Left-wing Coalition Research Articles

Norwegian Public Health Policy: Revitalization of the Social Democratic Welfare State?

Norway is part of the so-called social democratic welfare state model, which is characterized by its emphasis on solidarity and redistribution among social groups. The concepts of upstream and downstream policy measures may be useful to characterize different approaches to public health policies: upstream measures would be structural measures, in line with the social democratic welfare state model, while downstream measures would be more targeted at individuals or groups at some sort of risk. The aim of this article is to analyze national policies in Norway and how these may be characterized in terms of upstream and downstream factors. Health promotion and public health policies have been high on the Norwegian political agenda for two decades. However, the national policy emphasis has shifted between strategies aimed at individuals and structural strategies--that is, between downstream and upstream measures. Until 2003, policies included mainly downstream measures, but since then a policy shift has taken place and current policy includes an emphasis on upstream measures. This policy was strengthened after a left-wing coalition came into government in 2005. It may be argued that the present policy represents a revitalization of universal and structural measures, in line with the social democratic welfare state model.

Police and Politics in Marseille, 1936-8

This article deals with the relationship between the police and national and local politics in France during the mid-1930s. A new left-wing coalition, the Popular Front, had come to power to try to ward off a perceived fascist threat. This threat was felt very keenly in France because most of the surrounding countries were falling under far right control and France had had its own extreme-right demonstrations in 1934. It was important for the new coalition to be able to dispose of a reliable police force. In Marseille, the police was politically divided particularly between those who considered themselves apolitical and the supporters of the ‘fascist’ Sabiani and the socialist Tasso. The battle-lines were drawn partly on ideological lines but essentially around clientelistic considerations. Undoubtedly the socialists dominated the local force and the Popular Front was thus welcomed by the police rank and file, but not without some of their hopes being frustrated.

Coup (d'etat) in the Baltic States (1926, 1934): Similarities and Differences

The article compares the political upheaval that took place in Lithuania 80 years ago with those staged in Estonia and Latvia in 1934. Their similarities and differences are discussed, and their historiography is compared. All the three were classified as military-political coups that caused transition from democratic to an authoritarian ruling system without changing socio-economic system or foreign policy. The main alleviating circumstance common to the coups in the Baltics was disproportionate domination of legislative power over the executive in the period after the First World War. The alternatives of power distribution are discussed, employing the Finnish model of democratic system, according to which the parliamentary power is outweighed by the stronger institution of President. The model enabled a more flexible reaction to the danger of extremist trends or serious blows to democracy; it also contributed to the protection from damaging impact of outward influences, which was especially noticeable in Estonia. The differences in the coups in the Baltic states are connected with the differences of the time and circumstances, as socio-economic conditions were different in 1926 and 1934 (the Great Depression and its consequences in Latvia and Estonia, while only a local crisis was experienced by Lithuania). The international situation was different as well: growing activity of the right-wing radicals after fascists took power in Germany and consolidation of Stalin’s dictatorship in the USSR. The most significant difference is thought to lie in the fact that the 1926 coup was directed against the reforms that were planned or undertaken by the left-wing coalition, while the 1934 political upheavals attempted to prevent a possible takeover by the right-wing extremists, though some data can be found that by means of a coup K. Ulmanis was also interested in removing Social Democrats—the strongest political party in Latvia—from their path to power. The coups were different in their technique as well. The government was overthrown only in Lithuania, while in Latvia and Estonia those in power consolidated their position even more, i.e. being in possession of a part of the democratic power, seized it all and turned it into authoritarian. However, the democratic systems were destroyed in all the Baltic States, thus, the lessons learnt should stay in our heritage and cultural memory. Three aspects of the approach to the coup are being developed in recent Latvian historiography. Aivars Stranga (earlier partly Edgars Dunsdorf) and some other researchers mainly from the University of Latvia deny the validity of the objective prerequisites of the upheaval. Meanwhile, Karlis Ulmanis' strive for authoritarian power and the political short-sightedness of the Social Democrat leaders is being emphasized. Antonij Zunda would like to find more thorough analysis and less criticism in the evaluation of the coup. The scientists from the Institute of History of Latvia tend to focus their attention on the analysis of the prerequisites of the coup, even admitting that the coup was inevitable. Neither in Estonian nor in Lithuanian historiography can the above trends be observed; critical analysis of the coup is prevailing in both.

