Main Parties Research Articles

Virtual social capital: features of network and gaming resources in the development of cognitive and educational activities of high school students

Introduction. In the context of digitalization of education, the information and educational environment is actively developing, including formal corporate information resources and communication networks, as well as informal (non-corporate) interaction networks, whose function is performed by popular social networks and instant messengers. The digitalization of education is becoming an important factor in the formation of virtual interaction between the main parties of the educational process, namely, students, their parents and teachers. Virtual social capital is being formed as one of the ways to maintain, develop and structure human social ties in the information society. The purpose of this article is to study the features of the use of social network resources for solving cognitive and educational problems by high school students. Materials and methods: 1) handout survey for 358 students of grades 9-11 of secondary schools, lyceums and gymnasiums in the city of Kirov (Russian Federation); 2) secondary analysis of data from empirical studies on this issue (descriptive analysis). Results. The high involvement of teachers and high school students in popular social networks has been shown: up to 98% of high school students have their personal accounts, every fifth teacher uses social networks for work. Every day, teenagers spend 1 to 3 hours on social networks, regardless of their grade (χ2=3.5, df=6, р=0.74), 1 to 2 hours playing online games. 70% of high school students are subscribed to public pages that help to do homework, one third, to popular science public pages. High school students noted that thanks to computer games they improve their skills in mastering a foreign language, knowledge of basic subjects, and in every tenth case, they developed a desire for self-knowledge. Conclusion. The study showed that virtual social networks and online games perform important auxiliary functions, complementing the information and educational environment of the student: in addition to the communicative and leisure functions, they also perform organizational and information search functions. Social networks are becoming an important part of the virtual social capital of contemporary schoolchildren, as well as other parties to the educational process.

Transformational Leadership and Conflict Management in Zanzibar

Zanzibar has had a turbulent political history for more than half a century, from the time of nationalist struggles in the 1950s. The major bone of contestation has revolved around the politics of identity with its resultant long-standing political conflict. In November 2009, the then President of Zanzibar, Amani Abeid Karume from Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), and the Civic United Front (CUF) Secretary-General, Seif Shariff Hamad met and declared their commitment in public to end the long-standing political conflict between the two main political parties on the islands. This article seeks to explain the process of reconciliation in Zanzibar with specific reference to the role of leadership in transformational change. The study was conducted between March 2015 and February 2017, involving two main data collection methods: in-depth interviews and documentary reviews. Interviews were conducted with politicians, government functionaries, academics, journalists, and leaders of civil society organizations. The study found that the only substantive achievements that were realized in the short run were power-sharing under the Government of National Unity (GNU) and some changes in attitudes among some of the key political actors, which, to a certain degree, amounted to a discourse switch from a hostile political attitude based on zero-sum politics to the recognition of the need for cooperation across party lines. The uniqueness of the power-sharing arrangement in Zanzibar was that the system was entrenched in the constitution. The constitution was negotiated and established before the election. The theory of transformational change suggests that transformational leaders tend to have a strong personal attachment to their missions. Their absence in the course of implementation may sometimes negatively impact the transformation process, even in the context where the mission has been translated within the legal and constitutional framework. The case of Zanzibar indicates a pressing need for deepening the power-sharing deal so that it becomes people-centered rather than a mere elite project entrenched in partisan politics.

Ranked-Choice Voting and the Potential for Improved Electoral Performance of Third-Party Candidates in America

Proponents of ranked-choice voting highlight a number of arguments for why such an approach to elections should be adopted. One major argument is that ranked-choice voting will encourage voters to support more third-party or independent candidates and break the electoral stranglehold of the two main parties in America. Considering approximately two-thirds of Americans want a third major party this argument may prove appealing to American voters, but there is currently no empirical evidence to support such claims. In this project, we explore a theory of why ranked-choice voting may increase voter support for third-party or independent candidates and test the argument that ranked-choice voting (RCV) will improve the fortunes of third-party candidates using a survey experiment. We find significant support for the claim that ranked-choice voting increases support for third-party candidates.

Disability policy and UK political parties: absent, present or absent-present citizens?

In his study of disability and policy making in Canada, Michael Prince conceptualised the idea of ‘absent citizens’ to describe how people with disabilities were marginalised in the political process and disability policy treated in a piecemeal fashion. This article examines whether disabled people in the UK also constitute absent citizens by analysing the election manifestos produced by the two main parties over the past decade. The research finds an asymmetry in the parties’ attention to disability policy from 2017 onwards when disabled people were present as part of the wider critique of the Conservative’s austerity agenda. Conversely, disabled people constituted a sort absent-presence for the Conservatives, as they were subjected to policies which disproportionately affected them, yet this was not made explicit. Finally, there is evidence to suggest a similar piecemeal approach to disability policy, but it would be difficult to frame disabled people as totally absent citizens. Points of interest Disabled people in the UK have been disproportionately affected by the austerity politics of the past decade, but UK political parties have not always recognised or responded to disability inequality. This paper looks at disability policy pledges contained in UK political party manifestos since 2010. This paper finds a lack of attention paid to disability policy in 2010 and 2015 but an increased number of disability policies in Labour’s manifestos in 2017 and 2019. This paper argues that although disabled people are absent from earlier Conservative manifestos they were subjected to policies that negatively affected them, making disabled people simultaneously absent and present. Finally, this paper also argues that the approach of the political parties to disability policy can best be described as piecemeal.

