State-wide Parties Research Articles

Early Elections of the Mayor of the City in Poland. Analysis of the Case of Ruda Śląska in 2022

The paper concerns the subject of the early mayoral elections at the town level in Ruda Śląska, held in September 2022. As a background for the presentation of the central case, the article refers to other earlier mayoral elections held in the same term (after the elections of 2018). The main aim of the analysis is to verify the research hypothesis that early elections of town mayors, held in Poland after 2018, confirm that application of the principle of direct elections favors candidates independent of state-wide parties. The source material for the research consisted mainly of documents of the National Electoral Commission, as well as Polish legal acts related to local electoral processes. The authors have investigated selected sources using the content analysis method. To achieve the research aim, results for particular elections were compared.

Lessons from the Criticality of the Spanish High Capacity Road Network on Direct, Representative Democracies and Technocracies

This paper aims to shed some light on an issue that has not been analyzed enough in previous studies on complex transportation networks. The financial crisis and disrupting events like the COVID-19 pandemic episode are affecting how governments make crucial decisions regarding policymaking paying more attention to experts’ opinions. The impacts of disruptive events that could affect each road section will be analyzed using the criticality of the high capacity road network in Spain under different policymaking scenarios, such as direct democracy based on pure provincial decentralization (federal or cantonal vision), representative democracy in which decisions are taken by the National Parliament, and the governance based on technocracy stimulated by ‘what matters is what works’ (Southern Local Economy, 16(4), 264-271, 2001) using an Evidence-Based Policy Making (EBPM) case study based on a Data Envelopment Analysis applied to four accessibility indicators. We will complement our analysis with the different results obtained by the different national parties that were represented in the past election (November, 2019): PSOE, PP, VOX, Unidas Podemos, Ezquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Ciudadanos, Junts per Catalunya, Partido Nacionalista Vasco and Euskal Herria Bildu, exploring in-depth the obtained differences between the technocrat solution and the direct and representative democracy results. Important insights and lessons for the future will be obtained from the different party visions observed among the regionalist (nationalist) and the state-wide parties. The spillover effects created by the networks are so important that the room for federalist solutions might be very limited.

Coalition or Opposition? The Behaviour of Regionalist Parties in Multi-level Competition: The Cases of the Basque Country and Scotland

This article compares the positioning behaviour of parties and reveals why one party joins a coalition, while others do not. The cases of two regionalist parties of the UK and Spain are depicted: the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Basque National Party (BNP). The study is a contribution to the problems of positioning behaviour of parties in decentralised systems with strong regionalist elements and incentives of regionalist parties (RPs) to enter a coalition with state-wide parties (SWPs). Based on process tracing and comparative analysis of the main regionalist parties, electoral data, public statements, and media statements we conclude that the ideological proxi mity on the economic dimension of the parties, and the territorial dimension are of key importance in evaluating the coalition potential between SWPs and the RPs. Moreover, competition at the regional level creates incentives for RPs to enter a coalition with SWPs and there is no evident support for the minority government to be disposed to enter a coalition rather than a majority government.

Party conflict regulation and intra-party hierarchy in contemporary party organization

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with one important dimension of intra-organizational hierarchy that has to date received only little attention in cross-national party research, although its relevance has grown in light of both the increasing empowerment of rank-and-file members and the growing inclusiveness of contemporary party organizations: the range of monitoring and disciplinary mechanisms available to parties to manage internal differences and dissent essential to assure the day-to-day functioning of complex organizations. Based on the distinction between ‘organizational control’ and ‘leadership power’ that can be exercised through these mechanisms, this paper explores how the availability and nature of such mechanisms in party statutes is shaped by differences in ideology on the party level and the legal regulation of intra-party conflict regulation on the system level. Patterns are examined with regard to state-wide parties in Germany and Spain, two countries that regulate intra-party conflict legally, and the UK and Ireland, two countries that do not.

What’s on offer: how do parties appeal to women voters in election manifestos?

ABSTRACT Existing research has tended to examine party manifesto appeals to women voters as a homogenous group however we know relatively little about how parties appeal to different groups of women voters. Yet there are strong incentives for parties to respond to and reflect diversity in women’s voting behaviour. Through a gendered analysis of party manifestos at the 2015, 2017 and 2019 British general elections, we investigate the spread and reach of parties’ policy appeals to women voters. We find that, while the principal state-wide parties are increasingly recognizing women’s diversity in their policy pledges, some groups of women remain marginalized from parties’ electoral agendas. Our findings extend the empirical and analytical understanding of how political parties make gendered appeals during election times and to whom. We argue the way parties seek to appeal to the diversity of women is important for the analysis of both issue ownership and interparty competition for women’s votes. Additionally, we make a normative case for parties to recognize diversity and intersectionality in their manifesto policy promises.

