Alliance Party Research Articles

Pork Barrel and Identity Politics: Explaining a Minority Party’s Electoral Success in Lithuania

Abstract Our article describes the lifecycle of Lithuania’s Electoral Action of Poles–Christian Families Alliance (LLRA-KŠS) party that has been a part of country’s political landscape for near 30 years. Despite its seemingly ethnic program, the party has a poor track record for delivering on its electoral promises. Yet, it has been continuously supported by the majority of Polish-speakers in Lithuania. The background of the nationalizing state, which encourages the party elites to conflate substantive representation with the signposting of ethnic identity in party politics, offers one of the reasons for the LLRA-KŠS’s electoral success. Although the party effectively consolidated its regional electorate, it came to control service delivery to their ethnic constituency by engaging in pork barrel politics. Poor performance in recent national and municipal elections put this strategy to bond with its voters into question, casting doubt on the LLRA-KŠS’s ability to survive as an ethnic party in the long term.

Populist alone, but harmless together? Analysing inter- and transnational populism of EP parties ID and ECR on Facebook

Right-wing populist parties are highly successful in online communication and have made electoral gains in a wide range of European countries. In the European Parliament, until the recent European elections in 2024, the majority of them were distributed between the two party alliances and parliamentary groups Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). To analyse their communicative strategies, we collected all Facebook posts of the party and parliamentary group accounts of ID and ECR ( N = 616) within one year (08/21–08/22). Subsequently, structural topic modelling (STM), sentiment analysis and manual content analysis were applied to determine their communication strategies. Overall, the results indicate that ECR and ID are communicating rather moderately online. However, while ECR differs significantly from its national member parties, ID seems to reproduce right-wing populist narratives. Overall, this paper argues for a stronger focus on European party alliances, not only national parties, when researching right-wing populist communication in the EU.

Mergers and Disintegrations: Political Party Alliance Building in Kenya Between 2002 to 2022

Mergers and Disintegrations: Political Party Alliance Building in Kenya Between 2002 to 2022

Sensationalism versus Substance: Exploring “Viral” and “Quality” Journalism in the Greek Public Sphere

In an era dominated by the digital revolution, the distribution of information has undergone a profound transformation. The duality of “quality journalism” and “viral journalism” has become an important theme in the modern media landscape. This paper explores the scope of information dissemination, dissecting the fundamentals, challenges, characteristics, and trends associated with both “quality” and “viral” journalism. Utilizing the Greek political scene as a case study, this paper aims to examine the tensions and trade-offs inherent in journalistic practices within the context of contemporary information dissemination. Analyzing closely media coverage surrounding events such as the election of Stefanos Kasselakis, the new President of the SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance party, we seek to elucidate the delicate balance between viral and quality journalism. By shedding light on these dynamics, our study aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how journalism navigates the tension between virality and quality within the Greek political sphere in a “post-politics” era.

Adrien Rist (1841–1923), membre de la Société mdico-psychologique (1881) et fondateur d’une maison de santé privée à Versailles : « La Châtaigneraie » (1889) (Partie II)

