Search

The article discusses the Kurdish independence referendum held September 25, 2017 and examines the lack of international support as well as opposition from the Iraqi, Iranian, and Turkish governments. Topics covered include the overwhelming support among voters for Kurdistan's Independence, the resignation of Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) president Masoud Barzani, and the political party Gorran.

This study analyses the influence of the party reforms of 2012 and the ‘counter-reforms’ of 2013-2014 on the Russian party system, and the structure of political and electoral cleavages in Russian regions. The emergence of new political parties in 2012-2013 led to a temporary increase in electoral competition, an augmentation of the political space, and a rise in the number of electoral cleavages, but these developments did not weaken the domination of United Russia. The trend towards an ever greater tightening up of entry requirements for contestation in the elections led to a lowering of the number of political and, consequently, electoral cleavages, in addition to a reconfiguration of the political space. The study shows that there was an unbalancing of the political cleavage structure in 2012-2015: the socioeconomic political cleavage, whose primary place is a key determinant of equilibrium, ceded the top position to the authoritarian-democratic cleavage in 2012-2013, and to the ‘Ukrainian’ (systemic) cleavage in 2014-2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several political, social, and economic issues involving French Polynesia, and it mentions the Tahoeraa Huiraatira, Tavini Huiraatira, and Tapura Huiraatira political parties, as well as French Polynesia's President Edouard Fritch. Presidential and legislative elections in France and French Polynesia in 2017 are examined, along with the United Nations, a right to self-determination, and an end to nuclear weapons testing in 1996.

Democratic theories expect citizens to be able to accurately evaluate fulfilment of parties’ election pledges. We use specifically designed survey items from the Swedish National Election Study to compare citizens’ perceptions of the fulfilment of specific party pledges with actual fulfilment and assess circumstances that lead to correct evaluations. We find that political knowledge triumphs partisan attachments to incumbent parties when it comes to explaining why voters are correct. The results are interesting in light of common knowledge about the importance of partisan attachment in evaluations of general government performance: We argue that when specific election pledges are being evaluated, personal heuristics, such as attachments to incumbent parties, play a lesser role for judgements. Instead, the specificity embedded in the evaluation encourages citizens to engage in a more knowledge-based evaluation of whether pledges are fulfilled or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Present-day Flanders is characterized by the contrast between the impressive electoral successes of the pro-independence Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie (N-VA), and the very lukewarm attitude of its population towards independence. This success should be seen as one of the consequences of the regionalization of political identities in Belgium and the promotion of a Flemish identity by the Flemish regional government. Rather than a vote for independence, however, support for the N-VA corresponds with a rejection of interregional solidarity and more in general a preference for a more right-wing style of governance based on the principles of self-help and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the federal election campaign in Canada in 2011 with regard to the Conservative Party of Canada's (CPC) campaign strategies and their apologies for the 1914 Komagata Maru incident and Chinese Canadian exclusion. Topics include the elements of CPC's apology discourse, the role of the Asian Conservative Members of Parliament in CPC's campaigns, and the party's investment in ethnic media campaigns.