Financing party branches: Evidence from the German federal system

ABSTRACT Adequately financed branches contribute to the integration of regional interests into statewide parties. Yet, we have limited knowledge about the determinants of branches’ varying income levels in federal contexts. To address this shortage, this article elucidates why branches receive donations from citizens and businesses to different degrees. I hypothesise that party competition at the state level, the difference in regional economic performance and parties’ historical legacies can account for the level of branches’ donation revenue. Analysing German statewide party branches’ income from 2009 to 2017, this study finds support for the facilitating impact of state and federal electoral contests on donation levels. Regional economic disparities, by contrast, only marginally affect donation revenues. At the same time, parties’ path-dependent developments help explain asymmetries in average revenue levels between western and eastern branches. The study’s findings suggest that intense regional party competition contributes to branches’ financial independence within the statewide party organisation.

Факторы формирования коалиционных правительств регионалистских и общенациональных политических партий в регионах Испании

Received 09.09.2020. The paper focuses on one of the most significant arenas of multi-level politics – the interaction between regionalist and state-wide parties in the creation and functioning of government coalitions at the regional level. The research is aimed at determining the factors influencing the creation of such coalitions in which regionalist parties act as coalition partners with a specific agenda. Spain provides significant empirical material for research on this issue, where regionalist parties function in most regions, and state-wide parties often enter government coalitions with them at the level of autonomous communities. A comparative analysis of the practices of concluding coalition agreements between statewide and regionalist political parties in the regions of Spain during the democratic period is a key research method. The theoretical part of the article provides an overview of the theories of party coalitions accumulated by Political Science since the 1950s and updated by researchers due to actualization of new circumstances in the context of multilevel politics. The empirical part of the article examines the influence of three categories of factors on the construction of coalition deals between regionalist and state-wide political parties in the Spanish autonomous communities, including: the size of the coalition, the ideological inter-party distance (comprising the regionalist-ideological dimension) and correspondence of the alignments of party forces at the regional and national levels. The research demonstrates that the factor of coalition size is fundamental for transactions between regionalist and state-wide political parties, while the other two categories of factors manifest themselves situationally. Acknowledgements. The research was carried out at the expense of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 19-18-00053 " Subnational regionalism and dynamics of multilevel politics (Russian and European practices)") at the Perm Federal Research Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

One or two arenas? The break-up between national and regional elections

ABSTRACT This paper shows that the role of national electoral dynamics on regional elections is highly mediated by institutional and electoral constraints at the regional level. Using data on statewide parties’ electoral competition in regional and national elections in Spain and Italy, results show that the contamination of regional elections is lower in regions where decentralization has travelled further and where strong regionalist parties dominate electoral competition. The paper also shows that these two channels -more regional authority and more regionalist competition- shape the regional manifestos of statewide parties by increasing their pro-regional positions. These findings represent a contribution to a better understanding of the extent to which regional elections are a separate electoral arena from the national one.

How language becomes a political issue: Social change, collective movements and political competition in Corsica

AbstractThe Mediterranean island of Corsica became French in 1768–1769, and Corsican is one of the most widely used regional languages in France. In Corsica, the language issue is politically prominent, with a very strong opposition between the nationalist regional government, which claims a co-official status for the Corsican language, and the French national government, which advocates the supremacy of the national language. However, the French linguistic integration process has been an astonishing success since the end of the nineteenth century, and the first mass mobilisations in favour of the Corsican language did not take place until the 1970s. In this article, I try to explain why the politicisation of Corsican language came so late; how this language became a politically salient issue; and how public attitudes and policies towards this language have substantially evolved. Since 1982, the state and the state-wide parties on the island have amended their strategy and challenged the near-monopoly of Corsican nationalists with regard to the defence of the Corsican language. Especially in the field of education, they promoted and implemented a language policy shift, and tried to depoliticise this issue. Nonetheless, political positions remain polarised regarding measures such as compulsory education and co-official status.

Small versus Statewide Parties: How Subnational Contestation and Decentralisation Influence Presidential Elections in Europe and Latin America

Shugart and Carey were among the first scholars to recognise that there is a relationship between regional and local – or subnational – electoral forces and the presidential race. Yet because of a lack of subnational electoral data, this relationship has largely remained unexplored. We elaborate on Shugart and Carey’s theory to argue that the effects of decentralisation are conditional on a party’s presence in subnational elections for determining when and why parties enter the presidential race. Using an original dataset of subnational electoral results and presidential strategies in 17 countries in Europe and Latin America from 1990 to 2013, we find that parties with a small presence in subnational elections are more likely to compete for the presidency under more extensive decentralisation. Statewide parties, however, contest presidential elections regardless of level of decentralisation. These findings have important implications for understanding Shugart and Carey’s expectation that subnational contestation influences national party systems, presidential elections and democratic representation more generally.

НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ВОПРОС В ПРОГРАММАХ РУСИНСКИХ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКИХ ПАРТИЙ В ПОДКАРПАТСКОЙ РУСИ (1918–1938 гг.)

The article focuses on the national issue in the programs of Rusin political parties during the Transcarpathian stay in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938). The author claims that the main requirement of most of political parties was the autonomy of Subcarpathian Rus. The refusal of the Czechoslovak authorities to comply with this demand led to an aggravation of the political situation in the region. The two most powerful ideological trends were Ukrainophilism and Russophilia. The multiethnicity of the Transcarpathian population contributed to the development of parties of other national minorities – Hungarian, Polish, Roma, and Jewish. The statewide parties were also popular in the region – the Communist and Czechoslovak Social Democratic. These two parties were among those few in the interwar Czechoslovakia that were built on the ideological rather than national basis. The highest number of parties during the period when Transcarpathia was part of Czechoslovakia was 30. Most of them emerged after 1918, while the process of formation of the overwhelming majority of Czech and Slovak parties took place in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Thus, these were new political parties at the initial stage of their development and without a clear organizational structure.

Accommodating, Opposing, or Dismissing? Ethno-Regional Mobilization, (De)Centralization, and State-Wide Party Strategies in Nigeria and Kenya

Political parties in much of sub-Saharan Africa are often state-wide, but the societies are characterized by salient ethno-regional cleavages. State-wide parties, therefore, frequently encounter strategic challenges around ethno-regional mobilization and demands for special rights or self-rule. What shapes these parties’ strategic choices? We analyze whether party strategies are characterized by accommodation, opposition, or dismissal, and argue that their strategies are shaped by the degree to which contestation around territorial politics are centralized. We examine this argument by comparing how regionally dominant state-wide parties have responded to ethno-regional mobilization in the Niger Delta in federal Nigeria and the Coast region in more centralized Kenya over the last decade, and find that centralized contestation over ethno-regional issues forces parties to engage with ethno-regional demands while decentralized contestation allows parties to dismiss them.

Ethnic alignment in divided regions: individual and contextual factors

ABSTRACT The literature on sub-state nationalisms in Western democracies usually understands ethnicity as a defining feature of regional parties advocating for group and/or territorial recognition. However, the role of ethnicity for state-wide parties competing in regional elections has not received the same attention. Using observational data at the census section level for the Basque election of 2016, this paper shows how state-wide parties can be even more affected by ethnic alignment than regional parties. A key element presented here is the role of contextual effects that generate intra-group variations, resulting in different patterns of electoral boundaries. State-wide parties have an uneven distribution of vote indicating the difficulty of reaching wide segments of the electorate, a pattern that is only broken to some extent by the emergence of new political parties. On the other hand, some regional parties can be more successful both in non-core areas and reaching non-core voters in nationalist strongholds.

External Factors Determining the Electoral Strategies of Political Parties in Multi-Level Systems

This article identifies the factors which determine the electoral strategies of political parties in multi-level systems and describes how they can influence these strategies. It particularly focuses on the two aspects: regionalisation and “nationalisation” (centralisation) of the strategies. In the first case, state-wide parties allow their regional branches to develop their own strategies, in the second one – the regional strategies are dominated by the strategies of statewide parties. The article shows the features of political systems that foster each of these cases, especially the way in which a multi-layered system is created (bottom-up, top-down), the relations between the state authorities at central and regional levels (connected, separated), electoral systems and cycles.

Boundary shifts and vote alignment in Catalonia

This paper analyses the dynamics between ethnic boundaries and electoral alignment in the context of western minority nationalisms by focusing on the Catalan case. In particular, the research explores the changes in boundary shifts at the electoral level, whether they affect differently pro-sovereignty and pro-union parties, and to what extent changes have reinforced the ethnic alignment of vote. Methodologically, the analysis is based on observational data from the elections of 2010 and 2012, which allows control over some of the traditional limits of opinion studies. The results suggest that ethnicity is a dynamic factor that has gained relevance for both sub-state and state-wide parties, and that processes of boundary contraction are not necessarily associated with electoral failure.

