Major Political Parties Research Articles

Landed Nation: Land Reform and Ethnic Diversity in the Interwar Polish Parliament

AbstractThis article investigates the ethnic entanglements of the land reform debate in the first Polish Diet (1919–1922). Against the backdrop of global comparative studies, interwar Poland, haunted by land hunger, rural poverty, and high concentration of land ownership, is an odd case. Despite conditions conducive to far-reaching land reforms, that is, a high level of inter-elite conflict and semiautocratic order, the Polish reform was very moderate, if not disappointing. Unpacking the series of moves in the debate and the sequence of hairbreadth voting on its shape, I ask why, despite broad acceptance of the reform across the political spectrum, it could not attract enough support to be swiftly executed. The ethnic composition of the country triggered controversies concerning German farmers and peasants of the ethnically diversified eastern borderlands. Major political parties shared tacit Polish nationalism, but the history of political alignments made the nationalist politicians susceptible to the lobbying of the landed elite and estranged them from peasant parties. The land holdings of nobles were considered a bulwark of the nation, which effectively blocked the alternative idea of integrating the ethnic minorities via land ownership.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION: FOLLOWING OF FACEBOOK AND TWITTER CONTENTS FLOATED BY PAKISTANI POLITICAL PARTIES FROM 1ST JUNE – 30TH JUNE 2021

Social media is a direct source of communication that tries to connect people across the globe through text messages, video, and audio calling. In Pakistan, the use of social media has exponentially increased during the last decade. More people have access to social media and smart phones. Some network services in Pakistan are even providing free services to some social media platforms such as Facebook. This has made social media a leading channel through which politicians reach the public. They do it for the purpose of influencing constituents’ opinions, recruiting volunteers and donors, and mobilizing voters. This study is an attempt in line with the same proposition. The current research makes use of contents analysis techniques. The study explores how major political parties; Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN), Pakistan People Party (PPP) and Pakistan Tehreek – E- Insaaf (PTI) and their respective leaders reach; Shehbaz Sharif, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Imran Khan reach the public through their social media platforms to convey their messages. Political contents in the form of Facebook posts and tweets of the three major Pakistani political parties and their leaders during one month period are collected. Responses to the collected posts and tweets in terms of like, share, comments and re-tweets are quantified accordingly. The number of responses to political contents of a particular party and its leaders are taken as efforts towards political mobilization of the social media users. The findings suggest Imran Khan as the better followed leader on Facebook and Twitter than Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Shehbaz Sharif, whereas, PMLN as political party was followed more than PPP and PTI. Keywords: Twitter, Facebook, Political Mobilization, Political Parties, Political Contents

Politics of Alliance in Pakistan: A Case Study of MQM (1985-1999)

The purpose of this study is to make a case study of alliance politics practiced by MQM, a major political party in Sindh, which always remained in coalition to become a part of the government. The politics of alliance formation has remained a regular feature of politics in Pakistan since its inception. Several political alliances were formed in order to achieve the goals of power politics. MQM is a political party whose political influence is limited to the urban-based population influencing Urdu speaking mohajir community. From1988 on-wards, MQM formed alliances with different political parties;however, it could not become a national-level political party. It is a qualitative based study conducted to achieve research purposes. The findings suggest that MQM's alliance politics met failure due to multiple factors such as the party's alleged involvement in violence,practicing the politics of ethnicity, and pursuing regional interests rather than national goals. Moreover, unrealistic demands from the partners, pursuance of personal agendas and dissent of the state to the party's activities However, it left deep impressions on the national political landscape.

Divisions in the Big Tent: Group Sentiments and Candidate Preferences within the Democratic Party

Work in political psychology has found that the two major political parties are sorted based on individual’s group attachments. This sorting has resulted in the Democratic Party’s electorate and elites being made up of members from various racial, religious, and social groups. Given this heterogeneity, how do social group identities impact voter preferences in the Democratic primary? Based on social identity theory, I hypothesize that an individual’s feelings toward racial or gender groups should be associated with their candidate preference in the primary election, but only when a candidate’s group identities are known. Using the 2018 American National Elections Studies (ANES) pilot and a nationally diverse survey of 2020 Democratic primary voters, I find that the strength of sentiments toward racial or gender identities is associated with candidate preference and this association is conditioned by the ability to link the candidates to racial or gender groups. This paper shows that the effects of group identity extend beyond simply sorting individuals into one of the two major parties and have the potential to create group-based divisions within the “big tent” of the Democratic Party.

