Party Reform Research Articles

On the (Im)possible Relation Between the Universal and the Relative: The Aporia of Community

Abstract ‘British values’ have recently been invoked by the Right in Britain – both in the Conservative Party and outside by the Reform Party led by the Right insurgent and public school educated (Dulwich College) ‘man of the people’ Nigel Farage. Such values are directed at communities of colour, as well as those communities that stand apart from the logic of ‘phallologentricism’. Factions of the secular Left too have engaged in an iteration of ‘culture wars’ by targeting Jewish communities who may not share Hamas’s desire to eradicate Israel in favour of a monistic Palestinian State. At the heart of these contested cultural terrains is an overarching issue: namely, the question of the universal, and how the universal informs the States’ politics of representation (the “General Will”, the “nation”, “citizen” etc…). Derrida reminds us that “the social” – let alone the State and the polity it brings to life – can never be reduced to a single meaning, that the nature of community will always be subject to contestation contra the telos of monism.

Estonia jest kobietą – Kaja Kallas, żelazna dama estońskiej polityki

The aim of the article is to analyse the political situation in Estonia at the time of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. Kallas, as a young, dynamic and ambitious lawyer, and now primarily a politician, sets a new direction for leadership. There are many challenges and difficulties on the Estonian political scene, but Kaja Kallas has been successful to carry out her tasks since January 2021. The article is an attempt to analyse the situation on the Estonian political scene from the time of the first cabinet of Kaija Kallas, through the government crisis of June 2022, to the parliamentary elections of March 2023. The leader of the Reform Party perfectly copes with challenges, fights for people and their rights.

Strategi Kampanye Partai Amanat Nasional Pada Pemilu Legislatif 2024: Pendekatan Teori Marketing-Mix

This article examines to find out the successful campaign strategy of the National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional, PAN) in increasing its vote in the 2024 Legislative Election. Methodologically, this article uses qualitative method by applying case study approach. In data gathering, it employs library research by mining data from online news channels. In the data analysis, it utilizes the modern platform of NVivo 14 mainly word frequency query. To measure the campaign strategy of PAN, this article applies four indicators of marketing-mix theory: product, price, place, promotion (4P). The finding reveals that in terms of product, PAN promotes a platform of “helping people” with its past record as the reformist party and supported by the legislative candidates’ background of entrepreneurs and artists-celebrities. Regarding the price, the PAN’s campaign budget spent at least 223 billion IDR with its successful campaigns which conducted by each legislative candidate. PAN prefers to rely on the popularity of President of Joko Widodo and legislative candidates. In the context of place, the strategy of local network and canvassing are based on the creativity of each legislative candidates in attracting voters’ sympathy. The leader tour is conducted by visiting influential public figures. Concerning promotion, the campaign publication of PAN relies on printed mass media, television, and social media while event publication is carried out in various regions across the country. Among those four indicators, the price has the most significant impact which causes to the successful campaign of PAN in the 2024 Simultaneous Election.

Estonia: Political Developments and Data in 2023

AbstractParliamentary elections in March 2023 brought a stronger than ever mandate for the ruling Reform Party, which formed a new all‐liberal coalition with the Social Democratic Party and Estonia 200. However, the deteriorating public image of the Prime Minister and her party, the fact that Estonia 200 lost its new party image, and the political decisions made by the new government brought government approval and support drastically down by the end of the year. Struggling to tackle a growing budget deficit and to invigorate an economy in recession, it was a politically tough year for Estonia. And the fact that all viable coalitions until the next parliamentary elections in 2027 must include the Reform Party was likely to keep politics rigid, on the one hand, and tense on the other.

Land Reform Versus Repression in Counterinsurgency: Evidence From El Salvador

Land reform has been employed as a component of counterinsurgency strategies to inoculate peasants against rebel appeals by giving peasants their own land. However, the remedial effects of land reform can be undermined by right wing violence and rebel violence intended to subvert land reform implementation. We used municipio level data on land reform and election results from El Salvador to test propositions on the competing effects of land reform and political violence - right wing and rebel - on the distribution of popular support between the regime versus the rebels versus anti-reform parties in the regime. We find consistent evidence across three elections that “land to the tiller” forms of agrarian reform do increase support for the regime while right wing violence does erode support for reformist parties.

