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The key idea of this article is that, for the first time, on the example of the domestic and foreign policy of the Canadian Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau, we discuss the problems and prospects of Canadian Liberalism. The recent defeat of the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2019 parliamentary elections gave the impression that only the Liberal Party contributes to the prosperity of the modern Canadian state. The closest attention to the activities of the Liberal Party allows us to identify its absolute advantages and corresponding shortcomings. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to analyze and investigate both the indisputable advantages and current shortcomings of the Liberal Party in power, and against this background to determine the effectiveness, or vice versa, the incompetence of Canadian liberalism as a political ideology. At the same time, according to the author, it is necessary to separate objective and subjective factors associated with the presence of liberals in power. The objective ones are related to how the Liberals program settings meet the needs of the time, while the subjective ones characterize how an individual, and, above all, the party leader, implements the partys requests and the electorates hopes. In this regard, the reputation of its leader is of crucial importance. On the basis of the considered source base, and, first of all, the electoral programs of Liberals under Trudeau, since coming to power in 2015. In the first part of the article, the author presents a comparative analysis of the results of the liberals in the parliamentary elections in 2015 and 2019, explaining the reasons for the victory of the latter, and obtaining, respectively, a parliamentary majority, and then a minority. The second part of the article is devoted directly to the aspects of the domestic and foreign policy of the Liberals in 2015-2020. The author comes to the conclusion that the Canadian liberalism, implemented by Justin Trudeau is currently the leading political ideology that unites a significant part of the electorate.

In the aftermath of the 2019 election, the re-election of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals brought out a significant amount of regional tension, in particular in the West. Trudeau, it was claimed, and those in the Liberal Party more generally, represented a central Canadian “Laurentian elite,” which did not care about Western Canadian or other regional interests. This article takes stock of this claim. To do so, it will examine the history of the “Laurentian elite” concept to clarify the idea. It argues that indeed, the Trudeau Liberals have governed as classic representatives of the “Laurentian consensus” on what is “good” for Canada, a consensus that reflects a broader philosophy on how to govern the state. This philosophy focuses on protecting key central Canadian economic interests (for example, dairy farmers and manufacturers like SNC Lavalin or Bombardier), while also supporting free trade in other sectors less important to the central Canadian economy (such as defending oil exports through the new NAFTA agreement). Other examples of Trudeau’s commitment to the Laurentian consensus include a more cooperative federalism (such as in immigration and labour market policy), more money for social programs (the Canada Child Benefit, CPP enhancement, and possible Pharmacare), expanding individual rights and liberties (cannabis legalization, opposition to Quebec’s Bill 21), and the promotion of official language communities. The paper will conclude with a brief contrast with the policies of Trudeau’s predecessor Stephen Harper, to find that while the prior Conservative government did not pursue a Laurentian agenda per se, Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself must nevertheless be seen as closely aligned with the “consensus” as well. Suite à l’élection de 2019, la victoire des Libéraux de Justin Trudeau a révélé des tensions régionales significatives, en particulier dans l’Ouest. Elles venaient du sentiment que Trudeau, et le Parti libéral en général, représentait le point de vue d’une élite « laurentienne » basée au centre du Canada, qui se souciait peu des intérêts de l’ouest du Canada et des autres régions. Cet article entend examiner cette affirmation. Pour ce faire, il présentera l’histoire du concept d’élite « laurentienne » pour le clarifier, montrant qu’en effet, les Libéraux de Trudeau ont gouverné comme des représentants classiques du « consensus laurentien » sur ce qui est bon pour le Canada, consensus qui reflète une philosophie plus large du gouvernement de l’État. Cette philosophie donne la priorité à la protection d’intérêts économiques clés du centre du Canada (comme le secteur laitier et les groupes industriels comme SNC-Lavalin et Bombardier), tout en soutenant le libre échange dans d’autres domaines moins importants pour l’économie du centre du Canada (par exemple, la défense des exportations pétrolières via la nouvelle version de l’ALENA). D’autres exemples de l’adhésion de Trudeau au consensus laurentien incluent un fédéralisme plus coopératif (par exemple, pour l’immigration et la politique du marché du travail), plus d’argent pour les programmes sociaux (création de l’Allocation canadienne pour enfants, augmentation de la Pension de retraite du RPC, et peut-être Pharmacare), un élargissement des droits et libertés individuels (légalisation du cannabis, opposition à la Loi 21 du Québec), et la promotion des communautés de langues officielles. L’article conclura par une brève comparaison avec les politiques menées par le prédécesseur de Trudeau pour montrer que, bien que le gouvernent conservateur précédent n’ait pas adhéré à un programme laurentien en soi, le Premier ministre Stephen Harper n’a pas véritablement remis en cause le consensus.

