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This paper analyses the incentives of party activists to become involved in the party life. In the last decades, the research on party activism has developed several and relevant works that shed light to the topic. However, a strong division from the beginning between the American and European approaches has limited the scope of their results, eroding the potential of the comparative analysis between both partisan worlds. Our paper is an attempt to overcome this lack. Using data from party activists in two Spanish political parties, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP), and the California Democratic Party (CADEM), we propose two main hypothesis: a) the different types of party membership (more formal in Europe than in the US) affects the incentives of party activists to become involved; b) these incentives influences differently in US and Europe to the degree of internal activism. We considered two different typologies to measure incentives proposed by J.Q. Wilson and A. Panebianco. The empirical analysis employs data from people attending the recent party conventions and congresses in those parties. Our results are somewhat mixed overall. Although some significant differences in incentives and activism arises, the general comparison shows that party activists are not so different as the traditional American 'exceptionalism' and European 'regionalism' have assumed so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the electoral effects of corruption allegation in parliamentary electoral campaigns in Europe 1983-2007. Firstly, the paper examines the individual parties' electoral performances and secondly the survival rate of the governments. The results show firstly that parties that accuse their opponents for being corrupt are much more successful than parties that focus on other issues, under control for the position of the party (incumbent or in opposition) and for the actual level of corruption and secondly that governments tend to fall much more frequently when facing corruption charges, again under control for the level of corruption. The analysis also reveals that corruption scandals that are not politicized, i.e. brought up by a political party during the electoral campaign, have a negligent effect on governmental survival rate. Only when the issue is politicized does it have an impact. It thus seems that the politicization of political corruption has an independent effect on the electoral outcome and to a higher extent than previous research suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political Representation at the European level is organized around two principles: the territorial one and the partisan. Earlier studies have shown that the MEPs decide very much along partisan lines as long as bread-and-butter issues are concerned. When it comes to European issues, the national dimension plays an important role. The paper elaborates the distribution of styles and foci of representation, tests some explanation for the choice of style and focus, and finally investigates the impact of style of representation on the choice of foci and the character of campaign strategies. The paper shows that in a potential choice situation of colliding interests, the style orientations have a strong constraining effect on focus, and that it matters for political practice if candidates and MEPs regard themselves as trustees, party's or voters' delegate. The paper will use unique data from the PIREDEU project, namely the survey among the candidates (and elected) to the European Parliament 2009 in 27 countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to frame and describe a novel method of political party positioning within the European Union and beyond. Ever since the groundbreaking work by Downs in the 1950s, political scientists have derived a variety of methods to empirically determine the position of parties on scales varying between policy positions or between ideologies. Today, two sets of techniques dominate this research domain: expert surveys and manifesto/programme coding. What is common to both techniques is that the positioning is done by professionals outside the parties, i.e. by qualified researchers in expert surveys and in manifesto coding. Up to now, the parties have never been asked to position themselves. Through the EU Profiler project, a large-scale, interdisciplinary and pan- European research endeavour, some 300 political parties within the European Union (and in a number of neighbouring countries) have been offered the possibility to place themselves on 30 political issues related to party competition in the 2009 European elections. The resulting data will offer unique opportunities for comparing the accuracy and efficiency among party positioning techniques, exploring for the first time and in a systematic way the auto-positioning of political parties throughout Europe. This paper will offer insights into the conceptual design and practical application of this new method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extraordinary and highly consequential electoral successes of radical right parties in Western Europe in the last couple of decades are well documented. The evidence on how these parties' successes are associated with their anti-immigrant appeals invites the conclusion that such appeals are an easy way to electoral success for minor parties willing to exploit this issue. This paper argues that this is not so, since it is nearly impossible for minor parties to make credible appeals to voters on the immigration issue unless they have reputational shields-a legacy that can be used to fend off accusations of racism and extremism. Not many minor parties deciding to run on the anti-immigrant ticket, it turns out, have such reputational shields. This paper presents newly collected evidence to show that six out of seven anti-immigrant parties failed to achieve sustained electoral success in a period when Europe was in an immigration crisis. It furthermore shows that six out of the seven parties that did succeed had reputational shields, while none of the 34 