Radical Parties Research Articles

The rise and retreat of Syriza: an interview with Michalis Spourdalakis

Syriza is the only radical Left party to be elected a national governing party since the worldwide economic crisis began in 2008. In this interview with political theorist Michalis Spourdalakis, a founding member of Syriza, we discuss the unique strategic relationships between social movements and the new radical Left parties such as Syriza, the struggle to maintain the party’s independence amid co-optation into the Greek state and broader European Institutions, and what the Syriza experience can teach us about attempts to transform capitalist states.

Who gets what and why? Committee assignments in the German Bundestag

Although committee assignments have been researched in various parliaments, findings are inconclusive. This article contributes to the debate by analysing the allocations to specialised committees in the Bundestag, a legislature that establishes strong committees despite having strong parliamentary party groups. Studying assignments in this legislature can, therefore, help us to solve the present disjunction between ‘European’ and ‘American’ experiences regarding committee research. The study uses the congressional theories of legislative organisation as heuristic devices but explicitly highlights the strong involvement of parliamentary party groups. The hypotheses are tested with a multiple membership multilevel model across several legislative periods (1990‒2013) and backed up with evidence from 51 interviews with German legislators. The results show that next to constituency demands and the influence of regional factions, there is strong evidence for a reassignment pattern and that a legislator’s occupational background and connections to interest groups matter in the assignment process.

The economic vote at the party level: Electoral behaviour during the Great Recession

The Great Recession is a non-trivial test bed for the theory of economic voting, especially if its predictions are decomposed at the party level, as done in this article by analysing the electoral performances of parties competing in 89 national elections held in the 28 member states of the EU between 2003 and 2015. We acknowledge counterintuitively that prime ministers’ parties are able to exploit the relatively good state of the economy, while sharing the blame with their allies in times of crisis, counting on the lack of clarity in the attribution of responsibilities and deploying their heresthetic capacities. We further recognize that new parties, more than opposition ones, proportionally profited from the recession. Tough times magnify the alternation between left- and right-wing victories, without necessarily favouring the most radical parties, whereas the EU’s supposed responsibility in prolonging the crisis fuelled the success of Eurosceptic parties.

Convergence or Divergence? Do Parties and Outside Groups Spend on the Same Candidates, and Does It Matter?

There is a good deal of discussion currently among political scientists about the nature of political parties and the impacts of changing party–group relations. Are so-called outside groups promoting extreme candidates and, thus, contributing to polarization? Or perhaps, party-allied groups follow the party’s lead and support the same candidates the party supports. We view parties as extended party networks (EPNs) and examine the campaign spending practices of formal party organizations (the House congressional campaign committees) and some of the groups that are seen as allied with each party and some we expect to be outside each party’s network. We analyze the levels of congruence and divergence in party and group spending in the 2014 House elections. We find that most nonparty groups support the same candidates favored by the party with which they most identify, and very few are outside each party’s EPN-supporting candidates who are challenging the party’s picks.

A Response to the Taylor Review

The Taylor Review should be commended for recognising the success of the UK’s flexible labour market and for refusing to endorse the outright bans on zero-hours contracts and app-based “gig” economy advocated by the Labour Party, trade unions, and other pressure groups. However, its recommendations for further regulation of these types of work seem likely to inhibit their growth and reduce the benefits going to both consumers and workers. The Review fails to make a convincing argument that large numbers of workers are disadvantaged by working in different ways from the traditional model and downplays the costs of forcing businesses to treat self-employed people as “dependent contractors”. Many of the Review’s proposals for promoting “Good Work” are probably harmless, often because they are mere waffle. However, they underestimate the difficulties of assessing just what employees want from work, and of changing business behaviour. The proposed requirement to publish elaborate indicators of the “quality” of work will be an additional burden on firms and the taxpayer, and promote the mistaken notion that businesses exist to serve employees rather than consumers.