This paper tackles the issue of analyst bias in performance of comparative political analyses on political discourse, by leveraging data and machine-learning over human prior knowledge. The case studied is characterization of the issue of migration in the Croatian political discourse, which was chosen arbitrarily. We developed a machine-learning system that identifies most prominent features in the Croatian political discourse, with regards to migration and were interested solo in comparative political analysis in political science. This system does not rely on human judgement on the part of the researchers, and can be thus considered to be “objective”, short of possible sampling or selection bias. It is replicable. If provided, the same dataset and algorithm used, same conclusions should be reached by any scientist. This result was achieved by creating a text corpus from news items and press releases extracted from the websites of Croatian political parties currently represented in the Parliament. Available and collected data consist of public announcements mainly from IDS (Istarski Demokratski Sabor / Istrian Democratic Assambly), SDSS (Samostalna Demokratska Srpska Stranka / Independed Democratic Serb Party) and HSLS (Hrvatska Socijalno Liberalna Stranka / Croatian Social Liberal Party). Data analyzed suggests three dominant phrases of the research process. All political parties had similar political stand towards pointed out issues. Three most significant phrases were determined. First phrase is related to words “Demography” and “Reduction” and finding suggest that most analyzed articles relates towards migration of Croatian citizens in connection to economic hardships of some kind. Phrase two is related to words “Border” and “Croatia-Serbia” which strongly indicates relation to migration and is related towards inter-Balkan migration, mostly connected with consequences of the Croatian War of Independence from 1990’s, and is of most interest to SDSS, a Serb minority party in Croatia. Phrase three is related towards Marrakesh Agreement (Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration), where most of analyzed data shows that parties have a constructive but ambivalent stance towards migration from the third countries. Research conducted on available data, shows that wide spread international migration is not in the focus of most Croatian political parties, while topics and interest for inter-Balkan and Croatian economic/political migration dominates Croatian political spectre

The aim of the article is to introduce into international scientific circulation "Journals of Congresses of Farmers of Chernihiv Province" - an important source on the history of the Zemstvo liberal movement in northern Left Bank Ukraine.The methodological basis of the work was content analysis, principles of scientific synthesis, generalization and comprehensiveness. The scientific novelty of the work is that, in fact, for the first time in historiography, the question of the urgent need to study the agrarian question in the activities of the provincial nobility Liberal Party of Northern Ukraine as an organic and integral part of economic policy of this political current in the liberation movement of the Russian Empire Reforms Conclusions. The author of the article came to the conclusion that the found "Journals of Congresses of Farmers of the Chernihiv Province" reveal the essence of the agrarian policy of the opposition aristocratic front of the region. Content analysis of magazine protocols shows that congresses of farmers, in the conditions of extremely short liberalization of public life of the Russian Empire in the early 80s of the XIX century, became an effective tool in forming the foundations of agrarian policy and economic programs of the provincial nobility Liberal Party of Northern Ukraine. The agrarian question occupied, though not the leading, but a proper place in the coordinate system of the economic program of provincial nobility liberalism. It should be acknowledged that the opposition aristocratic front of the region before the provincial nobility counter-reform of 1890 considered it premature to pose the problem of fundamental modernization of the agrarian system of the Russian Empire: both because of the policy of industrial protectionism of the supreme power, and because of the financial incompleteness of the peasant reform of Olexander II.

This article reassesses the electoral decline of British Liberalism in the 1920s, especially the catastrophic defeat of 1924. A leading explanation for this disaster is that the Liberals were ‘fighting to lose’ by leaving nearly 250 constituencies uncontested. David Lloyd George is widely seen as deliberately seeking to destroy his party by refusing to finance candidates through his infamous ‘fund’, so he could lead what remained after electoral evisceration. His actions are widely credited with stymieing prospects of a Liberal recovery in the next election, 1929, which confirmed the party's permanent replacement by Labour. Through a wide-ranging statistical reanalysis, supported by a study of grassroots constituency campaigns, this article argues that the lack of candidates was a negligible contributor either to Liberal annihilation in 1924, or to Liberal failure to recover in 1929. The sharply deteriorating health of the party was already felt keenly at the grassroots before, not after, the seemingly freak result of 1924 was known. We thus argue that, contrary to the judgement of historians and contemporaries, the 1924 result represented the truer reflection of the party's fundamental interwar strength, with 1923 the exception. The inaction of Lloyd George in 1924 thus can be interpreted as pragmatic rather than Machiavellian.

The Quebec provincial election of October 2018 marked the end of an era. It saw the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP) suffer the worst defeat of its history and the election of agovernment, the first in a...

Summary Subject and purpose of work: This article analyzes the factors depicted in the literature as essential for the emergence of far-right parties and assesses the importance of unemployment, immigration and political establishments in the failures of the far-right wing parties in Sweden and Finland in early 2000s. Materials and methods: Multi-methods approach is used in this study including case studies and a novel technique based on Boolean algebra. Results: The findings of this paper lead to the conclusion that the correlation between unemployment rates and the electoral strength of far-right parties is weak and does not support simplistic thesis such as high unemployment leads to extremism. Moreover, despite objectively favorable conditions in terms of high immigration rates, the presence of non-European immigrants in a country does not in itself explain the emergence of far-right parties. Conclusions: The study points to the importance of political factors such as the differences between the mainstream parties and tackling the immigration issue by the Liberal Party in Sweden and the wide ideological span of the coalition government and the role of Finland’s special relationship with the USSR that militated against the emergence of far-right parties in these countries.