parties that failed possessed them. It is concluded that this striking evidence consistent with the reputational shields hypothesis suggests an important avenue for future research on the politics of immigration in Western Europ ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the role of party system in the outcome of pension reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Mapping party positions in a bi-dimensional space, in which one dimension is left-right and the second is a nationalist-authoritarian vs. cosmopolitan-libertarian dimension, allows predicting the likely pro-reform and anti-reform coalitions. The success of reform in the long-run depends on the types of coalitions that can form and the existence of a minimal consensus between the major left and right parties on the basic blueprint of reform. A roll call analysis of voting in the Polish Sejm brings evidence for the dimensionality of the political space, legislators? ideal points, and the formation of pro-reform and anti-reform coalitions. Results are compared with party positions given by expert evaluations. The study compares Poland?s chances of reform success with those of Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Unlike the existing literature, which emphasizes the role of crises and international pressures in the outcome of pension reform, this paper argues that the demand-side factors are of limited relevance. It also finds that the concentration of power is a poor predictor of the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the new institutional architecture of Eastern Europe. It extends Lijphart?s study of democratic institutions to fourteen new democracies in Eastern Europe. In his analysis of advanced democracies, Lijphart found that ten institutional variables cluster on two clearly separate dimensions. This clustering does not occur in the new democracies of Eastern Europe; they do not fall clearly into Lijphart?s consensus and majoritarian camps. On the executives-parties dimension, Eastern European countries are basically consensus except for highly majoritarian forms of interest group representation. On the federal-unity dimension, they are even more divided. While they tend to have unitary, unicameral governments (both majoritarian traits), they have adopted highly consensual modes of constitutional amendment, judicial review, and central banks. While Lijphart suggests that his two types of democracy have a logical coherence, this paper attributes these hybrids to the circumstances prevailing at the time when new institutions were adopted. In particular, communist legacies and international conditions have influenced the choice of new institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to examine the possible outcomes of the combination of liberalizing Middle Eastern political systems and Islamist oppositions. It does so by examining the broader phenomenon of liberalizing political systems integrating religious oppositions. This involves an examination of the earlier precedent of the passage of Catholic confessional parties and their constituencies in nineteenth century Europe from being protagonists of the Church?s opposition to the tenets of liberalism toward becoming pro-system political parties with Christian roots and inspiration, the post-WWII Christian democratic parties. The paper argues that this passage from opposition to reconciliation with liberalism in the European context entailed key processes involving (1) a dialectical relationship between liberals & religionists in the context of a liberalizing system, and (2) a gradual expansion of the religious party beyond religious and confessional lines. The Arab Middle Eastern context by contrast exhibits a process of limited liberalization from above in which liberals are a weak or quasi-non-existent force, resulting in the near absence of a dialectical process of elite challenges, negotiations and accommodation between liberals and religionists. In that context, the principal actors in influencing the religion-and-politics configuration in the political system are authoritarian states and religionists. The expansion of Islamist parties beyond religious issue concerns is in evidence but is limited in scope in part as a function of the constraints imposed by the authoritarian states. Based on this analysis, the paper introduces the theoretical argument that the process of democratic transition needs to be conceptualized as having a parallel process involving the transition of religious constituencies inimical to the religion-and-politics liberal formulae in the direction of an accommodation to new equilibria concerning the relative role of religion in public life, thus marking a transition of support from divine sovereignty toward popular sovereignty. Such a parallel transition it is argued, is not unproblematic and is contingent upon the nature of the democratic transition itself or the problems stalling its emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of governments in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has not led to the emergence of uniform cabinet structures across the region. The paper addresses the issue of a persistent variation in cabinet ministerial organization and size across countries and over time. It advances a patronage-based theory of cabinet formation. The central claim is that the extent of clientelistic structuring of the party system, the parliamentary/semi-presidential constitutional divide, and the character of a governing coalition have a systematic effect on politicians? willingness to proliferate cabinet ministerial positions or to maintain already oversized cabinets. To support this claim the paper specifies and tests a number of hypotheses about the effects of political, institutional, and structural variables on the evolution of cabinet organization in the region. The evidence suggests that constitutional design and party system clientelism have a significant impact on changes in cabinet organization and size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Parliament (EP) is heralded as one of the most gender-equal elected bodies in the