Party Change Research Articles

New people, new policy: How personnel renewal in the party executive affects party policy change. The case of Austria

The party organization literature has long acknowledged that changes in a party’s internal power structure bring about changes in leadership personnel. However, empirical assessments of how such personnel changes relate to party behavior are rare. We explore personnel renewal in the party executive as a driver of party policy change and argue that focusing on these processes provides for an encompassing perspective on the connection between intra-party power and party behavior. Building on the party change literature, we theorize on personnel renewal in the party executive as a potential stand-alone driver of party policy change as well as on its interplay with other explanatory factors and test empirical implications based on all major Austrian parties (1949–2019). Findings suggest that personnel renewal in the party executive has a profound effect on party policy and that these personnel changes are in part driven by party performance.

To caucus or primary? Why state parties change their presidential nomination contests

AbstractPresidential nominations are generally perceived to be under the control of primary voters and caucus‐goers, with party organizations themselves largely powerless to steer outcomes. However, parties are highly active in the background, often switching contests between primaries and caucuses or vice versa in order to influence the nomination. Despite the popular narrative of parties becoming more internally democratic and abandoning caucuses, we find numerous instances of states moving from primaries to caucuses. We examine state party switches between caucuses and primaries between 1980 and 2024, testing various theories of party change. This approach yields few systematic conclusions. Therefore, we shift to examining contemporaneous coverage of state party switches using an inductive qualitative approach, revealing a complex and dynamic nomination system and a variety of reasons why state parties choose one form of contest over another. These findings catch state parties in the act of trying to control nomination contests in surprisingly overt ways.

Democratic Breakthrough or Authoritarian Turn? The Impact of the DPS 30-year Longevity in Power and its Electoral Defeat in 2020 on the Democratisation Process of Montenegro

The aim of the paper is to analyse both the significance of the three-decade dominance on the Montenegrin party scene of the Democratic Party of Socialists (the longest ruling party, not only in the post-Yugoslav contries, but also in the whole CEE region) and the reasons behind its electoral defeat in 2020 and 2023. In the analysis of the DPS’s longevity in power and then its loss the theories of party change as well as of democratic trasition were applied. Above all, the focus was placed on the functioning of the so-called hybrid regimes and the phenomenon of democratic backsliding.

ANÁLISES DA EXECUÇÃO ORÇAMENTÁRIA DO ESTADO DO AMAZONAS (2016 – 2023) SOB A ÓTICA DA TEORIA DO EQUILÍBRIO PONTUADO

This study aims to examine budget execution in the State of Amazonas between 2016 and 2023, using the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory as a basis to identify periods of stability and abrupt changes. The methodology used was quantitative, with analyzes conducted based on data updated until December 31, 2023. To assess the normality of the distributions, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk tests were applied, with a confidence level of 5%. The results indicated that budget decisions, both in expenses by nature groups and by government functions, showed atypical behavior. The presence of periods of stability with interruptions was observed, which validates the central hypothesis that the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory is applicable to the analysis of budget variations in Amazonas. It was found that, although budgets are prepared incrementally, their execution reveals an interrupted pattern of stability. This research advances the literature on the execution of budgetary policies by including the analysis of total revenue and expenses paid by personnel group.Theoretical contributions cover discussions on budget preparation in Brazil, the impacts of party changes on budget execution and financial imbalance.

Tanah tak Bertuan: Volatilitas dan Stabilitas Elektoral di Jawa Barat Pasca Ode Baru

The changing power of political parties is one of the most important phenomena studied in democratic political systems. It can shed light on the extent to which political parties are connected to voters, the strengthening or weakening of party institutionalisation, the influence of personalities in politics, the influence of electoral and party institutional design, and so on. Studies on political party change (electoral volatility and stability) have been conducted comparatively, and some studies are conducted by looking at the national context of Indonesia. However, while studies have been conducted on these issues at the local level, they remain overlooked. This article fills this gap by presenting a description and analysis of electoral volatility and stability in West Java in the post-New Order era. Using the theoretical framework of electoral volatility and stability as well as the theory of party system institutionalisation (PSI), this study proposes three findings: high party turnover; higher electoral volatility in West Java compared to national electoral volatility; more competitive political party competition at the district/city level in West Java. The findings on electoral volatility, stability and competition are influenced by the restrictions of political party regulations, which have an impact on the decreasing number of political parties in elections, the personalisation of politics and the presidentialisation of politics, as well as the historical roots of the old-established parties that have been entrenched since the New Order era.

