Search

One of the most significant changes in West European politics in the past 40 years is the emergence of the new cultural divide. However, there is substantial variation in how the issues comprising this new divide have manifested themselves in party systems. This raises the question of what mechanisms bring these issues into established party systems. The literature has so far focused on new political parties and critical junctures. This article argues that the left-right structure is a key condition for the integration of new political issues into party competition. Rather than seeing their integration as a matter of the emergence of a new, second conflict, it argues that new issues become central to party competition if the existing conflict structure presents established mainstream parties with vote-seeking or coalition-building incentives to focus on them. The article uses Ireland as a 'negative case study' to develop the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians perceive their representative role in a variety of ways: as a delegate of their party, a delegate of voters, or a trustee who exercises their mandate independent of any external principal. Existing research finds that the tendency to adopt a specific style of representation depends on system-level institutions and individuals' political experience and profile. The influence of the party organisational context remains little understood. This study contributes to filling this gap by examining the effects of parties' resources and intra-party distribution of power on the prevalence of party delegates among their candidates. Drawing on data from the Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS) and the Political Party Database (PPDB) we find that party organisation shapes representation in a way that has not previously been demonstrated: parties with more resources and parties in which members have the final say in candidate selection have a higher proportion of party delegates among their candidates. This demonstrates the centrality of party organisation to representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]