Party Government Research Articles

Thuringia

Abstract The small federal state Thuringia has been politically unique over the last two legislative terms in two respects: It is the only German state in which a minister president belonging to the Left Party is leading a left of center coalition government; in other states where the Left Party is participating in governmental coalitions it is always the SPD that is leading the government. And, at least since 2019, Thuringia is unique because it is ruled by a minority government of the Left Party, SPD, and Greens. This article argues that the first uniqueness is a historically contingent deviance from national patterns that can be explained by the electoral development of the Thuringian SPD. The unique type of minority government has been caused primarily by the electoral success of the AfD in Thuringia, and it might serve as a model for other federal states if coalition building becomes equally difficult.

India’s Democracy: The Competitive Authoritarian Propensity? Rahul Mukherji and Seyed Hossein Zarhani

This paper explains and corroborates the mechanisms by which civic and political spaces opposed to Hindu nationalism have been attacked, especially after the arrival of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2014. Three mechanisms are discerned for replacing pluralistic values with Hindu majoritarian ones. Sometimes institutions are just allowed to drift by interpreting old rules in new ways. For example, no formal rules for media control have changed but the government???s control over media has increased substantially. At other times, incremental legal and policy changes are executed to make the change explicit, often building on a new moral purpose. To give another example, the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was amended and weaponized against NGOs in a layered way in 2020. Finally, when political opposition is weak, institutions that have provided guarantees for protecting diversity have simply been displaced by new and radically different ones. This was the case with abrogating Article 370, which converted the special status of the subnational state of Jammu and Kashmir to the status of two federally administered union territories–Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. These mechanisms place India in a competitive authoritarian frame, where those in power deploy electoral majorities to systematically attack the political opposition, making it more di(cult for it to rise. Despite these propensities, opposition parties have won elections in some of India’s subnational states. The challenges facing the world’s most populous democracy are significant, even though competitive elements co-exist. These elements in a competitive authoritarian regime, however, are under severe stress. India’s democratic credentials can be revived only if the competitive elements of India’s democracy stand united against ethno-nationalist Hindu majoritarianism.

The Influence of Implementing Accountability on the Management of Village Fund Allocation

This research aims to find out, then analyze and describe the Accountability of Village Fund Allocation Management in Je'netallasa Village, Pallangga District, Gowa Regency, South Sulawesi Province in Indonesia. Another research objective is also to see whether Village Fund Allocation Management in the village is running well or not. The type of research used is qualitative descriptive research. The location of this research was carried out in a village called Je'netallasa Village. The type and collection of data was carried out using interview techniques, observation and triangulation of data sources as well as triangulation of time to analyze research materials. The results of the research show that all stages of Village Fund Allocation Management starting from planning, implementation to achieving results can be accounted for before all Village Government parties and also the village community and the Accountability system in Village Fund Allocation Management in Je'Netallasa Village has implemented the principles of participation and principle of accountability.

Re-structuring Curriculum in Tertiary Institutions to Drive Sustainable Eco-civilization in China

Abstract In the strategic context of building a comprehensive ecologically civilized society as envisaged by the Communist Party and State Government of China, Eco-civilization education would become a mandatory new mission of the higher educational institutions in China. Linking the constructive postmodernism and ecological Marxism theories to eco-civilization, the purpose of the present essay is to restructure the higher education system for realizing the eco-civilized society in China via the literature integration methodology, the findings are as follows: (1) the goal of instituting the educational system of Eco-civilization in Chinese universities and colleges is to facilitate the culturing ecological literacy of the graduates; (2) the implementation of Eco-civilization education will create the graduates’ awareness, impart their requisite knowledge, and motivate them to adopt practices that promote Eco-civilization; and (3) the triple transitions of the higher education institutions in China to deliver on their missions as implementers of Eco-civilization education. Firstly, they must roll-out pragmatic programs to enhance students’ Eco-civilization conscious through the teaching Eco-civilization concepts as part of ideological and political courses. Secondly, they could also deepen students’ Eco-civilization knowledge by adjusting the teaching content and pedagogy of ecology courses. Finally, they could facilitate the Eco-civilization process by reinforcing behavioral reforms required to drive sustainable Eco-civilization and help positions these students as devoted ambassadors of Eco-civilization after graduation.

Domestic terrorism, incumbency, and legislative vote shares

A small number of studies have examined the effect terrorism has on political ideology and vote choice cross-nationally. However, scholars yet to understand how terrorist attack type influences vote choice based on the political ideology of incumbent governments. Thus, we examine the effect domestic and transnational terrorist attacks have on vote choice in legislative elections while accounting for the ideology of the incumbent government. In examining 56 democracies from 1975 – 2014 from various regions and levels of development, we find that domestic attacks, and not transnational, significantly effect both right and left party votes shares when the incumbent party in government is of a similar ideology. We attribute these results to the perception of instability that accompanies domestic attacks and the effects it has on voters’ evaluations of political parties. These findings have important implications for understanding how terrorism influences electoral behavior.