Kewenangan Partai Politik dalam Mengusulkan Pemberhentian dan Penggantian Antar Waktu Anggota Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah (Studi Kasus Pemberhentian Nofrizon Sebagai Anggota DPRD Sumbar 2019-2024)

On April 27 2023, the Democratic Party DPP issued DPP Decree No. 104/SK/DPP.PD/IV/2023 concerning the Dismissal of Democratic Party Members. Nofrizon was terminated because he violated Organizational Regulation Number 01/PO/DPP.PD/VII/2019 Article 5 Paragraph 4 that Democratic Party members are obliged to obey and carry out the decisions of the faction leadership without exception. Then, through a letter from the Democratic Party of West Sumatra Province DPD No.12/ext/DPD.PD/SB/V/2023, dated 29 May 2023, the Democratic Party stated that Mr. Nofrizon had been permanently terminated as a member of the Democratic Party and proposed an interim replacement (PAW ) Member of the West Sumatra Province DPRD from the Democratic Party Fraction for the 2019-2024 period. The legal basis used as a process for the temporary termination and placement of West Sumatra Province DPRD members is Law Number 23 of 2014 concerning Regional Government Article 139 Paragraph (2) DPRD members are dismissed from time to time for reasons as specified in letters e, h and i as following e. Proposed by the political party in accordance with the provisions of the statutory regulations, h. Dismissed from being a member of the political party in accordance with the provisions of the statutory regulations; and I. Become a member of another Political Party. To answer this problem, it is necessary to formulate it into three problem formulations. First, what is the process for the interim termination of DPRD members? Second, what is the interim placement process for DPRD members? Third, what is the authority of political parties in promising the dismissal and temporary placement of DPRD members? This research is a type of legal research using a sociological juridical legal research approach. The results of this research show that the temporary dismissal of DPRD members due to such termination can be carried out through a decision of the Honorary Board and/or through a proposal from a political party. Bro. Nofrizon, S. Sos was temporarily dismissed as a member of the West Sumatra Province DPRD from the Democratic Fraction. This interim suspension was at the suggestion of the Political Party (Democratic Party) due to a change of party and not a personal resignation, through the Democratic Party DPP decision letter No.104/SK/DPP.PD/V/2023. The interim replacement process for Provincial DPRD members cannot be separated from the process of dismissal of DPRD members which occurs first. Political parties have the authority to stop the temporary dismissal of DPRD members, but the process of guaranteeing candidates for interim replacement names for Provincial DPRD members is the attributive authority of the Provincial KPU.

Party change and electoral performance: assessing the impact of intraparty conflict on the Democrat and Hanura parties

This article examines the determining factors inducing the decreasing votes of two renowned political parties in Indonesia: The Democrat Party (PD) and the People Conscience Party (Hanura). As the ruling party in the 2009 election, the PD’s votes declined dramatically in the two following elections. Meanwhile, Hanura failed to exceed the parliamentary threshold in 2019. Methodologically, it is qualitative research by utilizing a comparative case approach. To gather data, this study employed in-depth interviews and documentary analysis and strengthened by NVivo 12plus platform by using Crosstab Query and Wordcloud Analysis to visualize data. By applying the party change indicators developed by Harmel and Janda, the findings revealed that leadership change was the most influential factor toward the poor performance of both parties in the electoral competition. Such leadership change caused a detrimental conflict and changed a dominant faction inside the party. More specifically, the corruption case behaved by the PD’s politicians aggravated the party charm, and the parliamentary threshold was a supporting aspect of the thrown out of Hanura from the parliament.

Establishing the External Identity of Claims in Civil Commercial Proceedings

The article analyzes judicial practice on the issue of establishing the external identity of claims in the arbitration process. The objectives of the article are to familiarize the reader with the positions of arbitration courts regarding the issue under consideration, to comprehend theoretical views on understanding the external identity of claims and to identify the correct approaches to the issue under consideration, allowing to avoid errors in law enforcement. To achieve this goal, the historical method was mainly used, as well as methods of comparison and analysis. As a result of the study, general conclusions were formulated. 1. Under the disputing persons in paragraph 2 of part 1 of Art. 127.1 Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and clause 1, part 1, Аrt. 150 of the Arbitration Procedure Code of the Russian Federation refers to the parties (plaintiff and defendant). Thus, the participation of a third party who does not make an independent claim in one of the identical disputes does not violate external identity. 2. External identity in the arbitration process is preserved when the procedural position of the parties changes, namely, that the former defendant becomes the plaintiff, and the former plaintiff becomes the defendant. 3. Not every change in the elements of a claim in the arbitration process will mean a violation of external identity, because identity is not equality. 4. It is necessary at the legislative level to provide the plaintiff with the opportunity to declare all competitive claims in one statement of claim, indicating the main (priority) and optional claims. The implementation of this approach will contribute to the real protection of the rights of entrepreneurs and will allow the court to significantly save the time required to consider such claims. 5. If the circumstances and evidence indicated in the second, identical claim are changed, supplemented, clarified or corrected to the extent that a new cause of action is created, then a change in the cause of action and a violation of external identity should be recognized.

