Radical Parties Research Articles

Pager Explosion in Beirut: An Unprecedented Event.

On September 17, 2024, at 15:30 local time, thousands of pagers used by members of a specific party group detonated across Lebanon. As a result of the explosions, 2800 were wounded and 12 lost their lives. Almost two-thirds of the injuries were in the face, eyes, or hands. The Lebanese American University Medical Center received 38 injured and admitted 36 patients, 13 of them to the Intensive care unit. A total of 33 patients needed surgeries. All medical and nursing staff were deployed. The health care workers faced major challenges that night: the severity of the injuries and the unprecedented types of injuries with the same pattern, and the urgent need for ophthalmology and orthopedics within the hospital and across the country. Learning from the Pager Explosion, each hospital should perform assessments of their disaster response plan, develop trainings, and conduct regular exercises in preparation for future disasters.

The institutionalisation of parliamentary party groups. Towards a concept

ABSTRACT Notable efforts have been made to apply the institutionalisation concept to legislatures, parties and party systems. In contrast, parliamentary party groups (PPGs) were either side-lined or bundled under the concept of institutionalised parliaments and parties, which implies some conceptual confusion. However, PPGs should be treated as distinct topic given their role in stabilising the parliamentary business in all modern assemblies. Encouraging research to close that gap, we introduce a framework to study the institutionalisation of PPGs for which we use illustrations from various polities. We suggest that highly institutionalised groups exhibit stable personnel, coherent legislative behaviour, structural differentiation, well-established procedural routines, and autonomy in terms of policy decision-making, leadership selection, and resources. Also, we examine PPGs as embedded institutions and provide a conceptual map for varying relationships with the institutionalisation of parliaments and parties. Finally, we point to a widely unexplored field for comparative research including investigations on democratisation.

Quantifying energy transition vulnerability helps more just and inclusive decarbonization.

The COP28 agreement signals "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel era, calling on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner. While a quantitative assessment of country's vulnerability in energy transition is a prerequisite for national and international policy makers to ensure a just and inclusive transition, it is notably absent in the existing research. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on the vulnerability scoping diagram (VSD) method to assess differences in energy transition vulnerability across countries, with a specific focus on the challenges associated with transitioning away from fossil fuels. The resulting energy transition vulnerability index (ETVI) scores reveal that countries in the Global South generally exhibit higher vulnerability in their energy transition compared to those in the Global North, and this gap has widened over the past decade. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the decade-long trend of continuous decline in global energy transition vulnerability. This study also provides two important applications of ETVI scores, aligning them with major global sustainable development agenda. Firstly, we identify substantial differences in the dynamics of transition vulnerability across seven major party groups in the international climate change negotiations and distinguish four energy transition statuses in relation to achieving global climate goals: Stressful, Leapfrog, Potential Challenges, and Less Painful. Secondly, we demonstrate crucial synergies between energy transition resilience and the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

THE ROLE OF LOCAL REPRESENTATIVE AND EXECUTIVE BODIES IN UZBEKISTAN'S POLITICAL SYSTEM: LEGAL AND INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS

This article explores the evolving role of local representative and executive bodies in Uzbekistan’s political system, with a particular focus on the increased participation of political parties in local governance. It examines the expansion of the powers of the Councils of People's Deputies, especially in relation to monitoring local executive authorities and ensuring the implementation of laws and governmental decrees. The study highlights the need for enhanced parliamentary oversight at the local level and discusses the potential impact of party groups in strengthening the socio-political framework of the regions. The article also addresses the challenges faced by local authorities in ensuring efficient governance, including insufficient use of the powers granted to political parties and the lack of a unified approach to solving socio-economic problems. Drawing on recent reforms, including experimental governance models in Tashkent, the article argues for a more robust legal framework to support local political oversight and promote greater accountability among local executive bodies. The findings underscore the importance of legal reforms aimed at enhancing the autonomy and effectiveness of local governance as a key component of Uzbekistan’s broader political and administrative modernization efforts.

The Local Party Branch and the Council Party Group: Who Governs?

AbstractThe relationship between the local party branch organisation and local councillors has been left largely unexplored in the party literature. We explore how this relationship varies within the case of Norway – a multi‐party system with large variation in municipal size. Based on a survey of leaders of municipal party branches and local lists, as well as qualitative interviews with branch and list leaders, we analyse the causes of variation regarding two dependent variables: the degree of integration between the party branch and council group and the involvement of party branches in council work. The overall picture is that work in branches and council groups is strongly integrated. However, local branches of left‐of‐centre parties are likely to be more involved in council work and less likely to be fully integrated with their council groups. The left‐of‐centre tradition of giving more power to extra‐parliamentary organisation seems to prevail.

