Party Ideology Research Articles

Populism's Challenges to Political Parties and Democracy - Taking the United States as an Example

In recent years, with the rise of populism around the world, the traditional party system and democratic system have encountered very serious challenges. This article mainly takes the United States as an example to explore in depth how populism affects American political parties and democratic governance. First, the development history of populism in the United States since the 20th century is analyzed and introduced, focusing on the impact of Trumpism in American politics. Secondly, it mainly explores the impact of populism on the internal structure and policy orientation of the two major political parties, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and deeply explores the role of populism in splitting party unity and reshaping party ideology. In addition, it also focuses on the role of populism in democracy from both positive and negative aspects. Finally, this article examines the challenges of American populism to the development of American democratic systems and political parties, including challenges to the electoral process, judicial independence, media freedom and public trust. This article believes that strengthening civic education and promoting party reform can better cope with the impact of populism and enable the healthy development of the democratic system.

Untangling the dominant culture in China’s elite universities

AbstractWestern literature has shown that elite universities are not culturally inclusive, presuming that these institutions predominantly reflect the culture of the affluent middle class. While cultural inclusion of socioeconomically disadvantaged students is a globally relevant issue, the overarching presumption does not necessarily apply to non-Western societies. This article reconsiders this assumption in the Chinese context, addressing the lack of systematic research untangling the dominant culture in elite Chinese universities. A two-phase, mixed-methods case study was conducted at two top-ranked universities in eastern and western China. In the first phase, a content analysis of the stories of the universities’ award-winning seniors was combined with a thematic analysis of the in-depth interviews with 49 graduating seniors to untangle the formal and informal dominant culture in China’s elite universities. The findings led to a three-fold model of dominant culture characterized by an emphasis on individual academic performance, loyalty to Communist Party ideology, and the significant influence of students from advantaged family backgrounds. In the second phase, three hypotheses about the impacts of this dominant culture on students’ socio-cultural integration were tested, largely supporting the three-fold model and highlighting the roles of academic and political performance in facilitating cultural inclusion. This study sheds new light on cultural capital studies in non-Western contexts and emphasizes that cultural (dis)advantages should be cautiously examined considering the historical and ideological context shaping higher education.

When is gender on party agendas? Manifestos and (De-)democratisation in Greece, Portugal, and Spain

ABSTRACT When do political parties give attention to gender-related political interests, and what determines their positions? We argue that progress in gender equality commitments is an essential component of democratisation, and backsliding in these indicates democratic decay. Using original data coded from party manifestos in Greece, Portugal, and Spain over recent decades, we investigate the role of party ideology and critical junctures in the political context. We find that left-wing parties give more attention to gender-related interests than other parties. Far-right parties also give significant attention to some interests and stand out for traditional positions. Further, the economic recession significantly decreased attention to gender-related interests. Our results suggest that economic crises and associated far-right party strength fuel gender backsliding and de-democratisation.

(Slightly) different objectives, but similar results?: Party ideology and participatory institutions

(Slightly) different objectives, but similar results?: Party ideology and participatory institutions

Designing Political Brand Identity Through Architecture: A Case of Malatya City Hall

Corporate level awareness and understanding of political systems are widely spreading in politics through the application of marketing concepts by parties. This study explores how party ideology, hierarchical structures, and symbolism are embedded into the design of government buildings to enhance corporate communication with stakeholders. A design strategy that links architecture with politics views specific architectural features as semiotic resources for party identity and envisions them as design patterns in the future. This paper presents the Malatya City Hall as an example, which was designed using a similar architectural style to that of the Nationalist Movement Party Headquarters in Türkiye. Employing critical discourse analysis (CDA), we unveil the political structure underlying the Headquarters, which is subsequently transposed into the design of City Hall. The Ottoman-Seljuk architectural style, in its modern interpretation, serves as a reflection of political ideology in these buildings. The corporate organizational structure is emphasized through the president’s prominent position and the restricted accessibility to his spaces, evident in the layout design. Additionally, symbolism is incorporated by aligning the building’s architectural plan with the party’s logo, creating a direct visual representation of political brand identity.

