Party Blocs Research Articles

Tweeting to save the furniture: the 2013 Australian election campaign on Twitter

Past years have seen continuing experimentation in the use of social media for political campaigning. By the time of the 2013 Australian federal election, social media of various forms had become comparatively mainstream in Australia and were widely used by members and candidates: more than 350 candidates operated Twitter accounts during the campaign, for instance. This article explores the key patterns both in how politicians and their parties campaigned on Twitter during the 2013 federal election campaign and in how the public responded to and engaged with these campaigns. It documents significant, systematic differences between the major party blocs and interprets these as reflecting the Coalition’s ‘small target’ strategy and Labor’s last-ditch attempts to ‘save the furniture’, respectively.

Competitive Consensus. What comes after Consociationalism in Switzerland?

AbstractLarge coalition governments, including all relevant parties, are at the heart of the consociational model of Swiss democracy. Until the 1990s, this model was characterised as “voluntary proportional”. It was based on a stable cooperation of two main blocs of political parties, and on elite‐driven agreements on all‐inclusive government formulas. Despite growing competition in governmental elections, all‐party coalitions have survived in most cantons. This article explains that the political minority could keep and even improve its representation, as a consequence of the divisions in the political majority. While right‐wing parties hold the majority in almost all Swiss cantons and at the federal level, they are no longer sufficiently cohesive to control the elections. As a consequence, elections have become more uncertain, and political minorities can capitalise on this in order to win seats. Empirically, this paper investigates elections for Swiss cantonal governments in the period 1971–2011. It combines data on the unity of political blocs with data on government formation. To measure the political unity of the blocs, the paper introduces a novel measure based on the voting recommendations issued by cantonal parties on the occasion of national referendums.

LIETUVOS RESPUBLIKOS VYRIAUSYBĖS VEIKLOS PRIORITETAI: KAIP ANALIZUOTI JŲ ĮGYVENDINIMO PROCESĄ IR REZULTATUS?

Implementation of government commitments is one of the most relevant issues of public policy studies. A gap between electoral pledges, government priorities and their practical execution brought disappointment in many democratic countries and attracted significant attention from public policy researchers. This article elaborates a theoretical framework and sets several hypotheses for analysing the process of implementing performance priorities of the Lithuanian government and achieving their results. It argues that public policy decisions can be best explained by the interaction of advocacy coalitions in different policy subsystems. This process is affected by various external factors and events, which are usually an important but not sufficient condition for realising policy commitments. Within policy subsystems, it is necessary to assess beliefs, resources, and behavioural strategies of advocacy coalitions, coordination among different competing coalitions, leadership of policy change, performance management and policy learning during the implementation process. Also, in order to understand the execution of political priorities, it is important to take into account such important factors as the level of policy ambition and political attention throughout implementation. Moreover, any assessment of Lithuanian policy implementation should address such country-specific issues as fragmentation in the Lithuanian party system and competition between two blocs of political parties, the influence of the EU and Russia on the public policy process, and reform constraints imposed by decisions of the Lithuanian Constitutional Court. This theoretical approach will be employed for explaining the implementation of six major performance priorities of the Lithuanian Government 15 led by Prime Minister A. Kubilius: (1) preparations to build the Visaginas nuclear power plant; (2) higher education reform; (3) civil service reform; (4) restructuring the network of personal health care organisations; (5) structural reform of the social sector, and (6) execution of the housing renovation programme. A public policy research agenda focused on the analysis of government commitments can be also applied to assessing how specific political priorities or other policy decisions are carried out in Lithuania and other democratic states, as well as to explaining successes and failures of their implementation process. Causal process tracing can be employed for the within-case and between-case analysis of policy studies. Theoretically developed and empirically rich policy studies following this research agenda would provide interesting insights on policy implementation to researchers, politicians, civil servants, various policy stakeholders, and even citizens.

