Opposition Political Parties Research Articles

Media Access and Political Efficacy in the Eco-politics of Climate Change: Canadian National News and Mediated Policy Networks

ABSTRACTWe use a discourse network analysis approach to answer two questions about national news coverage of climate change policy debate in Canada during the period 2006–2010. First, what is the media visibility of actors relevant to policy development and advocacy on climate change? Second, given the political and economic context of climate policy-making in Canada, does greater or lesser media visibility reflect effectiveness in climate policy advocacy? Multiple interpretive frameworks characterize Canadian political discourse about climate change, with fragmentation between the federal government, opposition political parties, provincial governments, and environmental organizations. Contrary to expectations, environmental organizations had high levels of media visibility while the relative invisibility of fossil fuel corporations was notable in the media coverage of Canadian climate discussions. Our findings challenge optimistic accounts of the relationship between media power and political power, and suggest that media power does not necessarily translate to political efficacy.

Constitution of Serbia and rights of opposition

The political opposition which is primarily organized in political parties, is a condition for existence of democratic political system. Special attention should be paid to guaranties of the position of political opposition in states which have renewed their multiparty system, or just initiated it. This guaranty means protection of oppositional political parties with rights and legal mechanism, enables the same legal treatment and real equality with ruling parties. This implies constitutional, statutory and executive rights and procedures through which opposition operates. The constitutional position of opposition in the Republic of Serbia was built just with the given order. Oppositional political parties have an equal legal status and, apropos, possibility to criticize, control and change the government through the election. However, a really low level of a political culture, lack of consistency of the political ideology, readiness for all kinds of coalitions, inferiority of the underdeveloped public opinion, makes so that the political opposition has slightly worse position in the relation to position of government.

Challenges and Prospects of Electoral Campaigns through Social Media in Ethiopia: Lessons from the 2015 General Election.

Despite electoral campaigns are essential elements of election, opposition political parties in Ethiopia have been challenged due to limited media alternative. In the 2015 general election, some political parties were using social media to conduct campaigns. Hence, this case study aimed to explore the challenges and prospect of using social media. The research utilized a qualitative approach. Blue Party, Ethiopian Democratic Party, Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum, and Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front were selected as cases by using intensity case selection method since they were active in using social media. In-depth interview, focus group discussions, and documents were used to collect data. The study used thematic analysis. The study found that the low number of followers at the social media bases of parties, suppressive tendency of the regime, high internet cost and poor internet connectivity, political apathy of users, unwanted interactions of some of the users as well as awareness predicaments as factors that challenge parties’ use of social media as alternative channel of electoral campaign. However, emerging fertile conditions such as optimistic perception of users towards the role of social media, increasing political involvements of youths, and attempts of price revisions on the other hand were found to be impetus to promote parties’ use of these media. Generally, despite there are such challenges, the prospects show that social media are becoming as alternative channels of electoral campaigns in Ethiopia. Key Words : Challenges; Electoral campaign; Ethiopia; Prospects; Social media, Political Parties

Whither Objective Journalism in Digital Age: Malaysia's Mainstream versus Alternative Media

In this digital age of online news, objective journalism is increasingly treated as unnecessary, if not obsolete. In the liberal West, news portals can offer different views to counter the political economic status quo proffered by traditional hyper-commercial corporate media. In more authoritarian Asian countries like Malaysia, alternative news portals are assumed to provide opposition political parties with favourable coverage to balance whatever bias the traditional, print and electronic media might have displayed towards the ruling political party. As a result, Malaysia's ruling political party, including many from the critical mass, has claimed that Malaysia's mainstream and alternative media, collectively, have attained the democratic principle of offering diverse, balanced and fair news coverage. This has strengthened the view that there is no need for objective journalism-as in providing fair and balanced news coverage. To what extent then are Malaysia's mainstream print media biased towards the ruling political party and to what extent Malaysia's alternative news portals biased towards the opposition party? Has the digital age finally rendered objective journalism obsolete, at least in Malaysia? These are key questions examined in a study that content analysed the coverage of Malaysia's general elections in 2013 performed by three mainstream newspapers and three alternative news portals based in Malaysia. The results show that even though partisan journalism continues to dominate, especially the mainstream newspapers, objective journalism is far from being abandoned. It is rendered unnecessary only by being politicized by the ruling political regime.

