Party Platforms Research Articles

Personalism or party platform? Gender quotas and women's representation under different electoral system orientations.

Underrepresentation of women in politics is a matter of great concern to social scientists, citizens, and policymakers alike. Despite effort over the past decade to ameliorate it with gender quotas of different types, scientific research provides a mixed picture on the extent to which quotas can close these gender gaps under different conditions. We approach this puzzle by focusing on the orientation of electoral systems—candidate-centered vs. platform-centered—as a context that conditions the effect of quotas on representation. Our analyses of 76 countries’ electoral rules and legislatures show that contrary to expectations, it is in candidate-oriented systems that quotas facilitate stronger effect on women’s representation. Even after considering proportional representation, district magnitude, human development, or labor-force participation as alternative explanations, we show that quotas foster greater increases in gender representation in candidate-oriented systems. The broader implications are that in electoral systems that tend to have larger gender gaps, quotas have a substantial contribution to equal representation.

Gender and UK elections: the gendered dynamics of campaigns, leadership, voting behaviour and party platforms

ABSTRACT UK politics has experienced unprecedented levels of upheaval and volatility since 2015. The rapid succession of European elections, the EU referendum and three general elections within five years of each other have provided British political scientists with much to analyse and study. In this special issue, we focus our attention on the role of gender in UK electoral politics. We argue that the increased descriptive representation of women in politics, both as Members of Parliament as well as in leadership roles, gives the illusion that women’s place in British politics is secured and unchallenged. This hides the many ways in which UK electoral politics are and remain gendered. The contributions of this special issue shed light on these dynamics, focusing on themes of political violence, masculinity and the representation of women’s preferences and interests.

Retreating from Redistribution? Trends in Democratic Party Fidelity to Economic Equality, 1984–2020

AbstractDuring his presidency, Barack Obama described rising economic inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” But a growing number of scholars and journalists argue that rising inequality is in part a result of the Democratic Party’s diminishing fidelity to an egalitarian economic agenda and its embrace of neoliberalism. In this article, we assess the veracity of this claim through a content analysis of all national Democratic Party platforms issued since 1984. We find that broad assertions of Democratic retreat from economic equality are for the most part exaggerated. Specifically, we argue that Democrats’ support for egalitarian policies has been complex and varied over time, with a marked decline under the influence of the New Democrats in the 1990s followed by a significant resurgence thereafter. However, while party support for equalizing policies has rebounded overall, the extent of the party’s commitment to specific policies varies according to the purported deservingness of beneficiaries. Our findings have important implications for debates concerning Democratic Party change, the politics of inequality, and the policy agenda of the Joe Biden administration.

The Infiltration Interface Structure of Suburban Landscape in Bimen Township, Anji, Zhejiang Province, China

Coordinating and promoting urban and rural-space development has been a new round of institutional change in the Province of Zhejiang since 2004. And this plan was fully implemented, which showed that the isolation between the urban and rural areas had gradually diminished. Meanwhile, an interaction that is dynamic, flexible and lasting is formed, and is embodied in change of landscape morphological structure in the surrounding villages. Bimen village locating at the intersect area of Anji Township, Huzhou and Yuhang District was the case. Recognized as ‘Bamboo village’ with flourishing bamboo industry, Bimen has witnessed the blooming process of interaction with urban areas in ecology, economy, technology and culture. However, there were challenges of agriculture and manufacture recession and population loss as well. This study focused on Bimen village’s adaptation to the resource exchange with cities, and put forward the infiltration model simulating the transformative process based on theory of landscape ecology and infiltration mechanism. By introducing the infiltration model, industrial upgrading and several patterns were proposed in the reformation design, such as adjusting the industrial structure, upgrading the local special bamboo crafting traditions, releasing space for activities, and establishing infrastructures on the interface. The new agriculture mode will strengthen the interface by orienting the Third Party Platform (i.e. Internet oriented platform) upon the old dynamic basis and will bring new vitality for economy development in Bimen village.

The Politicization of Immigration and Integration at the Subnational Level: Electoral Campaigns in Ontario and Quebec

AbstractOpen political debate on immigration and integration policies (IIP) among Canadian political parties has been relatively limited. As Canada's immigration and integration systems become more decentralized, what about political debates about IIP in Canadian provinces? This article examines how IIP evolved across time by focusing on political parties’ claims, frames and pledges in party platforms and newspapers, using the cases of Ontario and Quebec. In Ontario, IIP were primarily framed as an economic and social resource. However, following the event of 9/11, new frames began to be introduced, contributing to a heightened salience and polarization. In contrast to Quebec, however, this politicization was not sustained. In Quebec, IIP were only marginally a matter of debate until the mid-2000s. This changed following the Hérouxville event, as these topics became salient, and dominant frames of immigration as economic and social resources were challenged by those of immigration as economic and cultural threats.