Parties try to shape media coverage in ways that are favorable to them, but what determines whether media outlets pick up and report on party messages? Based on content analyses of 1,496 party press releases and 6,512 media reports from the 2013 Austrian parliamentary election campaign, we show that media coverage of individual party messages is influenced not just by news factors, but also by partisan bias. The media are therefore more likely to report on messages from parties their readers favor. Importantly, this effect is greater rather than weaker when these messages have high news value. These findings have important implications for understanding the media’s role in elections and representative democracies in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Invalid votes are often considered as simple failure to cast a valid vote. In fact, they might be a rational expression of discontent with party policy offerings. By employing individual and party system-level data on eighteen European party systems, this article focuses on voter discontent and voter apathy as two major determinants of casting an invalid vote and seeks to answer why some voters intentionally waste their votes despite paying the costs of voting. I find that higher distinct policy offerings decrease the probability of casting an invalid vote. However, voting behaviors of politically sophisticated and unsophisticated voters vary conditionally on the diversity of policy offerings and the cost of information. On one hand, when a party system offers a larger set of policy offerings, politically sophisticated voters become less likely to cast an invalid vote and more likely to support niche parties. On the other hand, sophisticated voters cannot deal with increasing cost of information, and are more likely to cast an invalid vote, especially in party systems with compulsory voting where the cost of nonvoting is higher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise to power of movement-based parties is a new and expanding phenomenon. Existing theories predict these parties will become increasingly oligarchic as they govern nationally. The Bolivian MAS deviates from this conventional wisdom, as it has followed a remarkably different organizational trajectory that has facilitated grassroots impact and constrained elite control. Through a within-case comparative examination of MAS, this article identifies necessary conditions and explains mechanisms facilitating this outcome in the crucial area of candidate selection. Key to understanding how these parties operate is the organizational context in which they are embedded. Where civil society is strong, has mechanisms to arrive at decisions, and can agree on candidate selection, it can play an important role in resisting the oligarchization of allied movement-based parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political competition is the engine for representative democracy. Within the representation mechanics I look at the political space, the dimensionality of political conflict, and how parties try to affect the relative salience of different dimensions by using direct democratic institutions. The leading question is how we can explain initiative use. The paper asks how the costs and benefits of using initiatives affect parties when they decide whether to use this instrument or not. The major argument is that when party competition increases, we will see higher initiative frequencies because parties try to affect the saliency of specific issues to increase their electoral bases. I analyze annual submission rates, the content of proposed initiatives, and the changing share of partisan actors behind initiatives. The findings highlight that the consequences of direct democratic institutions go beyond changing policy outcomes. For the specific case at hand, Switzerland from 1920 to 2011, it is shown that despite numerous opposite claims, there has been no underlying change in strategy or equilibrium but just a slow evolution of underlying factors such as institutional requirements and partisan competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Sri Lanka's April 2010 parliamentary elections as they played out in the Muslim community on the east coast. The political work of elections, as the article shows, involves a lot more than the composition of government. Antagonism over group identities and boundaries are at centre stage. Elections force people to show their colours, which causes turbulence as they grapple with several, possibly contradictory, loyalties. The article argues that elections bring together different political storylines, rather than one master antagonism. It is the interaction between different narratives that paradoxically provides elections both with a sense of gravity and dignity, and with the lingering threat of rupture and disturbance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Partisans often perceive real world conditions in a manner that credits their own party. Yet recent findings suggest that partisans are capable of setting their loyalties aside when confronted with clear evidence, for example, during an economic crisis. This study examines a different possibility. While partisans may acknowledge the same reality, they may find other ways of aligning undeniable realities with their party loyalties. Using monthly survey data collected before and after the unexpected collapse of the British national economy (2004-10), this study presents one key finding: As partisans came to agree that economic conditions had gotten much worse, they conversely polarized in whether they thought the government was responsible. While the most committed partisans were surprisingly apt in acknowledging the economic