The 2006 Italian general elections: issues, dimensions and policy positions of political parties1

In this paper we attempt to answer the following questions: what are the dimensions that best describe the policy space in Italy in 2006? What are the policy positions of political parties on those dimensions? To answer these questions, we first provide a qualitative account of the policy issues most emphasized by the political parties in the 2006 electoral campaign. Then we examine the most salient dimensions of the policy space in the Italian context. Our description relies on quantitative estimates from expert survey data. Finally, we provide estimates of party policy positions on the left – right dimension based on computer content analysis of party manifestos. Expert survey data point out the salience of the economic policy dimension and capture a relevant change in the importance of the social dimension. Content analysis of party manifestos highlights the policy positions of two parties, UdEUR (Unione Democratici per l'EURopa) and PRC (Partito della Rifondazione Comunista), on the left – right dimension. The first one is located to the right with respect to the other members of the left-wing coalition, while the second is located very far on the left with respect to any other party. Combined with the fact that both parties are pivotal actors within the left-wing coalition (PRC both in the Chamber and the Senate and UdEUR in the Senate), such policy differences raise questions about the enforcement of coalition agreements by those parties, once in government.

Family Values and the Radio: The 1937 Radio Elections and the Miniseries France

In early 1937, French radio owners participated in elections for governing boards of their local public stations. The election, which had occurred once before in 1935 to little fanfare, became a locus of political and social debate about the state of both government and radio in France. Two parties emerged; one, Radio-Liberty, was supported by the Popular Front and had an overtly democratic and political mission and slate of candidates. The other, Radio-Family, was supported by a coalition of right-wing groups and claimed to champion French listeners and families in a nonpolitical fashion, protecting listeners from far-Left political rhetoric and immoral broadcasts. Radio-Family handily won the election, and state radio responded to the conservative message by producing radio plays like France, a miniseries that espoused a conservative vision of French history, seemingly at odds with the left-wing coalition in government.

Understanding Reform: The CASE of Poland

This report reviews the reform process in Poland in the period 1989-2001, from the formation of the first non-Communist government to the defeat of right-wing forces in the 2001 parliamentary elections and the formation of a governing left-wing coalition of social democrats and the peasants' party (both of them with roots in the Communist era). It reconstructs the sequence of reforms, assesses their relative successes, and focuses on the problem of the stagnation of the reform process at the end of the 1990s. The report is organized in six sections. The first one is an overview of the whole process of reforms and provides an outline of its social and political context. The second one states the hypotheses guiding the research undertaken for this report, at the same time grounding them in the relevant literature. The next four sections focus on selected areas-selected key components of the state machinery, stabilization and liberalization, privatization and enterprise restructuring, and pension system. The report synthesizes much earlier research on the topic. It also relies on several specially conducted interviews with individuals who played a key role in or made extensive studies of the reform process. As some of our interviewees declared a will to remain anonymous, we disclose only the names of those who gave their explicit consent.

The rise and fall of French Ecological Tax Reform: social acceptability versus political feasibility in the energy tax implementation process

The French government has a 10-year history of negotiations with industry, resulting in voluntary agreements on energy consumption. When implemented, these voluntary agreements produced very few results in terms of global reduction of greenhouse emissions (Politiques et Management Public 11(4) (1993) 47), hence the idea of an energy tax became increasingly attractive for many French decision-makers. Ecological/Environmental Tax Reform (ETR) should have been one of the major political decisions and successes of the past leftwing coalition government. Instead it became one of its major failures as the Constitutional Court decided to terminate the energy tax project in December 2000. Through insights gleaned from focus groups and interviews with business-people and decision-makers, an attempt is made to understand the failure of the energy tax project. Firstly, decision-makers lacked crucial information about public and business opinions and secondly, there were conflicts between the relevant administrations. The fuel revolts of 2000 ended any hope of resolving the conflicts and implementing ETR, which was ultimately found unconstitutional. This paper examines the political controversies raised by the ETR project and the reasons for its eventual collapse, in the hope of contributing new understanding to the body of knowledge on the political difficulties of introducing environmental policy instruments.