Towards "All-round Cadres": Policy Priorities and Issue Diversity of Local Bureaucrats in China, 2005–19

Abstract: How do Chinese local political elites prioritise their attention in the one-party system? This study examines the issue diversity among China's local cadres by analysing the agendas of 707 local Party secretaries during their daily official activities from 2005 to 2019. Findings reveal that political and economic issues significantly dominate the secretaries' attention, overshadowing other niche topics. Yet after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012, there has been an increase in the secretaries' focus on Party affairs while there has been a decline in their focus on economic issues, leading to fragmented attention and disproportionate changes. These findings not only highlight the tension between the broader Party reforms and the actual responses of local officials, but also suggest the CPC's efforts to reshape the bureaucratic system by transforming local cadres into "all-rounders" capable of addressing diverse challenges while maintaining strong political leadership and loyalty.

Implications of Low Women's Representation: Strategies and Challenges Towards Gender Equality in Indonesian Politics

In Indonesia, pervasive discrimination against women prompts this legal research to scrutinize the significance of women's presence in parliament. Cultural and structural barriers fuel gender inequality, rooted in patriarchal norms and religious doctrine. Laws restricting women to domestic roles and regional regulations further compound these challenges. Employing a multifaceted approach—analyzing statutory rules, exploring expert opinions, and studying relevant cases—the research focuses on women's representation in parliament. Cultural biases and structural discrimination are addressed, calling for a comprehensive strategy involving legal amendments, societal paradigm shifts, and political party reform. Gender quotas, such as affirmative action, are proposed to boost women's political participation. Success relies on sincere commitment from political entities and society, aiming for a democratic, inclusive Indonesia free from gender discrimination. This approach seeks to create a space for diverse citizen needs, embodying principles of democracy and equality.

Human Rights Pragmatism: Problems of Structure and Agency

Abstract Mainstream human rights activists typically attribute the signature successes of their movement (e.g., antislavery, Gandhi, Martin Luther King) to their uncompromisingly principled stance on behalf of the weak and the exploited. Naming and shaming and ending impunity loom large in their lore. This attitude works well to recruit idealistic activists, but their moralism, legalism, and secular universalism miss the central role of the self-interest of the majority in powering the progress of human rights. A core of idealists has defined aspirational goals, but progress has depended on support from majority mass movements and reform parties that gained power through expedient compromise. The human rights enterprise is now facing fierce pushback from illiberal strongmen and populists who counter-shame the liberal order as decadent, degenerate, and threatening to deeply rooted values. Too often, contemporary rights rhetoric plays into the hands of these illiberal critics. Human Rights for Pragmatists explains how rights-based societies can recover a more accurate narrative of their past pragmatic successes, repair their tactical flaws, and withstand illiberal challenges.

From open government to open parties in Europe. A framework for analysis

Open government (OG) is an increasingly used management model among the public administrations of European countries and of the European Union, which is currently working on The Path to the Digital Decade. This supposes the application of measures to promote proximity and citizenship's prominence in many public policies, leading to improved quality of democracy. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a forced digitalization of many public services. Despite the fact that studies on OG do not usually focus on them, political parties are essential actors for the success or failure of OG measures, both from a bottom-up and a top-down perspective, on public administration transformation. Moreover, political parties are transforming themselves into more open organizations at the same time. We define open parties as political parties with high standards in transparency, participation, and collaboration. They also feature high degrees of organizational digitalization. This article proposes a framework for analyzing political parties' openness and explores available empirical data on different aspects related to OG in the European context. We have found that most parties possess a good level of local organizational strength but still need to reach better levels of anticorruption commitment, to form stronger ties with affiliated organizations, and especially to improve the participation of members and activists in their decision-making. Furthermore, elitism, clientelism, and populistic rhetoric represent significant obstacles that could hinder the party reform process.

Understanding how bundles of party reforms are shaped: A snowballing sequence in the French-speaking Belgian liberal party (MR)

This article introduces the concept of bundle as a new powerful tool in the study of party reforms. The intensive and intricate nature of the engineering political parties undertake to preserve the status quo amidst a challenging environment tends to be obscured by the focus on their so-called ‘conservative nature’. Applied to the process tracing of a large sequence of reforms implemented by the Belgian French-Speaking liberal party (MR) between 2019 and 2022, the bundle concept provides the opportunity to go beyond the narrow vision of party reforms only defined and empirically studied so far through their type, size and success. I triangulate a variety of sources to uncover mechanisms through which a handful of key party actors - as powerful steering agents - perceive and translate environmental factors into specific reforms. The bundle analysis brings notably to light a key sequencing mechanism – a snowball effect – explaining how the sequence actually unfolded and fed on itself, challenging our hitherto accepted understanding of party engineering. This study also offers a transferable conceptual framework with valuable insights for wider use in the field, providing an avenue for theory building through causal analysis.