The Secrets of Continuous Governance by the People's Action Party in Singapore: A Focus on Parliamentary System Design

Since Singapore's independence in 1965, the People's Action Party (PAP) has consistently maintained its position as the ruling party, securing an overwhelming majority of seats in the parliament. This paper seeks to explore the historical continuity and refinement process of the PAP's parliamentary system within the context of Singapore's parliamentary structure and discuss the impacts of these designs on the party's governance. By analyzing the PAP's contributions to the composition of the parliament and the design of the electoral system, this study reveals that the parliamentary system is a crucial component enabling the PAP's sustained rule. Evidently, within Singapore's parliamentary framework, the PAP has implemented numerous designs. On one hand, it leverages the procedural legitimacy inherent in the system to confer legitimacy upon its governance. On the other hand, it capitalizes on efficient and frequent design modifications to tailor the system to its advantage, ensuring the continuity of its rule.

German Legislators’ Conceptions of Democracy and Process Preferences: Results from a New Survey

ABSTRACT Democracy’s resilience arguably depends on political elites’ loyalty to the political system. How do elected representatives understand democracy and their own role in it? We present results of a survey conducted among German legislators in state parliaments and the Bundestag in 2022. We start by mapping the scope and content of consensus and dissent where principles of democracy and their institutionalisation are concerned and go on to hypothesise that congruence between one’s own conceptions of democracy and established institutions and practices is generally higher among established and government parties’ representatives but also dependent on ideological inclinations. Our results are overall reassuring, showing a relatively low level of polarisation in attitudes to democracy, and have implications for the study of political elites, for diagnoses of political polarisation in Germany and for the possibility and feasibility of institutional reform.

Governance by platforms: Configuration of the relationship between Party-government and society in China

Platforms have emerged as the dominant mode of communication in China, empowering individuals to express their opinions and question the authority and credibility of the ruling party. To illustrate the impact of platforms on Party-government relations and society in China, we analyze four representative Chinese platforms: the Sina Microblog matrix of @Yinchuan for Governing Online, Shenzhen Baoan Tong APP, Shanghai Baoshan Community Link platform, and the smart party building platform in Beihai City. Drawing on these case studies, we argue that platforms not only provide channels for party control and government transformation, but also contribute to social progress by shaping the relationship between the Party-government and society, thus reshaping Chinese governance.

Collaborative Governance Concept on Youth Football Governance in Indonesia

Purpose: The study aimed to demonstrate general governance study development leading to collaborative governance related to youth football development to map the position of collaborative governance studies for youth football development Theoritical framework: This study used the general governance concept leading to the collaborative governance concept related to football development. The correlation is that experts consider collaborative governance to be the exit of chronic social issues (Muslim et al., 2021). Although Indonesian football is not a chronic social issue, minimum national achievements with the resources are ought to have serious measures. Moreover, the public’s expectation for national football achievements is astronomical. Method: This Study Literature Review (SLR) will use the Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) method. It aimed to summarize scientific evidence available concerning the research topic, identify gaps in related studies, and recommend future studies regarding the objective and results of various articles. For substance analysis use Nvivo 12, which was described in the form of a word cloud and cluster analysis. Research mapping was conducted using the Vos Viewer analysis to display the research map of football governance and its interrelationships. Results and Conclusions: The study results showed that football governance studies are abundant in developed football countries, particularly Europe, and mostly focused on club governance, competition governance, and involvement of parties leading to football as an industrial commodity. In Indonesia, football publications merely emerged in 2000, discussing football technical issues and recommending the importance of governance studies. Further governance study development mainly discusses the relationship between the government and the federation. Thus, it is often observed from the conflict perspective. Research implications: There are plenty of opportunities to conduct research with various study focus or concern. Several studies are recommending implementing more extensive involvement and suggesting the importance of various parties in football governance, i.e., conceptually, such studies continuously shift to be closer to the collaborative perspective. Orginality/value: There is no study on youth football development collaborative governance. From the institutional aspect, relationships between related parties are often observed from the conflict perspective. Thus, prioritizing the collaborative governance perspective is urgent.

Control from the core? The impact of cabinet committees on ministers’ legislative activity

AbstractMinisters may be powerful policy initiators, but they are not equally powerful. Cabinet control mechanisms have become a crucial part of cabinet governance, which can serve to contain agency loss and consequently constrain ministers in the policymaking process. However, empirical studies have not focused on the impact of such control mechanisms on individual ministers’ political outcomes. I turn attention to certain cabinet committees as intra-cabinet control mechanisms and argue that members of these enjoy a policymaking advantage compared to nonmembers. Analyzing ministers’ number of laws proposed to parliament in Denmark from 1975 to 2022, I look beyond parties as unitary actors and provide evidence for this causal relationship. Membership of the Economic Committee increases ministers’ legislative activity. Thus, even within parties in cabinet, ministers have unequal possibilities to act as policy-seeking. These findings offer new insights into political parties in governments, cabinet governance, policymaking, and legislative processes.