Breaking Down Stereotypes by Realizing Women’s Interests: Gender and Its Impact on Legislative Consensus

The presence of women in legislatures has steadily increased over the past 2 decades, prompting numerous studies to explore the role of women in politics. This article focuses on Spain to analyze how women contribute to parliamentary consensus, a rarely explored but necessary topic in times of polarization and political conflict. The combination of aggregated and member of parliaments’ individual-level data provides a holistic approach to assessing how women operate in legislatures and their predisposition to political conflict. Aggregated findings show that an increase in female political representation does not go hand in hand with more legislative consensus, only when gender laws are approved. Similarly, the individual-level results show the importance of political parties in shaping attitudes toward conflict. Female parliamentarians present less consensual attitudes in the most extreme ideological parties: Podemos and VOX. However, no gender differences exist in the mainstream parties of the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) and PP (People’s Party). These findings also highlight the institutional and party barriers that women may face when developing their “know-how” in politics.

Voters’ perceptions of the policy making and performance of the elected government after 2018 general election in Pakistan

In this study, the phenomenological approach was used to explore the perceptions of Pakistan Tahreek Insaf (PTI) voters regarding PTI policy making and performance six months after the Pakistani general election of 2018 (GE-2018). The sample comprised 20 PTI voters, and data was collected through one-to-one interview. The thematic analysis led to the following broad and sub themes: The first broad theme, pre-election party ideology, was described by the following sub-themes: vision of change, fight against corruption, and developing Pakistan along the lines of the State of Medina. The second broad theme, the performance of the elected government, was understood through the following sub-themes: accountability, political stability, poor policy making, and false election pledges. And the last broad theme, the public’s perceptions of the future performance of the elected government can be explained by its single sub-theme, i.e., giving the elected government a chance to complete its tenure of five years. It can be concluded that most of the participants were optimistic that the elected government of Pakistan would fulfill its pre-election promises.

Formation and evolution of the Party Ideology of the Russian Social Democrats/Bolsheviks as the basis of the future state ideology of the Country of Soviets

Formation and evolution of the Party Ideology of the Russian Social Democrats/Bolsheviks as the basis of the future state ideology of the Country of Soviets

The comparative politics of solidarity: Political party discourse across three welfare state regimes

AbstractParty political conflict plays an essential role in shaping welfare policies, while they are simultaneously also shaped by these policies. As political parties grapple with the wicked challenges of our times, new forms of solidarity and solidarity conflicts arise across welfare regimes. Despite their significance, these dynamics have not received much recent attention. Our article aims to fill this gap. Through content analysis of party manifestos, we compare the solidarity frames of political parties within and between three distinct welfare regimes—Flanders (Belgium), Sweden, and the United States. Our results confirm our expectations drawn from political feedback literature: while party ideology influences parties' solidarity frame preferences and solidarity conflicts between parties, these preferences and conflicts are also influenced by a welfare regime's societal solidarity norms. Our article highlights the value of analyzing solidarity frames and political solidarity conflicts within welfare‐state regimes to better understand welfare politics and policies.Related ArticlesKönig, Pascal D. 2015. “Moral Societal Renewal or Getting the Country Back to Work: Welfare State Culture as a Resource and a Constraint for Policy Discourse.” Politics & Policy 43(5): 647–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12130.Mioni, Michele, 2021. “The ‘Good Citizen’ as a ‘Respectable Worker:’ State, Unemployment, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom and Italy, 1930 to 1950.” Politics & Policy 49(4): 913–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12425.Wagle, Udaya R. 2014. “The Heterogeneity Politics of the Welfare State: Changing Population Heterogeneity and Welfare State Policies in High‐Income OECD Countries, 1980‐2005.” Politics & Policy 41(6): 947–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12053.

