Mass Party Research Articles

Parliamentary procedures and democratization in Italy during the liberal age (1861–1922)

ABSTRACT This article revolves around two focal subjects: parliamentary procedures and democratization. On the one hand it explores the use of the term ‘democratization’ in the Italian parliamentary debate during the Liberal Age (1861–1922). On the other hand, it tries to clarify how the general trend of democratization, in particular the extensions of suffrage and the birth of mass parties, affected parliamentary practices in Italy.

Italy between liberalism and democracy: universal suffrage and the 1913 elections

Abstract In 1912, the Italian parliament approved the extension of male suffrage, making it ‘almost’ universal. This process of revising representation transformed the very idea of the relationship between citizens and the state and shaped a profoundly different Italy. The aim of this article is to trace both the process leading to the approval of universal suffrage and its impact on the party system. With a compilation and analysis of data developed from scratch for the elections of 1909 and 1913, it was possible to analyse the main dimensions of the two rounds in a disaggregated manner. Three aspects make 1913 a year of transition. First, the degree of competition in the electoral process, especially in the South, increased considerably. Second, the decline of liberal formations was not transformed into defeat, thanks only to the Catholic vote. Third, the birth of the Popular Party and the failure to create a mass party of conservatives were causes of the imbalance in the party structure.

Historical Alternatives and the Future of the Mass Party

Historical Alternatives and the Future of the Mass Party

Can the left respond to new cleavages in Italy?

ABSTRACT Over the last forty years, there has been a mounting societal shift towards post-materialist values in all countries adhering to the democratic tradition. This has fuelled demand for increasingly personalized content, reflected in political and electoral preferences that, shaped by new agencies of socialization, have gradually distanced themselves from former loyalties. The political supply has been reorganized as a result. The old mass parties have morphed into the so-called catch all party and the more recent variations of the professional-electoral party, forced to drum up votes however it can, chiefly by concocting new issues to compensate for the weakening of traditional subcultures and the fact that the social groups and classes that were the mainstay of twentieth-century parties have now exited the scene. In Italy, this process has led to a political system that is – to say the least – fragmented and unstable. Taken as a whole, the Italian left is even harder pressed than other European lefts, though they too have shown themselves incapable in recent years of sensing the changing pulse and adapting to the new milieu and how it will affect the left’s legacy in terms of the industrial conflict between capital and labour. This is a cleavage that has marked the platforms of liberal-democratic political systems and the form that parties accordingly take even more than it has affected their value content. The Italian left’s perennially upwelling legacy has thus prevented it from retooling for a changing society and formulating policies that can build a solid voter base by interpreting the expectations of the more moderate portions of the electorate who, though sceptical about the centre-right coalition, harbour even greater doubts concerning the centre-left’s ability to actually govern.

Party change and cleavage shifting in the global South: the case of Ecevit’s CHP in Turkey

ABSTRACT This article explores the prospects of and limits to political party change through a case study of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) under the leadership of Bülent Ecevit in the 1960s and 1970s. We demonstrate how the CHP, via a new generation of politicians led by Ecevit, gradually transformed its ideological programme and cadres in an effort to turn into a social democratic mass party, thereby maximizing its voter base in the 1973 and 1977 elections against the currents of the extant socio-political faultlines of Turkish politics. We claim that the potential for party change depends on the interplay between three factors: political entrepreneurs, the prevailing preferences and structures of a society, and the extant institutional setup. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for the prospects of party change as well as for the present and future trajectory of the CHP.

Thailand in 2022

Thailand’s military-aligned government saw its popularity plummet in polls throughout 2022. Yet former head of the armed forces and current prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha was resilient in the face of mass party defections, a falling-out with his fellow party leader and long-time friend Prawit Wongsuwon, a censure debate, and even a constitutional court case threatening to remove him from office. The mass street protests that were a constant feature of the previous three years evaporated as conservative forces used the controversial Section 112 Royal Defamation Law to silence the various movements’ leaders. Political attention was focused on the impending elections, which shook up the party system with rampant party mergers and switching. Meanwhile a return to the 2011 electoral rules fueled talk of another Pheu Thai landslide in the next elections. The economy began to improve with the relaxing of COVID rules and the return of tourism, throwing a lifeline to a rapidly sinking Prayut, who himself switched to a new political party before the year’s end.