A member of artistic, literary and scientific associations including the Société médico-psychologique (1881), A. Rist opened a private psychiatric clinic in Versailles in the years 1890–1891 called: La Châtaigneraie. This establishment will open its doors shortly before those of the old people's home (1892); they will complete the establishment opened in 1858: the civil hospital. In addition to his work as physician director of La Châtaigneraie, he was a medical expert at the court of Versailles. While practicing in Switzerland, he taught forensic medicine at the Law School of Lausanne. For example, A. Rist assessed Marie Christmann, a spiritualist masseuse, known as “the witch of Versailles”, who was denounced for the illegal practice of medicine and the mummified body of a woman was found in her house or Fernand-Théodore Charlatte, known as “the satyr of Saint-Cloud”, who simulated madness. Being an alienist was not without risk. He was threatened with death by an insane Arthur-Désiré Ferger who had twice escaped from the asylum; inspectors were assigned to protect him. A. Rist was a doctor fighting against alcohol abuse; the head office of the Versailles section of the French Anti-Alcohol Union was located at his home 11 rue des Deux Moulins. The National League against Alcoholism has founded “rooms of the soldier” in different cities of France (Cherbourg and Le Havre). A. Rist had one such room located at 29 rue de Béthune (Versailles). Author of “La philosophie naturelle intégrale les rudiments des sciences exacts” (1904), A. Rist shows us his pronounced taste for mathematics which inclined him more towards the physical sciences and their speculative aspect than towards biology, a discipline of observation and experimentation. In this second part, A. Rist appears to be a man of conviction and opinion. He was Dreyfusard and Republican. He was among the signatories of the “Appel à l’Union” (1899) like his friend Gabriel Monod (1844–1912), a member of the Institute. This founding document aimed to calm the political situation in the middle of the Dreyfus affair in order to save the parliamentary republican regime then in place. He does not hesitate to take up the pen to oppose Ferdinand Brunetière (1849–1906); director of the Revue des Deux Mondes, he was an antidreyfusard but not an antisemite. The latter had declared war on the scientific spirit and on Science which was not the point of view of A. Rist. In a national daily newpapers, he expressed his opposition to the reform of secondary education; this was a measure which had been advocated by the Minister of Public Instruction: Léon Bourgeois (1851–1925). At the end of the 19th century, A. Rist made a political commitment having being elected member of the municipal council of Versailles (1896–1900); he joined the Democratic Republican Alliance party (1901). During his career, A. Rist did not communicate or publish very much. In addition to his imposing work on “La philosophie naturelle intégrale”, we find among his works an article on phrenology published in the Dictionnaire de Dechambre, which he considered to be a science lacking a scientific basis; a case of idiopathic anorexia, which he said was a mental illness caused by a direct attack on the nerve center that regulates the need to eat; a case of forensic expertise on an anarchist sentenced to prison because he was not fit for internment. He was also supposed to publish a second volume of his natural philosophy, but it never saw the light of day. He died in November 1923, “La Châtaigneraie” closed its doors.

MOZAMBIQUE AND NEPAL: REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIENCES ON THE CUSP OF SOCIALISM WHICH REMAINS UNBORN

The revolutionary experiences of Mozambique and Nepal present a stark case of revolutions on the verge of socialism which remains unborn. Owing to several factors, the communists and socialists at the helm of these states for several years now have faltered to embark on decisive socialist paths despite their firm hold of state power. The same reportedly hindered its march to socialism. In 1985, Frelimo finally shredded its Marxist-Leninist ideology and embraced the neo-liberal policies in the guise of development and modernity in exchange for loans and aid from multilateral financial agencies of the West. Nepal, on the other hand, is being led by an alliance of communist and socialist parties. However, its march towards socialism is supposedly hampered by the country’s economic backwardness, dependence on aid and labor wages from India and the Middle Eastern countries, ballooning debt from multilateral institutions, the predominance of the peasant class over the proletariat, and the inability of the ruling coalition to forge on a single road to socialist construction. This paper looks into the feasibility of socialism being attained in Nepal and Mozambique whose economies and productive forces are undeveloped, with their people in subsistence living and a meager awareness of socialist ideals among the masses. ? The paper argues the possibility of building socialism as shown by the Soviet and Chinese experience, provided that there is a strong proletarian party whose vision and ardor are consistent with the Marxist theory of history and class struggle.

Transition from parliamentarism to presidentialism and the restructuring of the Turkish party system

ABSTRACT The role of institutional factors on party system change has received increasing scholarly attention. This article analyses the emergence of new trends in the structure of party competition in Turkey following the transition from parliamentarism to presidentialism in 2017. The newly-adopted presidential system endowed the president with extraordinary powers and reduced the role of the parliament. Presidential elections assumed central importance in electoral politics; competition was structured by pre-electoral coalitions and party alliances; more than two-thirds of the voters cast their ballots for one of the two main electoral alliances; and there was a trend towards the emergence of a bipolar party system. The analysis presented in this study emphasizes the role of institutional engineering, especially the introduction of presidentialism and changes in electoral laws, as major factors in the restructuring of the Turkish party system.

Does the Reform of the Parliamentary and Presidential Threshold Strengthen the Presidential System in Indonesia?