Estonia: Political Developments and Data in 2022

AbstractThe Russian‐Ukrainian war, which started in February 2022, changed Estonian domestic politics considerably. The Reform Party, which had failed to manage domestic crises at the end of 2021, was able to prove itself in foreign politics, and its support skyrocketed. Its coalition partner at the start of the war, the Centre Party, however, lost support, which eventually led to the break‐up of the government coalition in the middle of the year. A new government was formed by the Reform Party, Fatherland and the Social Democratic Party, which was limited in its ambitions and cautious of its political choices as elections were approaching in March 2023.

Winston Churchill as a One Nation Conservative

Paradoxically the social reforms which entitle Churchill to the title of One Nation Conservative were enacted when he was a member of a Liberal Cabinet after 1908. Indeed, it was partly because he believed that the Conservatives had ceased to be a party of social reform that he crossed the floor to the Liberals in 1904.Churchill pioneered the welfare state – measures such as labour exchanges, minimum wages in sweated trades, and the world’s first system of unemployment insurance. All this was in his words “the untrodden field of politics”. To help him, he brought into government in an advisory role, William Beveridge, later to be author of the famous report on social insurance. Churchill is best remembered of course for his leadership in war from 1940 to 1945. But in 1951, he had a second innings as peacetime prime minister. Here too he made his contribution to One Nation Conservatism, not by action as had been the case before 1914, but by inaction. He preserved the welfare state measures enacted by Attlee’s Labour government after 1945, rather than dismantling them as some Conservatives had wished. His peacetime government cemented his reputation as a One Nation Conservative.

Ink battles: the press and political struggle in Western Libya

ABSTRACT The article focuses on the issue of the press in Western Libya, starting from the Ottoman period, up to early 1920. In particular, the author analyses the newspaper al-Liwā' al-Ṭarābulusī, the official mouthpiece of the National Reform Party, whose secretary was Azzam and president al-Qīzānī, both involved in the newspaper activities. The article also aims to shed light on the editorial network that linked Libya to Italy, focusing on the League of oppressed peoples propaganda.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ РОЗВИТКУ ОПОЗИЦІЙНИХ ПАРТІЙ В ЯПОНСЬКІЙ ПАРТІЙНІЙ СИСТЕМІ НА СУЧАСНОМУ ЕТАПІ

The article analyzes the peculiarities of the development of opposition parties in the context of transformation processes in the party system of Japan at the present stage. The author characterizes the peculiarities of the formation of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after the reform of the electoral law and the establishment of a mixed electoral system in Japan in 1994. The author identifies the miscalculations of the DPJ's activities during the period of its stay in power, in particular, the causes and peculiarities of the development of centrifugal tendencies in the Democratic Party since 2017. The key factors of the success of the right-wing populist "Japan Reform Party" in the 2012 House of Representatives elections are outlined. It is concluded that one of the main reasons for the divergence in the political programs of the leading parties is the attitude to the pacifist Article 9 of the Constitution. Based on the analysis of the results of the elections to the lower house of parliament in 2017 and 2021, and to the upper house of parliament in 2019 and 2022, the election manifestos of the main political forces are characterized. Attention is focused on the phenomenon of the electoral coalition, which was formed by the left-wing opposition forces. The author concludes that the modern Japanese opposition is characterized by the absence of any basis for cooperation between the right and left poles of the opposition forces. The author outlines, on the one hand, the prospects for the potential formation of a temporary coalition between the ruling bloc and the right-wing opposition center to pass certain bills, including constitutional amendments, and, on the other hand, the impossibility of consolidating the left-wing center of the opposition in the near future. Key words: party system, party, elections, opposition party, right-wing populism.

When do parties reform? Causes of programmatic-, organizational- and personnel party reforms in the Belgian mainstream parties

When do parties reform? Causes of programmatic-, organizational- and personnel party reforms in the Belgian mainstream parties

Outrage and the Bounds of Empathy

Often, when we are angry, we are angry at someone who has hurt us. Our anger is a protest against a perceived mistreatment, and its function is to hold the person accountable for their offense. The anger involves a demand for some sort of change or response: that the hurt be acknowledged, that the relationship be repaired, that the offending party reform in some way. Call this “reform” anger. A different sort of attitude, often contrasted with reform anger, is hatred. Hatred is also a response to a perceived mistreatment, and it also demands some sort of change. Unlike reform anger, however, its goal is not to repair the relationship. Instead, its goal is destruction, to remove the offending party. In this paper, I develop and defend an account of a third sort of attitude, which I call “outrage” anger, that is distinct from both reform anger and hatred. I argue that outrage anger has an important role to play in the context of political injustice, but that it also comes with significant costs. In §1, I introduce outrage anger, and contrast it with reform anger. In §2, drawing on the work of Maria Lugones, I develop an account of outrage anger as a second-order attitude directed at the state of affairs in which a violation is not fully intelligible as the violation it is. I argue its central function is a kind of psychological boundary setting: it closes off the victim’s ability to feel empathy for their abuser. In §3, I show that the benefits of outrage come with serious costs, both epistemic and prudential. In §4, I make some suggestions about when, and for whom, the benefits of outrage outweigh the costs.

