Main Parties Research Articles

PARTY ACTIVISTS AND PARTY PROGRAMS AT GRASSROOTS LEVEL: THE INTERTWINED EFFECT

Purpose of the study: This study explored how party activists retain their high activism with the party through their involvement with party activities. It also attempted to explore party programs at the grassroots level that helps maintain continuous grassroots support for the party. The strong symbiosis between party activists and party programs at the grassroots level was a secret formula to win elections.
 Methodology: Being qualitative in nature, this study conducted in-depth interviews with thirty - two party activists. The PAS and UMNO party activists in Terengganu were selected as units of analysis using the purposive sampling technique. The interview data were thematically analysed through the content analysis method.
 Main Findings: This study yielded that Community and Welfare programs, and Electoral Works were two impactful party programs to fish votes and maintain voters’ support at the grassroots level. On party efforts to maintain the motivation of its activists, this study found four main party programs namely internal programs, political training, involvement outside party, and joining special programs.
 Applications of this study: This study concludes that ensuring party activists at their highest level of motivation by designing various programs are equally important with organizing party programs with the voters at local levels. When party activists are highly motivated, party programs at local levels would be successfully run, while organizing party programs at the local level without the presence of highly motivated party activists would be worthless.
 Novelty/Originality of this study: Party activists are often neglected by party leaders, as much focus has been given to party manifesto, choosing winnable candidates, and encountering electoral issues. Neglecting party activists often leads to frustration, thus party programs cannot be properly organized without committed party activists.

When top-down meets bottom-up: Is there a collaborative business model for local energy storage?

As the energy transition progresses, energy storage becomes increasingly important for safeguarding a reliable energy provision. At the same time, energy storage systems are used to increase the self-consumption of decentralised generation and are expected to result in lower electricity bills for the energy prosumers. Drawing on sustainability transitions and management literature, this contribution focuses on a neighbourhood battery with the aim to explore to what extent a collaboration between a network operator and renewable energy initiatives on local energy storage could help increase the impact of the latter in the energy transition. The concept of a neighbourhood battery involves strategic decisions, and perhaps a strategic innovation, whose transformative potential depends to a large extent on the perceptions and actions of those involved. This paper explores the opportunities and constraints for a collaborative business model for the neighbourhood battery in the Netherlands, as well as the challenges and tensions that emerge for the main parties involved.The perspectives of the network operator were compared with those of renewable energy initiatives in the country, including the Energy Service Company involved in the pilot and, in parts, with the perspectives of the involved end-users. This contribution registers a misalignment of interests and expectations which complicates the deployment of the neighbourhood battery concept. Recognizing the critical role of network operators, the conditions that may enable the emergence of collaborative business models for local energy storage are also discussed.

Институт местного референдума в странах Восточной Европы: организация и правовое регулирование

This article examines the characteristic features of the institution of the local referendum in Eastern Europe. The author believes that it is very important for states, which have relatively recently embarked upon the path of democratic development, after decades of communist domination, that the traditional representative institutions are supplemented by the structures of direct democracy, which can facilitate the more effective involvement of the population in the social and political life of the state, and introduce them to modern democratic values. It’s pointed out in the article that attitudes towards the institution of the local referendum in the countries of Eastern Europe are ambiguous, and its introduction has run into a number of obstacles. This might be explained by institutional reasons, by citizens having limited interest in municipal affairs, and the absence of the tradition of citizens directly participating in the resolving of issues of governance. The institution of direct democracy has often only been introduced slowly, which is often due to resistance from the main political parties and the current political elites, who see the activation of direct democracy as a threat to their position. Nevertheless, the author stresses the important practical role of the institution of the local referendum, its ability to serve the interests of both the state as well as the citizens. Through to the institution of the referendum citizens have acquired an additional channel of participation in the political decision-making process, and this facilitates the realization of the principle of political equality and the formation of more open political power structures. The institution of the local referendum is after all an important instrument of political control on the part of the civil society that is necessary for the further development of democratic statehood in the countries of Eastern Europe.

