One-party Regime Research Articles

Party Origins, Party Infrastructural Strength, and Governance Outcomes

Abstract Ruling party strength is often associated with positive outcomes in autocracies, but we know little about how the effects of party strength differ across party types or which feature of party organization contributes most to better outcomes. This article argues that party infrastructural strength – the ability of grassroots party organizations to penetrate society and mobilize the masses – improves governance outcomes but only for authoritarian parties that rose to power through social movements that overthrew the existing political system. Parties that relied on mass mobilization to gain power tend to continue utilizing party strength to provide public goods and gather support. I provide empirical support for my theory using data covering all autocratic ruling parties during the post-Second World War period. The findings have major implications for understanding the intellectual and political challenges posed by well-organized one-party regimes.

ISLAM SEKULER DI TURKI DAN PEMIKIRAN KEMAL ATATURK

There are three areas that can be observed in applying secularism in the era of the Kemalis reforms. First, is the secularization of the state, education, and the law in the form of attacks on the traditional power centers of the institutionalized clergy. Second, is the attack on the symbols of European civilization. Third, is the secularization of social life and attacks on Islam that its people adhere to. The aspects of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's thinking include those in the political system. At that time, Turkey was a very dictatorial one-party regime. Second, in religious reform. The state guarantees freedom of worship, for citizens, in its implementation carried out in the spirit of radical nationalism and imposed by Kemalis. And the third, in the field of education. Kemal's efforts in his policy showhow his desire should be completely sterile from sharia interference. 
 However, the author at this point agrees with Al-Attas's opinion that Islam rejects any application of a secular concept in any form. Because all of that does not belong to Islam and is contrary to everything.

Big business as vanguard: social welfare expansion in China

Why would an emerging market economy without Western democratic institutions provide and promote social welfare to its citizens? This paper explores the driving forces behind the rapid yet unequal expansion of social welfare in China, a phenomenon notable since the late 1990s. Rather than adhering to the conventional state-centered approach that views welfare expansion as a strategy for one-party regimes to seek legitimacy, this study offers an alternate perspective that emphasizes the ‘demand’ side, particularly the role of business. Through a systematic analysis of all 336 Chinese municipalities from 2001 to 2012, the study demonstrates how big businesses act as ‘vanguard,’ pushing local governments to enhance social welfare provision. It suggests that big businesses, in the absence of institutionalized democratic institutions, serve as ‘functional equivalents,’ channeling societal demands to the government. This paper also finds that firms’ influence on social policy in non-democracies is more capability based instead of institutional based; large domestic and multinational corporations are more capable in lobbying the government.

조선로동당 8기 정치국 인선 변화 연구

This paper is an exploratory study that seeks to explain the dynamics between North Korea's traditional ‘Suryong system (수령제)’ (in which the supreme leader is supposed to hold more power than all elites combined) and the growing prominence of the Korean Workers’ Party's (KWP) Political Bureau(Politburo for short) under Kim Jong Un's rule. Certain observers concluded that the ‘Suryong system’ became weaker since Kim Jong Un had assumed power. While this view is not widely accepted, Kim Jong Un did launch a process aimed at restoring and reinforcing the institutional politics of the KWP - a peculiar initiative, since the institutionalization of politics might potentially limit the personal power of the supreme leader. This study seeks to explain this paradox by analyzing the relations between Kim Jong Un and the lower - ranking KWP leaders. By analyzing the changing composition of the KWP Politburo in the framework of Milan Svolik's “power-sharing theory,” the author argues that the fundamentals of the Suryong system have remained unchanged under Kim Jong Un's rule. Since the 8th Party Congress (2021), the KWP Politburo has been dominated by the ruling coalition fostered by Kim Jong Un. However, his co-leaders seem to have been his subordinates, rather than his equal partners. Kim was able to arbitrarily reorganize the composition of his ruling coalition, and frequently change the status of other Politburo members as he saw fit. In Kim Jong Un's Politburo, practices like ‘jumping promotion,’ demotion, and reinstatement of former members have been far more common than in other Communist one-party regimes. Applying Svolik's concepts and terms to the North Korean scene, the author concludes that Kim Jong Un's status as dictator is already ‘established,’ rather than ‘contested.’