“Churchill's Party”: A necessary experiment in personalization

AbstractAimThis article aims to determine the extent of “personalization” and “de‐institutionalization” within the Conservative Party in Britain during the period 1940–1945 when the Party was under the leadership of Winston Churchill.Materials and methodsThe article examines the different dimensions of “personalization” and “de‐institutionalization” as defined by Harmel, Svåsand, and Mjelde in this special edition. To do so, it uses a variety of sources including: internal party records, memoirs and biographies, contemporaneous diaries, letters to party leaders, and survey research undertaken by the organization Mass Observation.ResultsThe article identified that a limited degree of personalization took place during the period. This was largely in relation to the movement away from existing internal policy and procedures, especially those to do with electioneering. Evidence regarding other dimensions was mixed with a notable lack of change in the perceptions other parties and their leaders held about the Conservative Party.ConclusionThe article suggests that the personalization that occurred within the Party was largely a product of necessity, notably the unpopularity of the Conservative “brand” during World War II, compared to Churchill's own personal popularity, as well as the disruptions caused by the war itself. The article argues that this was enabled, to an extent, by the already high degree of latitude that the Conservative Party afforded its leaders. At the same time, the article notes the way in which defeat at the 1945 general election led to the Conservative Party “snapping back” to its pre‐war highly institutionalized form. Both findings highlight the extent to which electoral calculations were central to the process of personalization and its subsequent reverse.

Political Turnover and Public Health Provision in Brazilian Municipalities

Abstract The objective of this work is to estimate the effects of political turnover on municipal health indicators. For this purpose, we used a regression discontinuity design applied to a pool of data on close municipal elections that occurred in 2008 and 2012. The outcome variables tested were municipal health indicators observed 1 and 3 years after the elections. We assume that the change of parties in the leadership of the municipal executive power alters the managers and public health policies and, therefore, affects the indicators of this sector. Our results indicate that health indicators linked to administrative issues appeared to benefit from political turnover in the period immediately after the elections (1 year). These results were corroborated by our additional estimates (robustness). We highlight that the number of health workers and coverage of primary care remained better 3 years after the elections in municipalities that suffered political turnover, indicating that this improvement resulting from the change in management may not be transient. Finally, through averaging tests, we found that in municipalities where the incumbent lost the election and there was a turnover, health managers were more qualified, and there was greater creation of basic health units.

The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective by A. Kadir Yildirim

The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective <i>by A. Kadir Yildirim</i>

Does regulation matter? Trajectories of party organizational change in Western Europe (1970-2010)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to verify whether a relationship exists between partly laws and party organizational change. While the prevailing contextualist perspective enhances the weight of social, economic and technological factors in shaping party change, we maintain that the intensity of party regulation plays a major role in this respect. Based on some basic assumption of Organizational Institutionalism, the article adopts the rationale of the Political Parties Database (PPDB): we thus conduct an in-depth empirical analysis of three core party organisational dimensions (Resources, Representative Strategies, Structures), over a total of nineteen parties in four Western European democracies (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK), from 1970s to 2010s. Our empirical findings show that, while a growing number of party laws have been introduced in the countries under consideration, their impact on party organizational convergence is far from univocal: we thus provide different possible explanations of these results.

The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective , by A. Kadir Yildirim, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 320 pp., £85.00/$110.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781009170741

The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective <b>The Politics of Religious Party Change: Islamist and Catholic Parties in Comparative Perspective</b> , by A. Kadir Yildirim, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 320 pp., £85.00/$110.00 (hardback), ISBN 9781009170741

Smokescreens and Smear Campaigns: The Dutch Communist Party in Times of Crisis

This article seeks to establish how different crises in the Eastern Bloc affected the political standpoints of the Communist Party of the Netherlands, Communistische Partij Nederland (CPN), through an analysis of publications in affiliated party magazines between 1953 and 1981. This analysis is conducted within a framework consisting of party change theories and the literature about Eurocommunism as a Europe-wide phenomenon. The analysis indicates that the CPN went from supporting military interventions in Germany, Poznan, and Hungary to condemning them in Czechoslovakia, initially while maintaining ideological distance from political opponents in the Netherlands. This changed in 1981, when the CPN seemingly without restraint joined the mainstream political parties in condemning the introduction of martial law in Poland and the Socialistische Partij (SP), the Socialist Party of the Netherlands, took over the CPN’s position as a political outsider. This indicated a shift in the party’s stance from a niche to a mainstream positioning against Moscow.

Zmiana stron w nowym węgierskim Kodeksie cywilnym w perspektywie porównawczej

The Hungarian Civil Code introduced changes regarding the change of parties. The paper argues that comparative law helped the Hungarian legislator to introduce new rules that address relevant market needs. The author shows how the clarification of the system of the transfer of receivables opened up new opportunities for the parties and how the treatment of non-assignment clauses changed in light of legislative changes in several European countries. It is argued that the new Hungarian Civil Code found the right balance between the interests of the debtor and the assignor. The second part of the article explains that the New Civil Code introduced a significant change through the rule on free transferability of rights. The third part presents how the New Civil Code introduced rules on the transfer of contracts, following the solutions of several European countries and international unification instruments, and explains the challenges posed by these rules.