The Religions Zionist Sector at Bay

In the last decades Religious Zionism moved from the margins to the center of Israeli society and politics. Members of this sector (RZS) are located today in top positions in Israeli politics, businesses, and among professional elites, academia, and the military, gaining growing influence over the national decision-making processes and policies. No wonder, then, that public opinion polls indicate that the members of the RZS are the most satisfied and optimistic in Israel today. The fact that the RZS is positioned mostly on one side of the political spectrum (Right), the tight interrelations within this sector and its widening periphery have further increased its national impact. It is argued here that this is a critical development in Israeli politics as this sector’s members, and in particular those voting for the RZS parties, show relatively low commitment to core democratic values together with a clear preference for the Jewish aspect over the democratic aspect of the state of Israel. Furthermore, whereas in the past the RZS was politically represented by one main party (with some splinter groups coming and going), in the 2021 elections two parties (Yamina and the Religious Zionist Party (RZP)) collided head-on. For the first time each of these parties, the first more modernist and the second more fundamentalist, claimed to be the only authentic representative of this sector. The competition between them intensified when the election results showed that each of the two had gained the same number of seats in the Knesset, with the leader of Yamina unexpectedly becoming the new Israeli prime minister. It is argued here that the future balance of power between these two parties and their respective constituencies will determine the future of the RZS as a whole—whether it will establish itself as a pivotal actor in Israeli politics or remain at the margins.

Climate change: Will the parties unite or divide?

Climate change: Will the parties unite or divide?

The issue content of party politics in Ireland: a new perspective on the Irish party system and its development

ABSTRACT The Irish party system has been exceptional both for the weakness of its left-right conflict and for its long-run stability. How then can party competition on policy, and particularly competition between the main parties, be characterised? This study examines the Irish party system from an issue competition perspective, examining the party system agenda and asking whether Irish party competition is marked by differences in issue focus. New data from Irish party manifestos (1981–2020) coded within the framework of the Comparative Agendas Project show that rather than competing by focusing on different issues, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s issue focus is very similar and has moved in parallel over time. Nor is a distinct focus on new issues evident in Sinn Féin’s offering as they have emerged as a major party. Moreover, it finds that ‘new politics’ issues have remained marginal and it examines how this has occurred using the ‘crucial case’ of environmental policy. While differences in issue focus do not help us to distinguish the main parties, the politics of competence continues to have an important role and positional politics may be coming to the fore.

Presidential politics of constitutional amendment in Francophone Africa: The case of Senegal

Abstract The paper is devoted to the role of the head of state in initiating and implementing constitutional reforms in Senegal. This country can legitimately be regarded as one of the few examples of a relatively successful democratization process in Africa, as evidenced, among other things, by the lack of military coups leading to the loss of power by civilian governments, as well as by two democratic transfers of power (in 2000–2001 and 2012), after which the main opposition parties gained the presidency and the majority of parliamentary seats. Both these fundamental political transformations generated important constitutional changes (for example, the adoption of the current Constitution of 2001, or the constitutional modifications of 2016 and 2019) that have influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, the position of the presidency in Senegalese systems of government. The author analyses their significance for the functioning of contemporary political institutions in the broader context set by the politics of constitutional amendment which was conducted by previous presidents of this country. The main goal of the paper is to examine to what extent the constitutional modifications introduced before and after the adoption of the 2001 Constitution were designed to contribute to the beginning or consolidation of pro-democratic trends, and to what extent they were created to strengthen the position of an incumbent president himself, leading to a political imbalance and regress in the democratization process. The author argues that the constitutional modifications adopted over the years have often gone in two opposite directions, influencing the efficiency and durability of Senegalese institutional structures.

Partager la chambre ibérique dans la « maison commune » ? Le Parti communiste portugais et le Parti communiste d’Espagne dans une Europe en mutation, 1985-1994

The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) evolved from divergence to convergence in the face of European integration between 1985 and 1994. Both parties started from opposite positions since the times of the struggle against the dictatorships of Salazar and Franco, when the PCP aligned itself with the Moscow orthodox line while the PCE opted for Eurocommunist heterodoxy. Gorbachev’s theses on the “common European house”, perestroika, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War forced the two Iberian communist parties to position themselves before vertiginous changes that also had their translation in European construction. The changes in the international relations, the form that European construction took with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, and the anti-capitalist and third-world turn to the left that the PCE gave as of 1988 facilitated a convergence with the PCP that resulted in cooperation between both in the European Parliament. This article analyses the evolution of the ideological positions and the tactical decisions of two main Iberian communist parties through documents, press, speeches, statements, parliamentary debates of both organizations and, when possible, their historical archives.