LA EVOLUCIÓN DE LA CUESTIÓN NACIONAL Y LA IDENTIDAD ESPAÑOLA A TRAVÉS DEL PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL, 1974-1996: EL PROYECTO SOCIALISTA ESPAÑOL DE LA TRANSICIÓN DEMOCRÁTICA Y MÁS ALLÁ

El presente artículo es producto de una revisión documental que tuvo por objetivo estudiar la España planteada por el proyecto socialista de la transición, desde 1974 a 1996, a través de los programas electorales del Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) y su publicación oficial, la revista El Socialista. Se aplicó el método análisis, con la técnica de investigación de revisión documental. Se encontró que el PSOE constituye un actor clave de la historia de España por su aporte e impacto al desarrollo del conjunto de la sociedad española. Por este motivo, para entender España y su realidad, es necesario comprobar la visión del país mantenida por uno de sus principales partidos políticos. Se concluye que, a pesar del tiempo transcurrido, se mantiene la vigencia del proyecto socialista de la transición, como modelo de convivencia e integración de las distintas regiones que integran España.

De la democracia revolucionaria a la democracia posible. Trayectorias políticas y conceptuales de la democracia en la izquierda marxista chilena, c.1950-c.1990

During the twentieth century, democracy became a central concept when grounding and legitimizing political action. The Chilean Marxist Left was not alien to this phenomenon. Based on periodical, doctrinal journals, memoirs and public discourses, in this article we study the political and conceptual trajectories of democracy in the doctrinal and strategic elaboration of the main left-wing parties and movements between the 1950s and the 1980s. In that period, democracy and revolution became conceptually decoupled. While the conflictive construction and application of a transition project to socialism incorporated the democratic ideal, the 1973 defeat forced a general restructuring, marked by the choice to reconstruct a representative democracy rather than aspire to revolutionize social structures.

Cultural memory of the migrants and accepting society in Russian and abroad: conflict dimension

The goal of this article is the socio-philosophical conceptualization of memory conflicts in the migration society, as well as comparative analysis of the Russian and foreign contexts. Foreign experience was examined within the framework of the policy of assimilation and multiculturalism, as well as politics aimed at formation of transnational identities. The analysis of Russian context was conducted on the basis of determination and classification of conflictogenic factors, main parties of the conflicts, settlement strategies, and types of conflicts in the condition of internal and external migration challenges. The author leans on the constructivist approach, which suggests that perception of the past is predetermined and formed by sociocultural contexts and practices of memory and obscurity. In comparison with the foreign, Russian context demonstrates the prevalence of latent forms of conflict. Russia marks the formation of “parallel” memory communities, when the migrants and accepting society maintain a forced neutrality. If the foreign research indicate mostly status conflicts, in the Russian conditions, the migrants are oriented towards defensive type of memory conflicts. The oversea conflicts of memory mark the clash of modernism and traditionalism, while Russia demonstrated the clash of different versions of traditionalism.

Crossing the left-right party divide? Understanding the electoral success of the Czech Pirate Party in the 2017 parliamentary elections

In the 2017 Czech parliamentary election, the Czech Pirate Party (Pirates) gained 10.79% of the votes – an unprecedented success, compared to most of the pirate parties across Europe. However, as their electoral gain varies widely across the Czech Republic’s territory, this article analyses all (more than 6000) Czech municipalities in the elections of 2010, 2013, and 2017 to explain this variation. Overall, the success of the Pirates was driven especially by obtaining much more support in larger municipalities with younger populations (although not only those aged 18–24 but also older ones), lower unemployment, higher turnout, and lower support for leftist parties. Thus, from a spatial perspective, the patterns of Pirate voting largely resembled long-term spatial support for Czech rightist parties and we can conclude that the Pirates made considerable inroads to regions which had historically been strongholds of the Civic Democratic Party, as the former main party of the right, but also strongholds of minor right-wing (‘liberal centre’) parties of the 1990s and early 2000s. Success of the Pirates thus was based especially on votes from municipalities located in more developed areas, where the Pirates received many more votes than in structurally disadvantaged regions.