Radical distinction: Support for radical left and radical right parties in Europe

Support for radical parties on both the left and right is on the rise, fueling intuition that both radicalisms have similar underpinnings. Indeed, existing studies show that radical left and right voters have overlapping positions and preferences. In this article, however, we focus on the differences in the voting bases of such parties. We show that radical left and right voters have sharply diverging ideological profiles. When it comes to the historical traditions of the ‘left’ and ‘right’, these voters differ radically from each other. Both groups express the traditions associated with their mainstream counterparts—particularly with respect to (non-)egalitarian, (non-)altruistic, and (anti-)cosmopolitan values. Such differences also explain why radical left voters tend to be more, not less, educated than mainstream or radical right voters.

Political party preference and social trust in four Nordic countries

This article examines how the level of social trust varies between different party supporters in four Nordic countries. We aim to offer new interpretations concerning the associations between party preference and social trust by examining social activity, social status and institutional confidence of political party supporters. Our data are derived from the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish sections of the European Social Survey including three recent rounds with over 20,000 observations. We found that the level of trust among the supporters of populist parties is relatively low in each country. Differences between parties may not be explained completely by respondents’ perceived social activity or institutional trust. Our results also suggest that higher societal status does not affect social trust similarly across party groups. In country comparison, we found that the supporters of populist parties are not as isolated in Finland as elsewhere. The article concludes with a discussion on interconnectivity between social trust and cultural homology, which is channelled by citizens’ political preference.

Nationalism and Populism in Radical Right Discourses in Italy and Germany

Populism is, besides nationalism, one of the common components of today’s radical right politics. In fact, populism and nationalism are often conflated when assessing radical right identity formation, ideology and discourses. This article sheds light on the relationship between nationalism and populism by empirically investigating the presence and forms of populist (people vs. elites) and nationalist (ethno-national people vs. others) frames in the discourse of radical right parties and movements in Italy and Germany. By applying a frame analysis to written documents (election flyers, party programmes, newspapers) produced between 2013 and 2016, as well as current website material (press releases, newsletters, blogs) of selected radical right organisations, this article examines how nationalism and populism interact, overlap and potentially clash. We look at how populist and nationalist frames structure the radical right’s definition of “us” and “them” and its diagnoses, prognoses and motivations for action. We find that radical right-wing forces increasingly combine populist with nationalist frames, but the forms of populism on the radical right depend on the national political context and on the type of organisation—for parties, populism has become a central feature of their discourse; social movements exhibit only a peripheral conceptualisation of populism.

Committee autonomy in parliamentary systems – coalition logic or congressional rationales?

ABSTRACTLarge-n comparative research on committee structures in legislatures is rare. This paper uses newly collected data to analyse committee structures across 30 legislatures of parliamentary systems which possess strong parliamentary party groups. It seeks to explain committee autonomy which reflects the degree to which committees are able to carry out their tasks independently. The variation in autonomy is accounted for by contrasting the ‘keeping tabs on coalition partners’ perspective with the congressional theories of legislative organisation (referred to as distributional, informational, and partisan theories). The results support the informational and the keeping tabs perspective. More autonomous committees tend to be found in legislatures with a relatively high workload and frequent coalition governments. For the ongoing discussion about the applicability of the congressional theories outside the US, this study provides support for the usefulness of the US theories in parliamentary systems of government.

Ideology or National Interest? External Relations Votes in the European Parliament

Studies of roll-call votes in the European Parliament show that most party groups are very cohesive, the left-right dimension is the dominant cleavage in the chamber, and that most votes are adopted with broad majorities. This paper asks whether these findings extend to external relations, issue areas characterized by intergovernmentalism and entrenched national interests. The ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’ idiom suggests that national interests trump party politics. In contrast, recent studies of politicization in international relations find evidence for party political cleavages as regards external relations. Examining the positions of party groups and national delegations throughout the 1979-2014 period, the paper compares voting behaviour in external relations with overall patterns of party unity and coalitions whilst also differentiating between various types of foreign and security policy matters.