Thailand in 2021

In 2021, COVID-19 spread like wildfire throughout Thailand, with the government being routinely accused of mismanagement and facing two censures in parliament as a result. The military-aligned government also faced continuing protests against its rule. As the year progressed, the protests became more violent and spread to the peripheral regions of the country. Combined with the economic impact of the pandemic on the tourist sector, cracks are beginning to appear in the multi-party coalition. Support from the armed forces may also be waning, and there have been rumors of another coup. Nevertheless, imports and exports increased throughout 2021, and the opening of the country to 63 low-risk countries in November promises to ease the pressure on the government. The Thai parliament also approved a measure to reform the electoral system back to the one used in the 1997 constitution, under which the main opposition party, Pheu Thai, performed so well. Another election seems imminent, but it remains to be seen whether the electorate responds more to the intimidation, increasing support for the government’s largest party, the military-aligned Palang Pracharat—or to the student demands for constitutional reform, increasing support for opposition parties.

The French Socialist Party in 2017–2021: adaptation to the new situation

For the first time in the Belarusian research literature, the activities of the French Socialist Party (FSP) to overcome the most severe ideological and political crisis that clearly manifested itself in the 2017 elections is examined. The author shows the results of the internal party struggle on the strategy of restoring the party’s position in the political life of the country. In the article the changes in the ideology are characterised and the degree of renewal of the party doctrine is determined, the features of the activity of the FSP in the role of the opposition party are established, the efforts of socialists to rally the left forces are shown, the specifics of the role of the FSP in political life and the left political camp of France are established. It is concluded that the FSP refused a deep revision of ideology and political strategy and kept the ideological and political identity of the left government party, its authorities managed to avoid transformation to a micro-party, but they were unable to restore the former role of the main party of the left political camp and one of the two leading parties in the country.

The ‘myth of moderation’ following the Arab Uprisings: polarization in Tunisia and Egypt’s founding elections

ABSTRACT From the actor-centric perspective of party politics, it is widely held that the two transitional outcomes observed in Tunisia and Egypt are the result of the different degree of polarization across the two party systems. Through a quantitative text analysis of the party manifestos of the main transitional parties in Tunisia and Egypt, this contribution shows that the end result of the two transitional experiences has actually little to do with polarization and it is rather due to the way political parties structured political competition during the founding elections.

Parents' Perspectives on Healthy Lifestyle Practices for Special Need Students

This study was designed to examine the difference between healthy lifestyle in terms of balanced diet, physical exercises, emotional and self management among special need students in rural and urban areas. This study is conducted quantitatively by using the questionnaires that are valid and reliable. These questionnaires were adapted from the Healthy Lifestyle Instrument. The sample size of 40 parents from Cheras, Kuala Lumpur were participated for the urban area, while another size of 40 parents from Sabak Bernam, Selangor were participated on behalf of the rural area. Google form was used as the platform of the questionnaires and were distributed accordingly online. Inference analysis was used to study the research questions by using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPPS) version 23.0. The analysis showed there was no significance in the difference between special need students in urban area and rural area towards their healthy lifestyle based from the three aspects. As a result, the main party should be obligated in adding healthy lifestyle practices among special need students in both urban and rural areas.

The Emergence of the Actively Managed ETF

Since the first exchange-traded fund began trading in 1993, the ETF form has attracted enormous investment flows. However, this triumph of the ETF has been overwhelmingly limited the world of passive investment. Due to a mix of recent market innovation and regulatory change, this state of affairs is changing today. As I explain in this Article, there is much reason to believe that the actively managed ETF is now set to emerge as a significant feature of the investment landscape. And this emergence has important implications for, among others, the main parties that play key roles in protecting investors (namely, the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as investment intermediaries).

The Effects of Political Attitudes on Affective Polarization: Survey Evidence from 165 Elections

How do individual-level political attitudes influence affective polarization on a global scale? This article contributes to the debate on the social distance of party affect by testing a set of hypotheses in 165 elections across the world. With a sample of over 170,000 voters, the results of multilevel mixed-effects regressions demonstrate that ideological radicalism, political knowledge, and external efficacy substantively affect how voters see the main political parties in electoral disputes taking place in 52 countries from 1996 to 2019. Satisfaction with democracy, however, is context-dependent; it positively influences affective polarization only when generalized democratic satisfaction is low. Furthermore, I show that these correlations remain stable regardless of the operationalization of affective polarization—that is, based on two dominant parties and weighted for multiparty competition. These findings provide robust inputs to the study of party preferences and social distance in a cross-national longitudinal perspective.