The Sunset of Social Democracy in East-Central Europe: Case Study of Hungary

The article analyzes the reasons of the long-term decay of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) since 2010. The party ruled the country between 1994–1998 and 2002–2010 and was one of the strongest and most institutionalized political forces not only in Hungary but in the whole East-Central Europe. However, during the parliamentary elections in 2010, it suffered a crushing defeat by their main political opponents – “Fidesz,” led by V. Orbán. The organizational development of these two parties is compared. Collected evidence reveal the significance of centralized party rule and efforts to organize civil society in shaping the intra-competition of the main Hungarian political parties.

Topical Focus of Political Campaigns and its Impact: Findings from Politicians' Hashtag Use during the 2019 Indian Elections

We studied the topical preferences of social media campaigns of India's two main political parties by examining the tweets of 7382 politicians during the key phase of campaigning between Jan - May of 2019 in the run up to the 2019 general election. First, we compare the use of self-promotion and opponent attack, and their respective success online by categorizing 1208 most commonly used hashtags accordingly into the two categories. Second, we classify the tweets applying a qualitative typology to hashtags on the subjects of nationalism, corruption, religion and development. We find that the ruling BJP tended to promote itself over attacking the opposition whereas the main challenger INC was more likely to attack than promote itself. Moreover, while the INC gets more retweets on average, the BJP dominates Twitter's trends by flooding the online space with large numbers of tweets. We consider the implications of our findings hold for political communication strategies in democracies across the world.

Partisan search behavior and Google results in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections

ABSTRACT This research shows that members of different ideological groups in the United States can use different search terms when looking for information about political candidates, but that difference is not enough to yield divergent search results on Google. Search engines are central in information seeking during elections, and have important implications for the distribution of information and, by extension, for democratic society. Using a method involving surveys, qualitative coding, and quantitative analysis of search terms and search results, we show that the sources of information that are returned by Google for both liberal and conservative search terms are strongly correlated. We collected search terms from people with different ideological positions about Senate candidates in the 2018 midterm election from the two main parties in the U.S., in three large and politically distinct states: California, Ohio, and Texas. We then used those search terms to scrape web results and analyze them. Our analysis shows that, in terms of the differences arising from individual search term choices, Google results exhibit a mainstreaming effect that partially neutralizes differentiation of search behaviors, by providing a set of common results, even to dissimilar searches. Based on this analysis, this article offers two main contributions: first, in the development of a method for determining group-level differences based on search input bias; and second, in demonstrating how search engines respond to diverse information seeking behavior and whether that may have implications for public discourse.

Investigating the Impact of Various Risk Factors on Victims of Traffic Accidents

In this study, our goal was to determine the impact of various risk factors on traffic accidents in the city of Shenyang, China, and to discuss the various common factors that influence pedestrian and non-motor vehicle accidents. A total of 1227 traffic accidents from 2015 to 2017 were analyzed, of which, 733 were accidents involving pedestrians and 494 were non-motor vehicle accidents. Among these traffic accidents, pedestrians and non-motor vehicle users had either minor or no responsibility. Sixteen influencing factors, including main responsible party attributes, pedestrian/non-motor vehicle user attributes, time attributes, space attributes, and environmental attributes were analyzed with regards to their impact on accidents using the binary logistic regression model (BLR) and the classification and regression tree analysis model (CART). Age, administrative division, and time of year were the three most common factors for pedestrian and non-motor vehicle accidents. For pedestrian accidents, the personal influencing factors of the main responsible party included illegal acts while driving and hit-and-run behavior. Factors affecting pedestrian and non-motor vehicle accidents also had different orders of importance.

“We Will Re-distribute Land When You Vote Us into Power…” Electoral Politics and Peasant Struggles Amidst Unresolved Land Question in Southern Malawi

The people of tea growing districts of Thyolo and Mulanje have been at constant loggerheads with estate owners for decades now. The borne of contention is that the tea estates own huge thatches of land and utilize less than 50% for plantation agriculture while the majority remain land-poor. The objective of the research was to understand the role of political parties in supporting or resisting land reform initiatives in Thyolo and Mulanje, Malawi. Political Parties in Malawi since 1994 have promised to redistribute land to peasants, but little action has been taken on the same. Using qualitative research approach, data was collected from peasants, local leaders, political parties and other secondary sources. Four main political party manifestos were studied: Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Malawi Congress Party (MCP), United Transformation Movement (UTM); and United Democratic Front UDF). The study finds out that political parties in Malawi uses the land struggle to woo votes from the electorates; promise them land redistribution and after they get into power the issue is forgotten. Party Manifestos from 1994 to 2019 have either included the issue in their blueprint, or omitted entirely. The study finds out that during the 2019 tripartite elections, no single party outlined what procedure it would use to free up land in the estate lands. This paper suggests that a successful reform in the area starts with political will within the ruling party, with governing institutions having a carefully mapped plan on how they would go about land reform; rather than mere propaganda on the matter. DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-5-08 Publication date: May 31 st 2020

