Party Reform Research Articles

Covert and overt electoral patterns : what strategies can be deployed to arrest pre-and post-electoral violence in Zimbabwe?

This paper presents and analyses suggested strategies to arrest pre-and postelectoral violence dynamics in Zimbabwe. The suggestions were gathered from the 20 provincial party chairpersons of the two major political parties in Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC - T). The suggestions of five representatives of the major civil society organizations that are based in Harare are also included in this write up. The research was carried out using indepth interviews. The period under synthesis is from 1999 when the MDC was formed up to depose Mugabe by the New Dispensation in November 2017. The sole aim of this research is to contribute to strategies for sustainable, peaceful, free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. To achieve this aim, the research gathered and analysed data from some of the key players in Zimbabwe elections who offered various insights into what needs to be done to arrest electoral violence dynamics that persistently plague the country's electoral landscape. Findings that emerge from the research as strategies to arrest pre- and postelectoral violence dynamics are repeal of draconian legislation, demilitarization of elections, observation of elections by the UN and AU, the SADC disallowing Mugabe to steal elections, presence of observers on the ground well before and after elections, preaching of peace by party leaders and reform of electoral bodies. This paper concludes that for Zimbabwe to have sustainable, peaceful, free and fair elections in future, the strategies raised in this research should be adopted in their entirety.

Federal and Political Party Reforms in Asia: Is There a New Model of Federal Democracy Emerging in Ethnically Diverse Countries in Asia?

AbstractHow do ethnically divided countries create inclusive and stable democratic institutions? Why do some kinds of federalism fail while others evolve? Scholars looking for answers to these kinds of questions have tended to focus on the West. Yet there are important lessons arising from the substantial democratic and federal reforms that have taken place in Asia over the last few decades. These reforms signal a new model of federal democracy in Asia, comprising multilevel ethnoterritorial federalism, mixed-majoritarianism and a party system that includes both ethnic and multi-ethnic parties. This model has emerged as a response to ethnic conflict and secession risks and reflects the high diversity of clustered communities and cross-cutting cleavages. Despite its overarching majoritarianism, the federal model has led to highly fragmented party systems and coalition governments, with positive implications for democratic stability. Together, these features go some way towards blending otherwise conflicting consociational and centripetal paradigms.

Response to Cristina Lafont’s Review of Rethinking Party Reform

Response to Cristina Lafont’s Review of <i>Rethinking Party Reform</i>

Podgotovka k liberalizacii politicheskogo (gosudarstvennogo) rezhima SSSR vo vtoroj polovine 1950-h — 1964 gg. (po dokumentam RGASPI)

Describes a process for the preparation of the 1950s-1964 years liberalization of the Russian political reform (State) regime in the context of the genesis of society on the basis of the documents from the Russian State archive of socio-political history of 586 fund, 1 inventory (materials for the elaboration of a draft the third program of the Communist Party), of 84, 3 fund inventory (materials activities Mikoyan A. S. in the Council of Ministers of the USSR-the materials of the Constitutional Commission). During the drafting of the third program of the the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the new draft Constitution of the USSR leadership carried out polls, considered draft citizens committed to research institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences development projects of socio-political, economic, financial, legal, ideological, the ruling party's reform, a citizen and a person, society, state, forecasting the evolution of international relations, global and domestic (socialist) markets.

Party Democracy and Reform of Political Party System

Party Democracy and Reform of Political Party System

The Party of Reform in the Doldrums: The Convergence of Anglo-American Political Progressivism

In September 1955, John Kenneth Galbraith encountered British Labour Party MP Richard Crossman at a conference hall in Milan, Italy. They went there with a clear mission: to defend their parties’ achievements from expected attacks by Friedrich Hayek and other “reactionaries” at the conference. In public, they confidently boasted about the records of the Democratic and Labour governments in prosperity, full employment, and social and welfare programs during the past decades. In private talks, however, they were less confident—and more candid. “Both the American liberal and the British socialist in the 1930s,” said Galbraith to Crossman, “assumed that capitalism was not only immoral but unworkable; it was a system which must destroy itself because of its own inherent weaknesses.” But if this assumption were not true, he asked, “would that not mean the snapping of the mainspring of the Labour Party?” Crossman instantly got the point. The clothes of American liberals were “stolen by the Eisenhower Republicans, just as ours [were] by the Butlerites,” confessed the Labour MP. The task of reforming capitalism, which had been the raison d’être of the “party of reform” of both countries, lost its urgency. An era of reform had been replaced by an era of moderation. And in this new era, their parties were clearly on the losing side—and would continue to lose until they could find a new cause to fight.