Tweet no harm: Offer solutions when alerting the public to voter suppression efforts

Voter suppression was a major issue during the 2018 U.S. Midterm elections. Civil rights organizations, advocacy groups, and celebrities used Twitter to urgently warn voters about potential problems at the polls. However, in raising awareness of these normatively problematic matters, these messages had the potential to negatively impact key measures of democratic health. We conduct a survey experiment exploring the effect of exposure to tweets about voter suppression on confidence in elections, democratic legitimacy, and vote intent. Tweets that highlight voter suppression without a solution depress confidence in elections across all party groups, suggesting that solely warning people about problems at the polls without concrete actions they can take in response may do more harm than good. In addition, tweets highlighting voter suppression increase democratic legitimacy among Republicans relative to Democrats, suggesting that the former see such efforts as beneficial. There is no impact of either treatment condition on vote intent. Normative implications for democracy are discussed.

Populist alone, but harmless together? Analysing inter- and transnational populism of EP parties ID and ECR on Facebook

Right-wing populist parties are highly successful in online communication and have made electoral gains in a wide range of European countries. In the European Parliament, until the recent European elections in 2024, the majority of them were distributed between the two party alliances and parliamentary groups Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). To analyse their communicative strategies, we collected all Facebook posts of the party and parliamentary group accounts of ID and ECR ( N = 616) within one year (08/21–08/22). Subsequently, structural topic modelling (STM), sentiment analysis and manual content analysis were applied to determine their communication strategies. Overall, the results indicate that ECR and ID are communicating rather moderately online. However, while ECR differs significantly from its national member parties, ID seems to reproduce right-wing populist narratives. Overall, this paper argues for a stronger focus on European party alliances, not only national parties, when researching right-wing populist communication in the EU.

Flexible quantum data bus for quantum networks

We consider multipath generation of Bell states in quantum networks, where a preprepared multipartite entangled two-dimensional cluster state serves as a resource to perform different tasks on demand. We show how to achieve parallel connections between multiple, freely chosen groups of parties by performing appropriate local measurements along a diagonal, staircase-shaped path on a two-dimensional cluster state. Remarkably, our measurement scheme preserves the entanglement structure of the cluster state such that the remaining state is again a two-dimensional cluster state. We demonstrate strategies for generating crossing, turning, and merging of multiple measurement lines along the two-dimensional cluster state. The results apply to local area as well as to long-distance networks. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Roll call votes in the committees of the European Parliament: A new dataset

This forum article presents a new dataset on roll call votes in the committees of the European Parliament in the 2014 to 2019 legislative term. Data on roll call votes in the plenary has greatly informed research on the functioning of the European Parliament, broader legislative politics and European Union decision-making. Responding to transparency concerns about legislative decisions increasingly taken at committee level, a change of the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure introduced mandatory roll calls in committees from 2014. The article explains the context of the rule change, the data collection effort, and the data as such. A discussion of conflict across committees, party group cohesion and participation in roll call votes illustrates potential applications of the data.

Making “strategic autonomy” rhyme with “fiscal austerity?” Unresolved conflicts of (geo)economic ideas in EU infrastructure policy

As a reaction to intensifying global competition, measures related to strategic autonomy are gaining traction on the EU level. Yet they coincide with a general return to fiscal consolidation. With current developments more inconclusive than previously suggested, this article asks how the central actors in EU economic policy, both public and private, position themselves in the autonomy-austerity conflict. It introduces a political-economic approach to the role of (geo)economic ideas and state-business relations in EU policy formation. The article focuses on infrastructure policy as a main field within which the conflict unfolds. A content analysis of official documents systematically maps the positions of relevant actors. While an influential group of southern finance ministries, Directorates-General, center-left parties, and trade unions is promoting strategic autonomy, a shrinking constellation around fiscal austerity contains relevant veto players. The deadlock results in the attempt to reconcile both ideas via “targeted flexibility”: consolidation via the expenditure side and a delegitimization of non-investment spending, coupled with a public de-risking of private investments. The approach is supported by European capital, yet highly inconsistent and runs up against pro-austerity forces. The findings have strong implications for the EU’s future geoeconomic strategy and its ability to compete globally.