Peasant Parties in Eastern Europe and Their Populist Moment


 
 
 This article examines the actions and discourses of the main peasant parties and movements in Romania, Poland and Bulgaria during the inter-war period. Ideologically and discursively, peasant parties were a heterogeneous amalgamate of anarchist, Marxist, socialist and liberal (and sometimes even conservative or nationalist) ideas. In defining the populism as a repertoire of actions and/or discourses, rather than the unchanging essence of a party, it shows that the three agrarian parties have known a “populist moment”, i.e. temporarily taking recourse to claims of representing “the people” and extra-parliamentary action. While the Bulgarian peasant party never resorted to populist actions, the Romanian agrarian party had its moment of populism without a significant shift in rhetoric and the Polish peasant party never resorted to populism neither in either rhetoric or actions.
 
 

El discurso pseudopolítico de la segunda pantalla. #ElDebateEnRTVE visto a través de sus prosumers

Introducción: Nuestro objeto de análisis es la conversación mantenida en Twitter en uno de los debates electorales de las elecciones generales del 28 de abril: el que tuvo lugar el 22 de abril en Televisión Española entre los candidatos de los cuatro principales partidos políticos: PP, PSOE, UP y Cs. Metodología: La metodología empleada en el trabajo es el análisis del discurso de base pragmática, en la que se emplean técnicas cuantitativas y cualitativas de análisis. Para este, se seleccionaron de forma aleatoria 1000 tuits de entre los más populares que habían empleado los hashtags promocionales del debate: #ElDebateEnRTVE y #ELDEBATEenRTVE. Resultados: Los resultados indican que los cuatro partidos analizados participaron en el debate paralelo generado en Twitter y que, si bien la mayor parte de las intervenciones en la segunda pantalla fueron de ataque, los partidos prefirieron sobre todo elogiar a su candidato, a excepción de Ciudadanos, que optó por el ataque al PSOE y luego por el elogio propio. Discusión y conclusiones: En cuanto a los temas tratados fueron no tanto políticos sino pseudopolíticos. Los memes, mensajes irónicos y bromas ocuparon un espacio reducido en esta conversación transmediática.

La percepción de los debates como factor de decisión en el comportamiento electoral en las Elecciones Generales de abril de 2019

Introducción: En el presente trabajo se analizan los efectos de los debates electorales sobre las percepciones de los ciudadanos acerca de los candidatos y sobre el voto a los principales partidos en las Elecciones Generales de abril de 2019. Metodología: Análisis descriptivo y modelos lineales generalizados con link logit para explicar el voto, mediante el empleo del Estudio nº 3248 Postelectoral Elecciones Generales, 2019 elaborado por el Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS). Resultados: Los modelos muestran que la percepción acerca de qué candidato resultó el más convincente en los debates electores influye significativamente en el voto. Discusión y conclusiones: Los debates electorales tienen un efecto principalmente de refuerzo tanto del voto como de los liderazgos de los participantes en estos.

Electoral Reform or Not: Party Interests Defeated Principled Arguments in the Late Nineteenth Century and Have Characterised the UK’s Electoral System Since

Conti’s Parliament the Mirror of the Nation is an excellent, thorough exploration and explication of nineteenth-century debates over electoral reform as members of Britain’s intellectual elite wrestled with the issue of how to create a system that would ensure that all opinions were advanced in the country’s Parliament without an expansion of the franchise, meaning that the House of Commons was overwhelmed by the working class. A superb contribution to intellectual history, however, it makes little contact with the ‘real world’ of politics, where the short-term interests of the dominant political parties led to pragmatic rather than idealistic resolution to that issue. That resolution, negotiated by leading politicians from the two main parties, led to an electoral reform in 1885 based on single-member, territorially based constituencies that, with modifications only, remains in place today, generating general election results that are both disproportional and biased as a consequence of the system’s geographical construction