world. One the most important achievements of representation in the EP is the more egalitarian representation of women when compared to the member states' lower houses. Several studies have found that the use of proportional representation (PR) in elections for the EP holds a large part of the explanation (Vallance and Davis, 1986, Freedman, 2002, Kantola, 2010). However our evidence suggests that despite the adoption of PR for all EP elections, electoral rules have only very limited impact on descriptive representation in the EP, which is in stark contrast to what can be observed in the composition of lower houses across Europe (Fortin-Rittberger and Rittberger, Forthcoming). In this paper, we investigate the effect of party nomination structures on women's representation in the context of EP elections. Our findings suggest that the inclusiveness of the selectorates in the early stages of candidate selection processes is one of the key determinants of representativeness of lists in terms of their gender composition. Moreover, we find that neither territorial centralization nor the inclusiveness of the selectorate in the later stages of candidate selection play a significant role: They key to the puzzle therefore lies in the composition of the initial pool of potential candidates and those who nominated it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a complete analysis of the online presence (website and social media activity) of those 163 incumbent political parties competing in the 28 member-countries during last 2014 European Parliament Elections. It cross-nationally examines the main functions and intensity of their overall activity by accounting for possible political and institutional explanations. The findings show that while there are significant differences across countries confirming the constraining effect of national institutions, the size or the government/opposition condition do not affect parties' individual campaign intensity, confirming the existence of observable equalization tendencies in the context of this well-known second-order election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the electoral consequences of catch-all parties' shifts to the political center. Although the move to the center of many European Social Democratic parties in the 1990s was first rewarded with victories, these parties have since faced a remarkable electoral drought that is surprisingly carrying through the current "hard times" of the international economic order. What explains the seeming inability of these catch-all parties to cast a wider, but sustainable net for voters? This inability is particularly puzzling given that Social Democratic parties should be well positioned to address the current economic troubles. This development challenges standard explanations that apply variations of the Downesian spatial model. It is necessary to add a temporal dimension to explain when and why the broadening of party platforms fails and produces counterintuitive electoral outcomes. Of particular concern in explaining the outcomes of catch-all strategies are the existence of viable parties to the left of the catch-all party on the left-right continuum and the electoral institutions of a given country. Scholars of European political parties have called into question the adequacy of standard left/right indicators as measures of party competition, suggesting that a multi-dimensional space is necessary to accurately depict contemporary European politics. Without dismissing other factors, we stress the enduring relevance of material-based competition in today's European politics, a competition still well captured by left/right measurements. Our empirical study analyzes the votes of individuals in six European countries in the past three decades in comparison to an individual's distance from Social Democratic catch-all parties' left-right position. The individual level allows us to observe current votes as they relate to previous votes, which is an essential part of our argument, but necessarily omitted from studies using aggregate vote shares. Our findings indicate that current analyses of the electoral effects of strategy shifts are misleading inasmuch as they fail to account for individual-level motivations for vote switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising Euro-skepticism, increasing levels of public disagreement, and, growing divisions on Europe both within and between political parties, are all indicators of the emergent potential for contestation on Europe. This paper seeks to identify whether two important elements of contestation on Europe, inter-party competition and divisions in public opinion, are causally related, the direction of any such relationship, and in which countries it might exist. In doing so, we apply a recently developed method for analyzing cross-sectional time-series data, panel Granger testing. We do, indeed, find a causal relationship between public opinion and inter-party competition, but only in some countries, not all, and we discuss the implications for political competition on Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why some party systems collapse, while similar systems confronting what seem to be equally insurmountable obstacles survive. I argue that when party systems neglect their central task of linking society and the state, they lose their reason for existence and fail. Parties may provide linkage through any combination of three major strategies: programmatic representation, group-based incorporation, and clientelism. But if the major parties in the system are unable to satisfy mounting or changing demands for linkage and therefore fail to capture voter support, the party system collapses. When new demands challenge the core representational profile of a party system and the system's context undermines appropriate adaptation, linkage deteriorates and the party system fails. Using Boolean algebra and comparative historical analysis of eight cases of party system collapse and survival in Latin America, Europe and Asia, I detail how linkage disintegrates, account for party system failure in some