The attempt to purify Indonesia's multiparty presidential system was only reflected after the Third Amendment to the 1945 Constitution. However, it took work to implement it. In practice. Various measures have been taken, including party alliances and introducing voting barriers in parliamentary elections. Therefore, analysing the relationship between electoral thresholds and their ideal proportions in the form of legal-political reforms to strengthen the Indonesian presidential system is interesting. This is in line with the purpose of this study, which is to uncover and analyse the legal politics of electoral thresholds in an attempt to strengthen the presidential system of government in Indonesia. The approach adopted in this study is a theoretical approach with legal, conceptual, comparative and historical approaches. This study concludes that the legitimate political renewal of the electoral vote threshold is not closely related to efforts to strengthen Indonesia's system of multiparty presidential government. The ideal way to reform the legal, political threshold for electoral votes would be to set the parliamentary threshold at 2.5%, but at the same time tighten controls over the parties participating in the election, and the 2.5% threshold serves as President to maintain a balance between the parliamentary and presidential thresholds. In addition, it is also important to strengthen consensus (consensus democracy) among coalition political parties. There is still a desire to abolish the presidential threshold through the People's Representative Council (DPR) instead of the Constitutional Court (MK).

Mqhayi’s UDon Jadu as a contribution to the ‘Native Republic Policy’ discourse

The central argument of this article is that Mqhayi’s utopian prose, UDon Jadu, reveals that the ‘independent native republic’ discourse that was dominant in the African National Congress and South African Communist Party alliance (1927–1934) had a profound influence on the conceptualisation of Mqhayi’s narrative. The fundamental tenet of his utopia, non-racialism, echoes the basic principle of the envisaged ‘Native Republic Policy’ which, during this period, was the policy of the South African Communist Party (SACP). The argument of this study is that the book is Mqhayi’s creation and his contribution to the model of society envisioned in the native republic debate, specifically by introducing a social and cultural dimension. Because of the segregation ideology (1910–1948), Mqhayi had to find a way of making an encoded political comment through his utopia. However, because of the Cold War (1947–1991) and the apartheid ideology (1948–1990), his inspiration could not be fully exposed by literary critics who feared reprisals from the repressive state apparatus of the time.

Die Europawahl 2024 – systemische Besonderheiten, Erwartungen und die extremistische Herausforderung

The division of powers in the federally structured European Union, the lack of fixed political coalitions, the absence of effective control of voting behaviour in the European Parliament by parliamentary group leaderships and the structure of European political parties as alliances of national parties make European elections systemically specific. In the 2024 European elections, the lead candidate system for the President of the European Commission is back. This may contribute to increased voter participation and be successful if the informal preconditions for the candidates are met during nomination. During the phase leading up to the election of the President of the Commission, the Parliament achieves maximum leverage. Political forces that endanger the existing conditions of the system itself, should be categorized as extreme and be opposed by the political mainstream.

Ethics of Studying Illiberalism in a Hyperconnected, Polycrisis-defined Era: An Introduction to the Special Issue

As of April 2024, at the time of composing this introductory note, research on the challenges faced by liberal democracies—whether established or aspiring—appears to be in continuously high demand. One needs only to focus on a small domain, election results, to realize the scope and intensity of those threats to the existing order. While elections of last year in Poland brought some hope for the pro-EU, left-wing opposition in Europe, populist far-right parties have secured a victory in the Netherlands, further fueling fears of a significant shift to the right in the upcoming European Parliament elections. The recent casting-of-ballots in Russia has ensured incumbent Vladimir Putin's presidency for another six years, while the fall 2024 elections in the US, with Donald Trump as the primary Republican candidate, promise to be a tough race for the Democrats. In India, Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi will run for a third term, competing against a broad alliance of opposition parties that are struggling to catch up.

IDENTITI SOSIAL DAN TINGKAH LAKU PENGUNDI DALAM PILIHAN RAYA NEGERI (PRN) KEDAH 2023

The Kedah State Election (PRN) 2023 is one of the 6 states that will be held simultaneously on 12 August 2023. There are several controversial issues throughout the campaign in the state, including the issue of the leadership of the Kedah Menteri Besar from PAS, Datuk Seri Sanusi Mohd Noor, the REE metal mining issue, logging issues, water supply issues, development issues and State Government cooperation issues with the Federal Government. All these issues shape the social identity and political behavior of voters in the state. Therefore, it is the purpose of writing this article to analyze the social identity and political behavior of voters in the State of Kedah in 2023. Based on data analysis of PRN 2023 results in Kedah, observations in the field and analysis of secondary sources such as journal articles and conference papers, the findings of the study show that the social identity of the Malays based on religion, rights, status, culture, language and social values has been used as political capital by the PN party to ensure that they are seen as a party that champions the Malays compared to the unity government party. The communication machinery of the unity government, especially UMNO and Pakatan Harapan (PH) is very weak and not well organized, causing them to fail to respond to the perceptions presented by the National Alliance Party (PN). The Malay Proclamation launched by PN especially PAS has succeeded in touching the hearts of young voters who are indeed the king makers who decide which party can form the Government.

