Party Ideology Research Articles

Parliamentary party loyalty and party family

Party cohesion is a crucial aspect of parliamentary systems, and it varies across time, parties and systems. To explain these variations, scholars have set forth the influence of macro-level and individual-level factors. Although party-level factors have also been considered, the role of party family has been overlooked. This research seeks to fill this gap. To this end, I focus on one dimension of cohesion: the extent to which legislators have internalized the norm of party loyalty. The concept of party family permits to investigate the effect of party origin and party ideology beyond a policy-based approach and left-right dimension. Using attitudinal data of 829 parliamentarians elected in 14 European national assemblies, the analysis uncovers a party family effect, particularly in the green and radical right parties. The results suggest that a greater attention should be directed towards party family as a determinant factor of legislative cohesion.

Presidents, Legislators, and Foreign Policy in Latin America

Which factors determine legislative support for the foreign policy initiatives of Latin American presidents? How do political parties and politicians behave when dealing with presidential foreign policy? The issue of whether presidents exercise greater influence over foreign or domestic affairs has been extensively debated in recent years, and the evidence indicates that legislators do behave differently when dealing with foreign policy proposals. Building on this debate, we analyse legislative support for the foreign policies of 22 Latin-American presidents in eight countries from 1994 to 2014, using an original dataset in a quantile regression framework. We also use three selected cases to illustrate our evidence. Our findings are counter-intuitive and bring new elements into the debate about legislative behaviour towards foreign policy in presidential countries. Measures of a political party's ideology, the size of the governing coalition, and the effective number of parties (ENP) play important roles in levels of legislative support for presidential foreign policy agendas. Surprisingly, the popularity of presidents and the nature of their initiatives - high or low politics - do not affect these levels of support.

The Romanian Pension System Reforms: Evidences from Legislative Roll Call Analysis

Abstract There are important differences between all Eastern European countries regarding the implementation of pension system privatization. The differences regarding the political configuration between the countries from Eastern Europe might be a possible explanation for the amount of diversity in this area. The ideology of political parties that form or sustain the government that implements the reform can also be an explanation, but this influence must be studied beyond the cliché that stipulates that the right-wing parties will support the public pension system reform and the left-wing parties will oppose it. Armeanu (2010a) showed that there are countries where privatization was supported by the centre-left coalitions that needed to overpass a strong opposition made by the right-wing parties. Using the Ideal Point Estimation technique within the voting sessions related to pension reform during the last three Romanian legislatures, we will explain the formation of pro and against coalitions regarding the pension reform from Romania during the privatization process of public pension system. We also test the hypotheses of the model presented by Armeanu (2010a, 2010b), model that predicts the behaviour of political parties based on the position they have on a two-dimensional space related to the costs of pension reform.