Party Change in the Post-Secular Age: The Case of Republican People’s Party in Turkey

The Republican People's Party (RPP) of Turkey is currently the main opposition party against the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP). While the RPP has usually been identified with a “rigid” understanding of secularism, the party has been experiencing a process of ideational change for more than a decade under the leadership of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. This study aims to describe and explain the party’s shift to a “softer” version of secularism. Under the light of party change literature, one internal and two external factors are identified. The impact of leadership change, the internal factor, is examined with reference to major strategic and ideational changes initiated by Kılıçdaroğlu. The first major external stimulus is the global and local hegemony of post-secularism, which refers to the idea and practice of a new balance between citizenship and difference, allowing a greater space for religious arguments and images in the public sphere. The second is the transition to presidential system in Turkey, which both forced and facilitated the RPP’s search for electoral alliances with conservative parties in a personalized winner-takes-all game. It is claimed that these factors have made the RPP reassess the effectiveness of its commitment to classical secularism in meeting the renewed party goal of vote maximization. Reverse pressures on the party will also be examined in the article, with an aim of foreseeing the RPP’s leaning in the near future.&#x0D; Key Words: Republican People’s Party, Secularism, Post-Secular Society, Party Change&#x0D; JEL Classification: Z1, D72, Y80

Preface to the Contributions on the Change of Parties in Contract Law

Preface to the Contributions on the Change of Parties in Contract Law

The times they are a‐changin': An experimental assessment of the causes and consequences of sudden policy U‐turns

AbstractPast research has long documented that voters dislike parties and leaders who reverse their policy positions. But would they tolerate (principled) policy U‐turns if they are motivated by external events, such as a large‐scale crisis or scientific evidence? In this study, we explore whether the motivation behind positional shifts affects voter evaluations of political parties. To do so, we seek to connect the causes and consequences of policy shifts, a synergy still unexplored in the literature. We suggest that, while U‐turns, in general, can be damaging to a party's reputation, principled changes brought about by new scientific evidence or major crises should not necessarily have negative implications, because these changes can be necessary for the public good. We conducted a nationally representative survey experiment in Germany (n = 3127) featuring two classes of policy reversals: strategic and principled. Surprisingly, however, we find that voters by and large hold negative views of different types of policy U‐turns, thus including when external circumstances suggest change may be necessary. Interestingly, our empirical analysis reveals intriguing patterns. First, voters are willing to tolerate all sorts of policy reversals if the party ends up adopting their positions, suggesting that proximity matters even in the event of exogenous events. Second, voters with high levels of political trust tolerate different types of policy reversals, even when the party changes for mere strategic office‐seeking motivations. Coming from the premise that political and societal change is imperative, these findings have direct implications for democracies.

TRENDS IN STATE FINANCES IN INDIA FROM 1990-91 TO 2020-21

The frequent changes in the political parties in power in states have influenced the revenue mobilisation and expenditure policies of the state governments in India. Economic and political factors over a period of time are responsible for leading the state government to a fiscal crisis. Rapid deterioration of state governments finances in India has been a serious issue in recent decades in India. The deterioration of State governments finances is mainly due to increase of committed revenue expenditure and implementation of too many welfare schemes and freebies. As per RBI report 2022-23, the state governments debt to GDP ratio is 29.5 percent in India in 2022-23. But it is more than the FRBM limit of 20 percent. The state governments total expenditure is about one and half times more than the Centre expenditure. After implementation of GST in 2017 in India, GST is the major source of revenue (42 %) for state governments. This paper examines a comprehensive analysis of trends in state finances in India during the last 30 years period. KEYWORDS: State Finances, Fiscal Imbalances, Revenue, Expenditure, Deficits.

On the measurement of electoral volatility

Electoral volatility measures the degree of vote switching between political parties in two consecutive elections. Political scientists use this as an indicator of party system (in)stability. Pedersen (1979) states that volatility should increase when the number of parties changes and/or relevant parties experience vote transfer between elections. However, his proposed functional form of measuring volatility does not always respond to these changes. To address these limitations, we introduce a class of additively separable electoral volatility measures which are responsive to changes in both the number of parties and their vote shares. We present a set of axioms that are both necessary and sufficient to characterize the proposed class of indices, making the structure of the indices more transparent. The paper also introduces two quasi orders which can rank party systems in terms of all electoral volatility indices satisfying certain intuitively reasonable axioms. Finally, applications of the proposed class of indices and the quasi orders are provided using data from Indian state elections.