Asking Fathers and Employers to Volunteer: A (De)Tour of Reconciliation Policy in Germany?1

AbstractIn Germany, up until recently, the combination of weak antidiscrimination laws and the rationale of family benefits had sustained the male breadwinner–female family caretaker model as the norm in social policy arrangements and gender relations. In the context of the unification of East and West Germany and the change in government to a left‐wing coalition in the late 1990s, the biases of this deeply entrenched model have been significantly put into question. After providing a brief description of the German welfare state context, the article presents the development of reconciliation policies in two parts. First, the measures taken by the Christian Democrat/Liberal governments in the 1980s and 1990s are critically summarized. Second, we examine new steps taken by the Social Democrat/Green governments since 1998 and discuss the possible impact of the new approach on reconciliation policy. In this context, we also consider reconciliation policies at the firm level, an object of recent government attention. The article concludes with some further reflections on a gender‐balanced future between work and family obligations in the German context.

In the House of the Hanged Man

Stephan Courtois' The Black Book of Communism has generated a major debate in most countries, leading to acrimonious exchanges in the French National Assembly when Pierre Jospin unconvincingly tried to defend his Left Wing coalition against charges that his partners included apologists for mass murder. In this article a leading Polish intellectual (with extensive experience of living under a Marxist dictatorship) looks at some of the merits/demerits of the first audit of global left-wing criminality, while arguing for a discriminating re-moralisation of 'social science' approaches to these 'subjects'. This article also suggests that before we get too excited about either global warming or the rights and wrongs of the World Trade Organisation, we might dwell a little more on ideology which murdered 100 million people.

The impact of turnout on electoral choices: an econometric analysis of the French case

The rational choice theory of abstention and turnout has focused on the “paradox of [not] voting”. Because of this focalization, other important problems have been left out, notably the possibility that electoral results are dependent on the number and characteristics of those who decide to vote. This question can be dealt with only within the framework of a simultaneous equation model. Such a model is built and estimated on French data. The results are clear. Not only is interdependence strong, but it also depends on the partisan affiliation of the incumbent (increasing/decreasing participation benefits/hurts the left-wing coalition). The empirical results also confirm that voting is not just an instrumental activity but also a means for expressive and signaling actions.

Updates on Japan & Italy: The Birth of the "Second Republic"

Updates on Japan & ItalyThe Birth of the "Second Republic" Gianfranco Pasquino (bio) The results of the parliamentary elections that Italy held on 27-28 March 1994 were surprising, if not totally unexpected. To judge from the opinion polls, the victory scored by the Alliance for Freedom—a coalition comprising three conservative groups (the neofascist National Alliance [AN], Forza Italia, and the Northern League [Lega Nord]) plus a few small parties—had been in the making at least since the beginning of March. What was less widely anticipated was the coalition's conquest of a 366-seat majority in the 630-member Chamber of Deputies and a 155-seat near-majority in the 315-member Senate; the two houses together make up the first Parliament chosen under the complex new electoral laws adopted in August 1993. Under the new system, proportional representation (PR) has been largely abandoned in favor of plurality elections in single-member districts, although a quarter of the seats in each house are allocated according to party-list PR with a 4-percent threshold requirement.1 What is more, the respective showings made by each of the three coalition partners were also major surprises. In less than three months, television magnate and soccer-team owner Silvio Berlusconi made a powerful electoral machine out of his brand-new Forza Italia, whose name is borrowed from a sports cheer that means "Go Italy, Go!" Its 20-percent share of the national vote was the largest that any single party received. For a new party in an established democracy, to get one out of every five votes cast is an achievement without parallel. The National Alliance, which used to be known as the Italian Social [End Page 107] Movement and can trace its roots back to Benito Mussolini, ran few "new faces" on its ticket but almost tripled its vote share, polling an unprecedented 13.5 percent. Although appearing as the junior partner in the coalition, the Northern League appealed effectively to its strong regional base and doubled the size of its parliamentary contingent. Thanks to the peculiarities of Italy's revamped electoral system, the strongly anticentralist Lega Nord is now the largest parliamentary group within the Alliance for Freedom in both the Chamber and the Senate (see Table 1), and one of its Milanese deputies, Irene Pivetti, has been elected speaker of the lower house. Click for larger view View full resolution Table 1. —Election Results for the Chamber of Deputies The defeat of the Progressive Alliance, as the loose left-wing coalition was known, appeared as less of a surprise to most observers, though the resounding character of the defeat seems to have stunned many inside the coalition. Having won almost all the important mayoral elections held across the country in November and December 1993, and having achieved a hard-won state of agreement amongst themselves, the Progressives entertained high hopes for a sizeable national victory, to be [End Page 108] followed by governmental power at long last. Indeed, their triumph seemed like such a strong possibility that Berlusconi entered the arena precisely to prevent it. Seeking to counter those he called "Communists, former Communists, and post-Communists," he openly exploited what remained of the communist-anticommunist cleavage, once the central divide of Italian politics. The electoral results suggest that what remains of this cleavage is still quite salient, and perhaps even decisive. Coalescing for the first time in their history (in a move dictated by the logic of the new electoral system), the left-of-center elements in Italian politics nonetheless found themselves punished with their lowest vote percentage since the critical elections of April 1948. Then, early in the Cold War, the Socialists (PSI) and Communists (PCI)—united as the Popular Front—received only 31 percent of the vote; the Social Democratic Party (PSDI), a recent breakaway from the PSI, obtained 7 percent. In 1946, when they ran separately, the PSI and PCI had posted a combined total of 39 percent. Subsequently, the combined electoral strength of the various left-wing parties fluctuated around 40 percent, reaching a peak of 46 percent in 1976. In 1994, the Progressive Alliance—comprising the Democratic Party of the Left...