¿Es posible que el gobierno de turno reparta tierras baldías para premiar a los electores y aumentar el apoyo electoral? Los gobiernos utilizan mecanismos distributivos para obtener réditos electorales. Este trabajo analiza la relación entre la adjudicación de baldíos y las elecciones de 1930 a 1946 –cuando el partido liberal se consolidó como fuerza electoral– mediante un modelo de mínimos cuadrados ordinarios que incluye más de 600 municipios. Los resultados muestran que la adjudicación de baldíos favoreció a municipios liberales, aunque no está asociada con mayorías electorales del partido liberal en 1946. Is it possible that public land allocation by the government might be a mechanism to reward voters and, eventually, increase electoral support? The literature suggests that governments use distributive mechanisms to obtain electoral revenues. To analyze this, we assessed the relation between land allocation and elections between 1930 and 1946, when the Liberal Party was consolidated as the main electoral force. We implemented an Ordinary Least Squares model for more than 600 municipalities and the results show that public land allocation did favor the liberal municipalities, although it is not associated with the electoral results of the Liberal Party in the 1946 elections.

From 1970 to 2018, either the Quebec Liberal Party or the Parti Quebecois won the elections in Quebec. The Coalition Avenir Quebec ended this long period of bipartisan alternation by winning a majority of seats in the 2018 election. Using datasets that cover five elections (2007, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2018) over a period of 11 years, we provide a unique longitudinal perspective of citizens’ vote choice calculus. More specifically, we analyse long-term factors that are known to be crucial to make sense of electoral outcomes. Do factors such as generations, sex, attitudes towards Quebec sovereignty and party identification have the same weight in voters’ calculus over time? Our results show a relative stability, but also several interesting variations, especially regarding the effect of support for Quebec independence. This perspective deepens our understanding of recent political developments in Quebec politics.

The 2018 Ontario provincial election marked a decisive shift in the political direction of Canada’s most populous province. The election brought an end to the long reign of the Ontario Liberal Party (2003–2018), whose government devolved into a series of scandals that resulted in a third-place finish. The Liberal’s defeat came at the hands of the Progressive Conservative Party led by former Toronto city councillor, Doug Ford. The Progressive Conservative’s victory was propelled on the back of Ford’s deeply populist campaign where he promised to reassert the interests of ‘the people,’ expel the influence of elites and special interests, and clean up government corruption. This campaign discourse led many political opponents and media pundits to accuse Ford of importing the nativist, xenophobic, and divisive rhetoric of other radical right-wing populist leaders. This article advances the argument that rather than representing the importation of ‘Trumpism’ or other types of radical right-wing populism, Ford’s campaign is better understood within the tradition of Canadian populism defined by an overarching ideological commitment to neoliberalism. In appealing to voters, Ford avoided the nativist and xenophobic rhetoric of populist leaders in the United States and Western Europe, offering a conception of ‘the people’ using an economic and anti-cosmopolitan discourse centred upon middle class taxpayers. This article makes a contribution to both the literatures on Canadian elections and populism, demonstrating the lineage of Ford’s ideological commitment to populism within recent Canadian electoral history, as well as Ford’s place within the international genealogy of right-wing populism.

Australian Governments’ Stance on Illegal Immigration in 1996–2018 Australia is well known for its strict immigration policy. It results from the country’s constant struggle with the flow of illegal migrants, brought to Australian shores through human smuggling. The author analyses immigration policies of five Prime Ministers representing two major Australian parties: the Liberal Party of Australia and the Australian Labor Party. Starting with the premiership of John Howard (1996–2007), and ending with Malcolm Turnbull’s era (2015– –2018), the author examines the situation of illegal immigrants in Australia and changes in immigration and asylum policies.

In recent years centrist-liberal parties, such as the German Free Democratic Party (FDP) in 2013 and the British Liberal Democrats in 2015 and 2017, suffered enormous electoral defeats. These defeats highlight a prominent puzzle in the study of party competition and voting behavior; the empty center phenomenon. That is, empirical evidence suggests that most parties do not converge to the median voter's position, despite the centripetal force of the voters’ preference distribution. Using survey data from Canada, Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom, this article shows that deterioration of centrist parties’ valence image is followed by a collapse of their vote shares. Using mathematical simulations, this article shows that centrist parties have limited strategic opportunities to regain their support. Differently from other parties, centrist parties cannot alter their policy platforms to compensate for their deteriorated valence image. These results have important implications for political representation and voters–elite linkages.

Here, we examine the understudied merger of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party. This systematic study of the process which created the Liberal Democrats in 1988 adds to our understanding of what was a rare but important event in British politics. We demonstrate that it deviated from theoretical accounts of such mergers that stress the need for trust at the elite level. We recognise that inter-party trust can instead develop across the three faces of party organisation. We contribute a new typology for understanding these processes, and argue that existing studies are right to highlight that trust between the party in public office is important but wrong to conclude that its absence precludes mergers from occurring. Instead, we find that a lack of trust between parties in public office restricts the degree of delegation and increases the level of monitoring and formalisation, which can have damaging effects on the parties that emerge.

