Party Back Research Articles

How to study political parties: from civil society to the state and back. The Peter Mair lecture 2023

ABSTRACT Cartel party theory has put the study of party-state relations high on the research agenda, deliberately shifting the focus of researchers away from an understanding of political parties on the basis of their relationship with civil society or, indeed, as part of civil society itself. As fruitful as this reorientation has been, this essay argues that the resulting emphasis on ‘parties as governors’ has produced downsides of its own. Cartel party theory reinforced a separation of the study of parties from the study of other membership organizations considered the very fabric of civil societies. While their governing role makes parties distinct from the latter, I argue that what parties do and how they function should be also assessed against other organizations such as interest groups or associations through which citizens engage in joint activities including but not restricted to political interest representation. The contention is that bringing the study of party back to civil society will generate a broader understanding of the possible roles political parties can (or cannot) play in contemporary democracy than an exclusive study of party as a separate genus.

The heterogeneous role of party affiliation in the runner‐up effect

SummaryA recent finding establishes that second‐place candidates perform substantially better over third‐place candidates in future electoral races. We show that this estimated effect masks substantial heterogeneity with respect to the party affiliation of the candidates. Only runner‐ups without a major party backing in election have significant prospects over the third‐place candidates in election , in terms of either recontesting or winning. Our finding suggests that political parties and voters, while strategically coordinating on the runner‐ups in election , also take into account the party backing as a potential signal of their intrinsic quality.

Bringing the Party Back into the Community: Restructuring Grassroots Governance in Shenzhen

AbstractWhile burgeoning research on China's state–society relations has paid attention to the Party, little is known about how the Party interacts with diverse actors and involves itself at the grassroots level in a specific region. This article delineates Party-advancement strategies at the community level in Shenzhen since 2013. To reclaim its leading role at the grassroots level, the Party opted for “Party–government disaggregation” by framing community governance as a Party-building affair, separating the government's affairs from those of the Party and “kicking” the government out of the community. Under the rubric of “reshaping Party–mass relations,” the Party penetrated deep into the community by innovating a “centre-periphery” organizational system, absorbing community elites in a top-down way and using a “service delivery taking the lead” method in a reciprocal exchange. In the end, the Party-governance structure, in which Party–mass relations are at the core, was reframed in the communities.

The Tea Party: Grassroots Conservatism in the Obama Years & Into the Trump Presidency

The Tea Party is an contemporary American political movement that combines elements of mainstream Republican ideology, such as support for the War on Drugs and lowering taxes; libertarianism, such as drastically shrinking the state and opposing the unionization of workers; and anti-immigrant, pro-Medicare/Social Security populism to form a political nexus that has not been seen before in American political history. From the movement’s “birth” in 2009 to today, the Tea Party has had an active role in changing American politics, particularly in the 2010 congressional elections and the 2016 presidential election. With Tea Party backing, 44 congressional candidates won election in 2010, including 5 Senators, 4 Senators in 2012, and multiple Governors between 2010 and 2016. Despite the end of the House’s Tea Party Caucus and with only a few dozen still in Congress, the Tea Party has reshaped the Republican Party, facilitating a rapid shift in American conservatism and propelling Donald Trump to the White House. In this paper, I will analyze the factors that led to the rise of the Tea Party, their political ideology and stances, the makeup of their voting bloc, their connection to organizations that are openly bigoted and hostile to the federal government, an analysis of several of prominent Tea Party politicians, how the bloc of Tea Party voters contributed to the popularity surge for 2016 Republican candidate Donald Trump, and how the Tea Party’s bloc of voters influenced the Trump presidency while their tactics influenced the anti-Trump Resistance.

Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston by Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood

Reviewed by: Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston by Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood Joshua D. Farrington (bio) Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston. By Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 262. $90.00 cloth; $29.95 paper; $22.99 ebook) Millington Bergeson-Lockwood offers a much-needed challenge to the dominant historical narrative of Black partisanship in the late-nineteenth century that tends to reduce Black politics to an unwavering support of "the Party of Lincoln." Bergeson-Lockwood's case study of Boston, however, reveals a far more nuanced and fluid partisanship in a city that produced some of the nation's staunchest, most racially progressive "Radical Republicans." By the 1870s, a sizeable segment of Black Bostonians, led by Edwin Garrison Walker (one of the first Black men elected to Massachusetts's state legislature), became vocally critical of the growing apathy of the local and national Republicans towards protecting Black rights. Over the next two decades, these criticisms would morph into a new brand of independent politics that "rejected the idea that they owed any party loyalty or unanimity based on past deeds" (p. 5). Instead, they sought to push the Republican Party back in the direction of civil rights by supporting responsive Democratic candidates, or by creating their own slate of Black independents. While this strategy of political independence held moments of promise for Black Bostonians in the 1880s and 1890s, it ultimately failed to push either party in the direction of Black civil rights and instead pushed the city's Black activists to turn toward new approaches, such as the Niagara Movement, outside of the sphere of partisan politics in their fight for racial justice and equality. One particularly fascinating chapter in Bergeson-Lockwood's narrative is the brief moment of interracial cooperation between Boston's Irish and Black independents. Both Irish immigrants and African Americans had for too long been ignored by the city's political establishment, and rallied behind the Democratic Party in the 1880s to elect the city's first Irish-born mayor. This interracial partisan cooperation led to the erection of a statue in Boston Common honoring Black [End Page 367] patriot Crispus Attucks, which appealed to strong anti-British sentiment among Irish immigrants and rightfully acknowledged the role of African Americans in Boston's history. Many Black independents also rallied behind the cause of Irish nationalism as part of their broader support for transnational civil rights. This moment of interracial promise, too, would end in failure, as Irish allies to African Americans lost to more conservative Protestants in the elections of the 1890s. By focusing on Boston, Race Over Party offers a geographic counterbalance to the recent plethora of books focused on the failures of Reconstruction in the Deep South. It also adds a needed perspective to urban histories of the Gilded Age, which tend to prioritize white ethnic mobilization over Black political activity. While Boston provides an interesting case study, the author should have done more to connect the Northeastern city to a larger, national context of Black independence. The reader is left wondering if this partisan independence was unique to Boston or reflective of trends in other urban areas. Even a cursory example of Louisville, Kentucky, for instance, which was mentioned twice in passing by Bergeson-Lockwood, would have revealed an equally independent brand of Black partisanship that eschews simplistic narratives of Black Republican partisanship. Apart from needing more national context, the book also lacks in placing Boston's Black independent politics in larger chronological context as well. While the final chapter attempts to assess the "legacy of independent politics," it fails to extend its analysis beyond the early twentieth century, thereby minimizing its lasting importance (p. 182). Ironically, it would be Black Republicans of the 1960s and 1970s in Boston who would take up the banner of "independent politics" and elect the north's first African American to the U.S. Senate, Edward Brooke. This legacy of Black partisan independence, and other examples after 1910, are left out of the book's analysis. [End Page 368] Joshua D. Farrington JOSHUA...

“There Is NoNewBlack Panther Party”: The Panther-Like Formations and the Black Power Resurgence of the 1990s

“There Is No<i>New</i>Black Panther Party”: The Panther-Like Formations and the Black Power Resurgence of the 1990s

Purging ‘Factionalist’ Opposition to Kim Il Sung – The First Party Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party in 1958

In March 1958, delegates from across North Korea met in the National Art Theatre in Pyongyang for the First Conference of the Korean Worker’s Party. To date, it has an event largely overlooked by South Korean and Western historians of North Korea because of a lack of source material. The newly unearthed official minutes, however, reveal a highly staged event in which the opponents of high-level party opponents of Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng 김일성) are subjected to what amounts to a show trial, before they lose their party membership. The official minutes are notable for containing one of the only official North Korean descriptions of the alleged plot by certain military members of the Yanan Faction to overthrow the Kim Il Sung government in a military coup. The purpose of the Party Conference within Marxist-Leninist parties is discussed, the background to the Conference and developments in the communist world are also described. The delegate roster is then briefly analysed, interesting and significant statistics are explained with broader reference to North Korean history—the context and what it can tell us about the structure of power in the Korean Workers Party back then. Following this, the show trial by conference is detailed. The trial by conference is split into two parts, the first dealing with their economic crimes and the second with their political crimes. This article discusses both sets of allegations in light of the actual economic pathologies of Soviet-type economies and the political nature of the Kim Il-sungist system.