Political competition, party polarization, and government performance

Lack of party competition may impair government efficiency. If the voters are ideologically predisposed to cast their votes in favor of one political party, they may reelect an underperforming incumbent. Party polarization may magnify this effect since the median voter faces a higher cost of selecting a better, but ideologically distant incumbent. Alternatively, if the electorate is evenly divided between parties, polarization may induce parties to invest more effort in improving their election prospects. The current paper analyzes efficiency in Norwegian local governments. Efficiency has been measured by means of panel data on government service output over a 10-year period. Electoral dominance has been measured as number of elections wherein one party bloc receives at least 60 % of the votes, measured over six consecutive elections. Party polarization is defined as the ideological distance between the two party blocs, and it is measured on basis of survey data on the ideological preferences of elected politicians. Lack of party competition reduces efficiency, the effect being stronger in governments where more party polarization exists. These agency losses are larger in high-revenue municipalities.

LIETUVOS VIEŠOJO SEKTORIAUS ORGANIZACIJŲ VADOVŲ KAITA IR POLITIZACIJA

This introductory article presents the common research questions of this special issue and offers a joint framework for analysing the change and politicisation of the senior levels of management of different groups of Lithuanian public sector organisations (agencies, state-owned enterprises, personal health care organisations and educational organisations). A comparison of all contributions to this special issue revealed that repeating alterations of governing majorities and governments best explain the frequent turnover of heads of different Lithuanian public sector organisations (except those of personal health care and educational organisations). However, their politicisation is associated with party entrenchment in power, density of the party networks and politicians’ beliefs. The factor of civil service legislation and its enforcement is only important in the case of ministerial agencies whose heads hold career civil service positions. Furthermore, variations in the scope of politicisation are related to such administrative factors as the political salience of policy areas and organisational functions, as well as the budget size. This indicates different politicisation motivations and opportunities in the public sector. Therefore, it is the interplay of political and administrative factors that determines the change and politicisation of management in various public sector organisations. In the context of alternating ruling majorities, changing governments and positions, patronage strategies are exercised by political parties and incumbent managers on the ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ basis. These strategies are more actively pursued in policy areas and organisations that are characterised by higher political salience, larger funding or revenue. The likelihood and scope of politicisation is also affected by such facilitating factors as party networks or such constraining factors as legal regulation of the civil service.These results of politicisation research to a large extent correspond to the previous theoretical propositions based on a game theory (prisoner’s dilemma) approach. Competing party blocs exercise patronage strategies, responding to their opponents’ behaviour in office. If one party bloc politicises the positions of career managers, a competing bloc attempts to force the incumbent managers out of office through organisational restructuring and changing the status of civil service positions. Although political parties may be aware of the negative effects of politicisation, as rational actors they may have no interest in discontinuing their patronage practices in the absence of party cooperation and credible agreements concerning the professional management of public sector managers.The mechanism of ‘top-down’ politicisation can account for the level of politicisation and its dynamics at the central level, especially among the government agencies and state-owned enterprises. However, unlike at the central level, managers of local-level organisations (especially personal health care organisations, educational organisations and forestry companies) are involved in a different politicisation game. First, if under the ‘top-down’ politicisation mechanism political parties exercise patronage in order to reward loyal party members and control decision-making, under the ‘bottom-up’ politicisation mechanism some heads of public sector organisations themselves engage in patronage relations in order to keep their managerial positions, reward loyal members of their organisations and control organisational performance. Second, these mechanisms also differ in terms of politicisation results and processes: if ‘top-down’ politicisation results in high politicisation and low institutional stability (frequent organisational changes and managers’ turnover), the mix of a relatively stable institutional environment and high levels of actual politicisation can co-exist under ‘bottom-up’ politicisation.

Are volatile voters erratic, whimsical or seriously picky? A panel study of 58 waves into the nature of electoral volatility (The Netherlands 2006–2010)

Electorates appear to be adrift. Across Western Europe electoral volatility is increasing. But are volatile voters whimsical? Do they behave randomly, like drift sand, or are they emancipated, not committed to a single political party but loyal to their own preferences? To answer these questions this study focuses on the Dutch electorate, which has become the most volatile in Western Europe. We analyse the extensive 1Vandaag Opinion Panel (1VOP) dataset, which covers 55,847 adult respondents who participated in at least 2 of the 58 waves between November 2006 and June 2010. 1VOP allows us to break down electoral volatility by type, direction (intra-bloc versus inter-bloc) and time span. We conclude that volatility reflects voter emancipation rather than disengagement. Although more than half of the respondents (55 percent) change party preference at least once, they mostly stick to one of two ideologically coherent party blocs. Especially middle groups are volatile: people with modal income, with average levels of education and who position themselves in the political centre. However, the lower educated are more likely to switch between dissimilar parties. Our findings question the socialization model: although older voters are relatively loyal when they cast their ballots, they are the most volatile in the years in between.