The virtuous circle of participation: Female candidates and women's engagement in Korean politics

This research statistically examined the impact of female candidates on women's political engagement using Korean survey data from the 2016 general election and the 2018 local elections. Statistical testing has shown that gender gaps in electoral interest, political information, and political activities narrowed for women who lived in constituencies where major parties in important elections had nominated female candidates. In other words, the presence of prominent female candidates promotes women's political engagement. However, the effect could be reversed if female candidates were nominated only by minor parties. These analysis results imply that the nomination of female candidates by major political parties is critical to realize gender equality in political engagement.

COMMENTARY – FIRE BELL IN THE NIGHT

Abortion is an issue around the world, varying in intensity by location. In the United States, it generates enormous controversy, especially because Protestant fundamentalists have joined Roman Catholics in strenuous opposition and have essentially captured one of the two major political parties. This extended commentary essay contends that anti‐abortion arguments are flawed and that an effective anti‐abortion policy requires a harsh authoritarian, if not totalitarian, government, fueled by misogyny and disregard for human rights. Such policies force pregnant women into what must be described as a condition of slavery.

Political alliance with COVID-19: Macedonian politics and the strategic use of the pandemic

The emergence of COVID-19 in Macedonia in March 2020 overlapped with a period in which the country was run by a technical Government tasked to organize premature elections. In circumstances of highlighted inter-party conflict predating the health crisis, the newly emerged health emergency has only added to the political confrontation and the existing political crisis. COVID-19 and the resulting discourses on health crisis in this respect, I argue, have been used strategically by the political actors to make a populist advancement in the struggle over state power. Moreover, the strategic use of the COVID-19 by the two major political parties in a discourse marked by blame casting and (inter)dependence on past political misconduct indexes, and at the same time perpetuates, a larger ongoing political crisis in the country. To demonstrate the strategic use of the COVID-19 health discourse within the interparty conflict and its diagnostic potential to witness a prolonged political crisis, I will use internet data collected from the websites of the two largest Macedonian political parties in order to analyze the discursive strategies of predication and argumentation employed by the political parties.

Social movements against Hindutva: analysing their impact on the Indian state’s support for cow protection vigilantism

This paper analyses the impact of social movements on the Indian state’s support for cow protection vigilantism, which forms a key aspect of its adherence to the Hindutva ideology. Adopting Varigonda’s framework, the paper argues that the movement’s impact is determined by its collective action repertoires, politicisation of its affiliated identity and openness of state input structures. The paper tests this framework through a comparative study of two movements: the Dalit-centric post-Una and the Muslim-centric post-Dadri movements. It demonstrates how stronger action repertoires, characterised by protracted mass mobilisation; effective politicisation of the Dalit identity and its propensity towards electoral mobilisation of the Dalit populace; and open state input structures, characterised by the consistent support of major political parties, enabled the post-Una movement – unlike the post-Dadri movement – to impede state support for cow protection vigilantism.

A Partisan Pandemic: How COVID-19 Was Primed for Polarization

Americans who affiliate with both major political parties rapidly formed diverging attitudes about the COVID-19 pandemic. Matters of scientific concern have elicited partisan reactions in the past, but partisan divergence of opinion on those issues occurred over decades rather than months. We review evidence on factors that led to polarization of previous scientific issues in an effort to explain why reactions diverged so quickly this time around. We then use publicly available survey data to reveal that partisan reactions to the pandemic were closely associated with trust in public health institutions, that the association between partisanship and trust increased over time, and that the conflation of trust and partisanship appears to largely explain polarized reactions to COVID-19. We also investigate the hypothesis that conservative media use might explain polarization but find that the hypothesis is not supported by our data.

Partisan Polarization in Korea: Ideology, Perception, Affect, and Participation

While many people think that ideological conflict is one of the most serious problems in Korean society, previous studies find no strong evidence of ideological polarization. Have partisan voters been more ideologically divided over time in Korea? If not, is it just their perception on major political parties? Or, do partisans dislike each other more than before, so they look ideologically more polarized? Using the election survey data from the 17th -20th National Assembly Elections, we find that none of the three can explain the seemingly divided Korean society. As an alternative explanation, we show that the gap in political participation between partisans and nonpartisans has been greatly increasing over time. Since parties are likely to focus more on politically active voters, our finding implies that the ideological conflict is likely to worsen in the future.