Political Party Coalitions and Political Development in Polyglot Societies: The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Perspective

This paper situates the All Progressives Congress (APC), a coalition of opposition political parties in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic within the purview of the ideals and goals of political unity and selfless service to the fatherland. These ideals are believed to be necessary but scarce ingredients for building enduring political bridges amongst existing ethno-cultural oriented political parties to galvanize socio-economic and political development amongst people of different ethnic nationalities and religious persuasions in polyglot societies such as Nigeria. Often, it becomes necessary to build such political bridges in polyglot societies so as to checkmate the onslaught of ethnic politics which, apart from its inability to build or sustain enduring peace, strangles overall development and has led to different levels of political unrest, including civil wars in several countries. However, the paper equally indicates it is not easy to build such workable, enduring political coalitions in polyglot societies as such efforts face several challenges. Digging into the political histories of Nigeria, the United States of America and Kenya through the use of secondary data, the paper identifies some of these challenges and how political coalitions impacted on the political development and material fortunes of these countries and their different peoples. On the strength of such evidences, the paper outlines the challenges in the way of APC in her effort to overcome ethnic politics, promote unity and advance socio-economic and political development in Nigeria.

The Presentation of the Political Transition in the Early 1990s in Albania in the History Textbooks of Primary and Secondary Education

This paper aims to analyse the political system change in Albania, in the early ’90s, as presented in the history textbooks for primary and secondary school. In regard to the chronological criteria, as the main principle of historicism, the overthrow of the communist regime and the establishment of democracy appear as a symbiosis of the internal situation and the pressure of the international community. The Albanian government due to the economic hardship, the social backwardness and the political tensions was gradually losing its ruling legitimacy on the basis of Marxist-Leninist ideology. The fallacy of the party-state propaganda caused a general dissatisfaction that led to the organization of anti-communist demonstrations, which culminated with the Student Movement of December 1990 and the institutionalisation of political pluralism, with the formation of the first opposition political party, the Democratic Party. The successive democratic transformations up to the creation of Aleksander Meksi’s government, after the elections of 22 March 1992, were as a result of the effect domino, too. The democratic revolutions in the Eastern countries and the influence of the international actors favoured the democratic changes in Albania. The theoretical and empirical analysis of the process of political transition in the history textbooks of elementary and secondary education in Albania, based on the historical discourse analysis, it is important not only for the political turnaround that marks this period of history in the way of building democratic institutions, creating a market economy and the functioning of civil society, but in particular for the challenge of educating young people as worthy citizens of a society that aspires to integrate into the European family. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n3s1p511

The Political Parties and Political Participation in Rivers State, Nigeria: A Case Study of 2015 General Elections

The study reviewed the activities of the political parties and its impact on voters’ participation in the political activities in Rivers State. In pursuit of this objective, the study generated secondary data, and applied content analysis as the tool of analysis. The scope of the study is on the political activities of the various political parties and the arising political issues before, during and after the 2015 general elections in the state. The social exclusion theory was adopted as the theoretical framework of analysis. The study in its findings noted that all the political parties in the state within the period under review carried out various political activities that had significant impact on political participation of the voters in the electoral process and the political system in the state. The study further agreed that all the political parties in the state could be classified as opposition political parties due to its status in the polity at the federal or state levels within the period. The study made some useful recommendations on the modalities to redirect the activities of the political parties to encourage effective participation of the electorates in the political system in the state. Key Words : Political opposition, political party, political participation, political activities

‘What Will We Be without Them?’ Rural Intellectuals in the State and NGOs in Zimbabwe’s Crisis-Ridden Countryside