Party competition over decentralisation: The influence of ideology and electoral incentives on issue emphasis

AbstractUnder what conditions is decentralisation a salient issue for state‐wide political parties? It is argued in this article that the extent to which state‐wide parties emphasise decentralisation depends on their strategic considerations: on their overall ideology, on the electoral incentives created by the context in which they compete, and on the interaction between the two. The results of the analysis of party manifestos in 31 countries since 1945 are as follows. First, parties that pay greater attention to cultural matters relative to economic matters tend to talk more about decentralisation. Second, the systemic salience of decentralisation also encourages parties to talk more about decentralisation. Third, the larger the regionally based ethnic groups within a country, the more salience all state‐wide political parties will attach to decentralisation. Finally, only parties that put greater relative emphasis on cultural matters tend to respond to the electoral threat of regionalist parties. The influence of territorial diversity on the salience of decentralisation thus works through two channels and is partly conditioned by political parties’ ideological profile.

The Regional Level of Ukraine’s Party System in 2005–2012

This article describes the results of a regional-level study of Ukrainian political parties’ interactions. The study sought to identify the congruence or incongruence of the party affiliationof the regional executives and the heads of regional assemblies across Ukraine when Ukraine’s democratic performance rose and fell. The study found that when democratic performance rose, so did regional-level, party-affiliation incongruence, with the greatest ideological incongruence occurring in regions with special institutional arrangements, such as Kyiv and Sevastopol. WhenUkraine’s democratic performance fell, the number of ideologically congruent regions rose. These shifts occurred because a decline in democratic performance leaves little institutional room for statewide opposition, and the main competitors of the ruling party in regional bodies of power are non-statewide parties and blocs. Thus, this article argues that political cleavages in a regionally diverse post-communist state do not automatically mirror the statewide party competition.

A dwarf among giants? Party competition between ethno-regionalist and state-wide parties on the territorial dimension

Scholars of party politics have recently examined the influence of niche parties on the dynamics of party competition. In particular, drawing on the ‘Position, Salience and Ownership’ (PSO) model, it has been argued that when a new niche actor enters the political arena, it seeks to introduce a new policy dimension into political debate and simultaneously affects the competitive strategies of mainstream actors. By using manifesto data, this article analyses the impact of the Lega Nord on political discourse in Italy relating to the territorial dimension. Its findings challenge the assumptions of the PSO theory on niche-mainstream dynamics of competition. The article argues that, firstly, niche parties can mobilise on a policy dimension that has long been present on the political agenda; secondly, that niche party influence on mainstream party strategies is limited, at least when compared with the influence of other systemic variables. Nevertheless, the role of niche parties can be re-evaluated by considering a further strategic tool that parties can use to define their strategies, namely framing. In particular, the article argues that the Lega Nord has introduced a new language into political debate on the territorial dimension, which has required rival parties to react by reframing and redefining these issues differently from the past. Using an original coding scheme for the measurement of party attitudes in party manifestos, the article provides empirical grounds for arguing that a consideration of rhetoric should be included in any analysis of the competitive strategies of political parties in a two-dimensional space.

From class to region

The primary dimension of political contestation for regionalist parties is the centre-periphery dimension but they are pressured to adopt positions on the left-right dimension by competition with state-wide parties. We argue that the relative economic position of a region is a key variable for explaining how regionalist parties adopt left-right positions and link them to the centre-periphery dimension. Based on a quantitative analysis of 74 regionalist parties – distributed in 49 regions and 11 countries – over four decades, we find strong evidence that regionalist parties acting in relatively rich regions tend to adopt a rightist ideology, while regionalist parties acting in relatively poor regions tend to adopt a leftist ideology. A qualitative illustration of two paradigmatic cases, the Lega Nord (LN) and the Scottish National Party (SNP), appears to support our interpretation that left-right orientations are subsumed into centre-periphery politics through the adoption of two ideal types of regionalist discourse: one labelled as ‘bourgeois regionalism’ (Harvie, 1994) and one labelled as ‘internal colonialism’ (Hechter, 1975).

Parties’ electoral strategies in a two-dimensional political space

This article has two objectives. Firstly, we test the theoretical assumptions about the repertoire of party strategies in a two-dimensional political space presented in the introduction to this special issue. We use a new dataset that content-analyzes electoral parties’ manifestos for regional elections in Spain and Great Britain (the Regional Manifestos Project) in order to see how well the theoretically-derived strategies approximate what parties in regional elections really do. Secondly, we develop tentative explanations of parties’ strategies: Which parties are more likely to use what type of strategy and under what circumstances? After running a multinomial logistic model we find that, in contrast to the niche party thesis, regionalist parties strategize simultaneously along the territorial and the economic dimensions of competition, while state-wide parties react to the presence of regionalist opponents by incorporating the territorial dimension into the agenda.