The Long 1970s and 1980s of television and movies in Italy: new forms of de-legitimization

ABSTRACT The collapse of the political system took place in a context of hostility towards the parties and consensus on judicial investigations. What were the long-term roots of this phenomenon? The answer to this question is difficult and requires new research on the evolution of the society, the economy, the structure of the political system and – this is a crucial point – about mentality and imaginary. A fundamental contribution in this direction can be given by the study of audiovisuals, cinema and television. In fact, they can be analysed as ‘agents of history’, interacting with existing patterns of behaviour and values, and as sources, documenting the deepest currents in society. How to explain the contradiction between the consensus that the major parties achieved for years and the sudden collapse of the whole system? Did movies and television programs contribute to spreading hostility towards mass parties and delegitimizing the political system? The purpose of the article is to offer a hypothesis of interpretation of these issues, using the most representative movies and television programs from the end of the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s.

Intra-party Balance of Power: Cartelisation versus Communist Organisational Tradition in the Cypriot Radical Left AKEL

ABSTRACT The article analyses the effects of cartelisation on the intra-party balance of power among the three ‘party faces’ of the Cypriot AKEL. Aiming to provide a testable hypothesis for other radical left parties with government experience, we investigate the claim of cartel party theory – that the party in central office and the party on the ground have lost their powers to the party in public office – in the light of AKEL’s communist organisational tradition. We ask whether this genetic heritage might have conditioned its adaptation and transformation and allowed it to resist cartelisation. Using a variety of material, including a rich set of unpublished party data, we investigate indices including the decline of the party on the ground, the composition and hierarchy of party organs, the relationship of public office holders to the party executives, and who controls the party’s finances and communication strategy. We find mixed evidence, rather pointing to the endurance of the mass party model, indicative of the strong influence that party history exercises upon AKEL’s present organisational configuration.

Rediscovering Revolutionary Socialism in America:


 
 
 This article examines the pre-World War I editorials of America’s first Socialist con- gressman, Victor Berger, in order to recover the lost history of early twentieth-century American socialism from the obscuring lenses of Progressivism, Populism, anarchism, scientism, Soviet Communism, and American Exceptionalism. As I argue, talk of a Second Gilded Age today overlooks the vastly different roles “socialism” has played in the respective discourses. Rather than fighting for a stronger national welfare state, even the most conservative Socialists like Wisconsin Representative Victor Berger campaigned for the abolition of wage labour and the overthrow of global capitalism. Recognizing Populism’s failure to preserve its political independence as a working-class movement, Berger, like Debs, proposed that the working class should organize itself under the banner of a socialist party to take state power. In order to link the forma- tion of mass parties like the Socialist Party of America to a totalizing philosophy of history and international political revolution, Berger drew from Second-International Marxist dialogue in which it was enmeshed, not indigenous American traditions. The prolific editorial career of Victor Berger, head of the largest English-language socialist daily in the country, demonstrates how pre-war American Socialists did not merely “translate” Second-International Marxism but rather made up a constitutive part of its transatlantic development.
 
