Party Institutions Research Articles

Police vs. Party? Institutional Hierarchies and Agency in Soviet Moldavia, 1944–1952

This paper addresses an under-researched topic in Soviet post-war history. It is about institutional hierarchies in a newly annexed Western borderland based on recently disclosed archival materials from Chișinău (including ex-KGB and MVD) and Moscow depositories. In contrast to all-Union institutional practices, the Moldavian SSR's case study shows that the party was hardly a hegemonic institution in late Stalinism. Using kompromat and inside information, the political police (NKGB-MGB) controlled the party institution. In contrast to the Baltic republics, Soviet Moldavia was headed by weak first secretaries appointed with the connivance of local police. Agency is an essential variable in explaining the dynamics of institutional design and hierarchies in Soviet peripheries in late Stalinism. Political police's predominance in this period is explainable as Bessarabia – mostly part of Soviet Moldavia – was a contested territory between Romania and the Soviet Union and hence the need to establish a more repressive policy to counteract the mass expectations of a regime change. I also argue that the realities of the immediate post-war Soviet Moldavia do not fit the conclusions of a recent book on ‘substate dictators’ by Yoram Gorlizki and Oleg Khlevniuk (2020).

Il caso dell’aborto: una buccia di banana per la SCOTUS?

SOMMARIO: 1. La questione dell’aborto e la perdita di credibilità della Corte Suprema statunitense - 2. Una tempesta perfetta? - 3. La partita della fiducia.
 The case of abortion: a slippery slope for SCOTUS?
 ABSTRACT: The case of the right of abortion in the United States is going to represent much more than a mere legal question. The upcoming decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on the matter involves its own credibility as a third party institution in a check and balance system where the SCOTUS is increasingly perceived as a political player. In this paper the A. tries to explore why it is so.

Institutionalisation of Political Parties: Comparative Cases

Institutionalisation of Political Parties: Comparative Cases

Эволюция латиноамериканской демократии и деконсолидация электорального пространства

This article examines the processes of nationalization of party systems in Latin America. The analysis demonstrates that the evolution of party systems, resulting in various degrees of nationalization, is quite different for every country and follows separate paths. In this regard, an analysis of possible political, social and economic factors influencing nationalization is carried out. However, it is not possible to identify a clear connection between democratization and nationalization, which distinguishes Latin America from Western democracies. An analysis of country cases based on materials and authors’ assessments of elections in the 21st century does not allow to speak about any correlation that may be expected between the improvement in the democracy indicators and the growth in the level of nationalization. At the same time, there are clear problems with the institutionalization of parties, which have exacerbated in recent decades due to the crisis of many old players and the emergence of new parties and coalitions, which makes Latin American politics even more turbulent. Among all the factors, the article studies ethnic and racial diversity which has a most significant impact on the volatility and regional variety of voting patterns. It is noteworthy that social stratification does not have a sufficient effect on the processes of nationalization, despite the fact that in many states it turns into a noticeable polarization of rich and poor regions. The authors conclude that the processes of democratization in Latin America are neither long-term nor strong enough to achieve a sustainable degree of nationalization of the party systems. An obstacle to this is the complex ethnic and racial structure of Latin American societies, which also leads to the emergence of deviant regions with their own specific voting patterns.

DOES COLLECTIVE ACTION INSTITUTIONALIZE RATIONAL CHOICE? CANDIDATE SELECTION IN INDONESIAN POLITICAL PARTIES

The selection process for local head candidates in the electoral democracy in Indonesia is still closed and confidential. Recruitment regulations are insufficient to control the informal actions of the candidate selection process, which is based on political pragmatism. (1.) This paper examines the dynamics of local head candidate selection from the rational choice institutionalism approach, with the collective action perspective. (2.) The research method uses content analysis, with analyzed interpretively using the NVivo 12 plus application. (3.) Research findings show that candidate selection in political parties is not entirely based on supply and demand but as a rational choice formed from the collective actions of party elites. In deciding the mayoral candidate in Makassar City in Indonesia 2020, political parties are influenced by collective mentality, individual quality, group size, and resources in political parties. (4.) The conclusion is that the rational choice institutionalism approach through the practices of principal-agent, game-theory, and rule-based models occurs in the selection of local head candidates. This rational choice institutionalism approach explains the tension between political actors to maximize personal and group interests in political party institutions.

Political hibernation in‐between elections? Exploring the online communication and mobilisation capacities of Nigeria's political parties

A noteworthy limitation among existing studies on the use of online technologies by political parties is the focus on elections. This study extends the frontiers by examining the extent to which Nigeria's political parties use their websites, as well as Facebook and Twitter platforms to communicate and mobilise citizens during and beyond elections. Using web assessment survey, data collected from the online platforms of registered political parties in February 2015 and February 2017 were analysed—to see trends in online activities during (2015 elections) and outside of elections (2017). The study reveals that the parties are caught in the web of the contradictory possibilities of digital engagement. On the one hand, is an online quiescence in the period between elections, which is premised on poor party institutionalisation. On the other hand, the parties are largely unable to reverse elements of institutionalisation challenges by leveraging digital tools to develop roots in the society and boost their public image. This quandary helps to demonstrate where the Nigerian party system fits in the equalisation versus normalisation debate on the utility of digital tools.