Election Inversions, Coalitions and Proportional Representation: Examples of Voting Paradoxes in Danish Government Formations

When collective choices are made in more than one round and with different groups of decision makers, so‐called ‘election inversions’ may take place, where each round produces different majority outcomes. In this article, two versions of such compound majority paradoxes are identified that are particularly, but not exclusively, relevant for systems of proportional representation with governing coalitions: the ‘Threshold Paradox’ and the ‘Federal Paradox’. The empirical relevance of the paradoxes is illustrated with examples from two Danish elections (in 1971 and in 1990), where a majority of the voters voted for one bloc of parties, but a majority of the seats fell to another.

The transformation of the Swedish political party system in the late 20th/early 21st century

107 This article studies the transformation of Swedish political party system in the 1980s, and aims to develop its typology before and after the transformation. The article identifies several key prerequisites for such transformation: among them, the crisis of social democracy and an increase in the nationalist feelings in society. The latter is caused by the negative effects of attempts at social integration of the migrants and introduction of the principles of multiculturalism. Ethnic tension manifested itself in the wide-spread support for the Swedish Democrats party in the 2010 parliamentary election. From a political party system dominated by social democrats, Sweden has gone to a system with two leading parties — the left-wing Swedish Social Democratic Labour Party and the right-wing Moderate Party. The Swedish Democrats position themselves as an alternative to the two party blocs headed by the ruling parties (the Alliance and the RedGreens). The study employs an interdisciplinary approach and uses the methods of scientific synthesis. Its findings can be of practical significance for politicians, social activists, and academics alike.

Estrutura da competição pela Presidência e consolidação do sistema partidário no Brasil

In this article, the authors: (1) argue that the structure of the Brazilian Presidential race represents the decisive factor in the recent consolidation of the country's party system; (2) identify three distinct party blocs based on an analysis of the strategies developed by the parties within the Presidential race; (3) examine the blocs' positions based on surveys conducted in the Chamber of Deputies in 2005 and 2010; and (4) demonstrate that the situation in the electoral sphere has its correlate at the Congressional level, allowing an ideological distinction between two of these blocs, while the third bloc calculates its moves exclusively on the disconnect between government and opposition.

Election Inversions, Coalitions and Proportional Representation: Examples from Danish Elections

When collective choices are made in more than one round and with dif¬ferent groups of decision-makers, so-called election inversions may take place, where each group have different majority outcomes. We identify two ver¬sions of such compound majority paradoxes specifically, but not ex¬clu¬si¬ve¬ly, relevant for systems of proportional representation with governing coalitions: The “Threshold Paradox” and the “Federal Paradox”. The empirical relevance of the two paradoxes is illustrated with examples from three Danish elections (1971, 1990, 2011), where a majority of the voters voted for one bloc of parties but where a majority of the seats fell to another.

The Positions of Irish Parliamentary Parties 1937–2006

Ireland is often described as the odd country out in studies of west European politics. Its parties do not readily fit into the classical European definitions of party families. This paper estimates the positions of the parliamentary parties since 1937, based on a dataset consisting of all parliamentary votes from 1937 to 2006 using a Bayesian ideal point estimation framework. It is shown that party competition in the Irish parliament adheres to a government‐opposition dimension, and that it is possible to distinguish only two blocs of parties in each period, one consisting of the parties supporting the government and one comprising the remaining parties as the opposition. It is argued that the estimated positions do not reflect party policy positions but are instead voting cohesion of two distinct blocs of the parliamentary parties. The findings are validated by a comparison with various expert surveys of Irish party positions.

