Mass Party Research Articles

Abderrahmane Youssoufi: an embodiment of the mutations of the Moroccan left

ABSTRACT At first sight, becoming the Prime Minister of Hassan II after having been considered, a few decades earlier, to be ‘the foreign minister of the resistance and the plotters’ against the monarchy might constitute a spectacular turnaround in a political career. In fact, this reversal was part of a process that was both slow and discontinuous, with bifurcations, and moments of fluidity and uncertainty. By examining oral sources from an interactionist perspective, this article shows that Youssoufi is the paragon of a segment of the nationalist elites, and that his trajectory embodies the transformations in the relations between a part of the Moroccan left and the monarchy. It stresses that individual and collective destiny cannot be reduced to explanations in terms of ‘domestication’, and that not everything was played out beforehand and once and for all. These strategic changes were intrinsically linked to variations in the resources available to the actors, their perceptions of their environment and the dynamics at work within it, their appreciation of the cards they could play, and so on. More specifically, if the left epitomised by Youssoufi benefited from ‘reputational capital’ acquired through repression, it never managed to accumulate the organisational capital of the mass parties. After bidding a regretful farewell to the revolution, the Maquis, and even the putsch, its leaders chose the only option they perceived as available to them: institutional participation.

Rethinking Self-Reliance: Emerson on Mobbing, War, and Abolition

A famous proponent of solitude and self-reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson rejected the conformity of Jacksonian mobs and mass parties for solitary nature walks, and so has long been read as an antipoli...

Conditions of Democracy in German Austria and Hungary, 1918–1919

Conditions of Democracy in German Austria and Hungary, 1918–1919

The Socialist Macro-Sect in the 'Digital Age': The Victorian Socialists' Strategy for Assembling a Counter-Public

The Victorian Socialists (VicSocialists) are a socialist electoral organisation in Australia which has had some electoral success as a regional fourth party behind the Greens. This article seeks to address what kind of organisation the VicSocialists are, what communicative techniques the organisation employs in assembling a counterpublic or constituency, and what this case study illustrates in terms of the broader formation of counterpublics in the ‘digital age’. This article characterises the VicSocialists as a “macro-sect”, a new organisational form. The macro-sect is something more than a socialist micro-sect and less than a mass party, while optimistically conceiving of itself as a proto-mass party. The macro-sect strategy is distinct from another 21st-century party-form, the digital party. Unlike the digital parties, which tend to fetishise digital media, the VicSocialists treat digital media soberly as just one tool in the formation and mobilisation of counterpublics, a tool with serious limitations. Additionally, digital media is complementary with face-to-face communication (such as doorknocking) in important ways. A study of a parallel US macro-sect, the DSA, similarly found that activists were ambivalent about digital media, yet strongly used it for promotion. This commonality with the DSA suggests the international emergence of a new organisational form, with a distinct communicative strategy for forming counterpublics in the so-called ‘digital age’ – one which necessarily uses digital media, yet does not fetishise it.

Party change and citizens’ retrotopia

ABSTRACT The article argues that the persistent high level of dissatisfaction vis-à-vis parties comes from a mismatch between public expectations and parties’ performances. The present lack of confidence in parties is not attributable to failings in terms of representation or the fulfilment of policy promises. A more subtle process is apparently in operation. Parties are, rather, criticized and even despised for the image they and their representatives project, an image far removed from what people expect. Public opinion is, in fact, affected by what Zigmunt Bauman called retrotopia, that is, nostalgia for the mass party. The idealization of that type of party, still so entrenched in the European people, has caught parties in a trap: as they cannot return that model whose premises no longer exist, they have introduced some changes; but they have moved in a direction that is the opposite of expectations as they have acquired more and more resources. In this way, they have heightened the image of a privileged, self-assured and uncaring organization, distant from ordinary people. The contrast between the idealized vision of the mass party and the parties’ present reality has caused the unremitting loss of confidence in them

The Influence of Media in the Evolution of Canadian Political Parties

The types of political parties in Canada have drastically changed over the last 150 years, and so too has the dominant forms of media. My research explores the role the media has played in the evolution of the Canadian party system, and attempts to answer the question: How has media contributed to the changes in the party system over time, and how has it facilitated a shift between the types of parties? The federal system has seen elite parties, mass parties and brokerage parties, and the market-oriented party, and my research examines how the media has influenced the way parties communicate their platform and policies with the electorate. As well, I explore the dominant types and modes of media present in each type of party system: from newspapers, to the introduction of broadcast radio, to television, to the recent phenomena of social media. Media influence is the most significant factor in the evolution of the Canadian party system, as it is the primary vehicle for the delivery of information to Canadian citizens.