Democracia e a Agenda de Desenvolvimento 2063 em África. Do passado ao futuro

Democracy and development are two intertwined concepts and processes, especially since the advent of neo-liberalism in the late 1980s. On the African continent, the adoption of an economic development model and system of governance based on neo-liberalism was not the result of a free choice of most local political entourages adhering to the socialist model and one-party regimes, but rather of the diktats of a post-Cold War environment in which state and institutional neo-liberalism dominated, notably the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of states in the Global North. As a result of this, many African states were forced to carry out reforms and openings in a hurry contrary to their preferences for schemes that would guarantee the survival of their regimes, the development of a local matrix, territorial integrity, and the possibility of maturing internal democratic processes and a local bourgeois class that would later sustain both liberal democracy and a market economy. The failure of the openings operated in that context led to collective decisions within the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU) to relaunch a development model based on local reality, whose AU Agenda 2063 appears as a response to this challenge. Therefore, with this article, I bring to reflection, through the historical method and contextualization, some elements that allow us to understand the attempt to move towards a local development model guided by Africans, amidst the difficulties of continental integration processes, of generational transition, in a continent where half the population is under 25 years old, but the gerontocracy seems not interested in yielding power.

JUDICIAL CORRUPTION, INSTITUTIONAL REFORM AND THE ELECTORAL PROCESS IN NIGERIA

Shortly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the demise of several African one-party regimes, leaders of a number of African countries began the process of reconstructing the postcolonial African state by embarking on policy and political reforms. This decision was informed by the fact that, since independence, many African countries have been wracked by political and economic crises that have prevented the state from pursuing the rapid growth and economic development needed to fight poverty and material deprivation on the continent. This study argues that while corruption has contributed largely to the development crises in post-independence Nigeria, the problem of judicial corruption is a major impediment to the attainment of sustainable electoral reform in Nigeria. The study substantiates this hypothesis by citing instances of corruption in the Election Petition Tribunals of the 2003 and 2007 general elections in Nigeria. It is submitted that corruption in the judiciary helps to undermine electoral reform by ensuring that the decisions of the Election Petition Tribunals are compromised and the mandate of the people is subverted. Suggestions are offered to reform of the Nigerian electoral process with a view to fighting corruption in the judiciary.

Style-Compartmentalization (SC) Framework: Understanding the Evolvement of So-Called 'Nominal Democratic Institutions' in One-Party Regimes

Style-Compartmentalization (SC) Framework: Understanding the Evolvement of So-Called 'Nominal Democratic Institutions' in One-Party Regimes

Framing in the Authoritarian Context: Policy Advocacy by Environmental Movement Organisations in China

ABSTRACT When do CSOs succeed in influencing policy when working under one-party regimes? This article compares two cases in which Environmental CSOs (ECSOs) in China tried to influence policies. This article argues that the difference between success and failure is connected to the types of frames that the organizations use and how well these frames can link to meta-cultural master frames. Most studies have concentrated on how activists apply frames to get resonance among the population to mobilize people against the regime. However, under an authoritarian regime that greatly represses public demonstrations, it is often more important to frame arguments in a manner that gets resonance among policymakers than it is to gain resonance among the population. Even though it has been rare to analyze how CSOs frame their arguments vis-à-vis policymakers, some recent studies of Chinese CSOs have done so. However, these studies do not go deep enough in elaborating the cultural and historical contexts of these framing strategies. Our study goes deeper in this direction, by claiming that in order to get resonance the frames must be in line with the cultural norms of society. Consequently, we link culture to the “master frames.” Scholars are often reluctant to discuss master frames because the term itself is a bit diffuse and it is not always apparent how to use it. By tying master frames to a meta-cultural analysis, we make it clearer how the concept of master frames can be useful for analyzing the framing strategies of political entrepreneurs.

Dislocation and continuity: Marking the 30th anniversary of the Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter Living Our Faith

One of the reasons that prompted Malawi’s Catholic bishops to write a pastoral letter in 1992 that triggered the movement towards democracy was the big gap between the rich and the poor. The pastoral letter, Living Our Faith, emerged as a critical voice in challenging the socio-economic and political state of affairs. The bishops demanded that the government ensures fair distribution of wealth. Since that time, Malawi has experienced different political parties that have assumed state governance after promising to eradicate poverty in their campaign manifestos. Despite political changes, Malawi continues to experience the very same challenges, which prompted the Catholic bishops to write the pastoral letter in 1992. This contribution drew on the notions of dislocation and discontinuity to explore the significance of the pastoral letter towards commemorating the 30th anniversary of this historical event in Malawi. Living Our Faith marked the end of one-party dictatorial regime and the beginning of a multiparty system of governance, something to be celebrated as dislocation. This research interrogated the custodianship of the 1992 Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter and suggested that intellectuals should facilitate socio-political and economic transformation and demonstrated the relevance of the pastoral letter as a blueprint for socio-economic transformation in Malawi.Contribution: This research contributes to the evaluation of progress in the role played by the Church and intellectuals in the development of Malawi.