Examined in this article is a core power group which supported and sustained Rhee Syngman’s one-man ruling of the country in the late 1950s. So far, this issue was mostly examined within studies that focused on the ruling party Jayu-dang(Liberal Party). According to those studies, coming into the late 1950s an oligarchy-type elite group -composed of several officials including Yi Ki-bung was formed within the Liberal Party, and from 1959 till the next year(when the regime collapsed), the party practically run the country from a dominant status, even sidelining the executive(administrative) branch. This kind of approach allowed us to view the Liberal Party which had only been considered as a tool for Rhee Syngman’s governing so far as yet another political entity that composed the very structure of governance. Yet at the same time, such studies -which also tended to ‘narrow’ the examination to the Liberal Party itself- ended up only discussing whether the party was able to serve as an actual ruling party or not, or emphasizing the existence of oligarchic elite group connecting the party and the cabinet and the expansion of the party"s influence in the operation of the state. In this article a larger focus will be placed on all three sources of power: the Liberal Party, the government’s Cabinet and the Presidential residence, Gyeongmudae[secretariat]. How they connected themselves with each other, and functioned within a singular structure, will be examined. Results indicate that there was a core power group -with Yi Ki-bung at the center- that connected all the above three sources, featuring a radial human network originating from Yi. Also confirmed is that there was a limit to the party’s control over the cabinet, and that the party and the cabinet had quite a ‘checks and balance’ sort of dynamic between them.

It is a paradox that the Liberal Party's electoral defeat in 1841 attested to its underlying strength and vitality. This article focuses on the impact on party unity of the free trade measures advocated by the ministry in the months preceding its fall. The Liberal Party's bold electoral platform antagonised its protectionist MPs, a group previously overlooked in the historiography, but fell short of the demands of its radical wing for political reform. While all the ingredients for fragmentation existed, unity prevailed. Protestations of loyalty to the leadership could be heard from the mouths of Liberal MPs of all shades, from stalwart protectionists who coalesced around the ministry on traditional foreign policy grounds through to the most fervent radicals who celebrated its ‘new’ direction. Such findings of cohesion contradict accounts which have hitherto viewed the 1841 electoral defeat as evidence of the party's inchoateness. Indeed, this article shifts the historiographical narrative away from addressing why the Liberals lost to the more pertinent issue of why the losses suffered were not greater. In answering that question, both the sensitivity with which the financial agenda was presented by ministers and the flexibility of different sections of the Liberal Party in interpreting and presenting the free trade measures to the electorate are underlined. Above all, Lord John Russell is rehabilitated as a ‘popular’ leader and his importance in the development of the nascent Liberal Party is unearthed.

A leader from Quebec boosts the fortunes of the Liberal party in that province. This, in turn, has helped make Quebec the veto player in twentieth-century Canadian elections and the Liberals the “natural” governing party. Although Quebec is no longer as critical as before, a leader from the province still makes a big difference. Full impact from the pattern requires more than one election to unfold. Patterns outside Quebec are similar, if fainter: the Liberal party is not punished for choosing a Quebecker and may even be helped. The early success of the pattern moved the Liberals to alternate between Quebec and non-Quebec leaders, such that the party is now led by a Quebecker more often than not. Maintaining alternation has never been easy and is only getting harder.

In 2015, the Liberal Party of Canada formed a majority federal government on a platform that included prioritizing Nation-to-Nation relationships with Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) peoples in the country and re-asserting global leadership in climate change action by moving away from fossil-fuel based extraction and toward renewable energy initiatives. It may be argued that addressing both of these issues, advancing Indigenous–Settler reconciliation, and mitigating climate change, can be done in the same space. Indeed, though Indigenous peoples in Canada and elsewhere have recently moved forward with renewable energy initiatives within their Territories, there has been very little critical analysis on just how such projects have been operationalized and whether renewable energy can or even should be considered a vehicle for reconciliation efforts. In this paper, we present a systematic review of Canadian literature (spanning from 1980 to 2017) concerning Indigenous peoples’ involvement in renewable energy to better understand the stated motivations and desires of Indigenous peoples in Canada taking leadership, partnering in, and (or) participating in the renewable energy sector. Using a series of keyword search strings across three academic databases, two theses databases, and a grey literature search, we retrieved literature (n = 980) that was subjected to four exclusionary forms and then thematically analyzed the included literature (n = 26). Our findings suggest Indigenous peoples’ experiences and motivations are varied, yet many are developing renewable energy in their Territories to: break free of colonial ties, move towards energy autonomy, establish more reliable energy systems, and reap the long-term financial benefits that clean energy can provide. Despite the apparent advantages seen throughout most of the literature reviewed here, we suggest further research in this area is necessary before this kind of positive rhetoric of renewable energy in Indigenous communities builds enough momentum that proponents become blind to possible shortcomings. We conclude with a broader discussion of the interactions between Indigenous–Settler reconciliation in the context of renewable energy projects as well as offering indicators for future research to fill current knowledge gaps.