collapse, they were also the most eager to attribute responsibility selectively. For that substantial share of the electorate, partisan-motivated reasoning seems highly adaptive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ed Cox and Arianna Giovannini survey the new political parties that have emerged in the north of England advocating greater decentralisation to English regions. While electoral success may be some way off, this is a propitious time in UK politics for building democratic momentum behind a bold and positive vision of devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time in 30 years, a single national party has won a majority on its own in the Indian parliament, and does not depend on the support of regional party allies for a parliamentary majority. Yet it is too soon to pronounce the decline or marginalisation of regional parties in India's national political life. The aggregate performance of regional parties remained resilient in the 2014 elections, even marginally improving over 2009. This article considers whether the 2014 elections mark a critical break in the position of regional parties at the national level. The principal argument is that the 2014 elections do not reflect a fundamental alteration in the dynamics of political regionalisation. Rather they suggest a new phase in the impact of regionalisation on the party system at the national level. In a landscape of continually increasing voter choice, electoral outcomes at the national level have begun to narrow to favour a smaller range of parties since 2004. The number of parties able to achieve influence via participation in cabinet governance or coalition has begun to decline. Political fragmentation has not gone away, but its consequences for election outcomes have changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The critical 2010 federal elections left the Flemish nationalists (N-VA) the dominant political party in the north and the francophone Socialists (PS) in the south of the country, unable to find common ground on the issue of devolution. It took no fewer than 541 days – a world record – to form a government rallying Christian Democrats (CD&V and cdH), Liberals (Open VLD and MR), and Socialists (sp.a and PS). The 2014 federal elections marked a change in tone, being fought on socio-economic terms, but confirmed the stalemate nonetheless. The N-VA made further inroads, winning 29.8 per cent of the vote in the Dutch-speaking community. The governing parties held firm, however; the PS in particular remained the largest political formation in the south, winning 31.0 per cent of the vote in the French-speaking community. Moreover, on 25 May 2014 federal elections, regional elections in Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels (and the German-speaking community), and European elections were held simultaneously, further raising the stakes in the complex, interconnected, government formation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Finnish electoral system has recently been changed to slightly increase proportionality, but nothing has been done to make cabinet alternatives more ‘identifiable’ before the election. This outcome poses a major puzzle for one important theoretical approach to electoral system change. This approach sees normatively ‘unbalanced’ systems as vulnerable to reform and would have expected a significant increase in the pre-electoral identifiability of competing cabinet options. The article explains the Finnish case by embedding it in a comparative model of normative tradeoffs in democratic design. Based on Finnish case evidence and a statistical analysis of 100 elections in 32 democracies (from 2001 to 2011), the article argues that the type of democracy exemplified by Finland is not normatively unbalanced. In particular, the lack of pre-electoral identifiability is compensated for by an unconstrained multidimensionality of partisan preferences. While it may be true that normatively balanced designs are more stable, there is more than one way to be balanced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 2008 economic crisis, there has been upheaval across Europe. In Ireland, the collapse of the banking, construction and property sectors, and the 2010 EU/International Monetary Fund loan and attached austerity conditions resulted in a dramatic election in 2011 that saw the removal of the dominant political party from power. Ireland provides an important case study to examine political legitimacy given the perceived culpability of political authorities in the recession and the effects of austerity on the population's welfare. In this article, we examine data from the European Social Survey over a ten-year period (2002–2012) to ascertain the impact of the crisis on political legitimacy. We measure change in trust in political institutions, satisfaction with government and the link between social trust and political legitimacy. The analysis is repeated separating ‘winners’ (those who voted for the parties in power) from ‘losers’ (those who did not vote for the parties in power). We find that trust in political institutions and satisfaction with government has declined since 2008. However, while satisfaction with government is increasing since the 2011 election, trust in government continues to decline. Social trust is only declining for those who did not vote for the parties in power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses Australian politics during the early 2010s, including elections held in Australian states and the country's fiscal policies. An overview of the budgets of Australian states, including the role that the governing coalition between the Australian Liberal Party and National Party in Victoria, is provided.