Developing A Network Model for the Iraqi Political Coalitions

Before the year of 2003, the Iraqi political arena was dominated by one-party regime. This party was the main and the only party that controlled all the joints of the country such as the education, economic, and industry sectors. After 2003, the whole political system of the country was transitioned from being a single-party to a multiparty regime. These parties formed coalitions and compete with each other to win the major offices in Iraq. In this paper, we involve the concepts of complex network in investigating and understanding the political performance of the current Iraqi parties in terms of political collaboration. We aim to generate and visualize a political network for the Iraqi parties and involve some measurements in the analysis. Using this measurement, we plan to evaluate the parties and the coalitions formed by these parties. We also plan to highlight some of the influential parties' leaders.

Adjudicating Presidential Election Disputes in Africa: The Emerging Challenge of Election Technology

Challenging the results of presidential elections in courts in many African countries is largely a phenomenon that accompanied the fall of dictatorships and one-party regimes across Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The reintroduction of multiparty democracy entailed that elections would be genuinely contested between several candidates, with the possibility that opposition leaders could wrestle power from the incumbent leaders. Many constitutions or electoral laws adopted following this wind of change provide for the possibility of aggrieved individuals and/or entities to seek legal redress in courts of law or other quasi-judicial bodies, usually on specified grounds. This phenomenon is now compounded by the increased use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the electoral process. In the last ten years, almost all presidential election disputes in Africa have revolved around failure or alleged tampering with the ICT facilities in the electoral process. It would, therefore, seem that ICTs, although helpful in increasing efficiency in the electoral process, provide possible new and cleaner ways of stealing elections. This new development presents new challenges to courts as ICTs are often adopted by Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) without appropriate changes to the electoral laws to enhance transparency and accountability. This article analyses how the courts are facing the challenge of increased use of technology in elections and explores the way forward in terms of progressive interpretation and proactive adjudication of election matters.

Who spends more? Party Ideology and Public Spending in 16 Post-Socialist Countries

Abstract The article is revisiting a never-concluded debate about the partisan effect on public spending. It explores the impact of the ruling parties’ ideological orientation, operationalised in a single-dimensional left-right scale, on budget expenditures in Central and Eastern Europe. The research is conducted within an expanded time series covering the complete period since the fall of one-party regimes in sixteen former socialist countries, where the issue has remained under-studied, especially in comparison with a number of similar studies focusing mostly on developed Western democracies. The findings moderately support the main hypothesis demonstrating that, although an ideology matters, there are also other more significant predictors of the spending among political, economic or other contextual variables related to a specific transitional framework of the countries in question. The same conclusion applies to the total consumption, as well as to the examined budget segments of social transfers and education, while the environmental spending seems to be completely unrelated to the partisan variable.

Dyadic Representation in the American North and South: The Case of Prohibition

A persistent question in the study of American political history has been the capacity of one-party government in the American South to represent its voting citizens. In this article, we use county...

The State of Liberal Democracy With Regard to Elections and Political Stability in Africa: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Tanzania and Keny

This study explores the state of liberal democracy and political stability in Africa. In particular it intends to assess what is said about liberal democracy in relation to free and fair election, political stability and the politics of ethnicity in Tanzania and Kenya and the reality happening on the ground (the practice) in East African countries. The rationale for undertaking this analysis is that the East African countries have experienced political transformation: for instance, for much of the post-colonial period East African countries tended to live under one-party regime, but since 1990s East African countries embraced multiparty system. This study pays attention to assessing the outcomes of liberal democracy in East African countries in particular examining the extent to which the liberal democracy promotes free and fair elections, political stability and the mitigation of the politics of ethnicity. This study employed a comparative analysis, in which it compared the extent to which liberal democracy is practiced in Tanzania and Kenya and how far the above-mentioned parameters are realized under the broad spectrum of liberal democracy. The methods of data collection were interviews and documentary review and the discussion of the findings was organized around the sub-themes of this study. The period covered in this discussion is the contemporary period from 1990’s to 2019. The findings indicate that even though African countries have adopted liberal democracy, in some of the East African countries like Kenya, political stability and free and fair elections have not been fully realized, while in Tanzania the experience indicates that political stability is relatively realized after elections. This study concludes that even if the institutions of liberal democracy have gradually developed with partial free and fair elections, the manifestations of political instability still exist in some of the East African countries, as shown by the election violence in Kenya comparatively to Tanzania. Therefore, the interface between the liberal democracy and political stability has not been sufficiently realized in the liberal democratic tradition. This study recommends that elections as one of the pillars of liberal democracy should be properly and fairly instituted, so that the role of liberal democracy is realized in fostering peace and tranquility.

Why Does a One-Party Regime Promote Civil Society? The Case of China's Homeowner Associations

Conventional wisdom holds that one-party regimes are intrinsically hostile to civil society because organized citizens can threaten the regime's political dominance. Contrary to this view, we argue that autocracies may tolerate, and sometimes even actively promote, genuinely voluntary civil groups when those groups can help the state efficiently resolve intra-societal distributional conflicts arising from economic modernization. Using China’s homeowner associations as a case, we demonstrate that local governments are more likely to promulgate policies that encourage the development of self-organized homeowner associations when citizens frequently call upon the authorities to intervene and adjudicate their disputes with property development and management companies. Additional analyses, including an instrumental variables estimation, suggest that the relationship is likely to be causal. These findings highlight the competitive aspect of civil society organizations and offer a more nuanced interpretation of their possible linkages with the political authority.