Politicians who appeal to the wisdom of the people and present themselves as defenders of the people are not fortuitous figures in time nor in the forms they adopt in the twenty-first century. Their rise has taken decades. This means that the conditions of exclusion and/or the lack of opportunities for broad sectors of society have found in populist practices powerful and influential leaderships in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. In this scenario, Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his team have had to use skillful strategies to successfully minimize populists, who make conflict and polemics their main political capital for their bases. This article outlines these protagonists and their characteristics in North America and the Trudeau government approach to them. Los personajes de la política que apelan a la sabiduría del pueblo y se asumen como sus defensores no son figuras casuales en tiempo ni en las formas que adoptan en el siglo XXI, su ascenso tiene décadas gestándose; de modo que las condiciones de exclusión y/o falta de oportunidades para amplios sectores de la sociedad han encontrado en las prácticas populistas liderazgos poderosos e influyentes en Canadá, Estados Unidos y México. En tal escenario, el primer ministro del Partido Liberal, Justin Trudeau, y su equipo han tenido que emplear estrategias hábiles que resultaron exitosas para minimizar los efectos de estas expresiones, las cuales hacen del conflicto y la polémica algunos de los principales capitales políticos con sus bases. En este artículo conoceremos a los protagonistas y sus características en América del Norte y la posición del gobierno de Trudeau frente a ellos. El populismo es una reacción a la tendencia globalizante de los últimos tiempos. Los excluidos de tales beneficios se han alineado en torno a poderosas figuras mediáticas que denuncian esa realidad, minimizando la gestión política y responsabilizando a las elites del estado de las cosas. Para los políticos liberales contemporáneos como Justin Trudeau, esta realidad ha sido un desafío, pues en medio de marejadas de personajes con dichas características ha tenido que llevar a la práctica una estrategia diversa, para no entrar en el escenario que sus antagonistas desean.

To explore discourses pertaining to immigrants and refugees introduced by the Trudeau Liberal Government elected in 2015. This study employs qualitative methodology in the form of discourse analysis of 9 speeches made by the Liberal Party’s speakers. This study has two main objectives to first conduct a directive discourse analysis to analyze the presence of neoliberal discourses found within the Harper Conservative Government: economic burden, reinforcement of traditional gender roles, security threat within the discourse of the Liberal Party’s speakers. The second objective is to discover new ways of thinking about immigrant and refugees by conductive an exploitative discourse analysis.

From 1995 to 2006, Canadian trade policy purported to insulate the Canadian health care system from the effects of trade liberalization, largely through reliance upon key general exclusion clauses in the NAFTA and the GATS and other legal strategies. During the Conservative years 2006-2015 the government de-emphasized these strategies, and (more importantly) the international trade agenda increasingly emphasized investment promotion and patent protection. When the Liberal Party returned to government in 2015, personal, structural, and ideological factors all pointed to the retention of the neoliberal trade agenda, but one which was legitimated by more 'progressive' features, such as side-agreements. This paper traces the evolution of 'progressive neoliberalism' in the trade-health interface and argues that we need to recognize the inherent limitations of an approach that preaches harmony and coherence between domestic health care and international trade law.

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This chapter explores why attempts to kindle debate on compulsory voting in Australia have been largely fruitless. The answer can be found in a number of contributing factors: that compulsory voting is compatible with the national political temperament; that it is buttressed by path dependency; that while there have been spikes of dissent about the practice in the Liberal Party (especially from the 1980s to the first decade of the twenty-first century) that opposition never attained a majority position on the right-of-centre side of politics; that the critics of compulsory voting have been reliant on abstract arguments in contrast to its readily demonstrable benefits (namely, the consistently high voter turnout); that the way in which compulsory voting has been enforced by authorities has been generally lenient; and, most importantly, that compulsory voting has enjoyed sustained and widespread public support.

This article traces the rise of neoliberalism in Denmark to the so-called crisis of the welfare state in the early 1970s, where a new liberal offensive was launched withinthe ranks of Venstre – The Liberal Party of Denmark. The article shows how new liberal ideas were launched by a generation of politicians who all connected the crisis of the welfare state to a growing public sector, which they regarded as inefficient and undemocratic. In the attempt to counter the crisis in question, they did not aim to abolish the welfare state but to reduce its size and change its content. The aim was first of all to create competition in the public sector. In this process, the liberal politicians launched new ideas concerning decentralization, free choice in the public sector, and economic growth, which formed the pillars of the new liberalism that was developed within Venstre in the 1970s.

During the 2015 election campaign, the opposition Liberal party pledged that if elected, it would re-establish diplomatic relations with Iran, which had been suspended in 2012 by the Conservative g...

The Brazilian presidential elections concluded on October 28 with devastating results. The radical right congressman Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party (PSL) won 55 percent of the vote, whi...

France voted for a new president on May 7, 2017. Emmanuel Macron, the candidate for the social liberal party En Marche!, won in a runoff election against Marine Le Pen, the candidate for the right-wing populist and nationalist party Front National. An enormous increase can be recorded comparing the shares of blank and spoiled ballot papers in the first round on 23 April, when no candidate won a majority, with that of the runoff election, which was held between the top two candidates less than a month later. Exceeding 11% in the 2017 runoff election all in all, invalid voting is more common than it has ever been before. In light of this, there is a strong suspicion that numerous voters—in particular those who did not vote for one of the top two candidates in the first round—decided to vote blank or spoiled their ballot paper in the second round. However, this conventional wisdom has not yet been tested empirically.

