Constituency Party Research Articles

One Nation's Electoral Support: Where Does It Come From, What Makes It Different and How Does It Fit?

This paper does three things. First, it offers a critique of the academic literature on the One Nation vote, focusing on the limitations of the work of political geographers and the methodological shortcomings of survey researchers. Second, it re‐examines data from the 1998 Australian Election Study in order to explore the demographic and attitudinal forces that both drove the One Nation vote and distinguished it from the votes secured by the Labor Party, the Liberal and National parties and the Australian Democrats; this highlights the importance of gender, geography and class, of political alienation and of attitudes to Aborigines and immigration. Third, it suggests that the basis of One Nation's mobilisation did not lie in concerns about economic insecurity so much as in opposition to ‘new class’ values, particularly around race. In doing so, it challenges common understandings of the Party's constituency and of its distinctiveness.

More Women Constituency Party Presidents

The purpose of this article is to explore the idea that the gender of constituency party presidents makes a difference in the recruitment of women as candidates in federal politics in Canada, notably by examining the attitudes of female and male party gatekeepers towards the presence of women in politics. Two hypotheses inspired us. The first suggests that female presidents are more likely than male presidents to assess candidates using traits more likely to be possessed by women. The second hypothesis proposes that women are more likely than men to support measures for increasing the number of women in politics. The first hypothesis is not confirmed: female presidents do not appreciate feminine traits any more than male presidents. The second is only partly confirmed. Far from being the only variable to influence support for measures promoting women candidates, gender appears to be a secondary determinant when the variables of political party and the feminist consciousness are taken into account. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to neglect the gender variable because, depending on the political party, a woman president can make a difference, especially when it comes to the Right and Centre parties.

Political Particularism Around The World

This paper presents a new dataset on electoral systems and outlines its potential uses in further research exploring the connections between electoral systems and economic outcomes. The dataset provides indicators of the degree to which individual politicians can further their careers by appealing to narrow geographic constituencies on the one hand, or party constituencies on the other.

Plurality Rule vs. Proportional Representation. How Much of a Difference Do Electoral Rules Make? Evidence from Germany

This paper examines the importance of electoral rules for legislators' behavior. It uses a quasi-natural experiment that assigns whether legislators are elected under the first-pass-the-post (FPTP), or the proportional representation (PR) electoral rule. The experiment is generated by the current German electoral system. This approach can identify the effect of electoral rules on legislators' behavior without being subject to a simultaneous equation bias. This approach can disentangle whether so-called pork barrel politics are due to political climate in a country or due to the electoral rule employed. We find that the FPTP system gives legislators incentives to service their geographically based constituency as evidenced by their committee assignments. Legislators elected through PR seek committees that service the party constituencies, which are not necessarily geographically based.

Tort Reform Voting in the U.S. Senate

This article analyzes the determinants of Senate voting on tort reform. The key issue addressed is the effect of party affiliation, experience as an attorney, constituent economic interests, and contributions to Senate candidates from the American Trial Lawyers' Political Action Committee (ATLPAC) on subsequent voting on tort reform legislation in the Senate. The article employs logit regression to model the determinants of voting on tort reform in the Senate. The results suggest that party interests, constituent interests, and self-interest influenced voting on tort reform. Democratic senators and those who are attorneys were less likely to vote in favor of tort reform. Contributions from ATLPAC significantly decreased the likelihood of a senator voting for tort reform. The size of the legal profession within the senator's state and the number of new corporations in the state have a small but significant impact.

Is There a Local Dimension to Modern Election Campaigns? Party Activists’ Perceptions of the Media and Electoral Coverage of Canadian Constituency Politics

Modern election campaign studies focus on national dimensions at the expense of attending to local campaigns in legislative elections. This is also true of analyses of media coverage and impact of election campaigns. This paper examines the local dimension of media and election campaigns across a wide range of diverse constituency contexts in Canada in order to identify the political, socioeconomic, and geographic determinants of constituency party associations ability to attract local media attention during an election campaign. We also examine the role of these features of the constituency settings and explain variations in satisfaction with the medias coverage of the local campaign.

Small kingdoms and crumbling organizations: Examining the variation in constituency party membership and resources

(2000). Small kingdoms and crumbling organizations: Examining the variation in constituency party membership and resources. British Elections & Parties Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 133-150.