 

The Italian Liberal Party and the crisis of the First Republic. A long-term analysis (1968-1994)

ABSTRACT The relationship between P.L.I. and the collapse of the party system in Italy presents elements of interest. Unlike the mass parties, the Pli perceived some crisis factors: the ever-increasing distance of the ruling class from citizens, the increase in public debt, the spread of bad practices in politics, the need for a big institutional reform, the growth of new political subjects (Leagues) they were issues widely addressed in the internal debate. What you notice is a very difficult situation of a party that is where it doesn’t want to be, that participates in the government but would like to stay out of it. 1 Despite a timid growth of consensus at the beginning of the crisis, just as a result of an effort to differentiate itself from the other government forces, the Pli was unable to escape the “Grande Slavina”. Factors related to its nature and its ideological-cultural identity, but also to its particular history, played a role on the “end” of the Pli, in spite of a favorable international situation (collapse of the Soviet system, Thatcherism, Reaganism). The essay proposes a reconstruction of the political parabola of the P.L.I. starting from the period following Malagodi’s opposition to the center-left governments. It is believed that this may serve to identify the reasons for the inability to impose itself as a valid political proposal in a completely changed scenario.

Political Agitation and Mass Party Work in the Sochi Militsiya Department of the NKVD during the Second World War (September – December 1942)

Political Agitation and Mass Party Work in the Sochi Militsiya Department of the NKVD during the Second World War (September – December 1942)

Politische Karriere und sozialer Aufstieg. Konservative und christlichsoziale Politiker aus Vorarlberg als Beispiel (1860-1918/19)

"Political Career and Social Advancement. Conservative and Christian Social Politicians from Vorarlberg as an Example (1860-1918/19). As far as the political developments in Vorarlberg were concerned, Martin Thurnher and Johann Kohler have lived in a time of rapid changes. Many of the newly elected deputies to the provincial parliament in 1870, and later also to the Imperial Council, now came from a petty or lower middle-class milieu. For them, political involvement, supported by structural factors such as the successive extension of voting rights to lower social strata, and the increasingly professional self-organization of the Catholic-conservative camp, provided an opportunity for social mobility. Martin Thurnher and Johann Kohler are just two examples of how political engagement enabled social advancement. Further quantitative and qualitative research would provide important insights into the social processes set in motion by the emergence of modern mass parties and the expansion of political participation. Keywords: social mobility, parliamentarism, Habsburg Monarchy, Imperial Council "

Toward a post‐neoliberal social citizenship?

Toward a post‐neoliberal social citizenship?

A Global Crisis of Liberal Democracy?: On Autocratic Democracy, Populism and Post-Truth Politics

This article proposes that autocratic democracy represents the natural political form of right-wing populism. It argues that while the emergence of autocratic democracy as a genuine political alternative to liberal democracy may be currently located primarily in states where liberal democratic norms were not well-consolidated, there are reasons to hold that structural features of contemporary politics in consolidated democracies relating to the decline of mass parties and the globalisation trilemma create the space for the right-wing mobilisation of populism. It is further claimed that the dilemmas of the EU in conjunction with the politics of immigration and multiculturalism provide resources for the right-wing mobilisation of populist discontents such that we should not be sanguine about the ability of liberal democracy to be resilient in the face of continuing populist pressures.

