Left-leaning Parties Research Articles

The partisan electoral effect of EU structural and investment funds in French European Parliament elections

In this article, we find a partisan electoral effect in French European Parliamentary (EP) elections that we consider to be a variant of an economic voting determinant. EU Structural and Investment Funds (SIFs) can be partially predictive of French EP electoral results. The direction of this electoral effect, however, is determined by partisanship. Left-leaning parties’ vote shares are positively correlated with SIF disbursement levels, while right-leaning parties’ vote shares are negatively correlated with SIF disbursement levels. This electoral phenomenon gives further credence to other findings that have demonstrated that variants of economic voting are occurring at subnational levels in second-order elections.

In Crisis or Decline? Selecting Women to Lead Provincial Parties in Government

AbstractThe majority of Canada's women premiers were selected to that office while their parties held government. This is uncommon, both in the comparative literature and among premiers who are men. What explains this gendered selection pattern to Canada's provincial premiers’ offices? This paper explores the most common explanation found in the comparative literature for women's emergence as leaders of electorally competitive parties and as chief political executives: women are more likely to be selected when that party is in crisis or decline. Using the population of women provincial premiers in Canada as case studies, evidence suggests three of eight women premiers were selected to lead parties in government that were in crisis or decline; a fourth was selected to lead a small, left-leaning party as predicted by the literature. However, for half of the women premiers, evidence of their party's decline is partial or inconclusive. As a result of this exploration, more research is required to draw generalizations about the gendered opportunity structures that shape how women enter (and exit) the premier's office in Canada.

Politized coalitions: Social affinity and the politics of redistribution

Does the structure of inequality in a society matter for the amount of redistribution from rich to poor? New, groundbreaking research indicates this to be the case: Where the market income of the middle class is comparably close to that of the poor, a cross-class coalition between the two groups emerges. This cross-class coalition will tend to favor a generous welfare state and extensive redistribution. We add to this in two ways. First, we complement the theoretical framework by highlighting the role of the politicization of multiculturalism. We posit that the social affinity between the middle class and the poor is lower when multiculturalism becomes politicized. Second, we provide new information on the mechanism by which social affinity affects redistribution. When the income of the middle class is comparatively close to the income of the poor, more people vote for left-leaning parties; yet as multiculturalism becomes politicized, this effect disappears.

Conflict and reconciliation between Turks and Kurds: the HDP as an agonistic actor

This paper proposes an alternative form of conflict resolution to analyze ethnic conflict and Kurdish dissent in the polarized and divided society of Turkey. It does so by employing Mouffe’s concept of agonism and radical democracy, in conjunction with Laclau’s model of populism. Through an analysis of the role of the Kurdish-led, left-leaning populist party, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), and its approach to Turkish-Kurdish reconciliation, the paper makes the case for the political and theoretical effectiveness of an agonistic approach, illustrating the possibility of dispute resolution by taking conflict into the centre of the peace building process.

Income inequality and election outcomes in OECD countries: New evidence following the Great Recession of 2008–2009

Using data on national parliamentary election outcomes in 32 OECD countries from 1975 to 2013, we investigate the importance of economic voting. We focus on the relevance of income inequality which has resurfaced to the forefront of public debate since the last global economic downturn. Additionally, we examine whether the degree of economic voting varies with the political orientation of the incumbent government. Finally, we check whether the Great Recession of 2008–2009 alters the degree to which voters hold the incumbent government, specifically left parties, responsible for poor economic performance and rising inequality. We find that economic growth is the most robust variable for economic voting, before and after the Great Recession. The vote share for left-leaning parties declines when income inequality rises during normal economic times. However, voters are more likely to vote for left-wing incumbents if domestic income inequality and unemployment rate rose during the Great Recession.

