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Privately financed infrastructure agreements (PFIAs) are increasingly being used across the globe, bringing private money into the delivery of public goods. How does introducing private actors to such a process change how we think about distributive politics? I investigate this question using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, uncovering a relationship consistent with PFIAs being used as distributive goods and exploring how the credit‐claim potential of PFIAs may affect their distributive use. My quantitative analyses (on 16 middle‐income countries) present evidence suggestive of a relationship between electoral variables and the likelihood of a PFIA being present in a district. In districts aligned with the national ruling party, PFIAs are more likely to be concentrated in swing districts than core districts. I find that this relationship is more pronounced for PFIAs that are more directly attributable to the government. My qualitative press analysis provides insights into how politicians use various features of PFIAs to create credit‐claiming opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group members often view their leaders as agents of continuity because leadership can help maintain group history and core values despite inevitable changes. Previous research suggests a connection between group continuity (i.e., a sense of connection between a group's past, present, and future) and a preference for autocratic leadership. However, whether group members' perception of the current state of group continuity influences the way they perceive leaders whom they have already supported has not been investigated. In the current study, we hypothesized that self‐uncertainty mediates the effect of perceived continuity on perceptions of leaders. Specifically, lowered perception of group continuity triggers self‐uncertainty, which motivates people to perceive the leaders they support to be more autocratic because these leaders often provide effective means to reduce feelings of self‐uncertainty. Additionally, as people might differ in their long‐term desire for group continuity, we hypothesized that the desire for group continuity moderates the path from perceived group continuity and self‐uncertainty. To test the hypothesized moderated mediation model, we collected data from Democrats and Republicans in the United States (N = 515) after the 2022 midterm elections. Analyses showed a significant moderated mediation effect, index = −0.02, 95% CI [−0.04, −0.002]. Specifically, perception of continuity within one's political party positively correlated with self‐uncertainty, and this correlation was stronger among those who displayed greater levels of desire for group continuity. Increased self‐uncertainty, in turn, positively correlated with the perception that the gubernatorial leader that one voted for during the midterm elections was autocratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While one in five people in the UK are disabled, their number among elected representatives remains disproportionately low. In ongoing efforts to make politics more inclusive and diverse, disabled people often remain sidelined. As a politically relevant identity, disability is associated with a shared set of experiences and policy interests which are often overlooked. This is at least in part owing to the under‐representation of disabled politicians, which is likely also contributing to a sense of political alienation. Thus, tackling the barriers that disabled people experience in the political recruitment process is not only a matter of democratic justice and equality, but also essential for ensuring that disabled people's needs and concerns are recognised and met. This article outlines the obstacles that disabled people experience in pursuing elected office—including inaccessibility, inadequate financial resources and ableist institutions and cultures—and offers recommendations to political parties, parliaments and governments on how to mitigate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional nationalism in Spain – particularly those movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country – have been characterized at the parliamentary level by political parties from both the traditional left and right of the political spectrum. While calls for greater autonomy and even secession are made from both ends of that spectrum, the framings of their calls for self-government vary in content and scope. Since the turn into the 21st century, sub-state nationalist parties of the left - those more typically associated with a prioritization of environmental concerns - in both regions have taken an increased share of the seats in their respective parliaments. Over the same period, climate change has increasingly moved to the front of the list of the concerns of European citizens. This paper investigates the degree to which key regional nationalists of the left have moved to incorporate environmental and climate change concerns into their claim making, narrative, and framings, highlighting both regional, and governance level comparative dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the EU introduced the lead candidate procedure to raise citizens' awareness and interest in the European Parliament (EP) elections and, thereby, voter turnout. We study the use of personalization, centralized personalization (focusing on lead candidates), emotional personalization, and private personalization on Facebook by political parties across 12 countries during the 2014 and 2019 EP campaigns and the effects of personalization on user engagement. A standardized quantitative content analysis of 14,293 posts by 227 political parties shows that about half of the Facebook posts were personalized, but there is no general trend of rising personalization. While emotional personalization increased, parties hardly ever posted about their lead candidates and their private lives. Variations are not due to structural (e.g., party and media systems) or geographical/cultural factors. Positive effects are found for the use of emotional personalization attracting a higher volume of user reactions (likes, reactions, shares, and comments) in both elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even when controlling for big