Putting the Politics Into Corporate Political Activity: A Variance Decomposition Analysis of Firm–Government Interactions Across Political Contexts

Despite the wealth of theorizing about the relationship between business and government, research on corporate political activity (CPA) has yet to comprehensively consider how political context (e.g., party ideology and the degree of united or divided party government control) may shift the salience of how CPA materializes across industry-, firm-, and executive-level factors, which can shed light on the level of effects that appear to matter more (or less). To advance our understanding, we conducted a variance decomposition analysis on U.S. public firms (2001–2019), exploring the relative effect of each level on firm (lobbying expenditures and campaign contributions) and government actions (government contracts), and parsing our sample based on whether key government branches are Democrat- or Republican-controlled. We generally found that firm effects explain the most variance, followed by industry, while executive effects explain the least. However, this pattern shifts notably when considering political context across our sample period. As such, our findings have important implications for future CPA research and theorizing.

A Study of the Influence of Religious and Nationalist-Based Political Parties in the Compilation of Legal Products Based on Legal Regulations

The ideology of political parties is divided into four categories: parties with Islamic ideology, secular nationalist ideology, religious nationalist ideology, and parties with Christian ideology. The regeneration process will bring out prospective leaders who have been tested in carrying out organisational work or society, and then the emerging decisions will be directed at achieving the goals of the country. These party cadres make a reflection of political parties related to ideology, which is expected to make policies in accordance with ideology, through being regional leaders. The research method used is sociological juridical with a qualitative descriptive analysis approach to obtain the answers to the problems studied, supported by secondary data and other data. When referring to the party principles owned by each political party, in general, political parties are based on three ideologies: Islam, Nationalism and Democratic Socialism. Political parties have an obligation to be able to build their own capacity; therefore, they have sufficient capability to fulfill what has been mandated by law. The fading of ideology has weakened the ties between political parties and their members, which in turn has resulted in the weakness of organisational networks. This condition leads the political parties to face an extreme dilemma. The way to collect party funds is by making policies that benefit certain parties. However, with transactional politics, the policies taken are not pro-people. The importance of the party's stand in policymaking is marked by their close relationship with elected and appointed political officials. For this reason, the party can see its role and influence in public policy using organisational theory. This fact shows that political parties are a more powerful element in the policy-making process than they should be.

Qualitative comparative analysis of policies implemented by 26 European countries during the 2020 great lockdown.

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, from March 1 to April 15, 2020, significant variations emerged among countries regarding the implementation of lockdown policies. During this period, viewed strictly from an epidemiological perspective, lockdown measures are considered the most effective means of containing a pandemic. However, the adoption of such measures varied, raising questions about whether the reluctance or failure of countries to implement lockdown policies reflected a disregard for epidemiological knowledge or stemmed from an inability to enforce these measures. This article employs Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) with 26 European countries as case studies to investigate under what combination of conditions a country would implement lockdown policies. The QCA results identify three distinct combinations of conditions that lead countries to implement lockdown measures. First, countries with relatively concentrated political power are more likely to implement lockdown policies. Among the 10 countries governed by a majority party or majority coalition within a two-party or moderate multi-party system, seven implemented lockdown policies. Second, in cases of relatively dispersed political power, countries facing state fragility risks are more likely to implement lockdown policies. Among the eight countries that meet both conditions, five implemented lockdown policies. Finally, factors such as political heritage, severity of the pandemic, demographic composition, healthcare access, quality standards, and the ruling party's ideology play a lesser role in the decision to enact lockdown measures. This article offers a novel perspective on the dynamics of party politics and state capacity in the context of decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. It contributes to a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between political systems and public health crisis management, highlighting how various political and governance factors influence the adoption of public health interventions during crises.

Explaining leadership quality among the directors of Mexico’s subnational women’s policy agencies

ABSTRACT This article examines the effectiveness of women’s policy agencies (WPAs), with a focus on the leadership of subnational women’s institutes in the Mexican states. We contribute to the existing research with a new original dataset on WPAs in an important third-wave democracy in Latin America. Our focus on leadership quality provides a useful method for measuring one central component of institutional effectiveness across a large number of cases. We consider high-quality leaders to be those with longer tenure in office and higher levels of education, more professional experience, and closer connections to the feminist movement. Using a dataset of 226 directors, we find evidence that party ideology, electoral competition, and the institutional design of the agency influence the quality of leadership. Moreover, states with stronger women’s movements have higher-quality leadership in their WPAs. These findings support a central premise of the state feminism literature – that WPAs are most effective when allied with strong women’s movements and left-wing governments – and also point to the importance of electoral democracy in promoting institutional effectiveness.