The Winning Party Platform: Voter Perceptions of Party Positions and Voting in Urban Africa

Previous literature suggests that some African parties employ non-valence positional issues in their party platforms and that this practice is more prevalent in some countries than in others; however, no quantitative research has analysed the electoral effects of non-valenced campaigns. How do African voters perceive parties’ policy positions? Who uses party platforms to choose candidates? Using data from an original survey experiment conducted in Nairobi, we examine voter perceptions of party platforms and their behaviour in the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections. We find that the opposition party’s clearer messaging helps average voters recognise and characterise the party, compared to the incumbent’s moderate policy stance. Moreover, while both parties’ policy positions positively affect voting, non-partisan voters are more likely to support a candidate advocating moderate policies. This implies an incumbency advantage: incumbents’ broad-appeal strategies help maximise their votes, whereas opposition parties have limited strategy options.

Labour and left-wing parties’ programmatic orientations: salience, valence and the impact of the Great Recession

ABSTRACT The steady weakening of the relationship between parties and civil society, in particular trade unions, has been the subject of considerable research. The same cannot be said, however, of the programmatic salience assigned by political parties to labour issues. This paper aims to explore how different party families relate to labour through a quantitative and qualitative approach. First, data from the MARPOR/Comparative Manifestos Project is used to compare the relative salience of labour in distinct party families, thus allowing us to analyse trends over time and across countries. Second, we focus on Southern Europe, before and after the crisis, to conduct a qualitative analysis of left-of-centre party positions toward labour. The findings suggest that labour issues are less salient in contemporary party platforms and that the mainstream left depoliticised this dimension of competition over the last decades. The historical links between parties and trade unions, the ideological legacies of left-of-centre parties and electoral pressures are the main factors that explain variations of party positions toward labour.

Competition law in attempt to understand (Luxury) trademarks

ABSTRACT The paper analyses the legality of online sales bans in selective distribution agreements in the EU, focusing on the “luxury brand image” justification as per the CJEU judgements and the decisions of the EC and national competition authorities. The paper questions the criteria for determining what constitutes a luxury trademark, and whether it is fair to distinguish (or even discriminate) between luxury and non-luxury trademarks, considering that both should have effective control and choice of the distribution of their goods. The paper concludes that the success of the selective distribution system depends on the effective control the trademark owner exercises over it, irrespective of whether or not it is covered by the aura of luxury. The non-luxury brands currently may justify their restrictions on sales on third party platforms under the unfair competition grounds. The selective distribution system should aim at protecting trademark image, which may not necessarily be luxury.

PopFactor: Live-Streamer Behavior and Popularity

Live video-streaming platforms such as Twitch enable top content creators to reap significant profits and influence. To that effect, various behavioral norms are recommended to new entrants and those seeking to increase their popularity and success. Chiefly among them are to simply put in the effort and promote on social media outlets such as Twitter, Instagram, and the like. But does following these behaviors indeed have a relationship with eventual popularity? In this paper, we collect a corpus of Twitch streamer popularity measures---spanning social and financial measures---and their behavior data on Twitch and third party platforms. We also compile a set of community-defined behavioral norms. We then perform temporal analysis to identify the increased predictive value that a streamer's future behavior contributes to predicting future popularity. At the population level, we find that behavioral information improves the prediction of relative growth that exceeds that of the median streamer. At the individual level, we find that although it is difficult to quickly become successful in absolute terms, streamers that put in considerable effort are more successful than the rest. Ultimately, we find that studying the popularity and success of content creators in the long term is a promising and rich research area.

Big data and democratic speech: Predicting deliberative quality using machine learning techniques

This article explores techniques for using supervised machine learning to study discourse quality in large datasets. We explain and illustrate the computational techniques that we have developed to facilitate a large-scale study of deliberative quality in Canada’s three northern territories: Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. This larger study involves conducting comparative analyses of hundreds of thousands of parliamentary speech acts since the creation of Nunavut 20 years ago. Without computational techniques, we would be unable to conduct such an ambitious and comprehensive analysis of deliberative quality. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the machine learning techniques that we have developed with the hope that they might be used and improved by other communications scholars who are interested in conducting textual analyses using large datasets. Other possible applications of these techniques might include analyses of campaign speeches, party platforms, legislation, judicial rulings, online comments, newspaper articles, and television or radio commentaries.