Research on NGOs in rural Zimbabwe suggests that ideas of automatic opposition between ‘civil society’ and/or non-governmental organizations and authoritarian states are too simple. Rather, relations between state and non-state organizations such as those referenced in this article, in the rural district of Mangwe about 200 kilometres south-west of Zimbabwe’s Bulawayo, are symbiotic. This contrasts with urban areas where political histories have led to more contested state-civil society relations in the last two decades, during which social movements with a degree of counter-hegemonic (or counter-regime) aspirations were allied with many NGOs and opposition political parties. Gramsci’s idea of ‘rural intellectuals’ could complement the widely used notion of ‘organic intellectuals’ to examine the members of the intelligentsia appearing to be at one with subordinate groups in the countryside and at odds with the state. Likewise state workers distant from the centre and close to their class peers in NGOs as well as their ‘subjects’ may operate with autonomy from their masters in ruling parties and states to assist, rather than repress, citizens and also to co-operate with NGO workers. This research indicates that discerning how hegemony works across whole state-society complexes is more complicated than usually perceived, given the many regional variations therein.

Access to Justice--Unaffordable Legal Services' Concepts and Solutions

Access to Justice--Unaffordable Legal Services' Concepts and Solutions

Parliamentary Opposition Under Hybrid Regimes: Evidence from Egypt

Why do opposition political parties choose to run for parliament in semiauthoritarian systems? Existing literature emphasizes the benefits that these parties derive from campaigning and running for elections, while paying little attention to the politics that occurs within legislative institutions under these regimes. Supplementing election‐centric theories, we argue that opposition actors in semiauthoritarian systems also benefit directly from serving in weak parliaments and that this helps explain their participation in biased elections. We demonstrate this by examining the Muslim Brotherhood's legislative performance in Mubarak's Egypt, highlighting the mechanisms through which it used its minority presence in parliament to its advantage.

PELEMBAGAAN OPOSISI DALAM SISTEM PRESIDENSIAL: STUDI TENTANG OPOSISI PDIP DI DPR

In a presidential system of government and opposition relations are not always mutually adversarial, unlike the relationship of government and opposition in countries that adopt a parliamentary system, in a presidential system of government and opposition relations can be negosiable. the mechanism of checks and balances, the opposition parties are able to negotiate, compromise, for the things that are important to the interests of the people. In such a reality, it is not easy to opposition political parties to encourage the process of institutionalization of the opposition in parliament, because the role of the opposition in parliament are not real. Increasing public appreciation theoretically form the capital for the further institutionalization of the opposition, as well as capital for PDIP to win the election. It seems to winning elections is not the case. The decline is one of them triggered by the actions of political elites who run transactional PDIP, which is very disappointing the public.

Khodorkovsky, Yukos, and Putin

The arrest of YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the destruction of YUKOS marked a turning point in the development of post-Soviet Russia. Under Khodorkovsky’s leadership, in four years (1999–2003) YUKOS went from a poorly-run undervalued company to a dynamo that was worth a third of the entire Russian stock market in one of the most impressive business and management case histories ever recorded. Khodorkovsky’s support of political opposition parties was likely a primary factor leading to his arrest. Another contributing factor was entrenched interests who felt threatened by Khodorkovsky’s success and growing power and knew how to maneuver both him and Putin towards a collision. However, the rapidly approaching merger with ChevronTexaco was the key to the timing of the arrest. YUKOS destruction and the ensuing slowdown in Russian production growth was a significant factor in the oil price spike of 2005–2008. While the increased oil price arguably initially had a positive impact on Russia, much of that advantage was dissipated by the capital flight that developed after 2008, an effect of the retreat from rule of law, necessary to break YUKOS. The breakup of YUKOSSibneft also possibly cut short the oilfield production revolution that eventually took place in the USA.