From fringe to front? Assessing the voting influence of the radical right in the European Parliament

Scholars have long believed that the influence of radical right parties in the European Parliament was indirect due to their internal heterogeneity, limited involvement in parliamentary activities, and the existence of a cordon sanitaire. However, the consolidation of these parties, marked by the Identity and Democracy group becoming the fourth largest group in 2019, raises concerns about their impact on European Union decision-making. This article seeks to understand the extent and conditions under which the radical right group in the European Parliament can influence policymaking. By analysing roll-call votes from the 9th term (2019 to 2024), we introduce a measure of voting influence, operationalised as the ability of a party group to sway the outcome of a vote in plenary. Our analysis reveals that while the radical right group frequently joins winning majorities in the European Parliament, its voting influence remains limited because of the low levels of conflict in plenary.

Research on the Cultivation of Primary School Chinese Core Literacy from the Perspective of Information Technology Media

In 2024, Huai Jinpeng, secretary of the Party Group and Minister of the Ministry of Education, pointed out in his speech at the National Education Conference that we should "strengthen the reform and innovation of education and teaching, and constantly explore and practice new teaching methods and means". Nowadays, cultivating primary school students' Chinese core quality has become an important direction of primary school Chinese classroom reform, the core of which lies in cultivating students' individual cognition and application ability of Chinese. Based on this, this paper breaks down the cultivation concept of primary Chinese core quality into individualized learning orientation, teaching orientation of students' subjectivity and feedback mode of multiple evaluation. The paper deeply integrates the use of information technology media with primary school Chinese teaching, and puts forward the cultivation mode of primary school Chinese core quality under the vision of information technology media. This model includes three parts: deep interaction of teaching and research, flipped classroom learning model, multiple evaluation and intelligent data management, in order to help the reform of the primary school Chinese core literacy training model.

Job insecurity and vote for radical parties: A four-country study

Job insecurity is a pervasive phenomenon whose effects on support for different parties have attracted increasing attention in the literature. A growing body of research has assessed the relationship between job insecurity and the success of radical parties in Western democracies, but results are still inconclusive due to the complex nature of this independent variable. This article contributes new evidence to the current debates on this topic by analyzing how both objective labour market status and perceived job insecurity are associated with the vote for radical right and radical left parties. Our findings, based on four original surveys conducted in France, Germany, Greece and Spain, suggest that perceived job insecurity is generally associated with greater support for the radical left, but not for the radical right. In contrast, we find the relationship between objective labour market status and support for radical parties to be more ambiguous (and, in most cases, statistically non-significant).

Slovenia: Political Developments and Data in 2023

AbstractThe political arena was lively in Slovenia, even though no elections or referendums were held in 2023. Both the government and all three governmental parties, especially the biggest one, the Freedom Movement, as a new party, experienced considerable turbulence—such as changes in the parliamentary party group and changes in the four ministerial positions falling within that party's quota. Having previously been the successful manager of an energy company, the Prime Minister encountered a multitude of challenges in the political arena. While the government announced many reforms, it managed to deliver substantially less. It also faced many (threats of) strikes and protests, particularly by public sector employees and farmers. Even though in the first year of its term the government enjoyed high public support, by November 2023, the situation was very different, with just 18 per cent of voters assessing its work as (very) positive. Parallel to this, two opposition parties were facing their own challenges.

The differential impact of EU attitudes on voting behaviour in the European parliamentary elections 2019

ABSTRACT EU attitudes are multidimensional and likely to matter differentially for voting across different parties. The 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections offer a unique setting for testing the differential effects of multidimensional EU attitudes, as the election results entailed increased political fragmentation – with notable pro- and anti-EU party groups in the EP gaining strength. This article examines the importance of EU attitudes on electoral choice and zooms in on the influence of specific EU attitudes on party voting in EP elections (‘EU issue voting’). We use original survey data collected around the 2019 EP elections in ten EU member states, which include a fine-grained measurement of EU attitudes. We find evidence for EU issue voting in all countries, albeit not equally structured across countries. EU issue voting matters across all party groups with affective and performance evaluations having the strongest effects.