contexts, and explain how other threatened systems have endured. I find that programmatic representation deteriorates when economic crisis occurs in a context of international policy constraints and inter-party agreements, that group-based incorporation decays when the structure or type of politically salient social cleavages transform and threaten powerful, entrenched interests, and that clientelism suffers when political reforms increase demand at the same time that parties face economic crisis and reforms cut that them off from benefits to distribute. When all types of linkage deteriorate, the entire system collapses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects that a country's electoral rules have on the electoral success of extreme right parties (ERPs) in Europe using a new dataset that includes election returns compiled at the electoral-district level for 18 European countries from 1980-2004 (N=12,050). Much of the extant research on the electoral success of extreme right parties suffers from at least two methodological problems. The first involves the selection of cases and occurs when only those national elections that were contested by ERPs are included in the cross-national analysis. The second major problem occurs in analyses that rely on aggregate-level statistics that conceal data censoring at a lower geographic level. The correct specification allows the causal factors that determine whether an extreme right party contests an election to differ from those that influence its share of the vote if it does appear on the ballot, and recognizes that ERPs' decisions about when and where to field candidates are observable at the level of the election district. I argue that the appropriate way to model this process is as a Heckman sample selection model estimated at the electoral district level. The results of this model indicate that a country's electoral system has a strong effect on the electoral success of ERPs: the likelihood an ERP will contest an electoral district and their expected vote share are both higher in countries with more proportional electoral systems. At the same time, this effect is conditioned on the stringency of a country's ballot access requirements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electoral rise of anti-establishment parties (AEPs) in recent East European elections raises some puzzling questions about electoral dynamics in new democracies: Why did the healthy power alternation of the mid 1990s not result in party system consolidation, as suggested by some earlier studies (Olson 1998, Miller et al 2000, Tavits 2005) but instead give way to a much more chaotic environment in which established mainstream political parties lost considerable ground to new political formations based on personalist and populist appeals? Why did this reversal happen during a period of economic recovery, remarkable Western integration progress and a broad acceptance of electoral democracy as the only game in town in Eastern Europe?This paper suggests that these electoral dynamics can be explained by focusing on the interaction between protest voting and election sequence. While protest voting to punish unpopular incumbents has been a widespread but understudied practice since the collapse of communism, the beneficiaries of these protest votes have changed in recent elections. Whereas in the first two generations of post-communist elections, disgruntled voters could opt for untried mainstream alternatives, in third-generation elections (defined as elections taking place after at least two different ideological camps have governed in the post-communist period) voters had much fewer untried mainstream alternatives, and therefore opted in greater number for anti-establishment parties. This explanation receives strong empirical support from statistical tests using data from 76 parliamentary elections in 14 East European countries from 1990-2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Control over government portfolios is the key to power over policy and patronage and is commonly understood to lie with parties in European democracies. But since the democratic transitions of the 1990s, Europe has had nearly equal numbers of parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and there is evidence that the ability of parties to control government posts in these two regime types differs. As yet, political scientists have a limited understanding of the scale and causes of these differences. In this paper we propose a principal-agent theoretical explanation. We examine our account using data on 28 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies in Europe, and show that differences in party control over government portfolios cannot be understood without reference to the underlying principal-agent relationships between voters, elected politicians, and governments, that characterize Europe's semi-presidential and parliamentary regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I evaluate whether regional citizens are more likely to support greater autonomy because they find the idea of an independent region within Europe to be more viable. The devolution referenda in Scotland in two distinct time periods provide a quasi-experiment in which to explore this observable implication. In the first referendum, a slight majority voted for devolution but the margin was not enough to overcome the electoral threshold set by Westminster. In 1997, though, the result was overwhelmingly pro-devolution. I argue that the fear of independence, coupled with a preference ordering where the second choice for devolution supporters was the status quo, explained the strategic voting behavior in 1979. Increased support for independence, as both a first and second option for Scots, fuelled the dramatic increase in sincere voting for devolution in 1997. I also presented evidence to support the contention that European integration, especially the Scottish National Party's successful framing of the EU as a mechanism to reduce the costs of secession, contributed to this increase in support for independence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role