versus small government philosophies, this paper reports quantitatively significant cleavages in the probabilities of supporting increased federal antipoverty efforts that persist between conservatives and liberals, and Republicans and Democrats. However, predicted conditional probabilities show that support for increased welfare spending or federal responsibility in raising the standard of living of the poor is not overwhelming, even among liberals and Democrats, although support for increased federal assistance to the poor is fairly strong, even among conservatives and Republicans. Hence, we consider assertions that conservatives and Republicans do not care about the poor to be extreme and unsupported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Country comparisons, often suffering from unobserved heterogeneity and obscuring subnational variation, dominate the social policy literature. However, the subnational level is better suited to reduce the omitted variable bias. This article distinguishes between social consumption and social investment policies and investigates their determinants at the subnational level. Following the literature across countries, we test the role of incumbent parties' ideology, but for within-country variation in social policy. Austria is a case in point because states have discretion in social policy (e.g., regarding public childcare and social assistance). Panel regressions covering all nine states in Austria for the years 1991 to 2019 reveal that the cabinet share of Social-Democrats increases social investment spending, while the Christian-Democratic party decreases it, and the populist radical right party reduces expenses for social consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a proxy for issue salience via studying congruence between parties' organizational structure and the policies they promote to their voters. This charter-manifesto congruence, i.e. institutionalizing the same democratic innovations at the intra-party level and advocating for their adoption at the national level, is particularly useful to demarcate party profiles in dominant party systems and electoral autocracies. To demonstrate how such congruence can be measured, we analyse the credibility of the commitments made by opposition parties in Hungary to a variety of democratic innovations. Drawing on novel survey data, we further substantiate our argument by showing high support for these innovations among party members and voters. The analysis identifies gender quotas as the most congruent innovation. Our longitudinal research design also reveals a recent breakthrough of e-democracy in party manifestos. We then discuss how preferences for various innovations are potentially shaped by membership size, party founders' political socialization or organizational learning. At the normative level, the analysis suggests that some forms of democratic innovations are better suited for intra-party organizations than for party manifestos. These implications might be relevant for those committed to promoting deliberation, gender equality and (re-)engagement of the youth in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing literature seeks to bring agency into the study of movement-parties (M-Ps). Yet studies pay little attention to radical M-Ps which confront acute dilemmas when deciding to contest parliamentary elections in systems they deem illegitimate. This article problematizes radical M-Ps' entry in elections and the meaning they attribute to the role and function of elections – their epistemology of elections. We examine three M-Ps – Beirut Madinati, LiHaqqi, and Muwatinun wa Muwatinat fi Dawla. We demonstrate that radical M-Ps with a coherent strategy for political change, one that includes an epistemology of elections, are more likely to mitigate and survive electoral dilemmas when entering elections. Radical M-Ps lacking such a strategy risk fragmentation and potential dissolution. Methodologically, we chose Lebanon because 1) during the period under study, it is a democracy and, consequently, a relevant case study for theories of party formation; and 2) it offers a controlled comparison of M-Ps in elections. Moreover, all three M-Ps emerged during a similar time-period, with similar social bases, and, at least originally, radical positions. Research is based on participation in, and observation of, protests and elections between 2011 and 2022, as well as primary and secondary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political preferences translate into behavior? I argue that when individuals support a stigmatized party, they have an incentive to hide that support. I start by theoretically discussing the meaning of political stigma. I define it as a situation in which individuals perceive that there are social norms against a political preference. I then show observational evidence of stigma leading to the falsification of political preferences. I study a Spanish region where voting was public in one election. Qualitative evidence suggests that voters felt their vote could be observed. Triple differences models show that this observability decreased voting for Partido Popular (PP), a stigmatized party in the country. At the individual level, PP supporters make more efforts to keep their vote choice secret. Those who make such efforts also show more discomfort answering political surveys. The results highlight social norms as predictors of political behavior and underline the consequences of changing voting procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the implementation of voter identification (ID) laws intensify conflict between legislative parties? We examine the consequences of the American states' modern wave of voter ID requirements for polarization in their legislatures. We theorize that these laws alter legislative candidates' perceived uncertainty about their districts' median voters, which creates centrifugal forces on their ideological positions and ultimately magnifies partisan divisions. To test this theory, we leverage plausibly exogenous variation in voter ID law implementation induced by the timing of postenactment legal challenges. We find empirical support; a law going in force widens interparty ideological distance. This divergence may be stronger for Republican parties, does not appear in other contentious