LE ELEZIONI DEL 1994

Le elezioni del 1994 sono state il risultato finale della crisi dei partiti di massa del XX secolo. Esse hanno portato alla formazione di un sistema politico bipolare di prima-past-the-post. Il sistema dei partiti è diventato completamente diverso dal precedente. La novità principale fu la vittoriosa "entrata nella mischia" di Berlusconi che innovò profondamente i modelli della politica italiana. Si presentava come un leader carismatico a diretto contatto con gli elettori grazie a un sapiente uso della televisione. Il partito da lui fondato, Forza Italia, si identifica con la sua persona e non esisterebbe senza di lui. È un partito personale. Questo ha segnato un salto di qualità nel processo di personalizzazione della leadership che caratterizzerà il sistema politico italiano da quel momento in poi. Berlusconi ha vinto anche perché è stato il primo a capire che - con il nuovo sistema elettorale a scrutinio unico - lo scontro sarebbe stato tra destra e sinistra, senza possibilità di partiti centristi, e che sarebbe stato necessario costituire coalizioni elettorali. Ha così formato un'alleanza con la Lega del Nord e il MSI senza alcun riguardo per la coesistenza politica dell'alleanza. Il bipolarismo italiano acquisirebbe così la caratteristica negativa di coalizioni fragili ed eterogenee, non essendo il sistema elettorale adatto a limitare la frammentazione dei partiti. Il sistema politico diventerebbe fortemente conflittuale a causa della mancata legittimazione dei due fronti politici.

IL MONDO SCOMPOSTO

La caduta del Muro di Berlino ha rotto l'equilibrio dell'ordine politico in Italia e ha decretato la fine dei partiti di massa. In Europa l'idea che il crollo del Muro di Berlino avesse espulso il conflitto dalla storia sembrava un'illusione. Sia in Italia che in Europa ciò era dovuto a una insufficiente capacità di comprensione e di governo di un evento così complesso e degli innumerevoli effetti che avrebbe causato.

The ‘genetic’ effect: Can parties’ past organizational choices condition the development of their internal distribution of power in the cartel party era? Evidence from Finland, 1983–2017

This study critically assesses the claim of the cartel party theory that the party in central office (PCO) has lost its powers to the party in public office (PPO) as parties have adapted to various changes in their operating ‘environment’. The study argues that a party’s tendency to adapt is conditioned by the party’s ‘genetic’ heritage: if the PCO assumed a prominent position during the party’s institutionalization, it can more likely stand against external pressures compared to a PCO that has been traditionally weak. The study compares the development (1983–2017) of two Finnish parties, which hail from polar ‘genetic’ traditions: a social democratic mass party and a conservative cadre party. The change of the party ‘environment’ has strongly supported PCO’s decay. Unlike earlier longitudinal studies on intra-party power balance, the study assesses all significant power dimensions and finds a contradictory development: while the distribution of leadership positions and resources increasingly favour the PPO in both parties, significant ‘genetic’ differences in the distribution of formal decision-making power have not diminished at all. If statutory regulations matter, the results suggest that the PPO cannot ‘insulate’ like the cartel model expects in parties where the PCO’s strong role has been strictly codified.

Mass Party Formation: Land, Civil Society, and Party in Postrevolutionary Mexico

AbstractWhat explains mass party formation? Prevailing approaches explain party formation as a process of reflection of preexisting social constituencies, or as the consequence of the rise of the bureaucratic state and in particular the advent of universal suffrage. These approaches fail to explain why Mexico’s Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) emerged as a mass party in some regions but not others despite attempts to do so and similarity in conditions that have been posited as central to party formation. I put forth a novel approach that posits that parties emerge as mass organization through a process of constitution of the very social base they claim to represent, but their constitutive powers are conditioned by fundamental economic structures. Relying on agrarian censuses and archival data, I show that the PRI emerged as a mass party in areas where land privatization had been more intensive. In these areas the party during its process of formation was able to build new, and absorb existing, peasant unions and organizations and carry out strong electoral mobilization. These findings suggest that mass party formation is dependent on the destruction of “pre”-capitalist agrarian structures.

Electronic Dance Music Festivals in Riyadh: Pop Culture as a Space of Cooptation and Contestation

Within the course of a decade, electronic dance music (EDM) grew from an underground subculture into one of the most popular music genres among youth in Saudi Arabia. EDM parties developed from an intimate, semi-legal pastime practice of cosmopolitan youth into state-sponsored mass parties. In this article, I discuss the effects of the state’s embrace of pop culture as a strategy of the new Saudi nationalism, heralded by Vision 2030. In the name of the diversification of the economy, today the Saudi state invests in local music festivals. Yet, rather than understanding Saudi youth as mere objects of state policy, I suggest that Saudi youth navigate, reject, and appropriate these new cultural spaces, and turn them into an arena, where all kinds of subversive practices can become possible.

Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization by Sean Jacobs

Reviewed by: Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization by Sean Jacobs Keyan G Tomaselli (bio) Sean Jacobs (2019) Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press Jacobs provides a panoptic view of the South African media and how in its broadest sense such media negotiated, shaped and debated the political transition (chapter 1). He starts from the multiracial TV adverts flighted on SABC-TV for Castle Lager that anticipated – and/or pushed – for impending social change after 1976 (chapter 2). New kinds of socially-referenced sitcoms, soap operas and the forging of a national identity through appealing to the notion of the 'aspirational viewer' contextualises these shifts (chapter 3). These were driven by the emergence of black urban class-mobile consumers, identified by the international advertising agency, J Walter Thompson, a firm that responded most alertly to the conditions that were developing from the smoky aftermath of Soweto '76. Discussion follows on the idiosyncratic Africa-wide public sphere enabled by Big Brother. On a broader scale were MultiChoice's forays into Africa on the back of the PAS4 satellite that enabled Big Brother's appeal as an alternative pan-African public sphere (chapter 4). The way that the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) mobilised as a civil society organisation to defeat the liberation government's bizarre and genocidal denialist policy on HIV/AIDS, is the case study comprising chapter 5. Chapter 6 moves in a different direction, exploring the relationship between media and especially white Afrikaner political identities after apartheid. New media technologies will have shaped these on the one hand, while appropriation by Afrikaners of the global human rights discourses [End Page 134] of 'minority rights' and 'victimhood' after ceding political power in 1994, were imported into public discussion. The book's conclusion offers some insights into the demise of mass parties, mass media, the rise of new mediascapes and associated identities that centre on mobile technologies. Jacobs evokes national allegories that decentre media as the direct focus, while examining broader issues read through the media in general. As mentioned, the new allegory actually starts with the rebranding of Castle Lager, based on a longitudinal study of the beer's TV adverts conducted by Alex Holt during the 1980s period of apartheid reform. Holt's benchmark study underpins Jacobs' analysis of the wider trends buffeting the late apartheid political economy, and the ensuing contradictions that would contribute to its demise. Holt's analysis of advertising practices and new consumption patterns brought about by the growing black urbanisation, and the need for single advertising campaigns aimed at identifying new and growing multiracial class-based markets that no longer responded to 'separate' messages, underpin Jacobs's analysis. The idea of 'nation' thus emerged from the advertising industry as their most effective marketing strategy (41). Similar trends were evident in SABC-TV programming with a growing African-American presence prior to 1994 and in commissioned sitcoms like Suburban Bliss and Going Up, as analysed elsewhere by Dorothy Roome. The strength of chapter 2 (Branding South Africa in Prime Time) is that it extends Holt's until now neglected but visually and sonically rich approach in constructing a narrative on South African emergent national branding. Allied to these advertising messages, was their multiracialisation of characters and notable Castle's anthemic unifier. Chapter 3 (The Aspirational Viewer) on locally made dramas and soap operas draws links between early 'whites' or 'blacks'-only examples (ie after 1976 when TV was first introduced). The programmes made during the transition aimed at promoting the idea of a kind of unified but classless multiracial nation adopting free market capitalism. The entertainment education imperatives that influenced the SABC commissioning editors is mentioned, but not developed, though such a methodology was very strongly at work via national public health communication programmes and programming, which also involved very intensive audience response and behaviour-change analysis. This corpus of research led by Soul City and Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa and its university affiliates might have been highlighted. [End Page 135] Chapter 4 (Big Brother MultiChoice) examines how reality TV challenged entrenched cultural values and sexual...

Strategi Menjaga Konstituen: Studi Kasus Anggota DPR RI 2014-2019 Daerah Pemilihan Jawa Tengah I

This research is about the strategy used by the member legislature body 2014-2019 to keep the constituents’ vote in their election area after being elected as a legislative member. This research used a case study in the 1st election area of Central Java Province which includes Semarang City, Semarang District, Kendal District, and Salatiga City. By taking a member of DPR RI as the main sample and two members of DPR RI as a comparative sample or as group control. This research applies the qualitative approach supported by a quantitative approach with the survey method. This research finds the strategy which is used by the member of DPR RI to keep the constituent vote in their election area. It could be done through some strategies such as interactive dialogue, provision of assistance, installation of campaign attributes (banner/billboard/etc), utilization of party structure and base mass party, encouragement of another cadre from the party, community approach, social media and formation of the volunteer. All strategies have objectives to keep the constituent vote in an election area, and to gain the sympathy and vote from those who have not chosen them in the last legislative election. So it could be ended in re-elected the member of DPR RI in the next legislative election.