One year on from the widespread protests in Turkey, the question of why small environmental protests against the building of a shopping mall on Gezi Park in the centre of Istanbul turned into the biggest example of mass civil movement in the republic's history remains unanswered. This article suggests that one can easily detect signs of instability and social unrest in the country long before these mass demonstrations took place. By analysing the evolution of the Turkish party system over the past decade, I argue that the political upheaval in the country is the result of a crisis of representation. This has two aspects: a high degree of polarisation has left certain segments of society unrepresented, while the AKP government has ceased to maintain the balance between responsiveness and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many proportional representation systems are characterised by a legal electoral threshold. Such a threshold reserves the allocation of seats for those parties that reach a minimum share of the votes. In order to fight fragmentation, a 5 per cent threshold has been introduced for both federal and regional elections in Belgium. This article seeks to explore the mechanical and psychological effects of this legal threshold after five elections. It is shown that the threshold has had limited mechanical and psychological effects on voters but some psychological effects on party elites. Moreover, while in the short term the average number of lists dropped and several pre-electoral coalitions formed, in the longer term the legal threshold has not prevented further fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a study which examined the determinants of electoral outcomes during the 2012 gubernatorial election in Edo state, Nigeria. Topics discussed include a theoretical overview of ethnicity, corruption and electoral politics in the country and the history of electoral politics in Nigeria. Also discussed is nature of previous gubernatorial elections in Edo during the fourth republic. The performance of the two major political parties is also examined.

While much has been written about the formation and termination of coalitions, comparatively little attention has been paid to the policy output of multiparty governments. The present study attempts to narrow this research gap by analysing policy-making in three Austrian coalition governments between 1999 and 2008. Drawing on the party mandate literature, a manually coded textual analysis of election manifestos is conducted that yields a dataset containing over 1,100 pledges. The fulfilment of these pledges is taken as the dependent variable in a multivariate analysis. The results indicate that institutional determinants (adoption in the coalition agreement, ministerial control, and policy status quo) significantly influence the chances of pledge fulfilment and thus present a powerful predictor of coalition policy output. By contrast, factors related to parties’ preferences (consensus between parties, policy distance, pledge saliency, and majority support in parliament) do not have an impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Parliamentary systems are characterised by strong links between the executive and the legislature. While the importance of executive–legislative relationships is well-known, the extent to which executive dominance affects parliamentary behaviour is hard to grasp. This study uses the recent institutional crises in Belgium to study parliamentary behaviour in the absence of a government with full powers. Cabinet formation in Belgium has proved to be protracted in recent years, leading to long periods of government formation in both 2007–2008 and 2010–2011. Such circumstances provide a unique comparison between normal situations of parliament in the presence of government, and exceptional situations of prolonged periods of caretaker government. In particular the article looks at three aspects of parliamentary behaviour that are usually linked to executive–legislative relations: legislative initiatives, voting behaviour and party unity. The general hypothesis is that prolonged periods of government formation gave parliamentarians more opportunities to influence the legislative process and more (ideological) freedom. The results show a nuanced picture: parliament became more pro-active, the salience of the government–opposition divide declined, while party unity remained as strong as ever. It is concluded that government formation processes did not lead to drastic changes in the legislative–executive relationship, but rather permitted a modest correction to the extremely weak position of parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Italian political system during the period from 1993 to 2013, as well as the 2013 general parliamentary elections, with a focus on the relationship between electoral laws and political results. Topics discussed include the political party system in Italy and the history of electoral reforms and laws, statistics on the number of seats in parliament and votes allocated to parties, and the lack of parties with clear majority in parliament.

The article discusses the impact of the 2013 Italian general legislative election, with a focus on political change in the party system and elected representatives. Topics mentioned include the emergence of the party Movimento 5 Stelle and the continuing role of the party Partito Democratico, the high level of change over in elected representatives resulting from the election, and the policies established for electing the presidents of the chambers of parliament and the president of Italy.