The Coevolution of Affect toward Presidents and Their Parties

This article reports the results of new research undertaken as part of a broader project examining how postwar U.S. presidents have influenced their party's popular standing, reputation, electoral fortunes, and attractiveness as an object of identification over both the short and long runs. The research published so far has found the president's influence to be strong and pervasive. Popular ratings of the president's party generally, and of its congressional wing and its leaders specifically, vary directly with presidential job approval and favorability ratings. Perceptions of the president's ideology shape perceptions of his party's ideology. Opinions of the president's performance have strongly influenced judgments of relative party competence in dealing with the nation's most important problem in every administration since Harry Truman's. The president's perceived success in handling specific policy domains also shapes his party's reputation for managing them. Performance evaluations of presidents affect their parties' electoral prospects as measured between elections by the generic House vote intention question as well as their actual fortunes on election day, both directly and through their impact on party identification (or party ID), which moves systematically in response to changes in evaluations of the president's performance at both the individual and aggregate levels (Jacobson 2009a, 2012, 2013, 2015). These findings leave no doubt that postwar presidencies have had both specific and diffuse effects on how Americans come to perceive, evaluate, feel about, and identify with the national parties. Presidents do not assume office with a blank partisan canvas, of course. Existing partisan biases and party images shape reactions to future presidents as soon as they arrive on the national stage and continue to exert a powerful influence on evaluations of their performance throughout their time in office (Jacobson 2011, 5-6). In previous analyses, I treated the initial reactions to each administration as a starting point, the product of existing configurations of public attitudes toward and beliefs about parties that were subsequently updated and revised in response to developments during a president's years of service. For the research reported here, I move backward from this starting point to examine the ways in which attitudes toward presidents and their parties come to be linked in the public mind. I also move forward beyond the president's years in office to gauge how this linkage decays when presidents are no longer on the ballot and new candidates emerge to take up their party's banner. Constrained by the available data, my focus here is on the affective component of political evaluations: how partisanship influences affect toward presidential candidates and presidents, and how affect toward these party figures in turn influences feelings about their parties, over the course of political careers. To anticipate, I find clear and consistent evidence that links between party and candidate affect are comparatively modest at first, increase sharply during the initial campaign for the White House for both candidates, tighten further when the winner seeks reelection, and then atrophy once the president leaves office. In this sequence, the causal arrow runs first from party affect (manifest in party identification) to candidate affect but gradually shifts direction to run from candidate or president affect to party affect (and party identification). I also find that the relative impact on party affect of the president and prospective or actual successors within the same party varies over time in a way that underlines the president's leading role in shaping feelings about his party. Theoretical Considerations These patterns, detailed and documented in the sections to follow, are fully consistent with constructivist models of the survey response. According to Zaller and Feldman's version, most citizens do not hold preformed attitudes that they express when questioned in a survey; rather they carry around in their heads a mix of only partially consistent ideas and considerations. …

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Left Government in West Bengal, 1977–2011: Strains of Governance and Socialist Imagination

This article appraises the role of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) in West Bengal, where the CPM-led Left Front formed government uninterruptedly between 1977 and 2011. It identifies four phases of Left politics in West Bengal: the period during which communists built support for a programme of radical transformation; the post-1977 years when the Left Front introduced land reform and effective local government that produced a ‘party society’ in rural areas; a third stage when popular support was subverted through clientelism tinged with coercion and petty corruption; and the 1990s, when growth in agricultural output petered out, the proportion of landless labourers increased and employment in manufacturing stagnated. The Left had also not delivered significant progress in social policy. The CPM turned to corporate investments and special economic zones. This trajectory points to problems of party ideology and the imperative of renewal to devise an anti-capitalist strategy.

Constitutionalism: A Theory and Practice

It is often argued that the theory and practice of constitutionalism is a key element to democratization and good governance to many countries of the world. In some cases, constitutionalism ought not to be driven from the perspectives of the party ideology in power or on basis of the ideals of those presiding over state powers and functions. From the above argument, it can be contested that enacting good laws is a fundamental aspect to sustain the theory and practice of constitutionalism. Experience has shown that constitutionalism in Africa is a subject of manipulation by those in power to safeguard their long stay in office. Ideally, a good constitution is premise for development as it entails the protection of the Bill of Rights of all citizens regardless of their social, political and economic status in the society. This is part of good public policy which any government should strive to enhance and must be evident in its actions. A fragile constitution has been a recipe for anarchy and civil strife in many countries as leaders find it easy to manipulate the government machinery. In short, it is the people who should always be the driving force behind any constitutionalism in order to ensure legitimacy in the governance process. Reasonably, one cannot dismiss the claims that constitutionalism should draw strength from the citizenry but this is not what often happens in most nations. On the contrary, proponents of constitutionalism argue that democracy is the safest way to sustain the theory and practice of constitutionalism. In many developing countries, the expectation of the citizenry is that the political leaders will desire to respect the provisions of the constitution but to the contrary most governments disregard their own constitutions in many ways.This shows that there is tendency by most governments not to respect the will of people in line with the constitution, and what is evident is that the political power always fails the majority of the people. This has defeated the whole essence of the theory and practice towards constitutionalism as an important yardstick to the process of legitimacy and rule of law in most emerging democracies especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It hurts when it really matters