Chile: The Authoritarian Transition to Electoral Politics

September and early October 1986 marked the culmination of a decisive shift in Chilean politics that has enormous significance for the future evolution of the country. In a rapid redefinition of positions, the Alianza Democratica (Democratic Alliance, or AD),1 a conglomeration of seven opposition parties grouping centrist, rightist, and social democrats, broke decisively with the left-wing coalition, the Movimento Democratica Popular (Democratic Popular Movement, or MDP),2 and quickly moved toward a restatement of its tactics and relationship with the Pinochet dictatorship and his 1980 Constitution. The new line adopted by the party elite of the AD transfers the axis of opposition struggle from the streets to downtown meeting rooms and replaces the actions of hundreds of thousands of shantytown dwellers, trade unionists, women, professionals, and students with the negotiating talent of a handful of party officials. The new tactics of the AD displaces social mobilization of the masses in favor of politicalelectoral maneuvers of Chile's political class. Thus, to meet the conditions for fruitful dialogue with the armed forces, the AD has ended up renouncing past alliances with the MDP, denouncing the self-defense activity of the popular movement, disarticulating mass protests, promoting peaceful petitioning, and accepting Pinochet's 1980 Constitution and his time schedule for a plebiscite in 1989.3 What is central to the political shifts among the Chilean opposition are not merely tactical issues but basic questions about the nature and

The Chilean Socialist Party and The Popular Front 1933-41

The Socialist Party (Partido Socialista de Chile-PS) has played a major role in Chilean politics since its foundation in 1933. Its participation, along with the communists, in the recent Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende-himself a member of the PS since the 1930s and Presidential candidate in 1952, 1958, 1964 and 1970-was fundamental to the survival of the left-wing coalition that until recently ruled Chile. However, relations between the parties of the left have not always been amicable, as this study of the early history of the Socialist Party and its involvement in the Popular Front of 193641 will show. The Extraordinary Congress of April 1933 that gave birth to the Chilean Socialist Party imposed a unified party structure on a bewildering kaleidoscope of microparties, factions and splinter groups. Yet in the short space of five years this unlikely amalgam of socialist oriented groups had become a major force in national politics as well as the majority party of the Chilean left, while the Communists remained, for the time being, a 'small and powerless sect'.1 Yet, despite some startling electoral successes during the 1930s-made all the more impressive by the fact that the proportional representation system discriminated against new parties-the PS proved that it too was incapable of avoiding the factionalism, compromises and debilitating schisms that habitually plagued the 'traditional' parties.2 Although a self-proclaimed doctrinary and revolutionary party favouring profound social and economic change, the PS in fact displayed a surprising willingness to become involved in the day-to-day politicking and scramble for office-holding characteristic of Chilean parties. Socialist ideas have a long history in Chile but, in contrast to the