Specialists, party members, or national representatives: Patterns in co-sponsorship of amendments in the European Parliament

Tabling committee amendments is an important way for Members of the European Parliament to influence legislation, build coalitions, and give signals to constituents. This article questions to what extent these coalitions follow party lines, national lines, or the logic of informational specialisation. Expectations are linked to the theories of legislative organisation and tested using exponential random graph models of the co-sponsorship patterns during the seventh legislature of the European Parliament. The results indicate that representing the same member state, sharing committee membership, and being affiliated to the same European Parliament Party Group all contribute to the formation of recurring co-sponsorship ties. Furthermore, this study indicates that especially the European United Left–Nordic Green Left has strong within-party co-sponsorship bonds and that Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe adopts a pivotal link between left and right in cross-party co-sponsorship.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE POLITICAL VIEWS OF CARPATHIANUKRAINIAN STUDENTS IN PRAGUE (1921-1930) (TO THE ISSUE OF THEIR PARTY SELF-IDENTIFICATION)

The article focused on Carpatho-Ukrainian students in the activities of Czechoslovakian political parties in years 1921-1930 based on archival and published sources. The author analyzes the process of formation and activities of the most popular party groups that existed at that time in Carpatho-Ukrainian students’ life and their impact on professional associations of Carpatho-Ukrainian students

The Alternative to Occupy: Radical Politics Between Protest and Parliament

In this paper, we compare the political anatomy of two distinct enactments of (leftist) radical politics: Occupy Wall Street and The Alternative, a recently elected political party in Denmark. Departing from Ernesto Laclau’s conceptualization of ‘the universal’ and ‘the particular’, we show how the institutionalization of radical politics (as carried out by The Alternative) entails a move from universality towards particularity. This move, however, comes with the risk of cutting-off supporters who no longer feel represented by the project. We refer to this problem as ‘the problem of particularization’. In conclusion, we use the analysis to propose a conceptual distinction between radical movements and radical parties: While the former is constituted by an infinite chain of equivalent grievances, the latter is constituted by a prioritized set of differential demands. While both are important, we argue, they must remain distinct in order to preserve the universal spirit of contemporary radical politics

Not so random after all? – revisiting committee assignments in Dáil Éireann

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I analyse the allocation of legislators to specialised committees in Dáil Éireann. Committees are privileged decision-making arenas: Committee members have, once assigned, the right and duty to work on issues within their jurisdiction. It is, therefore, important to understand which factors influence the assignment process. In what has been the most thorough analysis hitherto, Hansen [(2011). A random process? Committee assignments in Dail Eireann. Irish Political Studies, 26(3), 345–360] has found very little patterns explaining this process in the Dáil. The study uses the congressional theories of legislative organisation as heuristic devices to deduce several rationales of the assignment process. The role of parliamentary party groups in the assignment process is highlighted. The hypotheses are tested by means of a multiple-membership multilevel model on committee assignments across multiple legislative periods (1992–2011). The results are backed up with evidence from 22 interviews I conducted with Irish legislators. Contradicting earlier assessments of the assignment process, several factors increase the likelihood of being assigned to a committee. There is strong evidence for a reassignment pattern. Additionally, a legislator's occupational background matters in the assignment process. For the ongoing discussion about the applicability of the congressional theories outside of the U.S., my study provides evidence for the usefulness of the U.S. theories.

Party–Group Ambivalence and Voter Loyalty: Results From Three Experiments

Renewed emphasis on the group-based nature of political parties makes understanding the relationship between partisan and group identities essential. How do citizens respond to the internal disconnect between their partisan identity and their other politically salient identities? In addition, do differences in the group-based nature of each party lead to asymmetric effects of party–group ambivalence? Using data from an original survey experiment across three samples—the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the 2012 Convention Delegate Study, and a 2015 sample from Amazon Mechanical Turk—I find that party–group ambivalence diminishes party loyalty, making respondents less likely to vote for, contribute to, or volunteer for their political party’s candidate. Moreover, the strength of this impact is consistently larger among Republican identifiers than Democratic identifiers. These results suggest that party asymmetry in party coalitions may have an impact on party loyalty.