Do political parties’ shifts on sociocultural issues, which signify the withdrawal of ideological commitment and disturb their supporters, cause vote loss? We argue that the negative electoral impact of positional shifts is constrained by party supporters’ opinion as well as parties’ ideological strength on sociocultural issues. Using data on party positions and ideologies in Western Europe from 1990 to 2008, we find that only parties holding strong ideologies on sociocultural issues lose votes by shifting their positions on these issues. Even these parties, however, do not lose votes when their position shifts in the same direction as that of their supporters. The results indicate that niche parties are straightforwardly affected by position shifts regarding sociocultural issues; they should adopt different strategies between values they endorse and those they reject; and political parties should not be worried about vote loss from position shifts as long as they follow their supporters’ opinions.

Challenging Parties and Anti-Fascism in the Name of Democracy: The Fronte dell'Uomo Qualunque and its Impact on Italy's Republic

AbstractThis article studies the political ideology of the Italian political movement Fronte dell'Uomo Qualunque in the light of the problems of party democracy in Italy. The movement existed only for a few years in the aftermath of the Second World War, but the impact of its ideology on post-war Italy was large. The article argues that the party's ideology should be studied beyond the anti-fascist–fascist divide and that it provides a window onto the contestation of party politics in republican Italy. It contextualises the movement in the political transition from fascism to republic and highlights key elements of the Front's ideology. The article then proceeds to demonstrate how the movement distinguished itself from the parties of the Italian resistance and advocated a radical break with the way in which the relationship between the Italian state and citizens had been practiced through subsequent regimes. The way in which the movement aimed to highlight the alleged similarities between the fascist and republican political order, and its own claim to democratic legitimacy, constitute a distinct political tradition which resurfaced in the political crisis of the 1990s.

Peoples Democratic Party in the Fourth Republic of Nigeria

Their nature and functions make political parties central to democratic governance especially in the new democracies of Africa that face the challenge of building strong and enduring democratic institutions. It is accepted that the existing trend in most of these democracies of one big party dominating the political space weakens democracy and undermines its prospects for consolidation. Big parties—usually the ruling ones—exhibit tendencies such as absence of internal democracy that are antithetical to democratic governance. While observations such as these are incontestable, there is little understanding into the nature, character, ideology, and internal structure of big parties generally. In this article, I attempt to address this concern. Specifically, I examine the nature, structure, and ideology of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Nigeria’s ruling party at the federal level with considerable strength at local level between 1999 and 2015. Relying on data obtained from multiple sources, I investigate the process of its formation, the nature of its ideology, internal organization, its electoral strength, and how absence of internal democracy contributed significantly to its defeat in 2015 general elections.

Dear PM

This election dispatch is a selection of emails addressed by Montreal artist Chris Lloyd to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. They form part of a larger set of communications with the Prime Minister of Canada going back to 1 January 2001, and also a larger performance infiltration project, in which Lloyd secured the position of Conservative Party candidate in the riding of Papineau (Justin Trudeau’s riding) and campaigned for several months without being detected as a performance artist. The letters were posted on the project’s Dear PM blog along with photos of Lloyd rubbing elbows with Harper and other key figures in Canada’s Conservative Party. They remain important documents of Lloyd’s intervention, which continued after his campaign was exposed, in May 2015, as performance art and after he was subsequently removed as Conservative Party candidate and went on to run as an independent in the final months of the election. As Lloyd explains, this performance was designed to “test the limits of free speech and explore the possibilities of voicing independent views within the confines of an electoral system that privileges dominant party ideologies.” The letters also reveal the performative rituals on which the Conservative Party’s public relations machine and the wider electoral process depends.

Government ideology and party priorities: the determinants of public spending changes in Italy

The literature developed by scholars dealing with policy agendas suggests that it is more important to look at changes in governments’ priorities rather than in their ideology, and criticizes the partisan theory as inadequate. However, hypotheses based on conventional wisdom and normative theories, holding that the identity of the governing parties matters for the allocation of public expenditures, are still recurrent in the debate. And many empirical studies found mixed evidence on the importance of party ideology. Focussing on Italy (1948–2009), this article empirically tests whether shifts in governments’ ideology and policy priorities are related to public spending changes in four policy sectors. The results indicate that shifts in governments’ priorities are related with public spending changes in welfare and defence, while they are not relevant to explain changes in public order and education spending. Government ideology is relevant only when it comes to defence spending, but this influence can be hindered by veto players. We argue that these findings do not disprove the importance of partisan politics but warn us against relying too much on the distinction between left and right parties. At the same time, more research is needed to understand under which conditions partisan preferences translate into changing public policies.