Coalition oversight and blame avoidance in Greece

This article examines the behavior of Greek political parties before, as well as during, the recent austerity period. Drawing on coalition oversight and blame avoidance literature, it argues that the unpopularity of austerity governments leads to extreme levels of dissent within the coalition. I operationalize this ‘intra-coalition opposition’ behavior using parliamentary questions, a legislative institution that has not been studied in the context of coalition politics. The analysis demonstrates that junior members in unpopular austerity governments increase their use of parliamentary questions to a degree that matches or even exceeds the formal opposition. However, intra-coalition dissent is conditional on the type of unpopular government policies, and on the ideology of coalition members. Specifically, using a new method of text analysis, I show that while the socialist Panhellenic Socialist Movement uses its parliamentary questions to avoid or minimize the blame associated with austerity policies, the conservative New Democracy does not, because left-leaning parties are electorally vulnerable to austerity measures. The results have implications for studying dissent in coalition politics in general, and the politics of austerity in particular.

The Big Question

The Big Question

Cultural Scenes and Voting Patterns in Canada

AbstractExtending recent social science work using the concept of “scene” into politics, this paper investigates connections between cultural variation and political variation across Canadian localities. First, we introduce the notion of “scene.” Then, using a national database of local amenities (with some 1800 categories and 1.6 million data points), we show that key dimensions of cultural meaning account for significant differences in voting patterns in recent Canadian elections. In particular, electoral districts with scenes that suggest themes of self-expression are associated with support for left-leaning parties, while scenes that support locality and corporateness are associated with the right. We conclude with suggestions for pursuing hypotheses about potential mechanisms driving these associations.

Democrats against Democracy

In late 2011, the Wall Street Journal published a curiously titled editorial, “Democrats against Democracy.” Written by James Taranto, one of the Journal ’s conservative columnists, the piece documented a disturbing trend besetting democracy in America. Taranto claimed that American Democrats, or those who identified themselves as liberal and progressive, were increasingly turning their backs on democracy. Taranto was apprehensive that still more democrats would begin turning against democracy, spurred on by those on the American political left and by popular political movements like Occupy. In this essay, I take up and extend Taranto’s claim by exploring how democrats against democracy is manifesting in America beyond the relative minority who took to the streets as part of movements like Occupy. Basing my analysis on the Netflix series House of Cards, and the recent works of Sheldon Wolin and Henry Giroux, I demonstrate how standard it has become for democrats, broadly conceived, to use democracy as a means of producing antidemocratic and inequitable outcomes. I argue that Taranto’s analysis, though important, is tainted by his conservative outlook and, as such, misses the most pernicious and dystopic aspects of America’s democratic system, which not only permits but requires democrats to use democracy for their own ends. Here, it is not just left-leaning progressives and Democratic Party faithfuls we need to concern ourselves with. Private citizens, elected political representatives of all stripes, and the corporate and media elite are all engaged in the deceit, which has as its end point the decapitation of democracy.

From Selectivity to Universalism: The Political Economy of Pro-Equality Educational Reform

This study examines why countries adopt or do not adopt pro-equality educational reforms from the political economy and historical perspective. Our study steps into a century-long debate on advantages and disadvantages of less selective schooling and analyzes the conditions, which enable the spillover of international and domestic educational discourse into policy discourse, adoption of policies increasing equality of educational opportunities and successful implementation of these policies. We document a stable balance of political and social forces. Parents with high socioeconomic status and teachers in elite academic schools oppose less selective schooling and frame later tracking as a threat to the quality of schooling. In contrast, primary school teachers tend to be in favor of more comprehensive schooling, which raises their status; however, their attitudes are often ambiguous. Not surprisingly, the mobilization of parents with low socioeconomic status is low and interests of their children tend to be promoted by scholars, non-governmental organizations or international organizations. Left-leaning parties tend to be in favor of later tracking. In contrast, right-leaning parties tend to favor earlier tracking. However, under certain circumstances – such as electoral demand or needs of the local industry – they are willing to shift their attitudes in favor of comprehensive schooling. We document that reforms occur in both extraordinary times, such as economic crisis or regime change, and ordinary times, where the successful adoption of the pro-equality educational policy depends on bi-partisan consensus or a re-framing of the later tracking as a pro-growth measure.