Liquid parties, dense populism

Before proceeding, I would like to clarify briefly two interpretative premises, one methodological and one normative, which sustain my argument. Understanding the transformations facing constitutional democratic societies is a demanding task. These transformations, whose multiple causes are socio-economic not merely political, reflect on the one hand in the decline of mass party form of organization and on the other in the success of populism as not simply a movement of contestation but as a ruling power. In this article, I will suggest that the successes of populism are connected to the decline of organized parties, the pillar of constitutional democracy as it emerged after 1945. It is impossible to predict whether populism will succeed in becoming the new form of democracy. It is, however, certain that contemporary representative governments are facing astonishing mutations and the decline of the party form of representative unification of claims and ideas is one of them. My argument relies upon a phenomenology of populism as a movement that is strong in proportion as organized parties are weak, which actually capitalizes on a revolt against intermediary bodies such as parties. 1

Konzepte der Parteieninstitutionalisierung. Eine vergleichende Perspektive

Concepts of party institutionalization and party change were developed during the 1980s with regard to the European mass party model of party organization. Since then we have been observing the breakthrough of new political parties from the whole political spectrum in both, ‘established’ and ‘young’ democracies. But the birth and institutionalization of parties has been analyzed separately in different world regions. The focus of analysis in these research studies is either on Western parties and established party systems or on parties and party systems in ‘young’ democracies.

A Crisis for Both Parties

A Crisis for Both Parties

Social and ideological representativeness: A comparison of political party members and supporters in Finland after the realignment of major parties

This study provides a new frame of reference for understanding intraparty dynamics by analyzing party members’ representativeness with respect to party supporters regarding socioeconomic status and the ideological spectrum in a multiparty system, namely that of Finland. The analysis is based on a unique member-based survey of Finland’s six major political parties ( N = 12,427), which is combined with supporter data derived from a nationally representative survey ( N = 1648). The clearest difference was found between supporters’ and members’ social status as members were generally in clearly higher social positions. However, there is a wider gap between parties when comparing supporters and members in terms of social status. Findings show that political opinions on income equality are still a key difference between traditional mass parties at the different levels of party strata, while incongruence within parties is relatively low. In contrast to the traditional parties, the newer parties, namely the Finns and the Greens, are ideologically close to their supporters in terms of attitudes concerning immigration and environment. Together, these findings provide an interesting landscape of the last decade’s changes in the Finnish political spectrum and contribute to the ongoing discussion on the changing forms of political parties.

China’s Communist Party: From Mass to Elite Party

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is not withering away as predicted by some Western scholars. On the contrary, in recent years, the party has centralised and strengthened its rule over China. At the same time, party membership has changed. Today, workers and farmers only account for only one-third of the total party membership compared to two-thirds when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established. Instead, new strata and groups such as technical and management personnel have evolved. The composition of the party’s cadre corps has changed accordingly, and cadres today are younger and much better educated than during Mao’s time. The leading cadres form an elite which is at the heart of a ranking-stratified political and social system. This article discusses how the CPC has evolved from a mass to an elite party. It argues that in this process, the party has taken over the state resulting in a merger and overlap of party and government positions and functions, thereby abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s ambidextrous policy goals of separating party and government. Centralisation and reassertion of ranking-stratified party rule is Xi Jinping’s answer to the huge challenges caused by the economic and social transformation of Chinese society—not a return to Mao’s mass party.

Let's have more Russian babies. How anti-immigrant sentiment shapes family leave policy in Russia

This paper builds on scholarship of welfare chauvinism in Europe to present evidence of the relationship between xenophobia and family leave policies in contemporary Russia. I argue that popular anti-immigrant moods pressure government into providing more generous family benefits to Russian families while proposing restrictions to migrants. Findings are based on elite interviews, as well as content analysis of mass media, policy documents, public speeches, and party manifestos. I show that xenophobia is widespread in Russia among the public and policymakers alike, and find that xenophobia is embraced by policymakers to guide decisions regarding the allocation of social benefits.

The cartel party, consensus democracy and democracy without politics

Although the age of the mass party as an organizational form is long in the past, the mass party remains a widely accepted normative ideal, closely connected to the idea of party government and to a voters-as-principals-parties-as-agents understanding of democracy. In evolving from mass party, to catch-all party, to cartel party European democracies have also been evolving towards an ‘anti-political’ view of government, along with models of consensus democracy and the regulatory state. This evolution helps to explain the decline in popular connection to political parties. Ironically, the associated causes of this decline are generally regarded as good, notwithstanding that the decline itself is often identified as a crisis. Moreover, analysis of this decline suggests as striking similarity between the consensus model of democracy and the cartel party model of democracy, notwithstanding that the first is often seen as a goal to which democracies should be moving while the second is seen as a threat to democracy itself.