Building a Red Navy: Communist Activism and Military Authority in the Baltic Fleet, 1918–1940

This article examines the activities of the Soviet military-political organs in the Baltic Fleet. It shows that the web of party institutions transformed the fleet into a space of political and social activism that had little to do with the strictly military aspects of government policy. Such activism was nevertheless unfailingly promoted, even as it became clear that it compromised core elements of military efficiency such as discipline and well-defined chains of command. This argument has implications for our broader understanding of the nature of the Soviet state. It indicates that once the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary ideology had become institutionalised in the state via the ubiquitous presence of party organs, pragmatic retreats for organisational efficiency became exceptionally difficult to implement.

A Comparative Analysis of Selection Criteria of Candidates in Belgium

The literature on candidate selection has focussed extensively on the degree of inclusiveness and decentralization of the selectorate, as part of the debate on intra-party democracy. However, much less attention has been paid to the degree of openness of candidacies, or selection criteria within parties. Yet parties have a lot of leeway in how they design selection criteria internally. Which guidelines do parties follow when making the crucial choice on which candidates to select for elections? This paper investigates selection criteria from two perspectives: the formal rules set by parties that restrict the candidate’s pool and the (informal) preferences of selectors that shape who gets selected. We aim first at contrasting the degree of party institutionalization and parties’ formal rules in candidate selection and so, we shed light on whether parties formalise their candidacy requirements and candidate selection processes to the same extent as other party activities. Second, the paper investigates the role of the selectorates, and how selectorate’s characteristics matter for the kind of (informal) selection criteria, be they intended at maximizing offices, votes or policies. Drawing on party statutes coded in the Political Party Database (PPDB) and 23 in-depth interviews with selectors, we study three francophone Belgian parties that differ both in terms of inclusiveness of the selectorate who has the final say on candidate selection and in terms of degree of centralisation, and in terms of party institutionalisation: the green party (Ecolo), the socialist party (PS), and the liberal party (MR). Our comparative analysis of parties, selection criteria provides new insights into the secret garden of politics and highlights in particular the major impact of parties, degree of centralization.

Explaining intra-party organizational variation at the sub-national level in India

ABSTRACT Existing scholarship on democratic theory has emphasized the role of political party's organization in establishing institutionalized party systems. If an intra-party organization is understood to be a key explanatory variable, then it is important to explain why some political parties have a strong internal organization in comparison to others. However, there is no single study, of which I am aware, that explains variations in the level of organizations within political parties in India. Using Chhibber, Jensenius and Suryanarayan's party organization dataset alongside a qualitative example from the sub-national level in India, I show that there exists a ‘U’ shaped relationship between parties controlling the executive office and the strength of individual party organization. There exists a strong negative effect between time spent in the executive office and individual party organization. It is only in the very long run that parties in government reap the small benefits of the executive office for their individual party organizations.

Authoritarian Inheritance, Political Conflict and Conservative Party Institutionalisation: The Cases of Chile and Brazil

AbstractParty development in post-transition Latin America has often proceeded unevenly, as right-wing elites opted for non-partisan forms of political action and conservative parties remained poorly institutionalised. Recent research has demonstrated that party-building was facilitated where the political Right benefited from valuable political assets – party brand, territorial organisation, sources of funding and clientelistic networks – inherited from authoritarian regimes. This article argues that authoritarian inheritance in isolation is insufficient to foster conservative party institutionalisation. It analyses the trajectories of the major right-wing parties in Brazil and Chile, where former authoritarian incumbents benefited extensively from authoritarian inheritance and yet levels of institutionalisation differed widely across parties. The comparative analysis demonstrates that right-wing parties were most likely to consolidate where, in addition to inheriting valuable resources from the dictatorship, they experienced ideologically driven, violent conflict during their early years.

A jelenlét nélküli jelen(lét) – a hazai pártszervezetek fejlettségének területi különbségei

Numerous studies draw a direct link between party institutionalization and democratic (re) consolidation. The level of organization of a given political movement can easily determine their subsequent electoral performance. Not just in Hungary, but within the wider Central-Eastern-European region, accessing data on party membership, branch offices, etc., is extremely challenging, therefore concluding or discovering party organizational strength is a critical research area. In this study I am making a bold attempt to unveil the social embeddedness of the most important political parties from the 2014 general elections to the latest EP elections (2019), by using the polling station table-seater delegates` presence as an indicator of local party presence itself. I assume that, if a given party is not able to delegate a single person to a certain polling station, they have no operating organizations at the grassroots level, therefore it indicates their lack of localization and extensive network. With simple quantitative methodologies, I was also seeking the relationship between electoral performance and party organizational presence locally.