Undermining liberal international organizations from within: Evidence from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

AbstractInternational organizations promoting democratic governance and human rights are increasingly challenged by some of their own member states. To better understand this dynamic, we propose a distinction between the illiberal ideology of political parties and their regime environment, aiming to examine the international behavior of actors extending beyond autocratic governments. We argue that the domestic regime environment plays a pivotal role in influencing the extent to which illiberal parties engage in contestation to undermine liberal norms on the international stage. We expect contestation behavior to be primarily driven by illiberal parties seeking to diminish the influence of liberal international politics on domestic power structures. Moreover, we contend that government participation moderates illiberal parties’ contestation behavior. To test our expectations empirically, we study roll call votes in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), one of the most powerful international parliaments promoting liberal values. Drawing on an original dataset that records approximately 500,000 individual votes cast in PACE decisions, we find evidence for substantive contestation by illiberal parties, especially those representing illiberal regimes. Only illiberal governments in liberal systems moderate themselves at the amendment stage. Our study has implications for the potential threat that emerging illiberal actors pose to international liberal institutions.

The Impact of Religion and Culture on Political Corruption in Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State: A Case Study of 2015 General Elections

This study examines the impact of religion and culture on political corruption in Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State in reference to 2015 general elections. Many local governments in Nigeria lack many developments, social amenities, health facilities, rural development and power supply due to the syndrome of corruption and autonomy independence to control their resources without the state interference due to that scenario, lack of accountability, lack of credible leadership, instability of political and socioeconomic development as take place. Culture and religion as influenced voting patterns of the electorate during the 2015 Presidential general elections. The impacts of corruption on the politics of the country include the crisis of legitimacy, lack of party ideology, weak political institutions; economic underdevelopment and political violence and the role of “Godfatherism” as initiated electoral corruption. Some power brokers with sufficient financial muscles sponsored their anointed godsons for political offices in return for lucrative contracts and spoils of the public treasury looting. They sponsored thugs, bribed the electoral stakeholders, and influenced voters through vote buying and all sorts of electoral manipulation to ensure that their candidates scale through and control power at all levels. The questionnaire and the structured questions formulated by the researchers were given to project supervisor, who criticized and that the instruments are validated, for they were seen measuring what were expected to measure. Findings revealed that a total number of 30 respondents represented (22.3%) candidate’s choice, 27 respondents represented (20.1%) election campaign, 23 respondents represented (17.1%) family background, while 54 respondents represented (40.2%) religious belief. This implies that majority of the respondents in this study agreed that religious belief is the means by which religion and culture influenced the voting pattern of Akinyele Local Government Area in the 2015 general elections. The study recommends that all candidates contesting for any political office must declare their assets publicly to avoid cases of corruption.

Topic Diversity in Social Media Campaigning: A Study of the 2022 Australian Federal Election

This study explores the diversity of topics in political campaign communication on social media during the 2022 Australian federal election. While political campaigns on social media are often associated with both persuasive and mobilising appeals, this research focuses on understanding the differences in persuasive content by comparing organic (non-targeted) and paid (targeted) political communication. Analysing the Australian context, which follows a Westminster system, with compulsory voting, we utilise data from the federal election 2022 to investigate how political actors employ persuasive communication strategies. Through topic modelling, we examine whether distinct themes vary in content and prevalence between organic and paid social media content disseminated by political parties and candidates. Our analysis revealed that the differences in topic diversity between paid and organic content do not seem to be substantial, despite popular concerns about higher personalisation due to advertising targeting which could lead to information fragmentation of the electorate. Both types of content predominantly focus on core political topics, aligning with party ideologies and include overall campaign information (e.g., on election procedures). However, government critique emerges as a distinct topic in both organic and paid content signalling the usage of negative campaigning to weaken opposing parties. In conclusion, this study suggests that the strategic manipulation of the electorate through social media during the Australian federal election in 2022 was limited. Nonetheless, the prevalence of negative appeals towards the government and opposing parties raises questions about the potential impact on citizens’ trust in democracy and institutions.