Latin Women Take the Helm

Latin Women Take the Helm

State Formation, Democratization, and the Development of Civil Society in Nicaragua

The election of Daniel Ortega to the Nicaraguan presidency on November 5, 2006, temporarily refocused the attention of Washington and the U.S. media on Nicaraguan politics. Ortega's electoral success was one of a string of victories for leftist candidates in Latin America, sparking debate over the causes and consequences of the election of unprecedented numbers of presidents from left-leaning parties and coalitions. His return to power reminds us that democracy in Nicaragua is as much a question now as it was when the Sandinistas were defeated at the polls in 1990. During the 1980s, the Frente Sandinista de Liberation Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front—FSLN) led a massive popular insurrection against the Somoza dic tatorship. The revolutionary government that assumed power pledged to transform Nicaragua through home construction, employment generation, literacy and health improvement, and land redistribution. While its literacy and health programs received international recognition, the consolidation of democracy remained elusive, and the initial revolutionary hope for quick and meaningful change was shattered by a failing economy and a polarized electorate. Whereas the Carter administration cautiously accepted the new FSLN govern ment, which it considered extremely radical, the Reagan administration aggressively opposed it, attempting to force its removal through a CIA-organized proxy force, the Contras, which conducted a decade-long war of sabotage and terror against the people of Nicaragua in which more than 50,000 people died (Walker, 1991: 8). An increase in defense spending of 43 percent between 1980 and 1986 reduced the government's capacity to support its social welfare programs (Fitzgerald, 1987). As a result, health and social programs, house and school construction, the development of water and energy resources, and subsidies for basic grain production were all suspended. Moreover, the United States used its political leverage to ensure that international lending agencies gave no new loans to Nicaragua. In the decade following the Sandinista victory, the gross national product (GNP) per capita averaged US$635.56 (BCN, 2009: 3-5). In 1989, however, GNP per capita was US$252.3, the lowest since

Government Partisanship and Human Well-Being

This paper shows that the partisan composition of government is strongly related to the well-being of citizens, measured by the reported level of life satisfaction and suicide rates in industrial countries. Our analysis, using survey data of 14 nations between 1980 and 2002, shows that the presence of left-leaning parties in government is associated with an increase the level of individual life satisfaction. The relationship holds true even after controlling for the effects of macroeconomic variables such as gross domestic product, unemployment rates and government welfare policies. Our panel data analysis of 21 nations between 1980 and 2004 also shows that suicide rates decrease when a country experiences a shift to more left-leaning government. The increased presence of right-wing parties in government has a negligible effect on suicide rates.

The 2010 Czech and Slovak Parliamentary Elections: Red Cards to the ‘Winners’

2010 elections produced a significant change in government, and highlighted elements of stability and instability in party politics. Parties that had been permanent fixtures on the political scene for two decades fell below the threshold while newly emerged parties not only entered parliament, but went straight into government. The elections ushered in new governing coalitions of the centre-right, but in each case it was a left-leaning party that won the largest share of votes in their respective countries, ensuring that the ‘winners’ of the elections emerged as ‘losers’. Yet, although there were similarities in the elections, there were also notable differences. While in Slovakia the election was in some senses a referendum on the government in power, the existence of a caretaker, technocratic government in the Czech Republic meant no party was the incumbent. Commentators were quick to label the results ‘earthquakes’, particularly in the Czech Republic where four resignations by party leaders on election night certainly made the elections feel dramatic, although a closer look indicates that whilst the political tectonic plates moved, the tremors were on a par with the norm for postcommunist Europe.

Analyzing partisanship in Central Mexico: A geographical approach

The article explores the relevance of socioeconomic variables on partisanship in Central Mexico for the 2006 presidential election. We perform an exploratory canonical correlation analysis, a predictive binomial logit analysis and a further confirmatory set of OLS regression analyses. The analyses are based on a data set that uses electoral results as well as census information, constructed as 1.6 km (one mile) radii GIS neighborhoods, which allow for the integration of electoral and census geographies. The results suggest that income and education do not always influence party preferences in the same direction. In particular in the case of the vote for the left leaning party, these two variables have contradicting effects.