On the improvement of pre-trial dispute settlement in the criminal procedure of the Republic of Kazakhstan

This article presents a comprehensive theoretical and legal study of the legal nature, legal conditions, principles, the specifics of mediation, the legal status of a mediator in the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the specifics of criminal procedural norms regulating the activities of a mediator. Conducting the research, the authors applied the following general and special scientific methods of cognition: the analysis of legal acts regulating mediation, observation, systematic and logical approaches, as well as specific scientific research methods, formal legal and historical legal methods, the research of leading international and Kazakhstan scientists who have studied this issue. The authors proposed the following improvements: to consider the possibility of normative regulation of the reconciliation of the parties at the pre-trial stage; to develop a methodology for determining the voluntariness of the victim’s agreement; the prosecutor’s explanation of the application of the institution of parties’ reconciliation; and the participation of the lawyer in the recon-ciliation of the parties in the criminal legal proceedings.

Institutionalization of transnationalizing political parties: the case of the Conservative People\u2019s Party of Estonia

While party institutionalization research has advanced notably in the recent years, the institutionalization of political parties that extend their organizations abroad (i.e. transnationalizing parties) has remained an academically uncharted territory. This article draws on party institutionalization literature and analyses the particularities of institutionalization in transnationalizing parties. The findings suggest that transnational institutionalization takes place simultaneously on multiple levels (local, national and transnational) and is distinctly interactive, placing crucial importance on the activities and responsiveness of both the central party organization as well as the extraterritorial branches. The internal dimensions of institutionalization can be notably affected by the territorially and temporally scattered nature of emigrant communities and by the sense of inclusion provided to the activists. The external dimensions of transnational institutionalization involve a wider variety of actors than institutionalization on the national level and can also be more challenging due to the more contingent socialization patterns and interest in politics of transnational migrants. Transnational institutionalization of political parties is relevant to the parties and their continuous electoral success, but also for transnational migrant communities and impact of their political participation.

Foreign organization and the Foreign Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party at the beginning of the 20th century. (On the path of party institutionalization)

The article examines the organization and activities of the Foreign Organization and the Foreign Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party at the beginning of the XX century. It is the institutional history of political parties, in the authors opinion, that is of interest, since the structural analysis and the comparative historical method provide no less for an idea of ​​their nature than the analysis of party programs. In the first period of its existence, the structure of the conspiratorial party of the Social Revolutionaries was surprisingly simple: a few Central Committee members traveled around Russian organizations and corresponded with them. After the arrests of the late 1902 - early 1903. the first, the Gershunev Central Committee, ceased to exist. In August 1903, through the efforts of E.K. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the Foreign Organization and the Foreign Party Committee were created. Until late autumn 1905, they played the role of central party institutions: the Foreign Organisation was the main reservoir of cadres of party functionaries, its congresses, in essence, played the role of general party forums. The Foreign Organization concentrated many functions of the Central Committee: publishing and distribution of literature, communication with Russian organizations, business trips to Russia of party functionaries, etc. Thanks to the Foreign Organization and especially the Foreign Party Committee, a relatively ramified network of party leadership was formed. The Foreign Organisation was an amorphous union, squabbles and squabbles tore it apart. The Foreign Party Committee, along with the orthodox Socialist-Revolutionaries, included dissidents. In November 1905, the Foreign Party Committee ceased its activities, and the Foreign Organisation was disbanded. At the end of 1906, the Foreign Organisation and Foreign Party Committee were reanimated. The new Foreign Organisation did not want to be considered party, and the Socialist-Revolutionary leadership dissociated itself from it. The sphere of activity of the Foreign Party Committee was limited to the limits of emigration. Beginning in 1909, the process of demoralization embraced both the Socialist-Revolutionary Party as a whole and the emigration. In the spring of 1909, the delegates of the most numerous Parisian group for the promotion of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party left the III Conference of the Foreign Federation. After the Fifth Party Council (May 1909), the Paris assistance group withdrew from the ranks of the party. In 19101914. the decline of the Overseas Organization progressed. Disputes intensified, the Regional Foreign Committee was in conflict with the Central Committee. Thus, by the beginning of the First World War, the Socialist-Revolutionary emigration was a collection of scattered and warring factions. During the war years, the Central Committee finally broke up into opposing groups and as a whole ceased to exist.