Opposition Coordination in Singapore’s 2015 General Elections

Recent political science scholarship suggests that when opposition political parties are able to coalesce into a united coalition against an authoritarian regime, they will perform better in authoritarian elections, and can more credibly bargain with the regime for liberalising reforms. Yet, most of this literature pays little attention to the variety of ways in which opposition parties cooperate with each other. Drawing on the literature on the bargaining model of war, the author sketches out a theoretical framework to explain how opposition parties coordinate to develop non-competition agreements. Such agreements entail opposition parties bargaining over which political party should contest or withdraw in which constituencies to ensure straight fights against the dominant authoritarian incumbent in each electoral district. The author then applies this framework to explain opposition coordination in Singapore’s 2015 general elections, focusing on the conflict between the Workers’ Party and the National Solidarity Party.

Historical Dictionary of The Gambia (fifth edition) by David Perfect

Perfect, David. Historical Dictionary of The Gambia (fifth edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016. Once touted as an oasis of democracy and good governance during its first 30 years of independence from the United Kingdom on 18 February 1965, The Gambia has experienced authoritarian rule and human rights violations since Yahya Jammeh came to power in 1994. David Perfect, a researcher at the University of Chester in the United Kingdom, contends that Jammeh has crushed all challenges posed by the opposition political parties and has managed to avoid being overthrown by force, which has allowed him to remain the undisputed ruler of The Gambia (p. 21). This antipodal experience of Gambian history is well-captured in this edition of the Historical Dictionary of The Gambia. The book provides the most up-to-date reference material on people, places, and events in this small West African country, from antiquity to the present. Its goal is to provide a dependable source of facts and figures about Gambian history. Unfortunately, even before the book rolled off the press certain entries already need to be updated. Entries such as Momodou Sabally (p. 326), Aboubacarr Senghor (p. 392), and Political Parties (pp. 343-344) already require an update. This is a common hazard when writing an historical dictionary. Perfect, who co-authored the fourth edition of the Historical Dictionary of The Gambia (2008) with Arnold Hughes, a long-time scholar at the University of Birmingham who served as the director of Perfect's Ph.D. dissertation, has been researching The Gambia since the 1980s. An intrepid and enterprising scholar, Perfect is able to make sense of the characters who color the country's history. His intrepidness is revealed when he attempts to list all of government ministers who have occupied important positions since 1994. In the Justice Ministry, there have been no fewer than seventeen ministers in the past twenty years (p. 253). The Historical Dictionary of The Gambia fills a yawning gap in Gambian studies. Ordinarily, The Gambia, the nation with the smallest territorial footprint in Africa, is the least studied and written about of the four former British colonies in West Africa. Until 1975, the only comprehensive scholarly study of The Gambia was J. M. Gray's History of The Gambia, which had been published in 1940. Fortunately, for students of Gambian history, the first Historical Dictionary of The Gambia was unveiled in 1975. Harry A. Gailey, a historian at San Jose State University, authored the first two editions of the Historical Dictionary of the Gambia in 1975 and 1987, respectively. The third edition, published in 1999, was co-authored by Gailey and Hughes. Since publishing the fourth edition with Hughes in 2008. …

Race and Responsiveness: An Experiment with South African Politicians

AbstractDo politicians engage in ethnic and racial favoritism when conducting constituency service? This article presents results from a replication field experiment with local South African politicians that tested for racial bias in responsiveness to requests about public goods provision. The experiment represents an adaptation of similar experiments conducted in the United States, extending the design to a different institutional environment, albeit one with a similar racially-charged history. Although one might suppose that politicians in South Africa would seek to avoid racial bias given the recent transition to full democracy, I find that South African politicians—both black and white—are more responsive to same-race constituents than to other-race constituents. Same-race bias is evident in both the dominant and the main opposition political parties. Moreover, politicians are not particularly responsive to anyone. Implications for the further study of democratic responsiveness are discussed.