Political competition and renewable energy transitions over long time horizons: A dynamic approach

Climate change mitigation requires sustainable energy transitions, but their political dynamics are poorly understood. This article presents a general dynamic model of renewable energy policy with long time horizons, endogenous electoral competition, and techno-political path dependence. We calibrate the model with data on the economics of contemporary renewable energy technologies. In doing so, we discover transition dynamics not present in economy-energy models, which ignore politics, or in formal political economy models, which ignore long-term technological dynamics. We show that the largest effects of partisan ideology on policy occur when the competing parties disagree on the importance of energy policy. In these cases, the less ideological party appeases the more ideological one, while the more ideological party attempts to appease the electorate. The results demonstrate that political dynamics could have large effects on the development of renewable energy and carbon dioxide emissions over time, influencing the ability of countries to reach various climate mitigation trajectories.

Men of Little Faith: The Country Party Ideology in Britain and America

This article revisits the debate about the British eighteenth-century “Country Party” ideology and its influence on America. It points out that the Country Party tradition could best be understood as a libertarian resistance movement against the modern state. The article remedies the misrepresentations of the Country Party economic philosophy as feudal, agrarian, or anticapitalist. It reconceptualizes it as a philosophy of proverbial “men of little faith,” skeptical not of progress and modernity as such, but of the mercantilist regime created by the Walpole in England and emulated by Hamiltonian nationalists in America. The political and especially the economic philosophy of the British Country Party is compared with the Anti-Federalist and Jeffersonian doctrines in America, and the conclusion is reached that the Country Party thinkers and pamphleteers of both countries were not the slaves of romantic visions and republican “virtues” but the followers of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean-Baptiste Say.

Book Review: Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party by David S. Bell and Byron Criddle

David S. Bell and Byron Criddle Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014; 235 pp: 9780230282278, 68 [pounds sterling] (hbk) Two decades after their 1984 work chronicling the rise of France's Parti Socialiste (hereinafter PS, or Socialists) as a party of government, Bell and Criddle's latest work provides an excellent, and much-needed, up-to-date account of the party, with a particular focus on the post-Mitterrand era. Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party (2014) is a crisply written work that offers both a well-informed history of the party's evolution and a rich discussion of the influence of the French political institutional context on the party's ideology and policy programmes. The book's density of information on the party and the surrounding institutional environment mean that it will be of interest to scholars of French politics, whilst its accessible style and relatively short length also mean that students or those with a keen interest in the Parti Socialiste would benefit from the book. The introduction sets out a neat, if brief, case for 'French exceptionalism' and its relationship to French socialism. This helps to form the basis of the book's central claim, that the PS remains 'exceptional' amongst its European counterparts due to its historical resistance to 'social democratisation' and poor electoral record. It is this theme that the authors weave through the rest of the book as they explore what has shaped the party's ideology, policy programmes, discourse and electoral strategies. Of the books subsequent eight central chapters, the first six are organised thematically around the most salient institutional factors that have shaped the PS since its founding in 1969. This begins with a look at the competitive context of the French electoral system, before an account of the internal institutional structures and workings of the PS as a party is set out. It is, however, Chapter 4's discussion of the party's competing internal factions, or courants, that have characterised the party since its inception, which helps to put flesh on the bones of this institutional account of the party. Although, as they note, the ideological strength of these factions has been replaced by a more superficial, personality-focused battle between leading individuals (p. 58), the chapter's concise biographies of key 'faction personalities' in the post-Mitterrand party aptly demonstrates to the reader the fractious and elite organisation of the central party. Following this, Bell and Criddle cover the party's historically tense relationship with presidentialism, which, though contrary to the party's republican values, helped to establish an institutional environment wherein the PS could supersede the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) as the major party on the Left. Yet despite the decline of the PCF, the historic influence of the Communists, and indeed the wider 'minoritarian left', in shaping PS ideology is not underestimated. This account captures the awkward ideological position in which the PS finds itself on French political terrain; caught between influential Marxist parties to its left, which has led to a resistance of 'social democratisation' and in particular the social liberalism of the Third Way (p. 111), and its inability to even establish a reputation as the 'party of welfare' due to support for the welfare state on the right (p. 121). The latter two chapters then go on to plot the historical trajectory of the party from 1988 to 2014, and work effectively to tie together the assorted themes already covered, before the concluding chapter presents a highly critical analysis of Hollande and the PS governments since 2012. …