policies, and is not an artifact of the legislative agenda. Thus, a crucial legacy of these laws is the amplification of political conflict. By creating conditions that stifle compromise and bipartisanship, voter ID requirements indirectly threaten the quality of American democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What brings competing parties to coalesce into new entities? I present a model of electoral competition in which parties can form alliances and decide how binding these should be. Parties face a dynamic trade-off between insuring themselves against significant shifts in public opinion and allowing flexibility to respond to future electoral changes. The model shows that more binding alliances such as mergers emerge in equilibrium when electoral volatility is high; instead, when voters are predictable (e.g., highly partisan), parties either run alone or form more flexible preelectoral coalitions. When the electorate is sufficiently volatile, a risk-averse centrist party might prefer to merge with an ideologically extreme party than with a moderate one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ex-rebels govern almost a quarter of sub-Saharan Africa today. How does war affect these countries' long-run political development, and what explains their rebel regimes' longevity? The article explores the role of coercion in rebel governance: postwar governance draws from wartime strategies, which helps to explain (1) the continued use of organized coercion in postwar politics when faced with challenges to ruling party dominance and (2) where such coercion is most effectively employed. I examine Zimbabwe where the anticolonial rebel party has remained in power since 1980. I rely on archival data to qualitatively trace mechanisms, map prewar to current-day administrative divisions, and code a measure of wartime governance. I combine these data with Afrobarometer surveys to demonstrate long-run subnational variation in coercive political control. Findings deepen our understanding of war's effects on peacetime politics and provide one explanation for infrequent political turnovers despite regular elections in many postconflict states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can parties and politicians increase support for their policy positions by adding appeals to social groups? Social groups provide simple cues that heuristically help voters to decide whether they support a policy. We argue that the effect of group appeals crucially depends on respondents' group affect and the valence of the group appeal. Among those with a positive attitude toward a group, adding a positive group appeal to a policy statement should increase support for the policy statement, while adding a negative appeal (i.e., against the group) should decrease support. Among those with negative attitudes toward a group, the opposite effects should occur. We test our expectations with two survey experiments. Our results indicate that the addition of group appeals substantially influences the evaluations of voters and leads to higher polarization. Social group appeals are useful to political parties, but these rhetorical tools may reinforce attitude polarization and group stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know very little about the women who testify before congressional committees. Here we present data on the women who appeared as witnesses out of the 36,950 persons who gave testimony before 7,750 subcommittees and committees. We consider the roles of political party, party control, gender of chiefs of staff, location of hearings, and chamber rules among other factors to explain the underrepresentation of women witnesses. We find that women are dramatically underrepresented. Ultimately, the presence of Democratic women staff directors and women committee chairs, as well as initiatives to track witness diversity, increase the likelihood of women testifying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional narratives hold that parties are "the orphans of political philosophy" and that systematic normative justifications of parties and partisanship have emerged only in recent years in the West. This article aims to show that when antiparty sentiments were prevalent in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western societies, a systematic justification of party politics existed in China. Western antipartyism in that time shifted from an older accusation that parties were divisive and subversive to a "progressive antipartyism" that portrayed parties as elitist and antidemocratic "machines." In China, however, although proparty intellectuals faced the first type of antipartyism, the "progressive" type was relatively absent, as there weren't any mature party machines in the first place. Far from being a hindrance to democracy, parties comprised of public-spirited elites were justified as an instrument for political founding: transforming passive subjects under an imperial despotism into modern active citizens in a constitutional democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista UNISCI is the property of Unidad de Investigaciones Sobre Seguridad y Cooperacion International (UNISCI) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Omer Halisdemir Universitesi Iktisadi ve Idari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of Omer Halisdemir University, Faculty of Economics & Admistrative Sciene and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Athenaeum: Polskie Studia Politologiczne is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Security Studies Nicolaus Copernicus University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article aims to contribute to the debate on the rise of independents in local politics and the underlying factors driving this trend in Europe by investigating the situation in Czechia, a post-communist country with a highly fragmented local government system. This study uses statistical analyses of electoral data from the 2010, 2014 and 2018 local elections to test the relevance of supply-side and demand-side explanations of the rise of independents. The analysis results show that the political strength of independents in Czech local elections has steadily increased during the last decade. Both tested theoretical models are valid but the effects of supply-side and demand-side