The Funding of Constituency Party General Election Campaigns in Great Britain

The issues of political party campaign expenditure and funding sources are again high on the British political agenda. Most attention is focused on the amounts raised and spent by the parties nationally, with much less being devoted to the separate local parties in the 641 parliamentary constituencies—where the amounts that can be spent on general election campaigns are subject to legal constraints. Little is known about the sources of funds for those campaigns, and research on the 1997 general election has shown that for most parties the legal requirement to disclose where they obtain their income does not result in the disclosure of original sources of their income. As at previous elections, however, the amounts spent in the constituencies have an impact on the outcome, sustaining the case for regulation; much is spent outside the legal constraints, however, and it is difficult to envisage ways in which this might be regulated.

The Magic Bullet? The RTAA, Institutional Reform, and Trade Liberalization

The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA) of 1934 has long been heralded as a simple institutional reform with revolutionary consequences: namely, by changing the trade policymaking process in the United States, the RTAA is held responsible for the dramatic liberalization in U.S. policy beginning in the 1930s and 1940s. This article takes issue with this conventional wisdom. I argue that the standard accounts—which emphasize the importance of delegation for overcoming logrolling in Congress or for facilitating reciprocity in international trade negotiations—fail to provide an adequate explanation for just how the institutional innovation was achieved and sustained in the face of protectionist opposition. I suggest instead that trade liberalization was driven by exogenous changes in party constituencies and societal preferences that had crucial effects on congressional votes to extend the RTAA authority and liberalize trade after 1945. The preservation of the RTAA program was symptomatic rather than causal; as a consequence, it may well be abandoned in the future. The evolution of U.S. trade policy has been, and will continue to be, powerfully shaped by changes in the preferences of societal groups and in the positions taken by parties on the trade issue.

Carl F. H. Henry's Moral Arguments for Evangelical Political Activism

1 he rising tide of evangelical political activism refuses to subside. In the late 1980s, several commentators suggested that the wave of evangelical political involvement had crested and was coming to an end.1 They pointed to the poor showing of Pat Robertson in the 1988 presidential election, the demise of the Moral Majority, the cumulative impact of frequent media criticism, and the inability of evangelicals to implement a single major policy in the decade of the 1980s. The pre dictions were wrong. Ralph Reed's launching of the Christian Coali tion, a spate of highly visible state and local battles, and the 1994 midterm elections demonstrate this key Republican Party constituency

Tactical Voting and Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1992 General Election in England

Tactical voting has become increasingly salient in recent elections in England. However, it is not only voters who behave tactically. Political parties may also act tactically by focusing their election campaigns on marginal seats. This Note provides a unique exploration of the relationship between local campaigning and tactical voting in England, at the 1992 general election.

Are legislators ideologues or the agents of constituents?

Legislatures often make important economic decisions. A decade ago economists viewed each legislator as the agent, if not of the median voter, of some pivotal voter in a party constituency. Therefore, the voting decision of a legislator could readily be predicted if one could measure the preferences of the relevant pivotal voter. Models where interests on specific issues can be simply linked to votes on the same issues are questionable, however, since votes will be traded across issues. Political parties are one important vehicle for organizing such trades. A simple empirical test for the United States Senate, however, clearly rejects the notion that the representative is the agent of the median voter or a local party constituency, even if vote trades are allowed. Thus, there is ample opportunity for politicians, even under reelection constraints, to either voice their own ideology or that of idiosyncratic support coalitions. The relevant theory and empirical evidence is summarized, and some validating tests for European parliaments are suggested.

The Impact of Spending on Party Constituency Campaigns at Recent British General Elections

British political parties spent over £10 million on the 1992 general election campaign in the constituencies. Most commentators believe that this expenditure has no impact on the election outcome. Analyses of the last three inter-election periods show otherwise, however. Parties spent most in marginal constituencies and in defending the seats that they held. In general, the more they spent, the better their electoral performance, which could have influenced the outcome in a not-insignificant number of seats. Overall, the pattern of local campaign activity appears to be both rational and effective.

From factionalism to autocracy: PASOK's de‐radicalization during the regime transition of the 1970s

The contribution discusses the issues of party conflict that dominated the development of PASOK in the immediate post‐dictatorship era in Greece. The focus is on the dimensions of group conflict within the party and the extent to which the transition to democratic rule affected the development of factional behaviour. Particular attention is paid to the role of the founder and leader of PASOK. Andreas Papandreou and his (successful) attempts to ‘purify’ the party from volatile and challenging partisan tendencies and to consolidate absolute personal power. The analysis draws extensively on the theme of PASOK's embryonic existence in exile during the junta period, since it was then that a wide variety of groups gathered around Papandreou. The case of PASOK is one of genetic factionalism, rooted in the merger of the party's constituent groups.