The Impact of Governance on Chinese Inward FDI: The Generalized Method of Moments Technique

This study estimated the relationship between governance indicators and the inward flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China. We examined the relationship for the period between 2002 and 2019 using various estimation regression techniques, including fixed effect model and the generalized method of moments (GMM). The study confirms a significant relationship between the flow of foreign direct investment and good governance. More specifically, this study reports a positively significant relationship between control of corruption, rule of law, and regulatory quality with the flow of foreign investment in China. However, government effectiveness, political stability, and voice & accountability reported no significant relationship, which makes sense in China’s case. China, which has a one-party government, does not need to focus on these variables. The paper holds policy implications for other countries, especially those located in Asia, to adhere to the governance indicators to attract higher foreign direct investments, as these countries possess both cheap and abundant labor.

Specifics of unified government after 2020 elections in the USA

The article deals with interrelations between President Biden and the 117th Congress in this period of the unified government One of the main problems of the Democrats is that they have a minimal majority in both Chambers. Democrats in the Congress are divided into four major factions which not always vote together. Republicans are also divided into several caucuses, some of which try to maintain and develop Trump’s legacy. It is obvious that the one-party government will be seriously challenged at the 2022 elections.

Steigiamojo Seimo sukakčių minėjimų politinė potekstė 1927–1940 metais

Straipsnyje apžvelgiamos politinės aplinkybės, kuriomis vyko Steigiamojo Seimo sukakčių minėjimai po 1926 m. valstybės perversmo. Analizuojamos priemonės, politinio režimo taikytos „tautos šventės“ sąsajoms su parlamentarizmo tradicijos pradžia valstybėje menkinti. Apie Gegužės 15-osios minėjimus rašoma kaip apie politinio proceso išraišką – politinio pliuralizmo ir vienpartinio režimo šalininkų idėjinę kovą. Tiriama, kokių sunkumų kildavo mėginant organizuoti šventinius renginius ir kaip laikui bėgant šią datą interpretavo kairiosios partijos, krikščionys demokratai, tautininkai, nepolitinės organizacijos. Atkreipiamas dėmesys į tautininkų propaguotos 1926 m. valstybės perversmo – Gruodžio 17-osios kasmetinius minėjimus, kuriais norėta visuomenei įtvirtinti nuostatą, kad ši data simbolinė „antrojo lietuvių tautos atgimimo“ pradžia. Aprašomi paskutiniai nepriklausomoje Lietuvoje valstybės švenčių minėjimai 1940 m. ir jų simbolinė prasmė.

The Struggle for Minds and Influence: The Chinese Communist Party's Global Outreach

AbstractThis paper addresses a largely overlooked actor in China's foreign relations, the International Department of the Communist Party of China (ID-CPC). Using publicly available documentation, we systematically analyze the patterns of the CPC's external relations since the early 2000s. Building on an intense travel diplomacy, the ID-CPC maintains a widely stretched network to political elites across the globe. The ID-CPC's engagement is not new; but since Xi Jinping took office, the CPC has bolstered its efforts to reach out to other parties. We find that party relations not only serve as an additional channel to advance China's foreign policy interests. Since President Xi has come to power, party relations also emerged as a key instrument to promote China's vision for reforming the global order. Moreover, China increasingly uses the party channel as a vehicle of authoritarian learning by sharing experiences of its economic modernization and authoritarian one-party regime. The cross-regional analysis of the CPC's engagement with other parties helps us to better understand the role of the CPC in Chinese foreign policy-making, pointing to a new research agenda at the intersection of China's foreign relations, authoritarian diffusion, and transnational relations.

Stranded in geopolitics: the question of Turkish Armenians in Soviet-Turkish relations

The Republic of Turkey of the 1920s and 1930s was a complex place to live. Kemalism came to nurture and embrace a new citizen who had no other choice but that of being a Turk as stipulated by the 1924 constitution. It was particularly challenging for Christian minorities, or what was left of them, because of ultra-nationalism and the highly ideological nature of the one-party regime of the Kemalist era. Many Armenians, who chose to stay or had to stay in Turkey, were not at ease with the existing state of affairs. Most of them were still looking for ways to leave Turkey for safer places. It became a particular matter of contention in the initial years of the Cold War when the Soviet Union launched a policy of encouraging Turkish Armenians to migrate to Soviet Armenia. Based on Russian, Turkish, and Armenian sources, the article presents hitherto unexplored features of that policy.