Electoral System and Party Survival: The Case of Indonesian Democracy 1999-2019

Studies on party survival strongly emphasize the internal dynamics of political parties and their ability to adapt to retain voter support. This article contends that changes in electoral systems and laws, classified as an external factors, also have a significant impact. As a result of these changes, new political parties cannot register to run for office. These changes have also made small political parties with little support unable to survive in parliament. Two significant findings emerge from this case study of Indonesia’s five election cycles. First, changes in Indonesia’s electoral systems and laws have been heavily influenced by the desire of major political parties to strengthen their positions in the political arena. They raised the parliamentary threshold using their legislative authority to make it more difficult for minor political parties to send representatives to parliament. Second, critical variables in electoral systems and laws such as district magnitude, seat conversion formula, and parliamentary threshold do not independently impact party survival. As a result, at least two variables must be combined, namely district magnitude and parliamentary threshold.

Ideological Extremism and Political Participation in Japan

Abstract Do the policy preferences expressed through political participation represent the citizens as a whole? Previous studies argue that there is no ideological bias in voting participation in Japan. However, previous studies have only analyzed Japan up to 2010, and it is unclear whether ideological bias was consistently absent in voting participation in the 2010s. In the 2010s, ideological issues, such as the maintenance of nuclear power plants or the acceptance of collective self-defense, emerged in Japan, and the two major political parties, the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan, became increasingly polarized. Considering these changes, the influence of ideology on political participation may be growing. Therefore, this paper examines the relationship between people’s ideological positions and political participation using voter surveys conducted between 2001 and 2017. I find that since 2012, the more ideologically extreme Japanese voters are, the more they participate in voting. Furthermore, the same is true for other forms of participation. In general, the voices of ideologically moderate Japanese are becoming less represented by political parties and politicians.

U.S. CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION UNCERTAINTY AND STOCK MARKET VOLATILITY

This paper uses a Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to estimate the effect of uncertainty surrounding U.S. congressional elections on the level and volatility of U.S. stock market returns from 2000-2008. Uncertainty in these elections is measured using asset prices from the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM), online, real money, and online futures market where payoffs are based on real-world events including U.S. elections. This research model uses IEM futures contracts based on the control of the U.S. Senate and/or House of Representatives by either of the two major political parties in the United States. The election futures market prices are used to measure the “closeness” of upcoming election outcomes. The model results indicate that the volatility of U.S. stock market returns in the S&P 500 index is increased by uncertainty regarding which political party will control the U.S. Congress after the results of upcoming elections.

Political Parties Manifesto as an anchor for Prioritising Environmental and Climate Change Issues in Ghana: Rhetorics and Actions

Ghana's decision to uphold participatory democracy over the last two decades has led to the emergence of written public declarations of political parties' policies and intentions on a myriad of issues affecting the electorate and the country. To what extent do these declarations serve as an anchor for prioritising the environment and climate change issues which occupies an important position in global development discourse? This paper attempts to answer the question through the interpretive research paradigm. The analysis focused on manifestos of the two major political parties in Ghana. We argued that climate change has implication for national development and therefore political parties cannot outdoor its manifestos that seeks the mandate of the people without prioritising them - rationalist perspective. Our review identified that environmental and climate change issues were highlighted in the various manifestoes albeit but unsure of the extent to which these have actually been implemented following an electoral victory.

Livestreaming Election Day: Political Memory and Identity Work at Susan B. Anthony’s Gravesite

Social media platforms record and fuel the construction of memories and social identities through discursive processes of memory work—or reconstructing the past in the present—and identity work—or representing individual and group characteristics. In this article, I interrogated sites of intersection and friction between mediated memory and identity work to uncover their shared political potential. I conducted a visual discourse analysis of Facebook Live videos and Instagram photos captured at the gravesite of famed women’s suffragist Susan B. Anthony during the 2016 US presidential election. In a long-standing Election Day tradition in Rochester, NY, local women visit Anthony’s grave after casting their ballots to pay tribute to her suffrage activism. However, when the nation saw its first woman presidential candidate nominated by a major political party in 2016, the gravesite drew an unprecedented crowd. The resulting media texts both capture and shape memory and identity work as they unfold. Ultimately, I identify a collection of four discursive practices that illustrate distinct modes of interdependence between memory and identity work in the gravesite livestreams and photos: (a) representing commemoration, (b) displaying affect, (c) regulating “respect,” and (d) personalizing political imaginaries. Together, these practices illustrate how memory and identity work can spark collective sentiments, encourage political sense-making, and invite discord or social regulation. They also demonstrate how competing politics of memory and identity coincide and clash to envision participatory futures across digital and physical spaces.