“We” in the EU: (De) legitimizing power relations and status

Abstract The article analyzes how the leaders and the candidates of the main parties in Romania built a European field of power and subject positions in the context of the 2019 European elections. We adopt the premise that the (re) positioning of these politicians towards the EU is part of their ongoing strategies of (de) legitimization. In this respect, the study focuses on how they assign themselves a “European authority” in relation to audiences through their positioning as actors in the field. On the basis of a mainly critically discursive methodological framework, we analyze a corpus consisting of electoral messages on Facebook. The research reveals the ways in which the political actors build claims, representations and positionings about the EU through naturalizing (a) symmetric relations, statuses, and symbolic power hierarchies.

The role of political parties in multi-level environmental governance in the European Union and Germany

The subject of the study is the involvement of political parties in multi-level environmental governance in the European Union, using Germany and its federal states as an example. This article describes the theoretical and practical foundations of multi-level governance. The place of European parties and their national member parties from Germany in the institutional system and decision-making process of environmental policy has been defined. For practical illustration, the climate policy guidelines of Germany’s main national parties (the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Alternative for Germany, the Free Democratic Party of Germany, the Left and the Alliance 90 / The Greens) and their European affiliations (the European People’s Party, the Party of the European Socialists, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, the European Green Party and the Party of European Left) were compared with an emphasis on the new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The unique opportunity for parties to participate in environmental policymaking at all key levels, which is not limited to parliamentary institutions has been highlighted. Appointments to environmental positions at different levels often correlate with membership of the most environmentally oriented parties, although the level of environmental involvement may differ between national parties and their European affiliations. Among other things, this has to do with participation in governing coalitions and dependence on a senior partner in them, as shown by the examples of the Bundestag and the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg. The final decision depends heavily on the unity of the coalition at federal and state level, whereas in the European Parliament there is a great differentiation of opinions, which allows even the most influential European People’s Party to be blocked from voting.

Twitter and Affective Polarisation: Following Political Leaders in Spain

ABSTRACT The present study addresses the effect of the discourse of elites on Twitter on citizens’ affective polarisation through a quasi-experiment that was embedded in a survey panel. Participants were invited to follow one of the Twitter accounts of nine candidates from the main political parties during the 2019 European Parliament electoral campaign in Spain. Experiment compliance among participants was confirmed using web-tracking data (passive metre). The results show that exposure to candidates’ Twitter accounts by self-selection does not increase affective polarisation. Although high levels of polarisation might contribute to building echo chambers, the polarising content contained in the partisan Twitter accounts has no effect on increasing affective polarisation, even among those who strongly identify with such parties. This finding confirms the so-called limited media effect hypothesis for social media.

The Past and Present of American Civilization

In this article, the author dwells on three permanent but largely transformed foundations, namely democracy, immigration, and messianism. Until the 1960s, American democracy was identical with political democracy, but in 1930s – 1960s a “welfare state” emerged in the USA. Its expansion was halted during the Reagan presidency. The main reason was that, as capitalism triumphed in many countries of the world, its mythologisation was taking place. The myth was that capitalism, freed from all shackles, would benefit everyone. The counter-trend is explained by the fact that American democracy provides obvious advantages to the upper economic strata. In the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, immigrants were assimilated into the Anglo-Saxon core. From the beginning of the twentieth century they began to blend into the melting pot. Since the 1960s, multiculturalism began to compete with the concept of the melting pot, which meant that immigrants and citizens of different racial groups existed as equals in the US. If full equality were to be realised for non-white races and ethnic groups, American civilisation would change radically. The two main parties were close in their approach to foreign policy. Both adhered to the imperial messianism inherited from the British Empire, but preserved and developed after independence in 1776. At the present stage, there is a crisis of American empire and a move away from the goal of world domination and messianism.

News sharing on Twitter reveals emergent fragmentation of media agenda and persistent polarization

News sharing on social networks reveals how information disseminates among users. This process, constrained by user preferences and social ties, plays a key role in the formation of public opinion. In this work, we used bipartite news-user networks to study the news sharing behavior of main Argentinian media outlets in Twitter. Our objective was to understand the role of political polarization in the emergence of high affinity groups with respect to news sharing. We compared results between years with and without presidential elections, and between groups of politically active and inactive users, the latter serving as a control group. The behavior of users resulted in well-differentiated communities of news articles identified by a unique distribution of media outlets. In particular, the structure of these communities revealed the dominant ideological polarization in Argentina. We also found that users formed two groups identified by their consumption of media outlets, which also displayed a bias towards the two main parties that dominate the political life in Argentina. Overall, our results consistently identified ideological polarization as a main driving force underlying Argentinian news sharing behavior in Twitter.