La reforma electoral de 1996 en Uruguay:

The article outlines a model to analyze the strategies of the Nacional and Colorado parties during the electoral reform of 1996 in Uruguay. Based on the Analytic Narratives (Bates et al, 1998), the author analyzes the strategy of these parties, which consisted in adapting the electoral rules to the party system format. This strategy allowed the reformist parties continue to operate in terms of co-participation within the state level.

Edward C. Banfield and the Defense of Political Parties

Activists have sought to make American government more democratic or more effective by reducing the role of political parties. In opposition to such hostility to parties, a group of scholars and intellectuals has emerged to defend parties’ mediating role and make a case that they should be strengthened. However, the philosophical premises of the pro-party perspective often remain unarticulated. To animate a debate over the foundations of party reform, this article examines Edward C. Banfield’s political thought and how it informs his support of strong parties. Banfield is an important forerunner of the strong-parties position, and he offers a broad philosophical perspective that could underpin it. Based on an examination of Banfield’s political thought and his defense of the American party system, the article concludes that Banfield presents a challenge to contemporary scholars who reject his conclusions about the prospects for rational reform of the party system.

Marxist education and teacher education against capitalism in neoliberal/neoconservative/neofascist/times

In this article I analyse global and national neoliberalisms- economic and social class war from above- neoconservatisms which are leading to and connected with NeoFascisms- with their scapegoating, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, heterophobia, militarism and the attacks on dissent- whether electoral, media, or from academics/ universities and workers’ organisations and actions. Six prime examples are Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the USA, Orban in Hungary, the Law and Justice government in Poland, and the racist government in Italy, in effect led by Salvini. Across Europe Far-right anti-immigrant, xenophobic and ultra nationalist authoritarian parties are recruiting and becoming electorally significant- and, in some cases, significant on the streets. Critique social democratic reformist parties and governments for adopting neoliberal austerity policies and thereby becoming delegitimised, together with the too-often `accomodationist' trade union and party leaderships. and critically examine prospects for left social democracy as represented, for example, by the Jeremy Corbyn led Labour Party in the UK. Much of the article is devoted to the resistant and the revolutionary role of teachers, academics and education/ cultural workers in different arenas, from national and local electoral and direct action politics/ Focusing on Critical Education, Critical Educators, Marxist Education, Marxist Educators, I seek to address four aspects of education: pedagogy, the curriculum, resistance in the classroom and the hidden curriculum, and the structure of schooling nationally and locally (within-school). I conclude by setting out what is specifically Marxist about the proposals set out. These are: (1) Class Analysis: the Capital-Labour Relation; (2) Capitalism must be replaced by Socialism and that change is Revolutionary; and (3) Revolutionary Transformation of Economy and Society needs to be preceded by and accompanied by a Class Programme, Organisation, and Activism. Regarding capitalism, our task is to replace it with democratic Marxism, to lead, firstly, into socialism, and ultimately, into communism. As teachers, as educators, as cultural workers, as educational, union and party activists, as intellectuals, we have a role to play.

Party Reforms and Electoral Systems: Proportional Representation is More Hospitable to Internal Democratisation

ABSTRACT This article sets out the case for undertaking democratic reforms that reconnect parties with society, and addresses the well-known objection that democratising parties holds the risk of making them less electable, since it means empowering people who care more about their ideology than what the wider public wants. The article then argues that proportional representation systems reduce the risks associated with this potentiality, thus being more hospitable to party reform than first-past-the-post systems.

The role of cultural production in celebrity politics: Comparing the campaigns of Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura (1999) and Donald Trump (2016)

This article draws out the significant similarities between the political insurgencies of Jesse Ventura in 1999 and Donald Trump in 2016, charting their own premillennial political collaborations as members of the Reform Party, before identifying wider lessons for studies of contemporary celebrity politicians through a comparison of their individual campaigns. Its analysis is based upon the concept of the ‘politainer’, introduced by Conley and Schultz, into which it incorporates Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of the carnival fool. The heterodox nature of both Ventura and Trump’s political campaign styles, it argues, is in part explained by the nature of the cultural spheres within which their public personas were produced; specifically, the fact that these personas, which they carried over from the entertainment to political spheres, were produced within genres of popular culture generally positioned as having ‘low’ cultural value. This, it argues, furnished both with an anti-establishment ethos as ‘no bullshit’ straight-talkers, marking them as outsider candidates able to act as conduits for political protest by an electorate alienated from mainstream political elites. It concludes by emphasising the potential importance that political celebrities’ specific cultural production can play in shaping a subsequent political campaign in general.

Gauja (Anika) – Party Reform. The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change . – Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016 (Comparative Politics). 240 p.