Negative voting and party polarization: A classic tragedy

Elections around the globe attest to the persistence of polarization in democratic politics. Popular support for antagonistic elite strategies defies standard predictions of ideological convergence. This paper develops a new solution to the theoretical puzzle: The centrifugal drive in representative democracy is a byproduct of voters’ disposition to evaluate policy platforms on the basis of issue positions that they dislike—to wit, negative voting. While reasonable individually, this behavior backfires collectively as elections dominated by negativity produce more polarized legislatures. Quite tragically, party polarization ultimately reflects an uncoordinated struggle of the electorate to avoid the worst rather than to pursue the best. Support for these claims comes from a theoretical model and a large comparative analysis of vote choice and party platforms. The evidence also favors the negativity model over earlier spatial models of elections. In light of negativity, normative concerns about polarization and democratic representation stand to be reconsidered.

Embedded liberalism or embedded nationalism? How welfare states affect anti-globalisation nationalism in party platforms

In industrialised democracies, welfare state provisions have offsetting implications for anti-globalisation nationalism, central to the position taking of populist radical-right parties. On the one hand, social protection has an ‘embedded liberalism’ effect, mitigating economic insecurities associated with globalisation and thereby dampening anti-globalisation nationalism. On the other hand, social protection has an ‘embedded nationalism’ effect, awakening worries that globalisation may undermine hard-won provisions, thereby deepening anti-globalisation. This paper argues and finds evidence that which of these dynamics predominates depends on the particular kind of anti-globalisation debated and on the particular party family doing the debating. Welfare effort does generally dampen anti-globalisation nationalism, but it can deepen more than dampen anti-globalisation with respect to immigration and EU-integration that more directly impact existing national welfare provisions. Welfare effort can also deepen more than dampen anti-globalisation among radical-right and radical-left parties taking issue-ownership of anti-globalisation and of protecting national welfare-state competencies from global pressure.

How party platforms on immigration become policy

AbstractWe focus on one of the most salient policy issues of our time, immigration, and evaluate whether the salience of immigration in governing parties’ manifestos translates into actual legislative activity on immigration. We contend that democratic policymakers have genuine incentives to do so. Furthermore, we argue that the country context matters for pledge fulfillment, and we find that the migration salience of governing parties’ manifestos more strongly translates into policy activity when the level of immigration restrictions is higher and when countries’ economies perform well. This research has important implications for our understanding of the relationships between economic performance, democratic representation and immigration policy making.

Retreating from Redistribution? Trends in Democratic Party Fidelity to Economic Equality, 1984-2020

During his presidency, Barack Obama described rising economic inequality as “the defining challenge of our time.” But a growing number of scholars and journalists argue that rising inequality is in part a result of the Democratic Party’s diminishing fidelity to an egalitarian economic agenda and its embrace of neoliberalism. In this article, we assess the veracity of this claim through content analysis of all national Democratic Party platforms issued since 1984. We find that assertions of Democratic retreat from economic equality are for the most part exaggerated. Broadly, we argue that Democrats’ support for egalitarian policies has been complex and varied over time, showing a marked decline under the influence of the New Democrats in the 1990s, followed by a significant resurgence thereafter. However, while party support for equalizing policies has rebounded, justification for these policies has varied according to the purported deservingness of beneficiaries. Our findings have important implications for debates concerning Democratic Party change, the politics of inequality, and the policy agenda of the incoming Biden administration.

From Many Divides, One? The Polarization and Nationalization of American State Party Platforms, 1918-2017

Many contend that U.S. state parties are increasingly polarized and nationalized, meaning that they have adopted divergent positions matching their national counterparts’. Yet, the relationship between these trends and the mechanisms underpinning them remain open questions. We introduce a data set of 1,783 state party platforms between 1918 and 2017 to assess these dynamics. Applying tools from automated and manual content analysis, we find that innovative phrases increasingly debut in state (not national) platforms. We also document a dramatic divergence in the topics emphasized by Democrats and Republicans starting in the mid-1990s, just as congressional speech polarized. During this period, cross-state differences in issues decreased and regional/sectoral issues became less prominent, suggesting tight connections between polarization, nationalization, and state agendas. Overall, the evidence undercuts claims of top-down nationalization and is consistent with the view that polarization coincides with the development of an integrated network of activists spanning multiple levels of the polity.

Political Labels and Post-Politics

Debate over the present-day meaning of the traditional political terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ has been ongoing for at least three decades. Many claim that these labels have lost their former relevance. This article offers a comparative analysis of the Israeli, Polish, and Hungarian party systems. Using qualitative content analysis, it examines party platforms and politicians’ speeches in order to assess the significance of political labels both in political narratives and academic debate. Two main research topics concerning political systems of the three countries are explored in the article: the blurring of the traditional left-right divisions and the partial adoption of an anti-establishment agenda by mainstream parties.