Особливості формування партійних систем країн Тропічної Африки

The peculiarities of party building in the countries of Tropical (Sub-Saharan, Black) Africa are characterized. It is emphasized that party building takes place within the framework of a non-Western type of political process. The main features of the political process for the countries of Tropical Africa are highlighted: 1) a specific way of organizing power, which combines the principles and institutions of old (traditional, colonial) and new forms of autocracy and democracy; 2) the institution of elections is the only full-fledged democratic institution in Africa, although the procedures for their holding are constantly violated; 3) a long stay in power of one party and the constancy of political leaders; 4) presidential-parliamentary form of government, which is essentially presidential; 5) lack of stabilizing rational bureaucracy; 6) significant (sometimes dominant) influence of the army on the political process; 7) underdevelopment of civil society; 8) weakness of political parties, their clan nature, evolution towards the regime of personal power, populist strategies of their activities; 9) tribalism; 10) hybrid political regime. The main periods of the development of political parties in the countries of Tropical Africa are distinguished and studied: the first: between the First and Second World Wars (the birth of political parties); the second: 1945–1970 (formation of multi-party system); the third: the 80s of the XX century. (dominance of one-party systems); the fourth: starting from the 1990s, the main characteristic of which is the transition to multipartyism.The main characteristics of political parties in Tropical Africa are studied: the impossibility of determining the number of parties; weakness of the organizational structure; narrowed program and ideological spectrum of parties; great typological diversity. A typology of political parties is proposed: 1) Traditional parties of the local elite; 2) Customer batches; 3) Class mass parties; 4) Pluralist mass parties; 5) Nationalist parties; 6) Mono-ethnic parties; 7) Polyethnic (congress) parties (union, coalition of ethnic parties); 8) Religious parties; 9) Fundamentalist parties and neo-totalitarian religious parties; 10) Electoral parties; 11) Personalist parties; 12) Parties-movements; 13) Parties of "new politics"/ one or two topical issues. Conclusions are made regarding the peculiarities of the functioning of political parties in the countries of Tropical Africa in the conditions of democratic transit, as a rule, this is a hybrid political regime.

Memento obětí totalitních režimů jako motor kariéry, nebo závazek kontinuity vědecké práce

Although totalitarianism has already been widely discussed in academia, the war victims still generate a lot of attention today. This article examines the transformation of academia in Central Europe after 1945 and the reflections of war victims among scholars. To what extent did these losses to science and the loss of personal friendships create an awareness of commitment to continuity in academic work, the need to push through reforms, and the establishment of new institutions? The author focuses on the experience and career prospects of Czech natural scientists (mathematicians, astronomers, physicists) who re-established themselves in the 1940s and 50s and who firmly opposed the essential elements of totalitarianism in their professions (binding ideology, mass party, monopoly on information, central management, planned economy). Although this definition corresponds to the Stalinist period, many categorical decisions and reforms started immediately after the war (planned economy, mass university studies, centralization of research, binding ideology of revolutionary justice). The article shows how the general secretary of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts, physicist Viktor Trkal, used the argument of victims when he accused his colleagues of collaboration. The students’ experience has diversified, as shown with two interviewees. The historiographical explanation of a too short post-war democracy replaced by “captive universities” and “chained academies”, and the belief that Stalinists put much worse ideological pressure on historiography than other sciences, are being disputed.

Explaining the Chile–Uruguay Divergence in Democratic Inclusion: Left Parties and the Political Articulation Hypothesis

AbstractThis article develops a political articulation-based explanation of divergence in democratic inclusion between two champions of liberal democracy in Latin America: Chile and Uruguay. Political articulation scholars depart from the traditional reflection models of political parties as mere expression of preexisting social cleavages, highlighting the relative autonomy of parties’ practices and their strategic role in structuring state-society relations. My work extends this current trend in comparative-historical sociology to the Latin American Left turn after the demise of the market-fundamentalist Washington Consensus, empirically identifying a set of strategies that boost Left parties’ capacity to articulate on a specifically class basis. These strategies, I argue, are endowed with causal efficacy, driving democratic variation beyond the restrictions and opportunities of the institutional environment. Combining process tracing account of historical sequences with my own analyses of labor statistics, protest events, and party linkages and manifestos, I show that differences in Left parties’ ability to build linkages with labor and advance its institutional representation as a class actor are at the root of the divergence in political inclusion between these two countries. This finding has substantial implications for contemporary democratic theory: after neoliberalism, strongly organized mass parties of the Left may not be a necessary condition for a given democracy’s stability and consolidation, but they may be a sufficient condition for a particular democracy’s realization of the normative ideal of political equality.

Membership in Ukraine’s political parties: membership crisis or crisis of the party model?