The Impact of the Political System of the Republic of Serbia on Shaping Foreign Policy After 2012

Abstract Since 2012, the Republic of Serbia has been governed by the Serbian Progressive Party, and since 2017 its chairman has also been the president, who has full power in his hands. In the first years after taking power, this group implemented a policy that could have been surprising to public opinion, considering the fact that it separated from the Serbian Radical Party. The negotiations on Kosovo, which brought a number of agreements, the diplomatic offensive that created Serbia as a European partner and regional hegemon, dynamic progress in the EU accession process and the promotion of Western European values were the elements that noticeably exposed the change in the image of this country in relation to the previous decades. However, the second term of government began to fit into the pattern of the global phenomenon of populism, leading to the ruling group taking over the structures of the separation of powers and limiting democracy in the country. Subsequent general elections brought the strengthening of this party in the structures of the state, whose level of democracy was rated increasingly lower in international rankings. Moreover, the political system of Serbia itself began to be presented in scientific and expert analyses as an example of stabilitocracy. The aim of this topic is to analyse the specific power of President Aleksander Vučić and his party in relation to shaping the state’s multi-vector foreign policy.

Comparing evidence use in parliaments: the interplay of beliefs, traditions, and practices in the UK and Germany

Abstract This article draws on rich qualitative data from two national parliaments—the UK House of Commons and the German Bundestag—to examine knowledge practices in political institutions. This is an important topic, not only because parliaments play a significant role in democratic decision-making, but because it sheds light on debates about how such decision-making is based on and interacts with knowledge and evidence. By adopting an interpretive analytical approach, I analyze the ways in which those practices are shaped by the beliefs and values of parliamentary actors. Indeed, in better understanding everyday practices, beliefs, and ideational traditions, it also contributes to better explaining how components of political and parliamentary cultures contribute to knowledge use more broadly. In the House of Commons, MPs draw on a highly trusted and independent parliamentary administration; meanwhile, committees have become fruitful avenues for MPs to develop policy expertise and engage with knowledge and evidence in a non-partisan way. In the German Bundestag, MPs also develop policy expertise—in fact, they interpret their role as specialists in a “working” parliament—but their knowledge practices are more openly partisan through the structuring role of parliamentary party groups and the skepticism of “neutral” advice from research services. Consequently, committees tend to be sites of political bargaining and conflict, rather than evidence-gathering. In both cases, parliaments’ knowledge practices are shaped by wider webs of beliefs about the role of MPs within the institutions. This suggests that knowledge use in political and policy settings is shaped by broader cultural factors.

How warm are political interactions? A new measure of affective fractionalization.

Affective polarization measures account for partisans' feelings towards their own party versus its opponent(s), but not for how likely partisans are to encounter co-partisans versus out-partisans. However, the intensity of out-party dislike and the probability with which this comes into play both determine the social impact of cross-party hostility. We develop an affective fractionalization measure that accounts for both factors, and apply it to longitudinal survey data from 20 Western publics. From this perspective, countries with fewer dominant parties may be more harmonious because partisans have lower probabilities of interacting with political opponents. At the party level, partisans of smaller, more radical parties are particularly troubled because they strongly dislike out-partisans and have few co-partisans. Affective fractionalization has increased in most Western publics over time, primarily because of growing party-system fragmentation.

Refleksi Eksistensi Petani dalam Panggung Sejarah Indonesia

This article raises issues related to the overall exploitation of farmers in various regions in Indonesia. This paper uses historical methods. The existence of farmers was underestimated because they were merely extras, or more precisely, material for Dutch and Japanese colonial exploitation, both for economic and political interests. This fate then suddenly changed because farmers had joined political party groups and become organizations, such as Pertanu, STTI, BTI, and so on. Unfortunately, the euphoria to support the peasants did not run smoothly because there were clashes with civil society and with those who did not share the same ideology. The result is bloodshed between members of the nation; this is truly ironic. Until then, the New Order was born, and all forms of organizations related to farmers were communized.

Small Opposition Parties in a Westminster System: How Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Participation, Decision-Making and Oversight in the UK House of Commons?

Opposition parties are a key feature of parliamentary democracies, but their participation rights differ markedly. In the UK House of Commons, the institutional operation of the Westminster model facilitates a marked distinction between the rights afforded to the Official Opposition party compared to smaller opposition parties. During times of crisis, these Westminster model dynamics can shift, impacting opposition rights. This article uses a case study of the COVID-19 pandemic to assess institutional inequalities across opposition party groups. Drawing on an analysis of over 4000 contributions to parliamentary debates and interviews with MPs, we examine the pandemic’s impact on the roles of opposition parties beyond the Official Opposition. We find that the pandemic initially generated unprecedented cooperation between the government and small opposition parties but that this was short-lived. In the long term, the pandemic exacerbated existing institutional barriers and the size and geographical concentration of small opposition parties in the devolved nations brought disproportionate participation and oversight barriers. This suggests the need to guarantee formal opposition rights within Westminster systems beyond the Official Opposition party to ensure that all political parties have the capacity to carry out their functions during times of crisis.