played by the presidential heads of state in the government formation process in European democracies has been largely ignored in the literature on comparative politics. The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of presidential heads of state on hypothetically disaggregated stages of government formation bargaining processes: (1) PM Appointment, (2) Partnership Decision, and (3) Coalition Formation by PM designate. The results provide strong evidences supporting that the effects of presidential heads of state can be felt throughout the hypothetically disaggregated stages of government formation process. Particularly, we find that a presidential party is more likely to be appointed Prime Minister when the president is indirectly elected by parliament; that an ideologically distant party from the presidential head of state is less likely to be appointed Prime Minister when the president is elected by popular vote and has more recent mandate than the parliament; that a potential coalition is more likely to form when it includes the presidential party; and that an ideologically distant potential coalition from the presidential head of state is less likely to from when the president is indirectly elected by parliament or when the president is elected by popular vote and has more recent mandate than the parliament. Combined together, they suggest that the presidential heads of state have effectively induced preferred governments among potential alternatives, particularly when the president is indirectly elected by parliament or when the president is elected by popular vote and has more recent mandate than the parliament. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the extent and duration of democratic politics in postcommunist Europe, paying particular attention to the possible impact of the European Union. It concludes with a brief discussion of why it is that the postcommunist democracies that are now members of the EU or soon-to-be members register such high levels of dissatisfaction with the way democracy works and distrust of government, parliament, and political parties. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about a postfunctionalist theory of European integration is presented. It summarizes research on political parties, public opinion and identity to explain the conflicts that have structured European tradition. The resulting theory is subscribed as postfunctionalist because the term reflects the agnosticism concerning whether jurisdictions that humans create are efficient. The two most influential theories of regional integration, which are neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, are summarized.

Processes of decentralization in Western Europe (and elsewhere) have increased the importance of the subnational political level. State-wide political parties have needed to adapt to this. In spite of various case studies and some recent conceptual work, we only have limited knowledge and understanding of the multi-level organization of political parties. This paper attempts to improve this situation by providing a delegation framework to study the interaction between the national leadership and regional branches in state-wide parties. It conceptualizes this interaction as a principal-agent relationship, in which the national leadership can obtain benefits from delegating tasks to the regional branch, but also faces possible costs in doing this. The rules and conventions regulating the multi-level interaction in parties can, then, be interpreted as mechanisms to control the actions and policies of regional branches. These rules and convention include formal party rules, informal party procedures and conventions, and state laws affecting party organizations. The possibility to endogenize these state laws is a particularly promising implication of this approach. This framework opens up a different perspective on multi-level dynamics in political parties than usually presented, and can serve as an agenda for future empirical research. This research should focus on crisis situations in parties and what regional branches cannot do, rather than simply documenting the autonomy of these branches in their everyday activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years we have witnessed significant electoral successes of radical nationalist parties across Europe. This paper seeks to shed light on an important aspect of the emergence of these parties: the rise of radical nationalist constituencies. I focus on two of the most visible examples of success of such parties, the French National Front and the Greater Romania Party. This provides a type of most-different cases design: I identify explanatory variables (most importantly, economic transition) that account for the success of radical nationalism in both countries, notwithstanding many important differences between the two polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear is a political tool employed by many radical right-wing parties to mobilize support. Using immigration as an omnibus issue has allowed many of these parties to translate popular concerns of the day into problems caused by foreigners in their societies. This gave them the dynamism in the 1980s and 1990s to establish themselves as a viable voice of opposition, standing against the ineptness of governments across Western Europe that were failing to solve pressing problems. They have been able to take all that is wrong in their societies and use it as a report card to evaluate governments and mainstream parties in power. This strategy has provided them with relative success. Given the waning of legitimate opposition in the political party system, the radical right wing has picked up support along both the ideological left and right sides of the political spectrum. Using careful issue framing and language, they have been able to promote racism across Western Europe. This paper investigates the strategic positioning of radical right-wing parties beginning in the 1980s. It presents a model of "issue entrepreneur" parties describing their agency in reinventing themselves. Finally, the model