Sozialdemokratie Global. Willy Brandt und die Sozialistische Internationale in Lateinamerika

The culmination of two decades’ research, Sozialdemokratie Global. Willy Brandt und die Sozialistische Internationale in Lateinamerika is a high-level, political history of the Socialist International (SI) under Brandt’s presidency (1976–1992). Rother elevates Brandt’s SI engagement in a field of political history and biography dominated by attention to earlier periods. The book combines a chronological account of relationships among Latin American and Caribbean reform parties and European democratic socialists in the 1970s and 80s with case studies of practical SI involvement in regional conflicts (Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Falklands/Malvinas). Framed by a biographical orientation towards key actors and a concise summary and assessment of how increased attention to the SI in Latin America might illuminate modes of thinking about Cold War politics and diplomacy beyond national governments, each section converges on an image of the SI as exemplary of an emerging arena of loosely coordinated political action parallel to foreign policy classically conceived. Rother attends productively to the challenges of approaching the SI as a unified political actor. The organization’s ‘diffuse edges’ (p. 30), financial entanglement with and dependency on national party structures and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, and repeated failure to come to consensus around foundational documents, complicate but never negate its status as a recognized player in an era of political globalization.

Stosunek biskupa Józefa Kazimierza Kossakowskiego do reform polityczno-prawnych w Polsce doby stanisławowskiej

Józef Kazimierz Kossakowski is one of the best-known figures in the Polish ecclesiastical hierarchy, but, regrettably, he is also one of the most critically assessed. Being exceptionally gifted, he used his talents exclusively for personal and family benefits. Having great political aspirations, he tied their fulfillment with the support of Russia, its successive ambassadors in Warsaw (especially Otto Stackelberg, to whom he owed much). He became a supporter of Russia’s interests in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, remaining such until his death, one of the most subservient Polish politicians towards the Russian ambassadors. The decisions made by Kossakowski in 1772–1781 influenced the gradation of his future goals. After he became Bishop of Livonia he took a seat in the Senate, with an increasingly important role in it. His activism increased in particular as the Four-Year Sejm began its deliberations. Despite his seemingly good relations with the King, he vehemently opposed all proposals for reform, revealing his exceptionally adamant stance in this regard. As a senator, he spoke out against the reform party and the Constitution of 3 May 1791, because, like his family, he belonged to the fanatical proponents of gentry republicanism. He was among the most active leaders of the political opposition, flooding the country with hundreds of political writings opposing the reforms of the Four-Year Sejm. Appeals for respecting the rights of the people and reform of laws made for the government were a constant theme of Kossakowski’s arguments, who repeatedly opposed the bills for new laws which he had the chance to work on while he was a senator. His anti-reform stance intensified during the period of the Targowica Confederation and the Sejm of Grodno. During this time, the Livonian bishop and his brother Szymon practically ruled Lithuania, committing many violations. The result of the Kossakowski brothers’ policies, wanting full state hegemony in Lithuania, was also the aspiration expressed at the Sejm of Grodno for the complete separation of the Grand Duchy from the Crown. The dramatic events that led to the collapse of the Polish state, which were undoubtedly the single strongest highlight in Kossakowski’s life, determined his posthumous infamy, which primarily consisted of his personal traits. In terms of the two-facedness peculiar for the Kossakowski family, the Livonian bishop exceeded them all.

Estonia: Political Developments and Data in 2021

AbstractThere was one government change and two elections in Estonia in 2021. In January, the Ratas II government, led by the Centre Party and also including the populist Estonian Conservative People's Party and the conservative Fatherland, was replaced by the K. Kallas I government, a coalition of the liberal Reform Party and the Centre Party. Indirect presidential elections were held at the end of August and Parliament elected Alar Karis as the new President of the Republic. Local elections took place in October and did not produce any major surprises. Regular day‐to‐day politics and campaigning were overshadowed by waves of COVID‐19 in spring and autumn, and the onset of an energy crisis at the end of the year.

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms

Battered by Geopolitical Winds, Bulgaria Struggles to Restart Much Needed Reforms