Partisanship versus Institutions as Determinants of Property Rights: Firm-Level Evidence

Property rights are essential to economic development but vary with the political environment. We develop and test the claim that government partisanship influences the security of business firms’ property rights: the perceived security of property rights increases when right-wing parties take power and declines with the election of left-leaning parties. Unlike research that uses country-level aggregates to draw inferences about the determinants of secure property rights, we analyze survey responses of over 7,400 firm owners from 73 countries using a novel difference-in-differences approach. We find that the political partisanship of the government in power strongly affects individual perceptions of property rights: firm owners are more likely to perceive that their property rights are secure under right-leaning governments. Our results are robust to firm- and country-level economic performance as well as controls for political institutions that might induce more stability to property rights, such as the number of checks and balances (veto players) in a system. Overall, our results indicate that business owners’ beliefs about the security of property rights are highly responsive to changes in government partisanship.

Intimacy Appeals in Israeli Televised Political Advertising

Sparse literature exists on the topic of intimacy appeals in political advertising, so in this study Horton and Wohl's para-social theory was applied to explain the “relationship” in Israel between television performers (politicians) and spectators (voters) through the intimacy concept. Altogether, 442 political ads from two Israeli election campaigns (1996 and 1999) were analyzed to test three hypotheses on the use of intimacy appeals across campaigns and political parties. The intimacy appeal measure consisted of five intimacy techniques and was thus characterized as a macro-level variable. These techniques appear in the codebook as five questions that examine whether the spots present words of intimacy, intimate situations, families of politicians, nonverbal expressions, and children. The results indicate that intimacy appeals in political spots are quite popular. Religious and left-leaning parties tended to use intimacy appeals significantly more than nonreligious and right-leaning parties. We conclude that politicians indeed use the same intimacy strategies and techniques as other television performers do; therefore, para-social theory accords with the concept of intimacy in political advertising as much as in other communication settings.

Stock market political cycles in a small, two-party democracy

Real stock market returns in New Zealand are lower when the left-leaning Labour party is in power than under National party governments, in contrast to the USA where returns are higher under Democratic presidents than under right-leaning Republicans. The difference in real stock market returns between National and Labour is not reversed even when account is taken of the effect of the US political cycle and returns on New Zealand. The results of the study therefore suggest that the presidential puzzle does not transfer directly to other countries with two similar party democracies.

Smoke in your eyes: the struggle over tobacco control in the European Union

Throughout the decades, the European Commission has attempted to expand its regulatory authority beyond the mandate specified by the treaties.Between 1986 and 2002, the Commission struggled to expand its reach to public health by targeting tobacco advertising. Preparations for a directive lasted eight years. The European Court of Justice then struck down that directive in 2000. A weaker version was passed in 2002. What can explain such troubled history? In past attempts at expansion, the Commission could rely on advocacy groups to pressure hesitant member states. In this case, the Commission fell into a classic intergovernmental trap: countries took positions that directly reflected the "fit'between the Commission's proposals and existing domestic approaches to tobacco. Partial success in 2002 came only because of transnational shifts in moral attitudes towards tobacco and the ascendancy of left-leaning political parties in key countries. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of the findings for future Commission initiatives.

The Future of Social Democracy: Views of Leaders from around the World

Does 'Left of Centre' Necessarily Mean Political Marginalisation? It began to seem so with the steady rise of the Right over the past 25 years. Recently, however, there has been a turnaround. Over the last two years, social democratic parties have been elected to government in Britain, France, and Germany. They now control government alone, or in coalition with other left-leaning parties, in thirteen of the fifteen states of the European Economic Community. This kind of global movement requires global communication. Political scientist Peter Russell has heeded the demand by bringing together ten former leaders of social democratic parties and governments from four continents to express their views on the agenda of social democracy for the next century. Whatever the trends in political power, one thing remains consistent: the Left's capacity for critical self-reflection. Having emerged from the trenches of politics, the essayists in this collection are remarkably open, prescient, and nimble. With realistic optimism, they accept the existing market economy and inescapable globalization, but challenge neo-liberalism's absolute faith in market solutions, and present a strong case for humane public intervention to ensure that increases in wealth are directed to fulfilling the highest potential for all humankind. The result of this unprecedented meeting of minds inspired contributor Ed Broadbent, former national leader of the Canada's New Democratic Party, to organize a meeting of these minds. On November 20th, 1999, a major conference to launch the ideas and bring together these eminent figures was held at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. The conference marked a turning point inthe evolution of democratic socialism; neither friend nor foe of social democracy can afford to be without this book.