The characteristics of political parties of Ukraine and democratic countries in relation to the level of membership have been considered; its low level has been stated. In Ukraine, the formation of political parties was carried out in accordance with the model of “mass political party”, formulated by M. Duverger. Accordingly, regulations on political parties clearly define the requirements for formal membership. The main versions of the information on the number of members of political parties in Ukraine have been analyzed; its secrecy and impossibility of verification have been emphasized. On the basis of interviews with party activists of Lviv region, the parameters of membership in regional party branches have been determined. The influence of a number of factors on the involvement of non-party employees in party organizations has been clarified and their role in the work of party structures has been outlined. It has been proved that the low level of membership in regional centers is evidence of the crisis of the mass party model. It has been also proposed to consider as an indicator of this crisis the attempts to form a network party model by a number of newly created parties in Ukraine.

민주화 이후 한국 정당체제, 어떻게 볼 것인가? : 선거유동성의 관점에서 본 정당체제의 제도화 수준 평가

이 논문은 민주화 이후 한국 정당정치에서 나타난 정당 간 이합집산 현상을 "수정된" 페더슨 지수를 통해 분석하고 그 제도화 수준을 평가해보고자 하였다. 이를 위해 두 가지 선거 유동성 지수를 활용하였다. 하나는, 정당 간 진입과 퇴출에서 비롯되는 체제 밖/체제 내 유동성을, 다른 하나는 보수-진보(혹은 좌-우) 맥락에서 비롯되는 블록 간/블록 내 유동성이다. 분석결과는 다음과 같다. 한편으로, 총선거 유동성의 높은 지수는 대체로 체제 내 유동성보다는 체제 밖 유동성의 증가에서, 그리고 블록 간 유동성보다는 블록 내 유동성의 증가에서 기인한다. 다른 한편으로, 이와 함께 체제 내 유동성과 블록 간 유동성의 비중 또한 점차 증가하는 것으로 나타난다. 그러나 어느 경우든, 선거유동성 지수가 시사하는 바는 정당체제의 낮은 제도화 수준에서 비롯되는 불안정성의 지속이다. 그것은 민주화 이후 한 세대가 지났음에도 불구하고, 여전히 정당체제의 사회적 기반과 정당-유권자간의 연계가 취약하다는 것을 의미한다. 사르토리의 표현에 따르면, 그것은 정당체제를 강하게 응집해낼 수 있는 대중정당의 부재를 나타낸다. 이것이 바로 한국 정당체제를 ‘불완전한 정당체제’(inchoate party system)로 규정짓는 이유가 된다. This paper aims to analyze the phenomenon of the splits and mergers between parties in Korean party politics after democratization through the ‘revised’ Pedersen index and evaluate the level of institutionalization. Two electoral volatility indices were used. One is extra-system/within-system volatility resulting from entry and exit between parties, and the other is block/within-block volatility resulting from progress-conservative (or left-right) contexts. The analysis results are as follows. On the one hand, the high index of total electoral volatility is largely due to an increase in extra-system volatility rather than within-system volatility, and an increase in within-block volatility rather than block volatility. On the other hand, the proportion of within-system volatility and bloc volatility also appears to gradually increase. However, in either case, the implication of the electoral volatility index is the continuation of instability resulting from the low level of institutionalization of the party system. It means that even though a generation has passed since democratization, the social base of the party system and the linkage between parties and voters are still weak. According to Sartori"s expression, it represents the absence of a mass party that can strongly cohere the party system. This is why the Korean party system is defined as an ‘inchoate party system’.

Hammer and Cycle

This article explores the evolving relationship of the Parti Communiste Français to cycling in the interwar years. It argues that communist press coverage of the sport enriches our understanding of how the Party evolved from a marginal force in the 1920s to a mass party that had forged both an effective and affective bond with large numbers of the French working class. It examines attempts to harness and manipulate working-class enthusiasm for cycling and to project through its coverage of the sport an idealized image of the French worker. Reading sport history into the Party’s political trajectory in the interwar years reveals how the appeal to the emotions was fundamental to its evolving image as a national workers party, but also how the Party had to make accommodations between a Soviet ideal and the realities of French working-class sports culture.