The awkward biography of the young Washington Okumu: CIA asset (?) and the Prayer Breakfast’s man in Africa

ABSTRACTWashington Okumu (1936–2016) is now largely forgotten, but he had had a burst of fame as the mediator that brought the Inkatha Freedom Party back into South Africa’s democratic elections of 1994. This article concerns his professional life until 1988. In addition to reconstructing his life, it comments on the awkward challenges of this biography. Interviews with Okumu yielded confusing and often untruthful testimony. The research process involved extensive corroboration and correction. Okumu’s story was about his great achievements, but his greatest achievement was to position himself on the edges of power. All the same, he had a remarkable life that included relationships with Kenyan political leaders, study at Harvard and Cambridge universities, a likely relationship with the CIA, political imprisonment, and employment by the United Nations. His deepest connection was with the Fellowship (an international Christian network best known for hosting the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC). Most remarkably, it arranged for Okumu to conduct secret shuttle diplomacy between South African Prime Minister BJ Vorster and Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere in 1976. His life through early middle-age was well connected and eventful, but his initiatives do not appear to have been politically consequential. Indeed, the most significant event of life before 1988 may have been that he met IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi at the Prayer Breakfast in Washington and that he gained the trust of the South African National Party government and thus was positioned for his ‘great moment’ in 1994.

The Story of Two Women: Ishiuchi Miyako and Iwasaki Chihiro (Excerpts from a Conversation between Ishiuchi Miyako and Ueno Chizuko—On Mother’s and Hiroshima)

The Story of Two Women: Ishiuchi Miyako and Iwasaki Chihiro (Excerpts from a Conversation between Ishiuchi Miyako and Ueno Chizuko—On Mother’s and Hiroshima) Ayelet Zohar (bio) and Frank Feltens (bio) Translated by Tajima Miho (bio) Saturday, November 30, 2019 15:00 - 16:30, Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo1 Ishiuchi Miyako (photographer) and Ueno Chizuko (sociologist) discuss the lifestyles of working women, in particular the lives of Fujikura Miyako (1916–2000, Ishiuchi’s mother) and Iwasaki Chihiro (1918–74, illustrator). What follows is an excerpted and edited version of their conversation; for a full transcript, see the Women’s Action Network (WAN) website https://wan.or.jp/article/show/9142. Moderator: Today, we have a conversation about what it means for women to live and work, a discussion about the lives of Fujikura Miyako and Iwasaki Chihiro. I am sure everyone here is familiar with the two interlocutors, but I would like to begin by giving a brief introduction. Ishiuchi Miyako is a world-renowned photographer who began publishing her photographs at the age of 28 and has been using her mother’s maiden name, Ishiuchi Miyako, as her artist name ever since. She was selected to represent the Japan Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale and won the Hasselblad Award in 2014. Last year, we collaborated with her for the first time at the Chihiro Art Museum Azumino on the theme of Hiroshima, and this marks our second collaboration. Dr. Ueno Chizuko is known as a leading expert in women’s studies and gender studies, and her research interests also include elder care. She has taught at the University of Tokyo, among many other universities, and is currently the Chief Director of the Women’s Action Network (WAN). Ishiuchi: When I was invited to take part in the 100th anniversary exhibition for the Chihiro Art Museum Azumino last year, I was really taken aback. Why me? How would I possibly engage with the work of Iwasaki Chihiro! I was told that Hiroshima would be the theme of the work with Chihiro (for [End Page 189] Ishiuchi Miyako and Ueno Chizuko an exhibition at the Chihiro Art Museum Azumino). And I had basically decided that I would not turn down anything related to Hiroshima. Ueno: How is Hiroshima related to Chihiro? Ishiuchi: It was a collaboration that brought together my work on Hiroshima and a book in which Chihiro drew illustrations to accompany text written by a child who suffered from the atomic bomb. When I received the informational material, I was very surprised to find that Chihiro was so similar to my mother. I said to myself, “What’s this!” More than I could have imagined, I found myself amazed by how Chihiro thought about many things from such different perspectives, as well as the fact that she actually joined the Communist Party. It was not easy, I think, to join a political party back in those days. Ueno: Actually, right after the war ended, about a third of the population was sympathetic to Communism and were part of the Communist Party. Ishiuchi: Is that so? That many? Ueno: It was a boom. They said if you did not join the Communist Party, you were not human. And about a third of the population was anti-imperialist. Ishiuchi: It makes you wonder what has become of us today. Ueno: Indeed, it’s troubling. So, with Hiroshima as the subject, oil and water are mixed and cause a chemical reaction. When you mix oil and water, you get a really exquisite dressing. Ishiuchi: Yes, exactly. Ueno: So that’s how this combination came about. What do you think of it in the end? Ishiuchi: What I realized was that Hiroshima has great power. I mean, the power that Hiroshima calls forth—including my collaboration with Chihiro—and its depth, breadth, content, and so on, including the fact that the war is not over yet. So, the museum asked me to do the same thing here for the Chihiro Art Museum Tokyo. But I don’t like doing the same thing twice. Then I suddenly remembered that Chihiro and my mother were only two years apart, both had professional jobs...