Gauja (Anika) – Party Reform. The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change . – Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016 (Comparative Politics). 240 p.

Book review: Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change

Book review: Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change

Optimal Majority Rule in Referenda

Adopting the group turnout model of Herrera and Mattozzi, J. Eur. Econ. Assoc. 2010, 8, 838–871, we investigate direct democracy with supermajority rule and different preference intensities for two sides of a referendum: Reform versus status quo. Two parties spend money and effort to mobilize their voters. We characterize the set of pure strategy Nash equilibria. We investigate the optimal majority rule that maximizes voters’ welfare. Using an example, we show that the relationship between the optimal majority rule and the preference intensity is not monotonic—the optimal majority rule is initially decreasing and then increasing in the preference intensity of the status quo side. We also show that when the preference intensity of the status quo side is higher, the easiness to mobilize voters on the status quo side is lower, or the payoff that the reform party receives is higher, the optimal majority rule is more likely to be supermajority.

Tax revolts, direct democracy and representation: populist politics in the US and Canada

ABSTRACTThis paper examines ideological foundations of the ‘tax revolt’ theme in American and Canadian conservative politics, through an examination of two of its most notable expressions. One was the use of direct democracy in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s to reduce property taxes. The other was the Reform Party of Canada’s blending of appeals for more extensive direct democracy and lower taxes from the late 1980s through 2000. Each of these relied on a critique of ‘representational failure’ in their respective political orders. The popularity of direct democracy across North America has been aided by the right-populist analogy between a market that enables consumer sovereignty and direct democratic instruments that facilitate end runs around legislatures – the sites of representational failure – to allow unmediated registration of the people’s low tax, anti-statist will. Employing analytical methods and theoretical perspectives developed by Michael Freeden and Michael Saward, I identify shared and distinctive conceptual and strategic/rhetorical elements in the two cases, and suggest ways of developing a ‘hybrid’ approach to the study of populisms.

Reforms in Political Parties Through the Balancing of Funding Sources

This research was conducted through qualitative methods with literature study and in-depth interviews data collecting techniques to provide an explanation on how the ideal political party funding system will influence the political party’s recruitment system to encourage the realization of a substantive democracy. The result of the research shows that Indonesia needs a reformation in the political party funding source system by increasing the funding from the state and by involving their constituents. The aim is to break dependence from political party elites and to strengthen the relationship between the constituents and their parties. It can be concluded that political party reform through the role of the state and constituents should also be followed by periodic reports from parties to encourage transparency and financial accountability. Furthermore, it needs to be accompanied by administrative sanctions in the form of reduction or revocation of financial assistance by the state on the event that the party fails to fulfill its obligations.

La Operación Roca. El fracaso de un proyecto liberal en la España de los 80

El hundimiento de Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) hizo que los diversos sectores que la integraban buscaran un nuevo lugar en el escenario político. Mientras los suaristas trataban de refundar el centro desde el CDS, los democristianos se acercaron a Fraga y los socialdemócratas se integraron en el PSOE. Los grandes huérfanos que dejó la desaparición de UCD fueron los liberales. Este grupo intentó buscar su nuevo lugar, en un primer momento, en torno a Antonio Garrigues Walker, quien lo intentó sin éxito a través del Partido Demócrata Liberal (PDL). Finalmente fue la llamada Operación Roca la que capitalizó dichos intentos. Así nacía el Partido Reformista Democrático (PRD) en torno a la figura del político catalán, con el propósito de formar un partido liberal-demócrata que fuera clave en la política española. El proyecto generó un amplio interés en numerosos sectores de la sociedad, que no tardaron en verse frustrados después del fracaso del PRD en las elecciones de 1986. Este artículo pretende analizar la historia de este proyecto político para comprender las razones de su fracaso.