During the First World War, British by‐elections were more frequent than in either the pre‐ or post‐war period due to the length of the parliament, the stress of the war, and combat fatalities. Due to an agreement among the chief whips of the principal British parties, these by‐elections were infrequently contested. This party truce meant that in most by‐elections only a single official candidate from the incumbent party stood. However, an independent candidate (or in four instances, two independent candidates) did challenge the official candidate in 29 of the 118 by‐elections (or 24.6% of the time). The challengers were more than three times likely to support the war than call for peace by negotiation. In only seven by‐elections (or 5.9%), peace by negotiation candidates stood, and they polled much more poorly on average than the candidates who supported the war. Only three independent candidates defeated the official candidate, and all were strongly supportive of the war effort. Several independent candidates stood espousing a narrow issue, such as wartime liquor controls, veterans’ rights, conscription of married men, co‐operative taxes, or agricultural concerns. Further, the by‐election results foreshadowed the post‐war replacement of the collapsing Liberal Party by Labour as the principal rival of the Conservatives.

This article begins with an examination of the controversy caused in 1885 by the Macdonald government’s expansion of the dominion franchise to First Nations reserves in eastern Canada, a controversy that revolved around the liberal tenet that the right to vote should be intrinsically linked to independent property ownership. It then discusses the role of the Grand River Six Nations and Mississaugas in the elections and by-elections that took place in the Ontario ridings of Brant South and Haldimand between 1886 and 1897, the year before the Laurier government abolished Macdonald’s Electoral Franchise Act, with the result that treaty status Indians would not regain the vote in national elections until 1960. The picture that emerges is of an Indigenous community torn between conflicting forces, with traditionalists opposing participation in Canada’s elections, reformers supporting the franchise as well as the Conservative Party, and a third group who argued that the Liberal Party was more sensitive than the Tories to First Nations demands for increased responsibility and autonomy.

Aureliano Cândido Tavares Bastos was one of the main ideologists of the Brazilian Liberal Party in the 1860s and 1870s. Through several books, pamphlets and articles, Tavares Bastos defended that Brazil should follow a greater political and administrative decentralization, granting greater autonomy to the provinces. Another way to summarize Tavares Bastos’s political thinking is to say that he had great admiration for the United States, and understood that Brazil should, within the possibilities, copy more the political model of this country. Thus, this text interprets the political thinking of Tavares Bastos emphasizing as central factor of this the proposal that Brazil should not only more closely copy US federalism, but also get closer to the US in its foreign policy. Resumo Aureliano Cândido Tavares Bastos foi um dos principais ideólogos do Partido Liberal brasileiro nas décadas de 1860 e 1870. Através de diversos livros, panfletos e artigos, Tavares Bastos defendeu que o Brasil deveria seguir uma maior descentralização política e administrativa, conferindo maior autonomia às províncias. Outra forma de resumir o pensamento político de Tavares Bastos é afirmar que ele possuía enorme admiração pelos Estados Unidos e entendia que o Brasil deveria, dentro das possibilidades, copiar mais o modelo político daquele país. Dessa forma, este texto interpreta o pensamento político de Tavares Bastos destacando como seu fator central a proposta de que o Brasil deveria não apenas acompanhar mais de perto o federalismo norte-americano, mas também aproximar-se mais dos EUA em sua política externa.

Did Canadian voters choose Justin Trudeau in 2015, or did they choose the Liberal Party? Did British voters choose David Cameron in 2014, or did they choose to be led by a Conservative? In parliamentary systems around the world, no direct link exists between voters and leadership candidates in the way they are connected in presidential systems, and yet, studies suggest that voters consider party leaders when casting their ballot (Bittner 2011), and that this connection between the vote and the leader of the party is becoming increasingly important (Mughan 2000; Poguntke & Webb 2005). Scholars of comparative party systems and institutions have pointed to declining partisanship, increased voter volatility, and the changing nature of media and campaigns as the key reasons for the “presidentialization” of politics and the increasing importance of leaders in the minds of voters. There is mixed evidence for this phenomenon, however, and while in some countries (such as Israel), the pattern of increasing personalization is clear (Rahat and Sheafer, 2007), in others (such as Germany), personalization does not appear to be there (Kaase, 1994; Kriesi, 2011). Most (although not all) studies of presidentialization focus their analyses on Europe, and yet there are plenty of non-European parliamentary systems we can (and should) assess as well, to determine whether presidentialization is a global phenomenon as some suggest. This paper turns to Canada. What is the relationship between voters and party leaders in the Canadian context? Do party leaders in Canada matter? How and why? And has this relationship changed over time? Are we seeing a presidentialization of Canadian elections? This paper assesses the role of leaders in Canadian elections over time, using Canadian Election Study Data from 1984 to 2015. The data suggest that party leaders matter, but that this has always been the case in Canada: elections are not becoming more personalized over time.

The Liberal Party’s surprise win in the 2015 federal election was partly due to an articulation of liberal internationalism that contrasted with Prime Minister Harper’s foreign policy vision. “Cana...

The disparity in the gender gap in parliament between the Australian Labor Party and Liberal Party has grown over time. Katrine Beauregard assesses what measures to increase the representation of women in parliament the public – and political partisans – would support.