factors are highly conditioned by municipalities' population sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reflects on the evolution of the Afro-Caribbean neologism "jayaera"—a deeply internal feeling of joy when one can freely be oneself, coined by performer Macha Colón. By conducting a close reading of how, since 2008, Macha popularized "Jayá" (adj.), and by studying D'Chamacas party as a catalyst for "jayaera" (n.), this article analyzes the collectivization of "cuir bliss" and examines its multimedia origins. It also explores how, in 2019, there was a marked shift toward "combative jayaera" (n. with adj. modifier) that escalates "cuir bliss" into "cuir irreverence" through #8M Slut Walks, the Perreo Combativo during #RickyRenuncia protests, and development of the Caribbean kiki scene. The article argues that "jayaera" has gradually separated from its creator through reinterpretations and adaptations, notably through performer Ana Macho's song "Jayau," alternative Pride celebrations, and as a strategy for political parties to present themselves as open to LGBTQIA+ issues. Lastly, the article revisits Macha's latest exploration of this Afro-Caribbean multimedia neologism through the Templo de la Jayaera (est. 2021), where participants identify and develop spaces for contemplative experiences, further engaging with the slippery and transient nature of decolonial joy and cuir bliss for Puerto Ricans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting advice applications rely on user input to match user preferences to political parties or candidates. Providing the input can be time-consuming, which may have a negative effect on participation. For individuals who are under time constraints or who are affected by survey fatigue, the participation threshold may be lowered if there is an option to conclude the test without answering all question items. The test result should ideally be close to the result that the participant would have gotten after answering the full battery of questions. We propose a method that allows respondents to conclude a VAA early and still get results with sufficient accuracy.The method proposed here extends the Graded Response Model and the Maximum Information Criterion, used in Item Response Theory. The aim of the method is to allow the user to control the length of the test. Furthermore, we want a simpler interpretation of multidimensional parameter estimates than we get from traditional MIRT. To achieve this, we propose an algorithm for adaptive IRT capable of selecting from a pool of items that belong to separate unidimensional scales. Using both simulated data and response data from a voting advice application project, we evaluate the accuracy of shorter tests implemented with our adaptive method. When only a few test items are answered, our proposed method outperforms a static-order IRT test of equal length in identifying the best match. We expect that implementation of the method can increase participation and engagement in voting advice applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that the resurge of political violence by Renamo combatants in central Mozambique in the period 2013–2016 should not be merely understood in terms of a remobilisation of former combatants. Rather, the trajectories of Renamo's combatants are better understood when considered in relation to the continuation of Renamo as a political party, an armed movement, and a social and economic network, all at the same time, over the course of war and peace. Based on ethnographic research in the district of Maringue in central Mozambique, I show how Renamo maintained its armed wing from 1992 onwards; how former combatants remained part of so-called 'Renamo networks' in multiple ways; how the wider social context of Maringue was intertwined with Renamo during the war and how in post-war Maringue people, places, and institutions became politically divided between the Frelimo state and Renamo. Considering Renamo in terms of an armed political party within wider social and economic networks, offers new outlooks on the more recent armed conflict and the position of combatants. Conceptually this process is not easy to capture in terms of demobilisation and remobilisation (hence the title – renamobilised). Theoretically, this analysis of the trajectories of former combatants in Mozambique contributes to literature on the continuation of wartime networks and details the manifold ways by which these are intertwined with social life after war's end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Academic Inquiries / Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi is the property of Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi (Journal of Academic Inquiries) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Academic Inquiries / Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi is the property of Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi (Journal of Academic Inquiries) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In majoritarian legislatures, minority parties cannot directly influence policymaking. However, they may serve as whistleblowers against the majority parties' harmful policymaking. This study aims to explore whether a minority party's monitoring mitigates a political agency problem in a majoritarian legislature. For this purpose, we construct a two-period election model in which voters face information asymmetries regarding each party's type and the state of the world. After the majority party proposes a bill, the minority party votes for or against the proposed bill, which is a cheap-talk message. We show that the role of monitoring by the minority party is limited, even if we allow the possibility that the party is the truth-telling type. Under a weak condition, its opposition is informative, but does not change the electorate's voting behaviors. Consequently, any equilibrium outcomes attained in the game with monitoring are attainable in the game without monitoring. This implies that monitoring by the minority party does not influence electoral accountability. This irrelevance of monitoring is resolved when the minority party can delay legislation through obstruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast literature documents growing ideological divisions between the parties in the contemporary