Limited Choices: Russian Opposition Parties and the 2007 Duma Election

The December 2007 Russian Duma election, which Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party (YeR) won in an overwhelming fashion, did not use the same electoral rules that had structured parlimentary elections from 1993 until 2003.1 Before 2005, when the change was implemented, the 450-member Duma was selected through a combined electoral system in which half the seats were filled via a party list and half were drawn from single-member districts (SMDs) in Russia's eighty-nine regions. This system produced party ballots with frequently fluctuating numbers of parties, and SMD ballots with large numbers of independents. In an effort to expedite the party consolidation process, the 2005 law abolished SMD seats and extended the party lists to encompass all 450 seats. In addition, the vote threshold required for representation was increased from 5 percent to 7 percent.one of the highest thresholds in the world (rivaled by the 7 percent required for the Polish Sejm and exceeded by the 10 percent required for the Turkish Grand National Assembly). To ensure the maintenance of partyness, the law also stipulated that parliament members could not change their party affiliation after getting elected and that the candidates themselves must undergo a two-stage evaluation process by the Central Election Commission. Finally, the law prohibited the formation of party blocs, requiring each party to possess official registration, dovetailing with the 2001 law, On Political Parties, that raised the number of members and regional branches required for registration.2 All of these changes obviously pose a strategic problem for Russia's political parties: they must learn to adapt to the new rules to remain relevant as representational organizations. Most of all, the new electoral formula was a challenge to the opposition parties that saw their support decline in the 2003 Duma election.namely, the democratic parties Yabloko and Union of Rightist Forces (SPS), and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).3 In this article, I explore how these parties have responded to the electoral changes and what factors have influenced these strategies. The first part of this article examines Yabloko and the SPS, both of which failed to individually pass the 5 percent threshold in the 2003 election and were unable to combine into a single party for the 2007 election as a means of overcoming the daunting 7 percent threshold. I also look into the decline of the KPRF, which suffered a major reversal of support in the 2003 election that continued into the 2007 election. Finally, because the setbacks for these parties have not occurred in a vacuum, the last part of this article deals with the nature of the system itself and how it has limited opposition parties' choices. This includes a discussion of the hegemonic influence of the Putin regime (and, by extension, YeR), its use of administrative resource, and the role of client parties (the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia [LDPR] and Just Russia) in shaping party system outcomes. Even in the absence of the opposition parties' strategic failures (of which there are many), the election rules militate against opposition party success.Theoretical BackgroundBefore moving on to the main discussion of the opposition parties and their electoral challenges, it would be prudent to first outline some basic theoretical considerations of Russian party system analysis. Much of the existing literature on party systems explicitly deals with Western Europe and North America, and adapting the models used therein to the Russian context is fraught with certain difficulties, such as the nature of the post-Communist transition itself and the resultant conflict between representation and effectiveness in the party system. As Jack Bielasiak notes, the immediate aftermath of the 1991 fall of Communism was an explosion in the number of parties designed as vehicles for representation that moved into the newly opened political space. …

Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate

This article relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. We find that the occurrence of a terror attack in a given locality within three months of the elections causes an increase of 1.35 percentage points on that locality's support for the right bloc of political parties out of the two blocs vote. This effect is of a significant political magnitude because of the high level of terrorism in Israel and the fact that its electorate is closely split between the right and left blocs. Moreover, a terror fatality has important electoral effects beyond the locality where the attack is perpetrated, and its electoral impact is stronger the closer to the elections it occurs. Interestingly, in left-leaning localities, local terror fatalities cause an increase in the support for the right bloc, whereas terror fatalities outside the locality increase the support for the left bloc of parties. Given that a relatively small number of localities suffer terror attacks, we demonstrate that terrorism does cause the ideological polarization of the electorate. Overall, our analysis provides strong empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate shows a highly sensitive reaction to terrorism.

The Impact of the Australian Ballot on Member Behavior in the U.S. House of Representatives

Katz and Sala linked the development of committee property rights in the late-nineteenth-century U.S. House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. If, as they posited, members sought personal reputations to carry them to reelection in the new electoral environment, the current article argues that behaviors with more immediate political payoffs also should have changed in ways their theory would predict. The article examines whether committee assignments, floor voting behavior, and the distribution of pork barrel projects changed in predicted ways and finds supportive outcomes, but usually only when the office bloc ballot, and not the party bloc ballot, was in use.