Türkiye’nin Çözüm Süreci ve Bölgesel Güç Olma Çabaları: Beklentiler ve Kısıtlar

Scholars have so far examined Turkey’s Kurdish resolution/peace process (2013-2015) from various perspectives. While some works have pursued a rational choice approach and focused on the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s strategic calculations vis-à-vis the PKK in initiating a peace process and maintaining it until 2015, others have analyzed Turkey’s experience within the framework of the conflict resolution scholarship. Instead, this paper’s starting point is the idea that the 2013-2015 resolution process was not merely a policy to put an end to an internal conflict, but it rather constituted a key aspect of the AKP’s ongoing endeavor to turn Turkey into a regional power. This paper places the 2013-2015 resolution process within the framework of regional and global dynamics and argues that from the mid-2000s onwards, the AKP government’s efforts to put an end to the PKK terrorism and resolve the Kurdish question in Turkey reflected the policy of a middle-power country, i.e. Turkey, to increase its power and influence in the region instead of a mere domestic peace process. Thus, the end of the resolution process in 2015 constrained Turkey’s potential achievements in the Middle East and beyond.

The doublespeak of ‘leave no one behind’: Implications for religious inequality in Hindu and Muslim pastoralist communities in India

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledged to ‘leave no one behind’ (LNOB). This article suggests that LNOB can be a form of ‘doublespeak’, susceptible to being used to mask ideologies and policies that worsen social, political and religious divisions. Despite stated commitments to LNOB, both Agenda 2030 and the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of India adhere to narrow models of development that fail to address and exacerbate the growing problem of religious and other inequalities. This article argues for reclaiming LNOB’s radical potential by conceptualising it as an empty signifier that takes on meaning through the hegemonic struggle to articulate what ‘left behind’ means. It develops this argument through a case study of Hindu Nationalist developmental normativity and two mobile pastoralist communities in Gujarat: Hindu Rabaris and Sufi Muslim Fakirani Jats. The empirical data show that in Gujarat’s marketised neo-liberal land regime, mobile pastoralism as a livelihood is increasingly stressed and liable to be constructed as ‘left behind’. Simultaneously, the Hindu and Sufi religious practices that shaped pastoralists’ relationships with land and animals are being transformed and, framed by the BJP government’s promotion of a Hindu nationalist religious identity, are shifting towards adoption of communal Hindu and Muslim identities that exacerbate social and religious inequalities, with particular effects on women. The paper concludes that LNOB has potential to tackle religious and other inequalities and generate a more radical and democratic politics of development if the range of demands that are met by this ‘empty signifier’ is broadened to challenge the hegemonic representations that dominate, and religion’s centrality in this struggle is recognised.

Do experts and citizens perceive party competition similarly?

Researchers frequently rely on expert surveys to acquire information about political ideology and political parties, which they then use to explore a range of political phenomena such as proximity voting and satisfaction with democracy. Yet it is unclear whether experts and citizens place the parties similarly, which may have important implications for studies that rely on expert data. To what extent do citizens share expert views regarding political party placements? Using original data from Canada, we use multidimensional scaling techniques to examine and compare the responses of academic and journalist experts against a random sample of Canadians to a range of party placement questions. Our results suggest there is considerable variation between citizens and experts, and among specific subgroups of the general population. These findings have important implications for studies of party competition, voting behavior, and government responsiveness.

Counseling of Zakat Management in Daarul Ilmi Islamic Boarding School Cipeundeuy

The zakat management system according to Law (UU) Number 23 of 2011 is categorized into two, the first is an institution created by the Government, namely the National Amil Zakat Agency (BAZNAS) and the second is an institution built on the initiative of the community or association, namely the Amil Zakat Institution (Lembaga Amil Zakat) LAZ. The zakat law stipulates that LAZ which is formed at the initiative of the community by assisting the collection of zakat, its distribution, utilization, and formation must obtain permission from the minister or an official appointed by the minister. Article 38 of the Zakat Law emphasizes that the management of zakat by the community must go through a mechanism that has been regulated, so it is not permissible to establish an Amil Zakat body without the permission of the authorized party (government). The Daarul Ilmi Integrated Islamic Boarding School as one of the foundations located in Cipeundeuy, West Bandung Regency has a zakat empowerment program that has been implemented for 5 consecutive years. This service aims to see whether this institution is in accordance with the Sharia and zakat laws in its management or not. In principle, the management of zakat is in accordance with Sharia rules, but there are still shortcomings in the licensing aspect, namely, this institution has not registered as a LAZ. Extension activities and assistance to human resources (HR) in Islamic boarding schools are very necessary to achieve the desired goal, namely, the legality of the Zakat Management Institution. It is hoped that after obtaining legality, the management of zakat, infaq, and alms can be developed and gain the trust of the wider community, so that the benefits of zakat can be felt by people in need, especially for students and the community around Islamic boarding schools.
 Keywords: legality, zakat management, Islamic boarding school