is applied with analysis of the effects of such parties in contemporary Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the conditions under which nationalist political parties in Eastern and Western Europe are able to attract meaningful electoral support in national elections. Our aim is to explore how certain objective political, social, and economic conditions that inform voters’ subjective appraisals of nationalist parties’ claims and promises drive overall electoral results. As a second order concern, we are interested in understanding if and how the dynamics of nationalist political support differ substantively as we move geographically from Western to Eastern Europe. Here, we explore whether the same kinds of variables matter for nationalist parties in the West and the East and, if so, whether these variables play the same kind of role or have the same degree of importance for countries with quite dissimilar economic conditions, political legacies, social experiences, and historical memories. We argue that a full account of the determinants of nationalist voting must take into account this breadth in nationalist political parties and the diversity of country settings; we employ two-rounds of pooled regression analysis for more than 160 political parties in 89 national election cycles in 33 countries across Eastern and Western Europe. Our preliminary findings indicate economic, institutional, social and historical variables have significant effects across Europe, but in different ways. Our findings suggest that nationalist political parties in Eastern and Western Europe do well under different conditions, and that the dynamics of nationalist electoral support are, in some aspects, geographically bounded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the patterns of party financing in relatively recently established democracies in Southern and East-Central Europe, with a particular emphasis on the relative importance of the state and society as financial resources for political parties. The analysis shows that public funds have become a critical source of income in all of the democracies considered here, and that the robust financial linkage with the state has left parties largely dependent on and firmly entrenched in the state ever since the early stages of the democratic transition. Parties in new democracies thus reflect the tendency observed in their older West European counterparts, by which parties increasingly become part of the state apparatus rather than the tools of civil society. Furthermore, since state subventions are defined in terms of electoral success or parliamentary strength, they enhance the parties' focus on elections and on short-term electoral linkages, which is further encouraged by the increasing importance of state subsidies for election campaigns. It is also argued that the importance of public money does not unequivocally rule out the importance of society. However, rather than as a structural flow of income secured through the channels of the party organization, through membership subscriptions for example, societal funding has primarily taken the form of ad hoc contributions of private business to electoral campaigns. In addition, society seems to have acquired a special relevance as an illicit source of party financing. This money accrued from corrupt sources, however, may actually serve to reinforce rather than to counterbalance the strength of the linkage with the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a substantial literature has investigated the determinants of public support for European integration, little is known about whether these preferences actually matter for representational and political outcomes related to European integration. We address this question by examining the relationship between public support for the EU among member state publics and the positions political parties take on the issue of European integration. To conduct our analysis we utilize an original dataset of public opinion data since 1952 in seven current member states, and combine it with information about parties' positions from the Comparative Manifesto Project. We find that parties' attention to European integration as an issue has increased since the early 1950s. Moreover, our analyses reveal that public support for the EU consistently predicts the positions represented in national party systems on the issue of European integration, even prior to the growth of the European Union. These findings suggest that political parties have consistently represented Europeans' preferences about Europe in the domestic electoral arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most socialist parties were established at the end of 19th century. While their support grew rapidly over the next two decades, a substantial part of their natural electorate was still disenfranchised at the time of their establishment. Analysing data from eleven European countries for the period 1888-1975, we provide evidence that an increase in the size of electorate resulted in an increased support for socialist parties. We show that universal male suffrage contributed to the rise of socialist parties. A suffrage reform which enfranchises about half of the male population leads to estimated 7-8% increase in electoral and parliamentary support of socialist parties. This effect increases over time. The effect of female suffrage depends on the presence of Catholicism. Female suffrage increases socialist vote shares in countries which are Protestant by about 6% and decreases socialist support in countries which are Catholic by about 8%. The magnitude of the effect is slightly larger for socialist seat shares. Any type of suffrage extension which enfranchises about a quarter of the population leads on average to about 3% increase in electoral and parliamentary support. Applying synthetic control method, we provide further evidence from a comparative case study of male suffrage in Norway in 1898. We synthesize counterfactual Norway as a weighted average of five countries, which have not yet enfranchised the vast majority of working-class men. We find that universal