The changing colours of the post‐communist state: The politicisation of the senior civil service in Hungary

Abstract. This article examines claims that senior civil services in post‐communist Europe are subject to instability and politicisation, and that both features are at the centre of what amounts to the emergence of a distinct type of executive governance different from Western traditions. At the conceptual level, the article develops four modes of politicisation that differ with respect to the political control over the making and breaking of bureaucratic careers. Modes of politicisation serve as an analytical tool to assess and classify the politicisation of post‐communist senior civil services and to compare them to prevailing modes of politicisation in Western democracies as well as the communist past. At the empirical level, the article examines the politicisation of the senior civil service in post‐communist Hungary. It argues that the politicisation of the Hungarian senior civil service is characterised by high turnover, recruitment of outsiders and heavy reliance on the appointment of officials who come and go with their bloc of political parties while bridging the out‐of‐office period in the private sector, academia or at a political party. The article concludes that the politicisation of the senior civil service in post‐communist Hungary has more in common with the communist past than with the prevailing modes of politicisation in Western democracies. The main difference from the communist era lies in the periodically changing political colours of the post‐communist state.

Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate

This paper relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. We find that the occurrence of a terror attack within three months of the elections is associated with a 1.35 percentage points increase on the local support for the right bloc of political parties out of the two blocs vote. This effect is of a significant political magnitude given the level of terrorism in Israel and the fact that its electorate is closely split between the right and left blocs. Moreover, a terror fatality has important electoral effects beyond the locality where the attack is perpetrated, and their electoral impact is stronger the closer to the elections they occur. Interestingly, the observed political effects are not affected by the identity of the party holding office. These results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate shows a highly sensitive reaction to terrorism, and substantiate the claim that terror organizations especially target democratic regimes because these regimes are more prone to make territorial concessions.

Are Voters Sensitive to Terrorism? Direct Evidence from the Israeli Electorate

This paper relies on the variation of terror attacks across time and space as an instrument to identify the causal effects of terrorism on the preferences of the Israeli electorate. The authors find that the occurrence of a terror attack within three months of the elections is associated with a 1.35 percentage points increase on the local support for the right bloc of political parties out of the two blocs vote. This effect is of a significant political magnitude given the level of terrorism in Israel and the fact that its electorate is closely split between the right and left blocs. Moreover, a terror fatality has important electoral effects beyond the locality where the attack is perpetrated, and their electoral impact is stronger the closer to the elections they occur. Interestingly, the observed political effects are not affected by the identity of the party holding office. These results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that the electorate shows a highly sensitive reaction to terrorism, and substantiate the claim that terror organizations especially target democratic regimes because these regimes are more prone to make territorial concessions.

"Larger than a Party, yet Smaller than a State": Locating Hezbollah's Place within Lebanon's State and Society

the world's most lethal and effective guerilla/ terrorist organizations.' Although that reputation is certainly justified, the organization has changed substantially from the Iranian-led orga nization involved in the 1983 suicide bombing of an American Marine base in Lebanon. The orga nization that the U.S. government has labeled, and is pushing the rest of Europe also to label, as a terrorist organization comprises the largest party bloc within Lebanon's democratically elected parliament. It is Lebanon's largest non state provider of healthcare and social services and operates schools of such high quality that even non-Muslims send their children to them. Equating Hezbollah to al Qaeda in the war against terrorism ignores the substantial role that the organization plays within Lebanese society and the legitimate position it enjoys within the country's government. Within the context of its foreign policy towards Lebanon, the U.S. gov ernment has had difficulties differentiating between Hezbollah, the terrorist organization, and Hezbollah, the responsible social and politi cal actor, because the two represent different faces of the same coin. The nature of Hezbollah's relationship with the Lebanese state and its posi tion with the country's larger society suggests that U.S. attempts to dislodge and disarm the organization could very well suffer the same fate that Israel's did, and, furthermore, could poten tially lead to the organization's empowerment. On the basis of the intricate relationships that exist between Hezbollah, the Lebanese state,