Silk-Stocking Sympathy: American Whig Rhetoric and the Irish Famine

Silk-Stocking Sympathy:American Whig Rhetoric and the Irish Famine James M. Farrell (bio) On 11 November 1844 J. W. Mighels of Portland, Maine, wrote a letter to Henry Clay, who had just been defeated in the presidential election. Mighels styled himself a "native born Whig" and blamed Clay's loss in Maine on "an army of Irish paupers, set on and marsheled [sic] by their infernal priest."1 It was a view widely shared among members of the Whig Party, who felt the sting of defeat to James Polk and the Democrats. Clay's own running mate Theodore Frelinghuysen attributed the Whig electoral downfall to an "alliance of the foreign vote and that most impracticable of all organizations, the abolitionists." The Irish immigrant vote in New York City, he said, "was tremendous," and "it is an alarming fact that this foreign vote has decided the great questions of American policy—and counteracted a nation's gratitude."2 Clay lost the 1844 presidential election by a little more than 39,000 votes. More importantly, he lost electoral-college votes in several states like New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maine, and Michigan that had been won by the Whigs in 1840. In the earlier election William Henry Harrison carried nineteen states for the Whig ticket. Clay and the Whigs won only eleven states in the subsequent presidential election. Of course, there are many reasons why any particular election turns out the way it does: the candidates are different, the issues are different, the electorate is different. In 1844 American voters were concerned about the annexation of Texas, the dispute with [End Page 206] Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, and the growing influence of antislavery sentiment in an American politics that was becoming increasingly sectional.3 But the 1840s also saw a surge in immigration, particularly among the Germans and the Irish, most of whom were also Catholic. At the beginning of the nineteenth century about half-a-million Irish had settled in the United States. By 1845 another one million Irish immigrants had made America their home.4 Thus, even before the Great Famine, the Irish had become a potent political force in America, particularly in the urban areas of the eastern seaboard. Throughout the nineteenth century, and especially as their numbers grew, the Irish overwhelmingly favored the Democratic Party, and thus Irish political influence posed an existential threat to the Whig Party.5 Irish alignment with the Democratic Party is not difficult to understand. From its formative days as the coalesced opposition to Andrew Jackson, the Whig Party sought to be the conservative force in American politics. They were the party of business and wealth, and the party of moral reform. The Whigs attracted most of their support from the established ranks of middle- and upper-class American Protestants. They were, as one historian suggested, "anglophile elites."6 Although not all Whigs were bigots, the Whig Party had a virulent anti-Catholic element that continually fed nativist sentiment within its ranks. Most northern Whigs were also antislavery, a position that [End Page 207] put them at odds with Irish voters who mostly opposed the abolition of slavery, and who consistently expressed hostility toward both British and American abolitionists.7 From the Irish perspective the Whigs were "the party of Yankee Protestants and British-American immigrants," whereas the Democrats were more welcoming to Irish newcomers and more tolerant of their religion.8 Democrats portrayed Whigs as an elitist association of "narrow-minded, silk-stocking patricians bent on telling other people how to behave."9 For obvious reasons, elitist attitudes compounded with nativist sentiments and religious bigotry cannot form the foundation of a successful national political strategy, as Henry Clay and the Whigs had learned. "There can be no doubt of the greatness of the evil of this constant manufacture of American citizens out of foreign emigrants," Clay wrote to John Crittenden after his election loss. The most recent Irish immigrants, he thought, were "incapable of justly appreciating the duties incident to the new character which they assume."10 Indeed, during the 1844 election postmortem, "the belief that Clay was denied the presidency by the votes of immigrant Catholics became...

Politik Hukum Islam dalam Pengaturan Tentang Kesusilaan di Indonesia (Studi UU Nomor 44 Tahun 2008 Tentang Pornografi)

This article tries to explore how the influence of Islamic law politics in drafting Law No. 44 of 2008 on Pornography. A qualitative approach was employed in this study. The treatise of Indonesia’s Pornography Law was collected as the primary data. The findings expose that there was the effect of Islamic law politics in drafting Law No. 44 of 2008 on Pornography. It can be noticed from the active involvement of Islamic political parties in parliament and the House of Representatives (DPR) members from the nationalist parties possessing an Islamic background in promoting the law enactment. Likewise, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and Islamic mass organizations also actively encouraged the issuance of this law. Another result highlights that there was a strong debate between political fractions in the DPR, including the Gerindra Party (PG), the United Development Party (PPP), the Democratic Party (PD), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the National Awakening Party (PKB), the Democratic Vanguard Star (BPD), the Star Reform Party (PBR), the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), and the mass organizations that proposed the ratification of the Pornography Law draft, and other fractions, namely: the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS), and the mass organizations that supported the refusal of the law draft ratification

“New Canadians are new conservatives”: race, incorporation and achieving electoral success in multicultural Canada

ABSTRACT Despite declarations of race's irrelevance, the Conservative Party of Canada's (CPC) stance on race-related policies under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper's leadership was key to every electoral campaign it fought. Moreover, it is not despite but because of their race that racialized political elites have been incorporated into the CPC and its antecedents. Indeed, beginning in the 1990s, the inclusion of Asian Members of Parliament (MP) became for the Reform Party of Canada, a weapon in the struggle for electoral success; that is, part of an era of Conservative racial realignment. By tracing the role of Asian Conservative MP in the rise of the Reform Party since its 1987 inception and the electoral success of the CPC (2006–2015), this article explores how racialized political elites become crucial to the legitimization of the racial state when it is through a discourse of inclusion that exclusion is crafted.