Comparing Responsible Party Government in the United States and the United Kingdom

Comparing Responsible Party Government in the United States and the United Kingdom

The popularity function: a spurious regression? The case of Austria

AbstractIn this paper we apply the unit root and cointegration methodology as well as other methods of modern econometric time series analysis to estimate popularity functions for the Austrian parties in power since the mid-1970s. We find only very rare evidence for economic variables influencing the popularity of the main political parties in the federal government, thereby challenging previous studies that claimed to have established such influences. When considering the determinants of the popularity of the incumbent party (the sum of the popularities of the parties in government), the unemployment rate turns out to have a negative short-run influence. The robustness of this result is checked by various methods, demonstrating the usefulness of the applied methodology to clarify such issues.

Serious Conflicts with Benign Outcomes? The Electoral Consequences of Conflictual Cabinet Terminations

Conflictual cabinet terminations are seismic events in democracies, but their consequences are understudied. I argue that the electoral impacts of conflictual cabinet terminations depend on voters’ perceptions of them. Terminations following non-policy conflicts are electorally costly. They signal parties’ deteriorating governing competence, which reduces parties’ vote shares. In contrast, terminations following policy conflicts signal parties’ unwillingness to compromise their policy positions and clarify parties’ policy profiles, thus allowing them to evade voter punishment and junior coalition parties to reap electoral reward, particularly for those terminations preceded by interparty policy conflicts. Statistical analyses using the Party Government in Europe Database dataset support my argument on policy terminations and reveal more nuanced electoral effects of non-policy conflict terminations. These findings are robust to various alternative explanations, as well as multiple cabinet terminations and time passed from termination to election. The findings have large implications on electoral accountability of intra-cabinet conflicts and the quality of governance.

The Influence of Government Ideology on Renewable Energy Consumption in the European Union Countries

By utilizing the panel quantile regression method and employing unbalanced panel data covering the years between 1972 and 2020, this study examines the impact of government ideology on renewable energy consumption for 26 EU member countries. The estimation results indicated that an increase in the relative power position of right-wing parties in government was correlated with a decrease in renewable energy consumption, whereas a rise in the relative power position of left-wing or center-wing parties in government was associated with an increase in renewable energy consumption across all quantiles evaluated. The estimation results were robust to different indicators of renewable energy consumption and government ideology. The estimation results of this study also indicated statistically significant positive associations between the share of seats in parliament for political parties classified as green and renewable energy consumption, and between the total Christian democratic governing party seats as a percentage of all legislative seats and renewable energy consumption. This result suggests that green parties and Christian democratic parties may be the key driving forces behind the positive coefficients for variables representing left-wing and center-wing parties in our study.

The Illiberal turn in Indian democracy: shifting the trajectory of India’s foreign policy

ABSTRACT Long-standing democracies such as India were not exempt from the global trend of democratic retreat. India has come under increasing international attention due to certain domestic policies such as the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship (Amendment) Act passed under the Bharatiya Janata Party government. In addition to India’s democratic decline being reflected in global democratic rankings, this has induced strains on India’s foreign relations. In its pursuit of becoming a leading power, India’s perceived democratic backsliding is likely to influence the direction of its foreign policy. To discern the impact of its perceived illiberal turn on its foreign engagement, the role of democracy in India’s foreign policy needs to be explored. While attempts have been made to understand democratic backsliding through a theoretical lens, the impact of a nation’s democratic status on its foreign relations and policy remains a largely unexplored area.

NEP 2020 Study: Challenges, Approaches, Changes, Opportunities, and Criticism

After the education policies of 1968 and 1986 from previous governments, the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) by the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) Government appears ambitious to overhaul the higher education system in India. Like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh, certain governments have already begun the process of adopting the policy in their universities' higher education systems and setting the bar as examples. Some states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, to name a few, are demonstrating resistance. In the field of education, a change comparable to this last occurred in 1986. In order to thrive in this dynamic world, anything must be able to change with the situation. The same is true for education; due to evolving information and communication technology (ICT) and industry requirements, our approach to learning must evolve. Additionally, the total system has undergone a paradigm shift as a result of the fast evolving worldwide situation in education. It was crucial that India keep up with this transition, and NEP 2020 has made efforts to improve the Indian educational system in this direction. Because it only uses secondary data sources, the study is entirely qualitative.