The European Parliament in Times of Crisis: Transnationalism under Pressure?

In 2015, the intensification of the migration crisis has exposed the European Union to a highly politicized policy problem that was subject to radically different national approaches. In the past, the literature has tended to present the European Parliament as a highly supranational institution, where formal procedures and informal practices have encouraged the emergence of transnational party groups over time. However, while these groups are now seen as enjoying a high level of cohesion, the literature also argues that national loyalties are likely to prevail in the case of conflict between the European party group and the national party. The migration crisis can be expected to create numerous conflicts that would undermine party cohesion. Yet, the analysis of plenary debates in 2015 shows that European party groups still benefit from a high level of cohesion and that most MEPs avoid couching their arguments in national terms. The European Parliament is thus still a fundamentally transnational actor.

The interplay between parties and media in putting EU issues on the agenda: A temporal pattern analysis of the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom

We investigate the interplay between party communication and media coverage in putting EU issues on the agenda during the 2014 European Parliamentary election campaigns in Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom. A temporal pattern analysis focuses on the dynamic perspective of media–parties’ interactions based on a quantitative content analysis of (a) the press releases published by parties and (b) the coverage of two leading newspapers per country 12 weeks prior to the elections. We find that most public discourses are started by the media; however, political parties especially in Austria are also quite successful in initiating discussions about EU issues. Interestingly, once an issue has been placed on the agenda, only a few parties take the opportunity of exploiting their issue-ownership in response to the media agenda. On the other side, media react to publications of all party types, even radical parties.

The study of Parliamentary party groups from the perspective of a constitutionalist

Parliamentary party groups are now key actors in the French Parliament. However, the topic remains unexplored. Here, we aim to understand from a constitutional law point of view why there is this lack of interest. We argue that parliamentary party groups should be studied per se because they bring into focus contemporary transformations of the parliamentary regime and open a wide field of research that goes well beyond constitutional issues.

The impact of policy content and party label on policy agreement and candidate support. An analysis on the issue of the integration of immigrants

There is an ongoing debate in the public opinion and voting behaviour literature on whether policy content or party cues determine voters’ opinions and electoral behaviour. This study focuses on the issue of the integration of immigrants, and assesses to what extent the policy content and a radical right party label relate to voters’ likelihood of agreeing with the policy and of voting for the candidate introducing the policy. The analysis, using experimental video data with hypothetical political candidates embedded in a representative Dutch survey (LISS) (N = 3249), reveals that the influence of the radical right label is limited. It only negatively affects the likelihood of supporting a candidate and agreeing with the policy among voters who do not support a mainstream right or radical right party. The content of the policy plays a major role. In particular, a radical right compared with mainstream right policy towards the integration of immigrants decreases the likelihood of agreeing with the policy and supporting the candidate presenting such a policy among non-radical right voters. Radical right voters are substantially more likely to agree with a restrictive migration policy and to support a candidate presenting such a policy than voters of all other parties.

Failures in Leadership

Abstract This paper examines how Japanese leading politicians deal with the communicative problems posed to them during broadcast political interviews. Based on data gathered during 14-month period in 2012–2013, the paper replicates and modifies the “Theory of Equivocation” to explore the extent to which national and local level politicians endeavor to affect the content of information distributed to the public and to influence the way people perceive events that take place in the public domain. Differentiating among selected groups of politicians, i.e., ruling and opposition parties’ members, Cabinet ministers and prime ministers, and local level politicians, the paper focuses on the ways Japanese politicians (and for comparison also nonpoliticians) equivocate during televised programs and the conditions underlying this equivocation, thereby also assesses the significance of these talk shows in the broader context of political communication in Japan.