Policy Framing and Party Competition: The Italian Political Debate on Local Public Services since the Economic Crisis

In recent years many European governments reacted to the economic crisis introducing austerity measures that particularly affected Local Public Services (LPSs) through outsourcing, privatization and marketization. While several studies have analysed the logics of instruments choice also in this policy sector, the political discourses and policy frames that accompanied the tools selection for the management of LPSs in the last years have been paid limited attention in the scholarly literature. Starting from these premises, the article analyses the debate on LPSs that has developed in Italy since 2008, reconstructing the frames used by the main parties through the analysis of both electoral manifestos and press reviews of articles relevant to LPSs in three newspapers. Particular attention is paid to the 2011 referendum against the privatization of LPSs and the 2018 referendum on local public transportation management in Rome. The paper concludes that the economic crisis and subsequent transformations of party politics and participation encouraged a politicization of the issues around local public services, as well as a shift in the related policy discourse. The parties' choices and policy frames were guided mainly by a strategic logic defined in relation to the salience of the LPS issue and the competitive context.

Identity, ideology, and personality: Examining moderators of affective polarization in New Zealand

Affective polarization (i.e., differences in evaluations of the in-party and out-party) has important implications for political outcomes including civic engagement and partisan-motivated attitudes and behaviours. In this study, we add to the burgeoning literature on affective polarization by examining moderators of the effect of in-party support on out-party opposition across the three main political parties in New Zealand. Using a large national probability sample of adults (N = 19,078), we assessed the effects of social demographics, Big-Five personality traits, liberal-conservative ideology, political identity centrality, and weekly news exposure on the relationship between in-party and out-party support. Results show political identity centrality is the strongest and most consistent moderator. The effects of some other moderators (e.g., personality, news exposure) are party-specific.

The anti-establishment parties at the helm: From great hopes to failure and a limited resurrection

ABSTRACT2019 was a year of many crucial events for the Italian government. The government of the Five-star Movement (M5S) and the League, the two anti-establishment parties, the winners of the 2018 elections, shifted progressively from an active ‘reforming mode’, to increasingly open competition between its component parties for voters’ support at the European elections, and to policy stalemate. The European elections changed drastically the electoral balance between the two anti-establishment parties – the M5S and the League – and opened the way to a period of open conflict between the main government actors. In the summer, the Government was brought to an end by an abrupt internal crisis and gave way to a new government supported by a different coalition. Matteo Salvini’s attempt to force early elections failed, and unexpectedly the M5S showed that in spite of internal problems it could build alliances first with the Right and then with the Left. Giuseppe Conte, a rather obscure outsider, promoted in 2018 for lack of alternatives to the position of Prime Minister, having governed in the first part of 2019 under the shadow of his two deputy-prime ministers, managed to emerge as the effective head of a new government and gain greater visibility. The uneasy alliance between an anti-establishment party (the M5S) resisting its dramatic decline, the main establishment party (the Democratic Party) and the new party (Italia Viva) of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (in search of revenge) provides little hope, however, for a new period of stable government.

Interparty and Intraparty Factionalism in Cambodian Politics

Cambodia’s hegemonic party system that emerged after the violent removal of First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh early in July 1997 has now given way to a one-party state, which still remains prone to tension and instability. The party system has become less factionalised and can be characterised as moving from high to medium factionalism. This development resulted from the growing domination of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the weakening of the opposition parties, such as National United Front for an Independent, Netural, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia, which splintered and become almost irrelevant in Cambodian politics. The Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) emerged as the main opposition party after the 2013 election but was then banned from competing in the 2018 election. Although the CNRP remains united by its anti-CPP position, it is still fractured along political lines between two former opposition parties – the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party. Historical institutionalism sheds some new light on the variation of political developments among political parties and within them, but does not supplant the fact that party leaders are rational to the extent that they select strategies in pursuit of their interests defined as power or security under specific institutional constraints or the lack thereof.