For centuries, the capacity of British ministers to appoint individuals to positions on the boards of agencies, boards and commissions was viewed as little more than one element of the ‘spoils of war’ in a highly majoritarian polity. This article examines how the politics of patronage has evolved in recent decades and argues that it is possible to identify a silent revolution that has gradually but consistently constrained the reach and discretion enjoyed by ministers in deploying their patronage powers. What is particularly distinctive about British political history since 2007 is the introduction of a far-reaching ladder of legislative scrutiny that ranges from informal pre-appointment hearings, at one end of the ladder, to a statutory veto over the minister's preferred candidate, at the other. However, this ‘outlawing of the spoils’ has evolved in a typically British way with reforms being implemented on an ad hoc and incremental basis, that is, frequently without any advance consultation or planning but rather dependent on non-formal, informal and discretionary elements to counter problems as they arise. The result is a complex and frequently overlapping mixture of regulatory and scrutiny processes that arguably offer little in terms of principled underpinning or constitutional logic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Against all odds, South Korea's 2010 local elections were a landslide victory for the coalition of the opposition political parties. This article aims to provide an insight on the dynamic nature of Korean elections and politics by using a public opinion survey in Seoul's mayoral election as a case study. This article finds that the "north wind" triggered by the sinking of the South Korean battleship Cheonan helped the ruling party candidate, but not as much as the ruling party had hoped. Furthermore, a high turnout of the younger voters helped the opposition party candidate by showing a clear generation gap in terms of the important issues, ideology, and party orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the analysis of the unusual trajectory of Italian parties and party systems from the end of World War II to the 2013 general election, when an oversized coalition of three parties, with the crucial support of the President of the Republic, formed a so-called "broad agreements" government. This article will not retell the story of the passage from the First to an alleged Second Republic, for the simple fact that this transition never actually took place. Italy changed the format and, above all, the mechanics of its party system in the mid-1990s, but it has never significantly changed the Constitution and the functioning of its main political institutions. If the label "Second Republic" is designed to describe the transition from a constitutional structure to something else, that "Second" republic never existed. This article will describe the history of this "phantom" republic, and it will also analyse the evolution (or devolution) of the Italian party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the empowerment of the European Parliament over the years is due to its special role in providing a bridge connecting the public’s policy preferences on the one hand, and the legislative behaviour of elected officials on the other. As the only popularly elected EU institution, successive treaty reforms increased the EP’s political power. These reforms were accompanied by an explicit desire to see citizens’ involvement in EU politics increase and, in turn, provide support and legitimacy to the European integration project. This paper models MEPs’ track records on various political issues, and assesses the extent to which their output is in line with the positions their party campaigned on and the policy preferences expressed in public opinion. The findings suggest that there are discrete patterns of representation, where some parties are more inclined toward greater congruence with their selectorate and manifesto than others. Furthermore, the degree of congruence varies across policy issues and is shaped, to a large extent, by institutional arrangements and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers recent attempts to reform German federalism, the failed 2004 reform, and the reforms agreed in 2006 and 2009. It compares partisan, ideological and territorial factors which contribute to an understanding of reform, finding that all three have a role in explaining actors’ views of reform proposals. Two other claims are developed: that in some aspects of the reforms, a division between ‘generalist’ and ‘subject specialist’ politicians became apparent; and that a decisive change between 2004 and 2006 was the formation of a grand coalition at a federal level, which paved the way for agreement upon reform proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abyei was one of the most contested areas of Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005. Drawing on direct experience, the article examines the agreement and the experience of trying to support its implementation. It analyses the relationship between this and the overall problems of the CPA, and of peacekeeping in the newly independent South Sudan. Drawing on relevant literature, it examines the wider issues for the negotiation of peace agreements; for UN mandates, including the protection of civilians; for the limitations of peacekeeping; and for the importance of continuing political engagement. It argues that in some situations smaller missions without a heavy military component might in fact achieve more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reflects on the dynamics associated with state building in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with a particular focus on the role of external agency. The debate over constitutional reform has featured prominently in BiH since the early 2000s. The objective of this reform was to transform Dayton into a functional institutional framework that prepared the country for both international withdrawal and EU integration. Based on a detailed analysis of two international initiatives launched in 2005 and 2009 this article analyses the reasons why constitutional engineering in post-Dayton BiH failed. More specifically, the article argues that this reform failed as a result of various shortcomings including international divisions; a democratic deficit inherent in the process; and the neglect of local conditions (including conflicting notions of the future form of the state by both local and external actors). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]