The Electoral System in Light of the Jordanian Election Law no. (4) of 2022 Analytical & Critical Study

The significance of this study stems from the importance of electoral systems and their role in producing elected councils based on partisan pluralism, for the possibility of transforming into parliamentary governments stemming from the party or party alliance that obtains the parliamentary majority. The study comes to answer the main problem, which is: To what extent was the legislator able in the new election law 4/2022 to establish a tight legal organization for the electoral system to form the Jordanian Parliament, whether in terms of forming local lists or the general list and the effectiveness of distributing seats to them. The study concluded that the new election law did not achieve the main objective which is strengthening partisan pluralism and activating its role in the electoral process, as it was characterized by legal uncertainty and shortcomings in some aspects of regulation. Therefore, the study recommended the need to reconsider the legal regulation related to the distribution of seats among the local electoral constituencies on the one hand, and the general electoral constituency in terms of increasing the seats for the general electoral district, on the other hand.

Popular music and political contestations in Zimbabwe: An analysis of Winky D’s and Jah Prayzah’s music

This article explores the use of popular music in political contestations and specifically how it has been appropriated in Zimbabwe to advance hegemonic and counter hegemonic narratives. The article draws from two popular musicians in Zimbabwe, Winky D and Jah Prayzah and their use of music as an unconventional journalism format to comment on political trajectories in Zimbabwe. We argue that the two musicians have polarizing or competing discourses that either dissident or support the establishment. Theoretically, we use Mano’s conceptual framework that views music as a journalism variant in contexts where mass media and opposition parties are weak. Methodologically, the study employs a multimodal approach and thematic analysis. The study concludes that Zimbabwe’s two popular youthful musicians have been engaging in cold-war like fights that mirror existential political battles between the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party (ZANU-PF) led by Emmerson Mnangagwa and the then Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) party led by Nelson Chamisa. After the 2017 elections the MDC-A reconfigured itself and became the Citizen Coalition for Change (CCC).

Policy Entrepreneurs of European Disintegration? The Case of Austrian Asylum Governance After 2015

The re-establishment of border controls in the Schengen Area since 2015 and repeated contestation of the Common European Asylum System have made the policy sector of migration and asylum a topic of growing importance for European (dis)integration research. This article investigates differentiated disintegration and the factors that facilitate member states’ counter-projects to core-EU integration trajectories. Drawing on the concept of policy entrepreneurship and based on an analysis of policy documents, we use the case of Austria to examine how the government coalition, the Austrian People’s Party, and their chairman, Sebastian Kurz, have shaped European governance of asylum and borders in the aftermath of the 2015–2016 crisis. We first show how the Austrian government performed a shift towards bilateralism and multilateralism outside the EU framework by using transnational party alliances. Second, we outline a policy discourse that justified Schengen-internal bordering based on asylum politics, which eventually served to delegitimize Schengen’s enlargement in 2022. The article contributes conceptually to understanding differentiated disintegration in the sector of migration and asylum, and points to potential drivers of this development.

Mnemonic diplomacy in Russian-Serbian relations: The limits of the possible

The Balkan region has traditionally been of particular importance for Russia, and currently Serbia remains one of the few European countries potentially exposed, due to ideological affinity, to the influence of Russia’s soft power. Memory policy is an important tool in creating and maintaining this affinity because it enables formulation of unifying historical narratives and shared vision of the key events in the common history, thereby providing underpinning for assessments of current developments and for creating an image of the desired future. However, it has its limits and boundaries, and this paper aims at assessing the strength of the Russian-Serbian mnemonic union. The research builds on the concept of ‘mnemonic diplomacy’, which refers to a set of techniques and methods for the affirmation, coordination and dissemination of certain historical narratives designed to support the state’s foreign policy activities. The author argues that the Russian-Serbian memory alliance is based primarily on common assessments of the events of World War II. The paper examines the key stages, internal and external drivers of this mnemonic union development, as well as identifies contradictions and conflicts inherent to this process. The author emphasizes that within the framework of the Russian-Serbian memory alliance both parties have always pursued their own goals. For instance, Serbia sought to use it to increase its weight in the Balkan and, more broadly, European politics, as well as to strengthen relations with its traditional geopolitical ally. For Russia, this mnemonic alliance acquired particular significance when the country’s leaders set a course for transforming the post-Cold War world order. However, it was exactly this new turn of Russia’s foreign policy whose most visible manifestation was the launch of the special military operation in Ukraine that dramatically complicated Serbia’s position, including that in the field of memory politics. At the same time it has revealed the limits of the Russian-Serbian mnemonic union. The author concludes that the effectiveness of mnemonic diplomacy and, more broadly, the very possibility of forming and maintaining mnemonic alliances, ultimately depend on a combination of objective factors, including close economic ties and mutual geopolitical interest. Pushed outside this comfort zone, complementary historical narratives built solely on the appeal to the common heritage quickly lose their power of attraction.