U.S. Congress based on estimates from roll-call voting behavior (such as DW-NOMINATE). We revisit theoretical and empirical claims about the nature of partisan polarization by addressing concerns raised in recent scholarship about the comparability and interpretation of roll-call estimates over time. We leverage data from candidate surveys that allow us to hold the policy agenda constant from 1996 to 2008. We show that the replacement of relatively moderate legislators with more ideologically extreme legislators, particularly among Republicans, explains virtually all of the recent growth in partisan polarization. We further demonstrate that these patterns are explained mostly by increased polarization over social and environmental issues and link our findings to changes in the congressional agenda. Our results have important substantive and methodological implications for evaluating sources of legislative polarization and using roll-call measures in empirical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies of the 2016 U.S. presidential election have demonstrated that American voters with strong sexist beliefs tended to vote against the female candidate, Hillary Clinton. However, most of these studies did not pay much attention to whether eligible voters chose to vote. This study analyzed the 2018 and 2020 General Social Surveys to examine how American voters' gender stereotypes in the family and sexist attitudes toward women in politics were associated with their participation in the 2016 presidential election—the latest election when the surveys were conducted—considering their party identification. The study discovered that strong Democrats who harbored a sexist attitude toward women in politics were less likely to participate in the 2016 presidential election than were Republicans and Independents with the same attitude. Furthermore, weak Democrats and Independents who endorsed traditional gender stereotypes in the family were less likely to participate in the election than were Republicans with the same ideals. The findings indicate that benevolent sexism may have discouraged some Democrat and Independent voters from going to the polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of REICE. Ibero-American Journal on Quality, Effectiveness & Change in Education / REICE. Revista Iberoamericana Sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación is the property of Red Iberoamericana de Investigacion sobre Cambio y Eficacia en Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The health and welfare of children and adolescents—the nation's future—must always be a priority. One would, therefore, expect this to be reflected in the manifestos of political parties. This article suggests that pediatricians and the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) should play a more proactive role in influencing political parties to commit to an inclusive manifesto that addresses key issues related to child health and welfare, by also liaisoning and collaborating with other stakeholders, such as parents, educators, and child rights organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populist politics in Southern Europe displays several distinctive patterns related to a shared history, geography, culture, and economy, while being subject to similar geopolitical pressures. In the last decade, moreover, the Euro-Mediterranean region has been struck by destabilizing shocks: the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis, which led to a realignment of party politics, with populist parties of both the left and the right enjoying high levels of popular support and taking, or have gotten close to taking, governmental power. These patterns make Southern Europe an interesting case for the study of populism and foreign policy through a (sub-)regional comparative approach. This article applies a structured, focused comparison of the populist foreign policies (PFP) of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, seeking to explain how populist leaderships have shaped foreign policy in these countries and the conditions under which their PFP were translated into action. After putting Euro-Mediterranean populism in context, we examine four structural themes of catalysts or constraints that populists face when 'navigating' PFP around the European Mare Nostrum: international power distribution, ideological underpinnings, domestic political system, and policy domains. The comparative analysis reveals how; while, populist performances are often aimed at executing a rupture and, as a result, gaining legitimacy, the implementation of PFP in Southern Europe has ultimately been affected by structural pressures to discard these revolutionary impulses and align with the mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in formal powers of political actors like presidents are expected to impact their behavior. This study examines speeches that presidents can utilize for a variety of purposes ranging from topical reflections to new political initiatives and criticism of the government and political parties. In semi-presidential regimes, presidents are often constitutionally weaker than governments, but their popularity opens the possibility of using the public platform for swaying the minds of citizens or politicians. We analyze the tone and content of Finnish presidents' New Year's messages and parliamentary speeches from 1932 to 2023. To contribute to the long-standing literature on regime effects, we gauge the impact of Finland's comprehensive constitutional reform that stripped off most powers of the presidency that was formerly considered among the strongest in Europe. The results show that presidential activity changed already in the mid-1990s when the reform was still underway, and presidents appointed since then speak systematically less about domestic policy and emphasize national unity and citizens, indicating that constitutionally weaker presidents recognize their jurisdictional limits and lean more on their role as directly elected heads of state operating above political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking as a starting point the growing body of scholarship on movement parties of the far right, this research note undertakes a reflection on the boundaries of the movement party concept from two distinct angles – the established interactive‐mobilisational approach and the more recent discursive‐organisational one – and their empirical implications for the study of far‐right movement parties in Europe today. While the former approach's emphasis on the hybridity of electoral and protest‐based collective action repertoires as the primary defining feature of movement parties suggests a wide‐ranging applicability of the concept to the far right, the latter approach's understanding of the movement party as a specific organisational type based on horizontal coordinative links between constituent movements via collective leadership structures appears to pull in the opposite direction. These differences are explored in an overview of three far‐right parties that fit both movement party definitions to varying degrees – CasaPound in Italy, Right Sector in Ukraine, and Konfederacja in Poland – followed by a discussion of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an ambivalent case that prototypically fits the interactive‐mobilisational understanding but falls short of the discursive‐organisational one, thus magnifying the conceptual differences between the two approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While people use the term ‘mainstream’ on a regular basis, there has been relatively little discussion about what it actually means. Within far-right studies, attempts to define the mainstream often center around party politics and the impact of mainstream party strategies on the far right. While a useful starting point, this focus has led to more rigid conceptions which encourage particular normative assumptions about its identity. Through poststructuralist discourse theory, supported by insights from music studies and critical discourse studies, this article proposes a definition which accounts for its contingency and construction, challenging dominant narratives about its nature. These issues are crucial when we consider the relationship between the mainstream and far right because they encourage us to question their perceived relative positioning. By introducing the concepts of talking ‘with’ and ‘about’ the far right, this piece establishes the need for us to take the role of the mainstream in the mainstreaming of the far right seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The article provides a qualitative analysis of the political discourse in highly polarized political environment and the role of political divisions in shaping the collective violence. The paper will summarize attitudes toward pogrom violence of key political parties in pre WW2 Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores environmental protest outcomes during the decade of the 2010s in the UK. In doing so, it presents the results of a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of all 54 major environmental protest campaigns during the period. The study explores alternative causal conditions relating to a number of strategic and tactical options that environmental movements typically face. It finds that two alternative routes were sufficient for environmental protest campaigns to be successful: perseverance over time, in which longstanding campaigns staged a relatively large number of protest events; and instances where opposition political parties drew on, and supported, the demands of protesters. Interestingly, some of the more contested tactical options, including whether to adopt more or less disruptive methods, were inconclusive in explaining the successful outcome of protest-led campaigns. The article argues that this supports the case for tactical diversity. The findings show how in a context of austerity-era neoliberalism, where the government was (ostensibly) committed to tackling climate change, then protests (regardless of the organisational form or type of protest) proved able to exert effective pressure upon the government and firms, to ensure some degree of concession to the climate movement, provided that the protest campaign was able to persevere over time and/or secure the support of opposition political parties. This suggests a susceptibility, by both the state and firms during austerity-era neoliberalism, to (considerable) popular and political pressure arising from protest, but in the absence of which economic interests would otherwise take priority over environmental concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the July 2023 general elections in Spain and its potential impact on the governance of the country. Contrary to what most pre-election polls predicted, the two main opposition parties (i.e., PP and Vox) did not manage to earn sufficient electoral support and, as a result, a new coalition government of centre-left parties was formed. The outcome of these elections was notably shaped by the high levels of polarization registered in the country in the last years. This report tackles the most important elements of the elections with a historical perspective and an empirical approach, and how the subsequent formation of a new left-wing coalition government at the national level could affect the future electoral prospects of the incumbent parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research has been conducted on the influence of ethnicity on conflicts. Conversely, research on how conflict affects ethnicity has been more limited, tending to indicate that conflicts basically ‘harden’ ethnicity. Moreover, existing research suggests that the impact of ethnicity is gradually diminishing. This study revealed that these arguments are not necessarily true. Reviewing ethnic salience in Sierra Leone and Liberia revealed that the post-civil war situation in both countries can be considered a reemergence of pre-civil war party politics. Hence, civil wars may not invariably exert a significant impact on post-conflict party politics, and the impact of ethnicity can persist over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom claims that rural voters are politically mobilized by right‐wing and culturally conservative forces, while urban voters are left‐leaning and have progressive cultural views. Leveraging original survey data from Norway, our work challenges this dichotomy. We build on cleavage theory and recent research on place identitiesto develop a latent measure of rural attachment. Using regression analysis, we