Parties, Ideology, and News Media in Central-Eastern and Western Europe

This study assesses the degree and direction of media bias towards political parties in Central-Eastern and Western European democracies. Previous research has argued that despite policy efforts to detach the media from the political domain, journalism in former Eastern Bloc countries is still characterized by a more partisan style than in Western Europe. Our analysis employs data from the European Parliament Election Study 2009 (EES) and the European Media Systems Survey 2010 (EMSS), covering 187 parties and more than 120 media outlets in fifteen Western and ten Central and Eastern media systems across the European Union. To analyze partisan media bias, we look at (1) how well audience patterns correlate with partisan preferences of media users and (2) the extent to which media outlets favour specific parties according to experts. Contrary to our hypotheses, the results show that levels of media bias in Central and Eastern Europe are similar to those in Western Europe. We also find that left–right party ideology predicts media bias in the latter, but not in the former. Our findings question the general assumption that partisan media bias is higher in “the East” and challenge the widespread belief that a long tradition of media commercialization, as found in “the West,” leads to less political media bias.

Estimating parties' left-right positions: Determinants of voters' perceptions' proximity to party ideology

The article aims to explore whether the accuracy of voters' perceptions of party ideology are affected by party position shifts and by the media's turn to non-left-right issues, such as political leadership, during election campaigns. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and a country-specific left-right index based on data by the Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP), multilevel analyses reveal that emphasizing leadership issues can lead voters to reflect left-right positions more accurately. A party's left-right position shift between elections does not lead to a significant difference in voters' perceptions, while a shift on the economic sub-dimension of left-right ideology can even lead voters to more position clarity. However, multiple parties' shifting their positions seems to overburden respondents' cognitive capacity.

At the root of parliamentary party cohesion: the role of intraparty heterogeneity and party ideology

La cohésion est un enjeu crucial pour les groupes parlementaire. Les chercheurs se sont donc largement intéressés aux déterminants de cette cohésion. Une idée très répandue est que la cohésion découle d’un niveau d’accord important entre parlementaires, produit de l’homogénéité de leurs préférences idéologiques. Cette recherche fait valoir que ces deux dimensions –accord et homogénéité– recouvrent des réalités différentes, et que leur relation n’est pas si évidente. Le document soutient que l’idéologie du parti fonctionne comme un médiateur entre l’hétérogénéité des préférences et le niveau de désaccords au sein du parti. Les analyses se basent sur des données attitudinales collectées auprès de 840 députés dans 15 assemblées nationales européennes, et sont réalisées au niveau agrégé. Les résultats ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives sur la relation entre l’idéologie, l’homogénéité des préférences et le niveau d’accord au sein des groupes parlementaires.

‘Euro-Realism’ in the 2014 European Parliament Elections: The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and the Democratic Deficit

The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) emerged as the third largest ‘Euro-party’ after the 2014 European elections, and are now well-positioned to perform a central role alongside the European People’s Party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the eighth session of the European Parliament (EP). Despite this, relatively little is known about the views that ECR politicians represent, especially their core party ideology of ‘Euro-realism’. In this article, it is argued that the development of ECR since 2009 is ultimately rooted in a central desire by its member party politicians to reform the European Union by addressing its ‘democratic deficit’ without destroying the wider integration project altogether. More widely, ECR is the most visible vehicle for ‘soft’ Euro-scepticism in the EP, promoting ‘governance before policy’.