male suffrage in Norway increases electoral but not parliamentary support for the Norwegian Labour party. The reform lead to a notably steeper rise in the electoral support fpr the Norwegian Labour party compared to the synthesized control group. We find that this effect increases over time, reaching 7.7% in the third election after the reform. We test the robustness of these findings by applying the treatment to various pre-treatment years and show that these findings are strongly robust to the placebo interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is hardly any political actor that has come under more severe scrutiny and critique in contemporary democracies than political parties. Underlying of much of this critique is the notion that political parties no longer fulfil their central role in representative democracies: to represent the interests of their supporters. While the process of representation has various stages that pose different demands for parties, the first step of making sure that there is a high degree of congruence between parties and party supporters pre-electoral positions is arguably the foundation of the whole process. If parties and their specific supporters do not match ideologically in the run-up to an election, parties are logically not able to represent their supporters positions in parliament or government. I investigate the charge of an increasing disparity between parties and their supporters by employing an innovative measure of the quality of congruence. For the first time, this measure makes a single left-right party position comparable to the whole distribution of party supporters left-right positions. In order to achieve this goal, I create a theoretical distribution of a partys left-right positions over a point estimate and compare this distribution with that of the partys supporters. I employ this measure to a unique data set that matches party positions from the Manifesto Project's data set (former CMP) to voter positions taken from survey data (Eurobarometer and CSES) for Western European countries, resulting in data for 709 parties in elections between 1973 and 2009. The analysis explores whether certain parties show better congruence than others and why that might be the case. On the level of parties, I find that the parties belonging to the traditional Western European party families create the highest congruence with their supporters and larger as well as more right parties perform better than small and left parties. On systemic level, I find that the electoral system does not have an effect on congruence, which goes against much of the received wisdom in the representation literature (Powell 2000) but confirms newer findings by authors like Golder and Stramski (2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the study which discussed left-right perceptions of citizens of policy profile of political parties in Europe. It states the perceptions of citizens of the left-right position of parties can be explained to considerable extent by manifesto content of political parties. It mentions that the left-right dimension matters for the political behavior of citizens and politicians can easily establish number of ways that do not require substantive associations and connotations.

The article presents information on the popularity of extreme right-wing political parties across Eastern and Western Europe. Several theories contrasting the relative and absolute deprivation concepts are discussed. A structural account is offered about the emergence of extreme right-wing parties in two countries including Romania and France.

Has European integration affected national electoral politics beyond the margins? Experts describe its main impact as empowerment of radical voices. Mainstream parties avoid EU issues that divide their left/right-based organizations; extreme parties attack the EU and the center's silence. But EU issues also generate important dynamics inside mainstream parties. We theorize cross-cutting EU issues as an example of a general model of cross-issue interference. Two mechanisms of interference alter party strategizing. When electoral victories have strengthened leaders, cross-cutting issues produce muffling of more recently-emerged issues. Divided parties cling to left/right issues and suppress fights over integration. But interference also runs the other way. When leadership is weak, muffling fails, and challengers aggravate dissent. Internal fights on newer (EU) issues affect the selection of leadership on older (left/right) issues, generating displacement from electorally-competitive positions. We document these mechanisms and their generality with mixed methods: pan-European panel analysis and interview-based accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the self-dynamics toward unidimensional political party competition. Although the ideological space in most European countries is often characterized with its multidimensionality, empirical estimation shows that party positions in some of those countries can be more or less placed on a unidimensional scale. An alternative spatial model is suggested which allows parties to influence the salience and (non)-separability of both dimensions at voters' decision processes.

The article investigates the way by which electoral systems influence political support and engagement among ethnic minorities across 33 countries based on data from the European Social Survey. It discusses the role of parties and institutions in promoting political participation among ethnic minorities. It relates the attitudes of ethnic minority groups about the political system.

The article examines the conditions under which electoral representation is functioning particularly well or badly focusing on voter preferences about European integration. It explores the impact of strong issue effects on vote choices on the representational bond between parties and their voters. It provides an overview of the voter-party congruence on the issue of European integration. It has found the importance of the degree of politicisation of the European issue to effective representation.