China 2018: Bringing the party back into state institutions

China 2018: Bringing the party back into state institutions

The Political Economy of Chinese Bilateral Investment Treaty Policy

Among the most significant developments in international investment law and policy in the past decade has been China’s adoption of a new model of bilateral investment treaty that embraces disciplines commonly found elsewhere. This has been celebrated by some scholars as heralding the arrival of a universal model for investment protection that will be transformative of Chinese domestic policy. Others have expressed skepticism that Chinese policy portends liberalization of the Chinese economy. Nor does it indicate that China has embraced neo-liberal norms requiring the state to recede from controlling the levers of economic power. Both sides purport to derive their readings from shifts in Chinese investment policy and internal legislative change. We propose another reading derived from shifts in Chinese Communist Party leadership and the Party’s perception of what is required to guarantee its stability and continued dominance. The object is to understand Chinese BIT policy as a product of the complex and interacting influences reflected in debates within the CCP. By examining four main eras in which China BIT policy has evolved, we propose bringing the Party back into discussions about investment treaty policy.

The Road to Battambang

The Road to Battambang Maxim Matusevich (bio) Mme Rancourt is Cambodian but she has lived most of her life in France, where she moved in 1980, about a year after Vietnamese troops chased the remnants of the black-shirted Khmer Rouge army out of Phnom Penh. She is Cambodian but she is mostly French, and she is French in a peculiarly French way—in a light, understated, occasionally brooding, but inevitably elegant way. Her weightless tailored linen pantsuits are testimony to her style and easy understanding of the demands of a tropical climate. She looks fit and much younger than her fifty-seven years. When in Battambang she always stays at Le Pavillon, an old colonial hotel run by a French management company. There is a timeless feel about the hotel's interior, or rather it feels like it's always 1934—the coolness of the checkered black-and-white floor tiles, the whirring of phlegmatic ceiling fans, the friendly hotel dog resting by the mahogany reception desk, the clunky black rotary telephone. The doors to the rooms, solid wood and curved at the top like ovals, are painted white. Mme Rancourt's room is on the second floor, facing the pool where a couple of elderly guests (French? Scandinavian?) are lounging in the shadow of an old mango tree. It's always the same room, reserved months in advance. Olivia, the hotel manager, originally from Marseilles, will make sure that the room is available to her friend—they have known each other for years and once even vacationed together in Portugal. These days Olivia doesn't have much time for travel. Le Pavillon has been featured in several guide books, and Anthony Bourdain once stayed here during one of his whirlwind tours of Southeast Asia. TripAdvisor ranks it as the #1 hotel in Battambang. More work (which Olivia performs cheerfully and without a complaint) is the price of success. Mme Rancourt lives in Vertou, a fashionable suburb of Nantes, a lovely city in Brittany that Time magazine recently determined to be "the most livable in Europe." A reasonably successful real estate attorney, she runs her own agency, which is really just a two-person operation, consisting of Mme Rancourt herself and her scatterbrained but loyal assistant of many years, Mme Guillon. Mme Rancourt is married to Pierre Rancourt, an architect, and theirs has been a happy marriage, a marriage of equals, a marriage of mutual respect, of tenderness and understanding, and love of jazz