The Growing Rural-Urban Political Divide and Democratic Vulnerability

Throughout American history and as recently as the early 1990s, each of the major political parties included both rural and some urban constituencies, but since then the nation has become deeply divided geographically. Rural areas have become increasingly dominated by the Republican Party and urban places by the Democratic Party. This growing rural-urban divide is fostering polarization and democratic vulnerability. We examine why this cleavage might endanger democracy, highlighting various mechanisms: the combination of long-standing political institutions that give extra leverage to sparsely populated places with a transformed party system in which one party dominates those places; growing social divergence between rural and urban areas that fosters “us” versus “them” dynamics; economic changes that make rural areas ripe for grievance politics; and party leaders willing to cater to such resentments. We present empirical evidence that this divide is threatening democracy and consider how it might be mitigated.

Political Barriers to Reform: Analysing Australia’s Legitimation of Its Guardianship Framework

AbstractThe guardianship of unaccompanied asylum-seeker children is a contentious aspect of Australian asylum-seeker law and policy. The current legislative framework for guardianship is curtailed by migration legislation and policy and is ineffective for realizing the rights of these children under international law. This paper contributes to existing scholarship on guardianship by critically examining political discourse on child asylum seekers. It combines the discourse-historical approach with doctrinal analysis to uncover the historical and political context and outcomes of the legislation. Critical discourse analysis examines statements made by politicians from both major Australian political parties and the parliamentary report rejecting the most recent attempt at reform. This paper reveals that, to reject reform and justify maintaining the status quo, the government has rationalized the detention of child asylum-seekers as essential to the success of deterrence measures, and moralized these measures by framing them as necessary to protect the lives of those attempting to reach Australia by boat.

Generating Political Commitment for Regulatory Interventions Targeting Dietary Harms and Poor Nutrition: A Case Study on Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxation in Australia.

Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes are an effective public health policy intervention for improving nutrition and public health. Although implemented in over 50 jurisdictions worldwide, this intervention remains vastly underutilised, and in Australia political commitment for such a tax is low. The aim of this study is to understand the politics of SSB taxation in Australia, what factors have constrained political commitment for a tax, and what might enable such commitment in future. We adopted a case study design, guided by a theoretical framework developed from the political economy of nutrition literature. Data were collected from 16 interviews with informants from multiple sectors, supported by media articles, journal articles, and grey literature. Data were coded and organized by thematic analysis, and synthesised into the final results. Nutrition actors have made significant progress in generating commitment for a SSB tax by producing relevant evidence, raising awareness, advocating for action, employing resonating frames, collaborating with civil society organisations, and forming coalitions increasing their overall cohesion. Nevertheless, political commitment for a SSB tax is low and was found to be impeded by the powerful influence of the food, beverage, and sugar industries, opposition from both major Australian political parties, ideological resistance to regulation, a low quality monitoring and surveillance system for food and nutrition, and limited public advocacy. The influence of nutrition actors was also impeded by weak connections to key policy-makers and missed collaborative opportunities with pro-SSB tax organisations. The identification of several impediments provides an explanation for why political commitment for a SSB tax is low in Australia and reveals several opportunities for how it might be generated in the future. Political commitment may come about through, for example, actions to limit the influence of industry in policy decision-making, and by strengthening the existing pro-SSB tax coalition.

Algorithmic amplification of politics on Twitter

Content on Twitter's home timeline is selected and ordered by personalization algorithms. By consistently ranking certain content higher, these algorithms may amplify some messages while reducing the visibility of others. There's been intense public and scholarly debate about the possibility that some political groups benefit more from algorithmic amplification than others. We provide quantitative evidence from a long-running, massive-scale randomized experiment on the Twitter platform that committed a randomized control group including nearly 2 million daily active accounts to a reverse-chronological content feed free of algorithmic personalization. We present two sets of findings. First, we studied tweets by elected legislators from major political parties in seven countries. Our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend: In six out of seven countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left. Consistent with this overall trend, our second set of findings studying the US media landscape revealed that algorithmic amplification favors right-leaning news sources. We further looked at whether algorithms amplify far-left and far-right political groups more than moderate ones; contrary to prevailing public belief, we did not find evidence to support this hypothesis. We hope our findings will contribute to an evidence-based debate on the role personalization algorithms play in shaping political content consumption.

Populist parties shifting the political discourse? A case study of the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article examines the use of populist discourse in South African politics. We investigate speeches of leaders from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). We find that the EFF consistently employs populist appeals, while both the incumbent ANC and official opposition DA largely refrain. Our longitudinal analysis allows an examination of fluctuation across party leaders and electoral cycles, and illustrates that neither the ANC nor the DA have modified their political discourses in light of a rising populist challenger. However, there is some evidence that the two most dominant parties have reformed their programmatic offerings and behaviour in an attempt to compete with the EFF's popular appeal. The South African case offers important insights into the study of oppositional populism on the African continent, and a window into how major political parties may respond to emerging populist contenders.