Electoral Reforms, Membership Stability and the Existence of Committee Property Rights in American State Legislatures

One of the most creative theories advanced about legislative organization in recent years is Katz and Sala's linkage of the development of committee property rights in the US House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. Katz and Sala argue that the Australian ballot – a government-printed ballot cast in secret that replaced a party-produced ballot that was cast in public – gave members of the House an incentive to pursue personal constituency votes. This, in turn, led to the rise of committee property rights as members sought to keep their committee assignments from term to term because of the potential electoral benefits they derived from them. In this Note we use the state legislative committee membership dataset collected by Hamm and Hedlund and their colleagues to test whether committee property rights appeared in American state legislatures at roughly the same time as Katz and Sala find they emerged in the US House. State legislatures were, of course, exposed to the same electoral innovation at the same time. But, while in some ways state legislatures were much like Congress as organizations, in other ways they were very different. Our cross-sectional data and the variance in important institutional variables they provide allow us to test a critical proposition about the importance of membership stability rates in mediating the rise of committee property rights. We also go beyond Katz and Sala's analysis by testing to see if differences in Australian ballot design (office column and party bloc) across the states influenced the behaviour of legislators in the way their theory suggests.

Georgia: Rise and Fall of the Façade Democracy

Jaba Devdariani is founding director and chairman of the board of the United Nations Association (UNA) in Georgia.Georgia's revolution of roses, November 22-3, 2003, brought an unprecedented generational change in post-Soviet political leaderships, based on public support for the democracy. Like every revolution, it tells a story of reform.Gradual weakening of Eduard Shevardnadze's government has been observed both by national and international analysts who spoke of Georgia as a failed state. But, more important, Shevardnadze's inflexible style of governance acted as a straightjacket for the political environment that grew increasingly complex since Georgia's independence.On November 23, Eduard Shevardnadze was forced to resign his office, amid the wave of public protests against rigged parliamentary elections, after ruling the country for twelve consecutive years and being in the country's top leadership since the 1970s.Some observers refer to these events as a surprise breakthrough of democracy. Others point out that the leaders who deposed the president were among the top ten leaders of Shevardnadze's own Citizens Union of Georgia in the 1999 parliamentary elections. Thus, the critics say no significant political change has occurred.To put Georgia's revolution of roses in a proper context, it is necessary to analyze the pressures that the country's social and partisan environment put on the political system that personally became associated with Shevardnadze since the 1990s.Only by fusing both of these observations can we tell a story of emergence of the country's democratic institutions, party politics, and reform.PrefaceForty-five political entities, thirteen of which were the party blocs, participated in Georgia's 1999 parliamentary elections. While the general level of party pluralism in Georgia is acknowledged widely, researchers have noted several deficiencies that prevent the political process from becoming a robust and sustainable foundation for the country's democratic development.Among the most frequently mentioned are: 11. Lack of internal party democracy2. Little or no effort to develop meaningful party platforms3. Little attention to membership4. Weak constituency relations5. Failure to separate elected party representatives from the management responsibilities6. Confrontationalism and a propensity to fractionalize 2These political party deficiencies are characteristic of many post-socialist countries. In Georgia, however, the party system had to be recreated from scratch at least twice in the country's recent history, leading to abortive development.The political parties emerged in Georgia in a process broadly reminiscent of similar processes in post-Soviet space. The elitist groups in ideological opposition to communism, commonly known as dissident groups, preceded the modern parties. They did not strive to gain control of the government; hence they cannot, strictly speaking, be characterized as political parties. Many of the dissident leaders have played an active role in the new political parties, and some still remain in the political arena.The political groups aspiring to power today emerged in the late 1980s and formed a vanguard of the independence movement. They succeeded the Communist regime through elections in 1990 but had little time to develop organizationally. Most of these groups squandered popular support in a bloody coup that ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia in early 1992. As a result, the rules of the political game and the system of political parties have taken shape since 1995.Different from many other post-socialist states, the Communist Party almost has vanished from the political arena since 1989. The former Communist nomenklatura has maintained some of its influence and financial assets, but as an organizational entity, the Communist Party never has recovered, attracting the protest vote. …