and Italian vacations. They have two grown-up children: Dominique, who is expecting, has recently moved to London with her Swiss-born husband Daniel, a financial analyst whose joviality and easy laughter defy every common stereotype of a Swiss financier. Dominique is a serious and gentle soul, a foil to her outgoing husband. And then there is Bastien, Mme [End Page 46] Rancourt's adored son and a kindred spirit, with whom she enjoys a raucous friendship that makes her feel younger than her age. Bastien studies computer science at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He is obsessed with artificial intelligence and Eastern European women; sometimes his mother wonders about the connection between these two preoccupations. And Pierre, her dear Pierre, it's been almost thirty years and not one regret, not a single disappointment. They were introduced at an office party back in 1988 and he immediately won her over with his easy charm and intelligence, his ability to be empathetic and accepting without indulging in liberal grandstanding. They slept together on their second date, which was not like her at all, but being with him, kissing his kind and open face, having him inside of her—passionate but keen on giving pleasure, not hurting—felt like the most natural thing in the world, like finally falling asleep in your own bed after a long absence from home. It was so easy to be with Pierre. It still is. The Rancourts usually vacation in Umbria, where they own a modest three-room stone house in a sleepy lakeside village, some forty kilometers southwest of Perugia. They both harbor a strong preference for lakes and wooded retreats over crowded...

Bring the party back in: Institutional design for ‘smart election fraud’

Autocrats face a dilemma. Continue with fraudulent electoral practices and risk revolt, or reduce fraud and risk losing elections. One solution is to structure electoral governance such that it allows for independence and professionalism at the center, lending credibility to the electoral process, and partisan local-level administration, enabling fraud at the micro level. Partisan poll workers can help deliver the vote by the use of ‘smart fraud’ – fraud that minimizes the risk of being caught and is used only when needed. In Armenia, the ruling party's vote share, as a proportion of all registered voters, increases with 2.5 percentage points in polling stations where the chairperson was randomly assigned to the ruling party. Fraud forensics suggests that one of the mechanisms behind this was falsification of the results protocol during the count. I conjecture that fraud is only used in high-stakes elections and that election observers are unable to detect it.

Bringing the Party Back In: How the DPJ Diminished Prospects for Japanese Agricultural Trade Liberalization under the TPP

AbstractChanges to the institutional structure of trade policymaking are important to understanding why Japan remained largely on the sidelines of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP) negotiations in 2010-2012. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) embarked on a series of changes to policymaking institutions, which initially empowered the prime minister and cabinet at the expense of pro-agriculture backbenchers in the ruling party. However, the potential for a breakthrough on farm trade substantially diminished as the institutional reforms were reversed, allowing political supporters of domestic farm interests once more to assert their voice and influence in trade policymaking. Tracing the process of DPJ government decision-making on the TPP reveals that ‘bringing the party back in’ was a major factor in preventing Japan's formally joining the TPP negotiations, despite the strong pro-TPP sentiments of DPJ prime ministers, thus limiting prospects for agricultural trade liberalization.