This essay challenges the conventional wisdom concerning the impact of the 1918 Reform Act on the Liberal Party. It was not the extension of the franchise or any other feature of the act that led to the downfall of the Liberal Party. Instead, it was the division between Asquith and Lloyd George and the resulting ‘Coupon election’ of 1918 which severely harmed the Liberals, and the provisions of the act only caused difficulties for the Liberal Party in the context of the split. This essay explores the four facets of the 1918 Reform Act (the enlarged franchise, the redistribution of constituencies, the new registration system, and the method of election), and examines how these affected the Liberal Party. The response of the Liberal elite to these changes is found to be wanting, with the leadership of Asquith particularly criticized. It was the failure of the party leaders to engage with the changed circumstances, and particularly the ways in which they viewed the new electorate, that disadvantaged the Liberals. The coincidental timing of the act, when the Liberals were at their most divided for a generation, provides the most persuasive explanation of why they struggled while the Labour and Conservative Parties prospered under the new system.

This paper focusses on the circumstances under which various political organisations, particularly the ANC and the SACP, in South Africa turned to the armed struggle as a means to prosecuting the liberation struggle in the early 1960s. It looks at the setbacks and shortcomings that this shift in strategy and tactics suffered and the challenges that arose at the time. From the perspective of the ANC and its allies it is important to appreciate that the armed struggle was an extension of the political struggle. The paper seeks to unravel some of the complex theoretical and empirical issues that were at play across the broad spectrum of organisations that regarded themselves as opposed to the apartheid system. We focus on the features of the mass struggles in the 1950s and the repressive actions of the state culminating in the massacres at Sharpeville and Nyanga, the imposition of the State of Emergency and the mass detentions that created a climate in which by 1960-62 almost all organisations that could lay claim to be part of the struggle had concluded that the time had arrived for armed resistance to apartheid. The paper draws together the range of groupings and organisations that entered this field in the early 1960s, looks at the response of the state and the setbacks that these different efforts endured. It concludes at the point where international solidarity becomes a significant force against the repressive actions of the apartheid state and the continuation of the liberation struggle depended on the regrouping of forces of the ANC and MK in exile.

This paper examines sports metaphors as symbolic resources for electoral discourse, focusing on both their conventional nature and their strategic value in delivering the political message. It takes the form of a case study analyzing the multimodal realizations of the ‘EuroChampion’ sports metaphor in five posters used by the Romanian Liberal Party in the 2014 campaign for the European Parliament. We argue that the ‘EuroChampion’ metaphor and the richness of sports imagery are strategically used to enhance deeper doctrinal party positioning, such as promoting meritocracy and competitiveness, while, at the same time, empowering women candidates in the election.

On 7 December 1916, in a dramatic coup, Lloyd George supplanted Asquith and became prime minister. This marked the death of a great party and has generated huge controversy. For long, Lloyd George was condemned as the culprit but latterly his reputation has risen sharply. Asquith and Lloyd George came from very dierent wings of the party, imperialist and Little Englan- der. Asquith seemed the supreme insider, Lloyd George a supreme Welsh outsider. However in peacetime government, they formed a tremendous partnership. Their close association con- tinued to the formation of the rst coalition in May 1915. Then serious division came over military conscription, with Lloyd George moving towards his old foes, the Unionists. As min- ister for munitions, then secretary for war, he became publicly very critical of the conduct of the war. A great conict arose over his demand for a new war committee. This was directed against the generals:he did not wish to become prime minister.It looked as if a compromise was possible.On 3 December 1916 Asquith agreed to such a committee but,fatally,reversed his view the next day, Crucial was his misjudgment of the Unionist leaders, especially Balfour. On 6 De- cember the king asked Lloyd George to form a government. Asquith seriously exaggerated his own strength while Lloyd George now had growing Unionist support, the backing of Labour and of a majority of Liberal MPs mobilised by Addison. So Asquith fell and a governmental revolution followed – a new small war cabinet, a cabinet secretariat under Hankey, a secretariat of private advisors in the ‘Garden Suburb’ and an inexorable move towards prime ministerial (or quasi-presidential) government. In May 1918, the ‘Maurice debate’ saw the Liberals divided into pro- and anti-government factions; they were cr ushed at the subsequent general election. The party was thereafter haunted by December 1916 and responsibility was bitterly contested. Yet it should be remembered that before 7 December 1916,the two Liberal leader s formed a dy- namic and commanding partnership, which changed British politics profoundly and irreversibly.

This article discusses the way in which nominally liberal, secular political parties in the Netherlands refer to religion when describing Dutch national identity with particular emphasis on controversies surrounding the 2017 parliamentary elections. Focussing on the currently ruling liberal party VVD and the populist right-wing party PVV, appeals on ‘judeo-christian roots’ and the importance of christian symbols are analyzed against the backdrop of larger currents of religious-secular developments in (inter)national political discourse. The author suggest using the term ‘postsecular nationalism’ to describe this development. The article ends with speculation on the impact of postsecular nationalism for policy-makers.

