, onetime prime minister Rajiv Gandhi (1984–89), was assassinated by Tamil ethnic separatists during the multistage balloting. The four elections since 1987 bear witness to the extraordinary fluidity that democracy has brought to India’s once rather fixed power structure. It may be considered a triumph of democracy that Robert A. [End Page 56] Dahl’s classic question “Who governs?” is now far harder to answer. New leaders, new parties, and new coalitions of parties have all emerged with dizzying speed. For all its limitations, democracy has proved to be a successful vehicle for the political empowerment of the country’s populous “backward” castes. Indeed, the end of upper-caste political dominance has been nothing short of a quiet revolution. 1 Indian voters have increasingly used their ballots to express dissatisfaction and cashier governors deemed responsible for misconduct. In elections since 1987 for India’s 25 state governments, less than 15 percent of incumbent administrations have been returned to power; the general trend, even at the national level, now clearly works against incumbents. A diffuse sense of dissatisfaction pervades a large slice of the electorate, and few politicians in power can feel secure. The party system has also been transformed. 2 No longer is it characterized by a dominant party (i.e., Congress) embodying a centrist consensus, with rightist and leftist parties on the margins. The Congress party is losing, if it has not already lost, its capacity to gather an enduring electoral majority. Not only is its share of the national vote at an all-time ebb, but it also suffers from an unprecedented leadership vacuum. It is no longer the party that binds state and society by providing the framework within which a heterogeneous mass of ideologies and interests can be reconciled and arbitrated into consensus. Congress’s decline has complex causes. The greater politicization and mobilization of the electorate eroded much of the clientelism that had become a party mainstay. The failures of the socialism associated with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–64) discredited Congress’s traditional ideological plank. Parties and other movements representing India’s “backward” castes emerged, even as such traditional Congress supporters as “scheduled” castes and Muslims drifted into a state of alienation. 3 These trends were in evidence as far back as the 1970s, but leaders like Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1966–77, 1980–84) and her son Rajiv were able to blunt their electoral impact by building coalitions around their own personalities. In the short run, this masked the symptoms of Congress’s decline, but at the cost of a degree of centralization that ultimately exacerbated the weakness of the party’s organization and left it vulnerable to the debacle of 1996...