Music and political identity salience in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election

ABSTRACT This article addresses the nexus between musical taste and political identity salience, and how (if at all) that informs citizens’ own perception and performance of national (cultural) identity in Nigeria. It specifically interrogates the extent to which Nigerians signalled political affiliations and identities in the sonic and textual references of selected 2023 presidential election campaign songs. Following a synthesis of the discourse on political and cultural identity, Nigerian musical arts and culture, and with specific analytical reference to three preselected election campaign songs, we demonstrate that, beyond party ideology, campaign promises, money, and literacy level, Nigeria’s voting public activate and perform political identity salience when messages and objects of cultural and socio-political value align and are communicated in song.

The view of freedom that shaped the Swedish welfare state

AbstractThe paper contributes to the debate of the Swedish welfare state by re‐examining the view of freedom underlying the design of this welfare model. The point of departure is two interpretations by Bo Rothstein and Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh, which both describe advancement of individual autonomy as the ultimate point of the model. The paper argues that these readings are overly liberal in the sense that they exaggerate the importance of individualism and autonomy. The view of freedom that shaped the Swedish welfare state was not liberal, and individual autonomy was not the overriding goal for the founders of the model. Instead, the view is best described as quasi‐republican and nondomination based. It was mostly a result of semi‐Marxist ideas about capitalist power and exploitation that lingered on in the ideology of the Swedish social democratic party, the SAP, in the 1930s and 1940s. During the first decades of the 1900s, the SAP gradually revised these ideas in a domination‐based direction. It was the outcome of this process that more than anything else gave the impetus to the design of the Swedish welfare state.

Fiscal Policy, Government Ideology, and Economic Activity: Evidence from OECD Countries

AbstractThis study explores the role played by a country's political environment in the origin and effect of government spending. Using a rich data set that contains time‐varying ideological party positions, I show that both government ideology and the timing of elections are key determinants of government spending shocks and Granger‐cause government spending shocks estimated from traditional structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models that ignore political considerations. I find that the magnitude of the spending multiplier depends on the political context: highly polarized countries have smaller multipliers relative to countries with a low degree of polarization, and established democracies have smaller multipliers than younger democracies.

Revitalizing The Regeneration System Of Political Parties In Building Pancasila Democracy

Problems with recruitment and regeneration systems and patterns that are carried out instantly can contribute to the community's negative perception of political parties. Political parties are more likely to recruit ready-made cadres rather than cadres who have been raised and have experienced the process of party life from a difficult period to the achievement of the party's goals, resulting in recruitment patterns and patterns of Cadre of Political Party Members who are less loyal and competent. This study employs normative juridical research. This study discovered that the decline in the quality of political party regeneration is inextricably linked to political parties' unclear ideology, problematic political party funding, and democracy that has been hijacked from the start because political dowries are viewed as political investments that must eventually be paid for with policies that are not beneficial to certain groups as capital providers. The revitalization of the Political Party Cadre System had implications for the development of the democracy of Pancasila, which includes the development of the constitutional life order as well as all aspects of life, including the establishment of economic, social, political, cultural, defense, security, and legal systems. An adequate political party cadre system includes political parties with a clear ideology, state direction in politics, an obvious curriculum and cadre, trainers, guidelines, and, finally, a system for tracking and assessing progress. Aside from that, the implications of the cadre of members of the candidate pair have 4 (four) impacts in the cadre system: the first is that party cadres have sufficient competence to carry out their duties; the second has devotion while being a party cadre and a good track record while active in the political party; the third has achievements, dedication, discipline, loyalty, and irreproachable (PD2LT); and the fourth meets the provisions required by law. The novelty of this research lies in the quality of democracy which is only placed on the electoral candidate pair or the power of the candidate pair's political dowry to be able to buy the electorate, but the quality of democracy needs to be placed on the ideology of the political party, the state's direction in politics, clear curriculum and cadres, and trainers as such. So political parties are expected to represent society in making choices in line with the development of Pancasila democracy