From Abstentionism to Enthusiasm: Sinn Féin, Nationalist Electors and Support for Devolved Power-sharing in Northern Ireland

The Northern Ireland peace process saw remarkable change in the policies of Sinn Féin. Having pledged to end Northern Ireland as a political entity, Sinn Féin accepted the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and has since been a strong supporter of the political institutions created under that deal. The party's backing for political institutions has amounted to the zeal of converts, the one-time ‘unequivocal support’ for the IRA's ‘armed struggle’ and repudiation of ‘partitionist institutions’ long displaced by participatory politics. This article shows how, in agreeing to work within political institutions, Sinn Féin was following the desires of the nationalist electorate, assisting the party in capturing majority support within that community. Drawing upon electoral survey data from 1998 and beyond, the article illustrates how, controlling for other demographic and socio-economic variables, it is Sinn Féin supporters who are now the most enthusiastic backers, if only marginally more than those of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, of the devolved power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

Keeping the rascals in: Anti-political-establishment parties and their cost of governing in established democracies

Coalition governments in established democracies incur, on average, an electoral 'cost of governing'. This cost varies across coalition partners, and is higher for anti-political-establishment parties. This is because, if such a party participates in a coalition, it loses the purity of its message by being seen to cooperate with the political establishment. In order to demonstrate that anti-political-establishment parties suffer an additional cost of governing, this article builds on the work by Van der Brug et al. and refines the standard cost of governing theory by 'bringing the party back in'. The results of the analyses, based on 594 observations concerning 51 parties in seven Western European countries, cast doubt on the conventional concept of a cost of governing that pertains to all parties equally. The findings call for a major revision of the standard cost of governing literature, while adding a significant contribution to the debate on strategies against parties that may constitute a danger to democracy.

The American Voter and the Economy, 2008

Why did Obama defeat McCain in 2008? As with any national election outcome, the immediate culprit that comes to mind is economic performance. When the U.S. is prosperous, the electorate votes the incumbent presidential party back into office. When the U.S. economy sours, the incumbent (or incumbent party) loses. In 2008, the application of this rule led to a correct prediction once again. Economy up, Republicans out. It is difficult to challenge this conventional wisdom that the economy contributed to the transfer of the White House from the Republicans to Democrat Obama.

Putting the Party Back into Politics: An Experiment Testing Whether Election Day Festivals Increase Voter Turnout

A century and a half ago, casting a vote in the United States was an engaging social experience, as voters at the polls talked with friends, threw down shots of free whiskey, listened to lively entertainment, and generally had a good time (McGerr 1986). According to Altschuler and Blumin (2000, 75) We are grateful to Pam Lamonaca and Nicole Batdorf, who played a key role in organizing Election Day festivals, and Timothy Ryan and Marcos Luis, who helped in all phases of this project. We also thank Dan Winslow, whose ideas about raising turnout were an impetus for this project, and Dan Bergan and Beth Weinberger, who commented on earlier drafts. The studies described here were funded by generous grants from the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale, the Tufts Summer Scholars Program, and Working Assets, none of which bear responsibility for the content of this report.

New Intercommunity Infanticides by the Chimpanzees of Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda

Hostile intercommunity relations, including attacking and killing extra-community infants of both sexes have occurred at most wild chimpanzee sites. We describe three recent cases of intercommunity attacks on infants committed by members of the Ngogo chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park, Uganda. Two of the attacks resulted in confirmed infanticides while a third attack probably resulted in the infant's death. In common with previous accounts of chimpanzee infanticides, the attacks described here occurred during boundary patrols outside the Ngogo community's usual range, adult and adolescent males were the main participants, one infant was cannibalized after being killed, and the victims’ mothers did not accompany the attacking party back to the Ngogo range. However, the patrol parties during each infanticide were larger than before and included females from the Ngogo community. Our observations indirectly support both the range expansion and imbalance of power hypotheses, which address why and under which conditions chimpanzee intercommunity encounters lead to aggression. These cases of intercommunity infanticide add to the growing database of the phenomenon in wild chimpanzees.

Matter Out of Place

Matter Out of Place