Expressions of Euroscepticism in Political Parties of Greece

Eimantas Kocanas ‘Euroscepticism in political parties of Greece’, Master’s Thesis. Paper supervisor Prof. Doc. Mindaugas Jurkynas, Kaunas Vytautas Magnus University, Department of Diplomacy and Political Sciences. Faculty of Political Sciences. Euroscepticism (anti-EUism) had become a subject of analysis in contemporary European studies due to its effect on governments, parties and nations. With Greece being one of the nations in the center of attention on effects of Euroscepticism, it’s imperative to constantly analyze and research the Eurosceptic elements residing within the political elements of this nation. Analyzing Eurosceptic elements within Greek political parties, the goal is to: detect, analyze and evaluate the expressions of Euroscepticism in political parties of Greece. To achieve this: 1). Conceptualization of Euroscepticism is described; 2). Methods of its detection and measurement are described; 3). Methods of Euroscepticism analysis are applied to political parties of Greece in order to conclude what type and expressions of Eurosceptic behavior are present. To achieve the goal presented in this paper, political literature, on the subject of Euroscepticism: 1). Perception of European integration; 2) Measurement of Euroscepticism; 3). Source of eurosceptic behavior; 4). Application of Euroscepticism; is presented in order to compile a method of analysis to be applied to current active Greek political parties in a duration of 2014-2015 period. The presented literature details analysis of party perception of European integration, party attitude towards EU and its institutions, levels of Euroscepticism within a political party, party application of Euroscepticism. At the end of this paper, based on conducted analysis, it was concluded that: 1). European integration is viewed differently between Greek political parties. Soft Eurosceptic parties agree with the principal of European integration, but later differ on how they view current and future integration. Hard Eurosceptic parties tend to disapprove of European integration ideals or to view them through a prism of party ideology; 2) Based on how a party views European integration in past, present and future sense, it determines what level of Euroscepticism it expresses and what level of Eurosceptic attitude is present within a party when dealing with European issues; 3). Dependent from which source of Euroscepticism (strategic or ideological) party expresses anti-EU behavior, it affects party application of Euroscepticism towards EU; 4). Even parties that are considered to be pro-EU reside small levels of Eurosceptic behavior within themselves, which is caused by party ideology coming into conflict with elements of European integration such as power balance of member states or levels of democracy in the union; 5). Soft Euroscepticism dominates Greek political parties. Hard Euroscepticism is present only in strongly ideological (radical) political parties. Greek party polity combines within itself various types and variations of Euroscepticism, each different from each other and yet at the same time having similar roots. This shows that Euroscepticism is not a single entity, having only one form or expression, each unique in how it is applied and assimilated.

Политика Временного правительства в решении «национального вопроса»: подходы и методы реализации региональных вариантов

The article presents an analysis of the “national policy” of the Provisional Government. The events of the February Revolution exacerbated a number of problems associated with the national question in the state, and these events led the new government to necessity to develop and implement policies to meet the requirements of the time. The national policy of the Provisional Government was based on the party ideology of the Cadets, the Octobrists, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and was an eclectic approach to solve the “national question.” The Provisional Government defended the idea of the indivisibility of Russia, so in the very first policy documents abandoned the idea of the empire’s disintegration on the national basis, and the solution of the “national question” was seen in the provision of cultural autonomy, the development of language and ethnic identity of the peoples from the national borderlands. The Provisional Government sought to develop the variability approach to the national question in large ethnic regions: Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. However, the rise of nationalism in the borderlands of the Russian State, the spread of the ideas of regionalism required more fundamental changes. Therefore, the course chosen by the Provisional Government, did not find support in the society, and democratic initiatives were not enough in the time of difficult inter-revolutionary period. The confidence in the preservation of Russia undivided, the inertia of the control system, the loss of control over the national situation in the state led to the failure of the Provisional Government’s policy in the national sphere.DOI 10.14258/izvasu(2016)2-01