How cynical can an incumbent be? Strategic policy in a model of government spending

When parties with different preferences compete for election, strategic manipulation of state variables for electoral purposes can occur even with rational voters. This paper presents a model in which government resources can be used ‘productivity’, for the benefit of everybody, or ‘unproductively’, for the benefit of the ruling party's constituency. A government more inclined to unproductive spending may choose to collect public resources inefficiently in order to produce the importance of spending decisions in the election. The model highlights the strategic role of policy decisions that affect incentives and constraints faced by future governments, and their impact on election results.

Measuring Local Campaign Effects: Labour Party Constituency Campaigning at the 1987 General Election

Thursday 31 March: Polling day. To headquarters at about 9 and from 9.30 am to 6 visiting all the polling stations and committee rooms. We had lunch at the ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ and then went out again with our loudspeaker, doing final knocking up. After the polls closed we cleared up the headquarters, went back to the hotel and began watching the BBC Election programme. It was evident that a big Labour victory was coming …1

How iron is the iron law of oligarchy?

Abstract. Probably the most famous dictum about parties' internal structures is Robert Michels' ‘iron law of oligarchy’. Over the past two decades, however, the societal context within which parties are embedded has begun to change which may alter the psychological premise upon which Michels’ law is based. More specifically, we hypothesize that New Politics proponents within established parties are disproportionately likely to rely on cues from local party branches, instead of leadership cues, in forming issue positions on intra‐party controversies. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the influence of New Politics issues on the leadership‐constituency views of party delegates within fifty‐two West European parties. In addition, we analyze the relative contribution of party ideology and party structures to the evolution of mean party support for NP policies and constituency orientations. The data base for this paper is a unique study of convention delegates conducted in all major West European parties, and a study of party characteristics. We find that New Politics supporters, especially within socialist parties, are predisposed to emphasize the representation of their local party constituency, in case the views of local party branches and a party's national leadership clash. We assess the implications of this research for parties and party theories, especially Michels' law.

Images and Issues in the 1988 Presidential Election

This article uses a methodology first suggested in "The Two Faces of Issue Voting" by Carmines and Stimson (1980) to disaggregate voters into "issue voters" and "image voters." An application of this methodology to the 1988 American National Election Study dataset demonstrates that image voters provided Dukakis with a slight advantage over Bush in the 1988 election, and that Dukakis was the primary beneficiary of negative image voting. Issue voters outnumbered image voters, however, and provided Bush with a decisive advantage over Dukakis. Redistributive issues played the critical role in Bush's success. The electoral trade-offs involved for the Democrats on redistributive issues are explored by examining the differential effects of this subset of issues on pivotal Democratic party constituencies.

Introduction

The relationship between the political and industrial wings of the European left has undergone a profound transformation since the 1970s. While the left has dominated government in some countries and union density and organizational strength have held up well in others, the range and scope of social change that labor unions and left parties can contemplate today is narrower than at any time in the last seventy years. One has to look back to the 1920s for a similar set of constraints imposed upon the workers' movement. Even where the left holds power, its programs have become more cautious, less redistributive, and in some cases barely distinguishable from those of electoral competitors on the right. Similarly, even where unions have maintained membership levels, their concrete gains have been reduced. Bargaining agendas are now dominated by the concerns of employers, not workers. Witness the conversion from the 1960s to the 1990s of debates on participation: the concepts of worker power and selfmanagement have been curiously transformed into the current enthusiasm among employers and conservative governments for quality circles and employee participation. The essays in this issue of the International Journal of Political Economy examine the complexion of the left today through the prism of the union-party relationship. The left has traditionally consisted of these two vehicles of mobilization; their relationship has been central to the strategic capacity and the selfconception of progressive forces. The so-called transmission belt between communist, socialist, or social democratic parties and organized labor consisted of linking action between the political and economic spheres, through a division of labor, towards a shared vision of society. The capacity to achieve the goals of one has depended on the involvement of the other. Constituencies of unions and left parties have historically overlapped. Thus, the focus upon the union-party nexus provides a window onto the fortunes of both organizations and the character of the left. The four cases examined in this issue Britain, Germany, France, and Spain exhibit a series of contrasts. The political parties range from the Mediterranean socialist parties, which experienced tremendous electoral success in the 1980s, through the electoral failure of the British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats (SPD), to the organizational and electoral crises of the

The Political Ecology of Campaign Contributions in Canada: A Constituency-Level Analysis

AbstractThis article explores the constituency dimension of campaign financing in the 1984 and 1988 federal elections in Canada. The analysis uncovers considerable variability in the capacity of constituency parties to attract campaign donations. These variations appear to be related to the past local and regional strengths of parties, to the expected closeness of the current contest, and to whether incumbents are running for re-election. Multivariate analyses suggest that these political variables have a broadly consistent impact on fund-raising after other features of the socio-economic diversity of constituencies have been controlled.