Isolating the effect of compulsory voting laws on political sophistication: Leveraging intra-national variation in mandatory voting laws between the Austrian Provinces

Compulsory voting laws introduce a legal requirement to vote that substantially increases in voter turnout. Additionally, this study provides evidence that a legal requirement to vote also generates a more politically informed population. A comparative case study leverages intra-national variation in mandatory voting regulations across the Austrian Provinces over time. The analysis constructs novel measures intended to quantify recent and accumulated exposure to compulsory voting laws. The results suggest that exposure to mandatory voting laws caused Austrian citizens to increase their political interest and attention to political news, as well as their level of information about party platforms on whether or not to expand EU integration. As a whole, the study suggests that compulsory voting not only increases voter turnout; it also leads to an increase in political information.

Telehealth Optimization – Role of Clinical Athletic Trainers In Orthopedic/Sports Medicine Practice

Background: Prior to COVID-19, telehealth (TH) implementation in most health systems was minimal. The transition to high rates of TH was dramatic in response to COVID-19, and many health systems struggled to develop optimal, efficient TH workflows. Hypothesis/Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of clinically integrated athletic trainers (ATs) into the TH transition of a major orthopedic academic center through growth of TH visits as well as physician satisfaction. Methods: Workflows and tip sheets were designed to include considerations of TH visit increases, adoption of appropriate technology platforms and optimal staff models. The rapid rate of TH adoption by orthopedic providers as well as the rates of TH visits were monitored. Growth of TH and in person (IP) visits was reviewed over a 4 month period. The percentage of TH visits compared to total visits was calculated. These results were then subjectively reviewed by physician leadership for satisfaction and effectiveness of the TH clinic. Results: TH became common practice in March due to COVID-19 social distancing measures. In mid-May, the organization lifted restrictions to allow for greater IP visits. March – June, TH visits were 291, 702, 408 and 193, respectively. IP visits were 862, 393, 730 and 788 for months March – June, respectively. Percentage of TH visits was highest in April, accounting for 64% of all visits (Figure 1). At the beginning of TH implementation (March), the organizational electronic medical record platform was used for virtual visits. There was a high drop-rate, inability to share images and overall patient dissatisfaction. TH visits were transitioned to a 3rd party platform in April. Initial concerns were that it required more man-power to run: families had to be emailed a link, patients were manually checked-in/out, and documentation had to be collected. ATs were used exclusively to coordinate and execute the visits. Physician satisfaction for TH visits resulted in compliance and increased desire to continue a virtual-based clinic. Discussion/Conclusion: While the future of TH is not clear health systems will increasingly rely on this modality. Developing optimal workflows will be critical for further acceptance, effectiveness, and managing the financial costs/returns of providing this service. A clinically integrated athletic training team can be utilized to develop, monitor and maintain a TH system, both for sports medicine and general orthopedic practices.

Place, candidate roots, and voter preferences in an age of partisan polarization: Observational and experimental evidence

Throughout the mid-twentieth century, scholars identified considerable contextual variation in American electoral politics. Party platforms varied significantly across the country, split ticket voting was commonplace, and candidate idiosyncrasies appeared to matter a great deal to voters. According to previous research, candidates' roots seemed especially important to voters, with “homegrown” candidates enjoying a boost at the polls. There is good reason to expect, however, that voters may no longer care about candidate roots. Partisan politics have polarized, both ideologically amongst elites and “affectively” amongst the electorate, continually since the mid-1990s (Mason, 2018). In addition, recent work suggests that American political behavior has “nationalized; ” meaning that national level partisan cues dominate voters' decision calculus, from presidential to mayoral races (Hopkins 2018). Both trends suggest little to no role for apolitical candidate characteristics to factor into voters' evaluations of candidates. To reassess voters’ appetite for homegrown candidates, this paper features observational and conjoint experimental studies designed to discern whether individuals in the United States still care about candidate roots. Results indicate that, despite trends of partisan polarization and nationalization, voters continue to consider candidate roots important. Furthermore, this preference appears especially strong among those with a strong place identity, suggesting that those for whom geographical identity is most important are particularly sensitive to geographical cues.

Linked Conservation Data: the Adoption and Use of Vocabularies in the Field of Heritage Conservation for Publishing Conservation Records as Linked Data

One of the fundamental roles of memory organisations is to safe-keep collections and this includes activities around their preservation and conservation. Conservators produce documentation records of their work to assist future interpretation of objects and to explain decision making for conservation. This documentation may exist as structured data or free text and in both cases they require vocabularies that can be understood widely in the domain. This paper describes a survey of conservation professionals which allowed us to compile the vocabularies used in the domain. It includes an analysis of the vocabularies with key findings: a) the overlapping terms with multiple definitions, b) the partial coverage of the domain which is lacking controlled vocabularies for condition types and treatment techniques and c) the limited formats in which vocabularies are published, making them difficult to use within Linked Data implementations. The paper then describes an approach to improve the vocabulary landscape in conservation by providing guidelines for encoding and aligning vocabularies as well as considering third party platforms for sharing vocabularies in a sustainable way. The paper concludes with a summary of our findings and recommendations.