This article takes a fresh look at the decline of the Conservative Party in post-war Scotland, a phenomenon that has provoked much debate. The analysis presented here is innovative in that it takes a regional approach, whereas other contributions to this field have tended to ignore the considerable regional diversity of Scottish political behaviour. By examining one particular region of Scotland – the rural north-east – this article demonstrates that the Conservatives’ decline occurred at the hands of parties – the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalists – that did not brand themselves as left wing or right wing; the latter in particular eschewed conventional political labels. This marks another departure from the established literature, which has tended to discuss the decline in terms of the Conservative Party or the Scottish electorate moving ‘left’ or ‘right’. Furthermore, the article makes it clear that a serious decline befell the party between 1965 and 1979: before the advent of Thatcherism that has widely been held responsible for the Scottish Conservatives’ electoral woes. This analysis is conducted by examining the local press coverage of the region, as well as the national and regional records of the parties concerned. It therefore seeks to make a contribution to the wider study of post-war British politics, by demonstrating the benefits of local and regional approaches in this period where they have been largely overlooked. This article demonstrates that even in the 1960s and 1970s, when politics seemed so nationally uniform, there is considerable diversity to be appreciated in different parts of the country.

From the Act of Union until 1884, the Irish electoral franchise was different from that in England or Scotland. The history of its reform also followed a different calendar: 1829, 1832, 1850, and 1868 were the waypoints on the path to homogenisation with the rest of the United Kingdom. But the Irish Reform Act of 1868 has received little attention, and is usually dismissed as a minor technical alteration of minimal political or social importance. When set against the changes in England the year before, this is true. But it is worthy of study, and this essay is the first to examine the 1860s campaign for Irish reform, its relationship to events in Britain, the expectations for the act, its various drafts, and its political consequences. It traces the short-lived alliance between the Catholic Church, the Irish Liberal Party and often secular working-class radicals in both Ireland and England, as well as the parallel, but quite distinct, campaign for reform on the part of working-class northern protestants, many associated with the Orange Order. Although political circumstance resulted in the abandonment of most of the projected reforms, the drafting process and accompanying debates reveal important aspects of Irish political realities and expectations, as well as the limits of parliamentary interest in Ireland. Even in its abbreviated form, the act had a significant impact on Irish politics, substantially increasing the borough electorate across the island and dramatically so in Ulster.

Using text mining, this chapter digitally analyses 1,619,838 words of candidates’ manifestos from the elections of 1892, 1906, and particularly 1918. It makes numerous interesting findings, in particular that the majority of references to promises and pledges were actually attacks on those offered by opponents. In 1918, it finds that Conservatives moved away from the old language of party and towards a communitarian appeal to nation in framing promises, while the official Liberal Party maintained much the same approach it had in previous elections. This chapter evidences not just the feminisation of political appeals ushered in by women’s suffrage in 1918 but also a broader gendering of electoral language in general. Finally, it explores differences in party appeals to the new female electors, finding (surprisingly) that Asquithian Liberals focussed on women most and Conservatives least.

During the last decades, political parties have still appeared as an almost unknown factor within the substantial expansion of topics in forest policy research. While discriminating between green, state/protection and market/use orientated parties, this study aims to reveal the influence of different governing parties on forest nature conservation policy in Germany, contributing to partisan theory. The analysis covers 247 politically relevant cases between 1998 and 2018 in 15 German Bundeslander (regional level). The analysis model distinguishes between positive, negative and non-decisions, linking results of governing parties' activities in the agenda-setting and the policy-formulation phases of the policy process. It examines the manifestos of the governing parties and the results of the government's actions concerning four of the main conflict issues. Both the demands in manifestos and the policy outputs are evaluated using the interests of the forest and the nature conservation policy sector as a benchmark. As a result, two-thirds of the non-decisions arrived at during issue-relevant periods led to a status quo, as well as 6% of demands blocked, and 27% were positive decisions that led to a renewed policy output. Among these, only few corresponded to the interests of nature conservation. In proportion to their government participation, the Greens have contributed most frequently to policy outputs, and they have contributed the most to nature-conservation oriented outputs. The small liberal party, FDP, is the corresponding counterpart and fosters forest interests the most, but it has governed only seldom. The two major parties are more balanced. The SPD, as a state-orientated party, clearly leans towards nature conservation, whereas the CDU/CSU presents a market-orientated party, and prefers forest interests. In conclusion, political parties make a significant difference in German forest nature conservation policy. The details on the parties contribute empirical insight into partisan theory in environmental policy.

Emissions reduction policies for pollutant companies in Australia has become one issue that divides society and parliament. This study discusses the causes of the shifting of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), a carbon pricing policy by the Australian Labor Party to the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) by the Coalition. This study used the political exchange concept by Bruno Dente which describes a mutually beneficial relationship between the Coalition (consisting of the Liberal Party and National Party) with business groups. In addition, Carter A. Wilson’s theory of policy regimes and policy regime change was used to see the presence of interest groups and stages in policy shifts. This study used a qualitative approach by collecting data from literature studies and the Australian institution’s website, Hansard. Based on the findings, political exchange between the Coalition and business groups encourages the creation of conditions where stressors / enablers, legitimacy crisis, and power shifts occur. The Coalition as opposition then weakens the ETS policy regime by the reigning Australian Labor Party (ALP). After the Coalition won the election, there was an ETS policy shift by ALP to become an ERF which passed through the House of Representatives and Senate, and was approved by Governor General in 2014.