The David and Goliathh or from the Ruling to the Opposition Political Party: The PDP, Crisis of Internal Democracy and 2015 Election Outcomes in Nigeria

Generally, Nigerian political parties in the present republic have been hampered by crisis of internal democracy thus undermining their political leadership recruitment function. Also, this has negative implications for party discipline and unity. The resultant effects are party factionalization, defection and carpet-crossing. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is a good example of one of these Nigerian political parties that lacks internal democracy. In fact, PDP was a leviathan. The 2015 Election symbolized a contest between David and Goliath. The electoral outcome is that PDP has transformed from a ruling party to an opposition party. The study, by relying on the theory of relative autonomy of the state and secondary sources, concludes that the PDP authoritarianism deepened crisis of internal democracy in Nigeria and that this authoritarian character of the former ruling PDP was a reflection of the authoritarian character of the Nigerian state which is currently shaping the ruling APC. The implication being that this lack of internal party democracy in Nigerian political parties generally undermines the credibility of the entire electoral process thereby rendering the entire process undemocratic. The study is essentially qualitative, historical and inductive.

Political entry, public policies, and the economy

This paper presents a theory of competition in dictatorships, in which the possible equilibrium political market structures range from pure monopoly (uncontested kleptocracy with high entry barriers) to perfectly competitive (benevolent dictatorship with regular leadership turnover). Leaders compete sequentially and are constrained by the threat of entry, their ability to tax, or both, so that a dictator with no challengers may nonetheless implement policies in the public interest. By focusing on the incentives for political entry, our model helps to classify regimes and to clarify some of the political science debate as to whether political monopoly power is properly measured by the size of political entry barriers or the frequency of leadership turnover. Moreover, we offer economic interpretations of why some dictatorial regimes are uncontested, why there are good and bad dictators, why nondemocratic countries are associated with lower wages, why resource abundant countries tend to be nondemocratic, and how technological change affects political development. Finally, we show how external support of opposition political parties and other policies designed to promote democracy may actually have the unintended consequences of discouraging political competition.

Spanish

This article focuses on the role of the university and the student movement against Franco in the fight for democracy in Spain since the 60s, framed in cultural dynamic ( Beat Generation ) and international politics ( Third Wave ). It analyzes the role of the university youth, the opposition political parties, the process of democratizing university and - by extension - the country, concluding with an explanation of the causes of demobilization after 1977. The article utilizes newspapers, as well as bibliographical, oral and archival sources. How to reference this article Carrillo-Linares, A. (2015). Universidades y transiciones politicas: el caso espanol en los anos 60-70. Espacio, Tiempo y Educacion , 2(2), 49-75. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/ete.2015.002.002.004

Environmental Movements in India

The study of environmental movements has become one of the important discourses in academics and it has a number of aspects. This article investigates the determinant factors of success and failure of environmental movements in India based on a comparative analysis of the colonial regime, postindependence regime, and the more recent era of liberalization. During the colonial period, all the movements were suppressed by the authoritarian British regime except the movement in Kumaun and Garhwal, due to its strategic importance as a border region. Similarly, the democratic regime of India suppressed many movements in the early postindependence era. However, starting in the mid-1970s, environmental movements began to achieve some success, when these movements were supported by various national and international human rights groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and activists. The movements during the 1960s and 1970s were suppressed by the democratic state, because they did not have this kind of support. The factors that were responsible for the success of the environmental movements in the late 1970s and 1980s have not produced as much success in the more recent era of liberalization. The rising nexus and collaboration between the state and multinational corporations have led to the suppression of more recent environmental movements and those that have been successful have received strong support from opposition political parties.

Public Servant or Censor?: The South African Broadcasting Corporation in the Era of Political Television Advertising

Political television advertising is becoming an important feature of democratic elections and essential to election campaign strategies. In this article we take a close look at the role the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is playing in the new era of political television advertising ushered in in 2009. We focus our analysis on the banning by the SABC of election advertisements by two major opposition political parties before the 2014 elections. The country's regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) upheld the decision of the SABC when the two parties filed complaints. The banning of the advertisements and Icasa's decision are assessed on two important principles for public broadcasting - editorial independence and public accountability. We argue in this article that the action by the public broadcaster undermines freedom of expression and the credibility of both the SABC and Icasa, especially when contextualised within other controversial editorial decisions taken by the broadcaster over the years. Further, we argue that laws governing political advertising in South Africa are constitutionally problematic and contain contradictions in how they should be applied and implemented by both broadcasters and Icasa. We conclude by arguing for a review of these laws.