Simultaneous General Election: It Is Fair for Democracy in Indonesia

This study discusses the implementation of simultaneous elections in 2019 which is the decision of the Constitutional Court No. 14/PUU-11/2013 on simultaneous elections, and the purpose of this study is to examine and analyze whether the 2019 concurrent elections took place democratically and have a success rate to strengthen the consolidation of democracy and institutionalization of political parties in Indonesia. This research was conducted in North Sumatra, Banten, West Java and West Kalimantan. Furthermore, this study uses the theory of the pillars of the democratic system and the Theory of Success of Procedural and Substantive Quality Democracy. The method of research that is used is descriptive method with qualitative approach. With data analysis techniques. The findings show that the democratization of a concurrent election in 2019 is analyzed based on the pillars of a system that gives influence to the quality of the success rate of a democracy both procedural democracy and substantive democracy that measures the success rate of a democracy. Simultaneous elections in 2019 have increased public political participation and the Indonesian Democracy Index (IDI) but a new study is needed to measure the institutionalization of political parties so that comprehensively it can be known the level of democratization, consolidation of democracy and its relation to institutionalization or institutionalization of political parties.

Nomadic Hearths of Soviet Culture: ‘Women’s Red Yurt’ Campaigns in Kazakhstan, 1925–1935

This article discusses the ‘red yurt’ campaigns in early Soviet Kazakhstan, in which party and state institutions sponsored mobile centres of Soviet culture in nomadic pastoralist communities. In conversation with other literature on nomadic encounters with the Soviet state, this article considers how red yurts sought to exemplify Soviet ‘culturedness’ (kul’turnost’) within nomadic ‘everyday life’ (byt)—two concepts that have, so far, been discussed primarily in the Russian context. It argues that the campaigns were less antagonistic towards nomadic lifestyles and more embedded in regional discourse than has often been assumed, although realities on the ground complicated idealistic plans.

The Role of the European Socialists in the EU Political System

The article explores the formation of a single European socio-political space and the evolution of the institution of pan-European political parties (Europarties). It is shown that the growth of practical and scientific interest to the European parties was associated with the gradual strengthening of the role and influence of this relatively new institution in the political system of the EU. The authors identified new trends in the development of the institute of European parties. On the one hand, the confrontation between the supporters of European integration (Eurooptimists) and their opponents (Eurosceptics) has intensified. On the other hand, the format of relations between individual European parties (in particular, the Party of European Socialists, which traditionally supports the expansion of ties between governments and society) with European civil society and key political institutions of the EU (the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament) is gradually changing. Based on the analysis of materials related to the activities of the Party of European Socialists (PES) in the last two years, it is shown that this party has managed to create specific tools and mechanisms to strengthen its ties with civil activists (the so-called PES networks on various issues), national member parties, to involve representatives of this party in its work in the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

The Electoral Paradox of Party Institutionalisation: The Case of PKS in Eastern Indonesia

ABSTRACT What caused the surprising electoral success of an Islamist party in one of Indonesia’s most Catholic regions, and why was this success short-lived? This article argues that in Ngada district on Flores Island in 2014 the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) deftly mobilised local voters not because of its own organisational and programmatic discipline but because of its “project of commonness”, or adaptation to prevailing local patterns of personalistic local electoral competition. The party’s growing popularity in Ngada, however, paradoxically fell after it sought to build solid and coherent relations with the electorate in preparation for the subsequent election. The case of the PKS in Flores thus suggests that under certain conditions, in which voter–party linkages are highly fragmented and cleavage-based politics remain undeveloped, party institutionalisation can harm electoral performance.

Legal Aspect of Relationship between Political Parties, People, and People's Representatives

This article discussed the topic of political party membership in the Indonesian Parliament institutions, which is based on the pattern of relations between the People's Representatives and the people they represent, and their impact in the process of forming and implementing strategic policies that rely on popular sovereignty. The article focused on the study of politics of law in the institutionalization of political parties within the parliament's institutions and the impact on the exercise of popular sovereignty. This paper has several different approaches if related to the basic theory of democracy about political links which generally examines the relationship between political parties and their voters, between politicians and citizens, and between members of parliament and their people. The results emphasize the pattern of relations between the representatives of the people and the people they represent, in connection with the institutional existence of the Indonesian parliament which is the executor of people's sovereignty.

Party institutionalization, authoritarian regime types and women’s political equality

ABSTRACT This article examines the association between women’s political inclusion and incumbent party strength in authoritarian regimes. It argues that the degree of party institutionalisation is the main determinant of women’s political inclusion under authoritarian rule. Institutionalised party rule determines the incentive and capacity for authoritarian parties to introduce more gender equal political processes and political outputs. Using different measurements of women’s political inclusion and data on 108 countries between 1946 and 2010, this article estimates within- and between-country effects of party institutionalisation, regime types and political inclusion of women. Although previous research stressed the link between authoritarian regime types and gender equality, this study finds regime types to explain little gender equality variation. In contrast, regimes with higher levels of party institutionalisation provide more gender equal politics and policies than regimes in which authoritarian parties are less institutionalised.