Party System Closure: Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe. By Fernando Casal Bértoa and Zsolt Enyedi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 320p. $100.00 cloth.

Party System Closure: Party Alliances, Government Alternatives, and Democracy in Europe. By Fernando Casal Bértoa and Zsolt Enyedi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. 320p. $100.00 cloth. - Volume 21 Issue 2

Generating value in program alliances: the value of dialogue in large-scale infrastructure projects

Collaboration forms the backbone of program alliances, with the ‘pain-gain share’ regime acting as an incentive to engender behaviours that foster teamwork and trusting relationships to flourish. While dialogue within and between parties in a program alliance has been identified as key to establishing collaboration and trust, there is limited understanding of how it is engendered and maintained to ensure the delivery of superior project outcomes. In filling this void, our paper aims to address the following research question: How does the value of dialogue influence effective collaboration in program alliances? A sense-making lens is adopted to garner an understanding of the value of effective dialogue in two program alliance infrastructure projects. The value and power of dialogue are examined by addressing a recurring problem that negatively impacted the performance of the alliances and their projects: rework. We show that effective dialogue mitigated rework as participants had a shared purpose. Enacting dialogue helped shape the program alliances’ culture and foster an environment where people felt safe to ‘speak up’. This paper’s contributions are 2-fold as we: (1) unearth new value-laden principles to support dialogue in program alliances; and (2) provide empirical evidence for practitioners to help them understand the value of dialogue in delivering a program of infrastructure projects using an alliance delivery strategy.

Italian diplomacy and the Ukrainian crisis: the challenges (and cost) of continuity

ABSTRACT This article seeks to analyse the Italian diplomatic response to the Ukrainian crisis. To this end, the article relies on role theory to understand how Italy’s diplomatic posture during the war was influenced by the expectations deriving from its EU and NATO membership, but also by the different role conceptions emerging in the public debate. Though Italy under its Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, not only responded to but effectively led European strategy towards Ukraine during the crisis – including supporting Ukraine’s membership bid – on the internal front the country was polarized, unwilling to push for further punishment of Russia in view of its economic reverberations, but also questioning military involvement in the war in Ukraine. After a failed attempt to reconcile external expectations and domestic preferences, centred around Italy’s sponsorship of a ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine, the tension between the two sets of influences intensified to the point of precipitating the end of the Draghi government in July 2022, with Italy’s response to the Ukrainian crisis invoked as one of the main causes of the government’s fall. Although the right-wing alliance of political parties that won the ensuing general elections campaigned on a populist and nationalist, ‘Italy first’, platform, the country’s posture towards the war in Ukraine has not really changed – under its current Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, Italy has continued to align with the multilateral expectations set by the EU and the US. The differences in foreign policy outlook within the current governing coalition, however, are not insignificant, and public opinion continues to be divided. This suggests that the tension underlying Italy’s foreign policy in the Ukraine crisis has not been resolved – in fact, it could still potentially undermine the country’s diplomatic posture, as well as the government’s own stability, in the months to come.

Local Electoral Institutions and the Dynamic Motivations of Ethnic Party Candidate Nominations in South Africa

How do parties historically dominated by one group diversify their representatives? I argue that ethnic parties adjust their strategies according to the institutional rules in place and the demographics of relevant constituencies. I study South Africa, which has a Mixed-Member Proportional electoral system, where parties nominate Single Member District and Proportional Representation candidates. Using original data on the racial, ethnic, and career background of over 10,000 local candidates nominated by the historically white Democratic Alliance party, I find that the party engages in vote-based inclusion by nominating black candidates to predominantly black districts. And while the DA symbolically includes non-whites on its PR lists, white candidates dominate electable list positions. These findings provide a demonstration at the micro-level of why ethnic parties struggle to meaningfully diversify.