Three significant events in European politics and technology occurred almost simultaneously in the early 1990s: the signing of the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union; the formerly-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe emerged as democracies; and the publication of the World Wide Web changed the Internet from an academic, text-only email network into a graphic, user-friendly phenomenon, connecting millions worldwide. These events started trends that are now converging around new types of social and political networks, enabled by technology. Examples include new issue-based pan-European political communities (e.g. Euroskeptics, the Greens;) decentralized, socio-technological political networks (e.g. Otpor in Serbia; Pora in the Ukraine;) and an array of web-0based social and commercial networks.Political science, technology, and social network scholars are only beginning cross-disciplinary study of these networks. Although the penetration rates of new technologies in the formerly-Communist countries lagged behind those of the EU, some of the most interesting and early examples of the Internet's unprecedented ability to support the creation and growth of social and political networks can be found amongst them. Of these, none was more interesting than the role played by new technologies in the resistance to and overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia.My central research question is: can the Internet, together with related technologies and applications, facilitate the formation of social and political networks and affect political behavior in the context of an evolving Europe? I use a focused case study of Milosevic-era Serbia, divided into three phases, or sub-cases, to addresses the efficiency and effectiveness hypotheses raised by this question:1.The early, 'informal' resistance to Milosevic (1991-1998) 2.Organized resistance—the Otpor movement (1998-2000)3.The end of the Milosevic era: election, demonstration, and concession (September 24 - October 5, 2000) I use two methodologies: network mapping and process tracing. I depict and analyze the formation of, first, informal networks, then actual communities of interest and resistance organizations, and finally of more formal political networks. A survey will provide the data on who was connected to whom, and how, so that these maps can be generated.* Then I describe and analyze the process chain both within the context of each of the three phases and how it evolves over time as the use of technology becomes more effective through both innovation and penetrationThe main contribution of my work will be to create an analytical framework to examine political events in multi-party democracies, primarily in Europe. I plan to do so in post-doctoral work by testing the methodology in a study of the Estonian vote to join the EU in 2003 and/or the Dutch EU Constitution referendum in 2005, in both of which the largely-Internet-based opposition played a major role. For those who will be doing further research into the political impact of the Internet in Europe or elsewhere, this work contributes a modeling framework and structured analysis to fields that currently lack them. * This is a work-in-progress, pending the results of an extensive survey of participants in political and resistance networks in Serbia during the Milosevic period. Initial results are reported. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of electoral systems on citizens' likelihood of behaving either as the delegate model or the psychological model predicts in five European countries. In all European countries, key findings suggest that attitudes toward political parties are influenced both by citizens' established orientations and by the alignment of party positions with citizens' positions. In the context of a representation system, citizens are more likely to have knowledge of a political party's ideological position.

The article examines the relationship between political campaign and party finance laws and corruption. Several problems with campaign and party finance have been cited, including politics does not respond to the laws of supply and demand. It also outlines some of the most common mechanisms that have been proposed to deal with the problems pertaining to financing parties and politicians in some European states such as spending limits on campaigns for public office and the public financing of election campaigns.

The article examines whether the radical right and their parties have fostered an enduring social base among core voters in the U.S., Europe and in other parts of the world. The researcher discusses the alternative theoretical frameworks and considers the rival hypotheses about the social basis of radical right support, as well as compares evidence to analyze the social basis of the radical right vote across 15 nations, using data from the European Social Survey, 2002, and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, 1996-2001.

The article analyzes how European governments have pursued liberal activating measures, while striving to uphold principles of fairness and concern for the disadvantaged. It analyzes the strategic choices confronting progressive parties in an age of economic liberalization. It highlights the perils of both no reform and neo-liberal reform. It offers examples of progressive strategies for increasing labor market participation. It then analyzes welfare reform in the U.S., which corresponds most closely to the thin, neo-liberal ideal.

Determinants of green party activism. 15 pages of text, 40 pages of tables. An exploratory analysis of surveys of 18 green parties in 15 countries in Europe and Australia, with more than 7500 respondents. A typology of party activism is given. Comparisons of demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, length of party membership), of motivation to join the party. Reasons for lack of activism and description of activities within the party, and green activities. Relationship to other parties and organizations (environmental, peace, labor and gender). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study on coalition governance and communist successor parties in Eastern Europe. Success of CSPs in elections; Effect of CSPs on coalition formation; Treatment on CSPs in government formation; Government participation of CSPs; Allocation of portfolios to parties in a governing coalition.

We present a theory about the institutional determinants and the political consequences of party systems. We look at a select number of cases drawn from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. We argue that the party system format is a central determinant of democratic quality. In turn, institutional engineering largely shapes the party system. Parliamentary systems and party list proportional representation are more conducive to a strong party system with competitive, programmatic and institutionalized political parties, and consequently to a better democratic quality. In order to show this, we take a closer look at a subset of post-Communist polities, those with a majority Orthodox population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which focused on how different political responses to the populist right affected the views of majority populations in Western Europe on new minorities. Assessment of political responses to the asylum crisis of the early 1990s; Theories of how parties interact with public opinion; Impact of the incitement of xenophobia on the on electoral popularity.