investigate how well this measure maps onto five different cultural attitudes, left‐ right ideology, and partisan voting. The findings show that people with rural identities are not more right‐wing, reluctant towards immigration, or anti‐environmental than their urban counterparts. Instead, the geographic cleavage relates to dissatisfaction with the way the central government treats rural areas, resistance to the EU, and voting for the agrarian Center Party. The findings from Norway therefore show that it is possible to mobilize rural identifiers without disparaging immigrants or adopting other radical‐right stances. Our work suggests that the supply of political parties plays a decisive role in how rural identities are activated and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the urban‐rural divide in advanced, multi‐party democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the advancement of the reform and opening up, the non-state Sectors (NSS) in China and Vietnam have developed rapidly. The ruling parties, which used to have comprehensive control over politics, economy, and society, have now found it difficult to control the new economic space. To effectively control NSS, the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of Vietnam have attempted to embed themselves in NSS by expanding grassroots party organizations. In this process, they have adopted different strategies and procedures, resulting in two distinct models: China's expansion model, which is characterized by a proactive approach combining rigidity and flexibility, and Vietnam's expansion model, which is characterized by a flexible approach with a focus on soft cooperation. This study compares the formation, nature, and main characteristics of the two models for party organization expansion in China and Vietnam, hoping to provide a more comprehensive and objective understanding of the developments in China and Vietnam, preliminarily elucidate, from an academic perspective, the operational model of party-building in NSS in the two countries, and enrich the theoretical research on the continuous expansion of the existing Leninist parties in the new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centralized agenda control is a feature of many parliaments, with important consequences for the conduct and outcomes of legislative politics. Much previous work has thus sought to understand the emergence of centralized agenda‐setting rules. We extend this literature by studying the “Balfour reforms”, which centralized agenda control in the early twentieth century UK House of Commons. Our aim is to probe a conventional claim in the existing literature: that the opposition supported these reforms. This is a counter‐intuitive claim, which rests on relatively little direct evidence. We analyze historical roll‐call data from 1902 to assess how far the opposition supported agenda centralization. We complement this analysis by examining attempted amendments and speech contributions to parliamentary debates. Contrary to the standard view, we find that the primary opposition party consistently resisted these reforms. This evidence of controversy rather than consensus revises our understanding of a key milestone in the development of the Westminster parliament, and contributes to the wider literature on the choice of agenda‐setting procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classic theories of political ambition assume relatively stable and programmatic party systems. However, in many parts of the world, ‘fluid’ or ‘inchoate’ party systems do not provide ambitious legislators with the electoral benefits associated with stable party brands. In this paper, we examine ambition in fluid party systems: What is the frequency of party switching for legislators who seek re‐election, and what are their characteristics? What incentives do parties create to push away or retain legislators? And which parties do ambitious legislators seek out? Using a systems approach, we argue that in fluid party systems, legislators' office‐seeking behavior is driven by their attitudes towards parties and their constituents, their prospective evaluation of party performance, and ideology. Incentives for politicians to switch parties act as negative feedback mechanisms which keep the party system stuck in a fluid state. We test the determinants of party switching using two data sources from Ecuador: a public records dataset of every legislator who earned re‐election from 1979 to 2021, and the Parliamentary Elites in Latin America (PELA) surveys of all legislators from 1994 to 2017. Both sources distinguish between switchers and non‐switchers. The results support the conclusion that ambitious legislators in fluid party systems are strategic actors that seek or keep parties to maximize their probability of re‐election—and thereby further exacerbate the party system's fluidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have unpacked the conditions out of which electorally successful ethnic parties in Europe emerge and the important roles they play in diverse contexts. But the existing research overlooks important political actors, whose influence explains some of the behaviors of these ethnic parties. In this analysis, we explore the different roles of co-ethnic core intermediaries (CCIs) – that is, officials who come from the same ethnic groups as those whose interests ethnic parties champion but represent other mainstream political parties. Based on an illustrative case study of the Swedish-speaking Finns, this article demonstrates that CCIs both benefit and threaten ethnic parties: they generate support among and facilitate collaboration with other mainstream political parties; however, they also cause voter attrition and pursue ethnic causes in ways that differ from the ethnic party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, powerful new forms of influence have been discovered that the internet has made possible. In the present paper, we introduce another new form of influence which we call the "opinion matching effect" (OME). Many websites now promise to help people form opinions about products, political candidates, and political parties by first administering a short quiz and then informing people how closely their answers match product characteristics or the views of a candidate or party. But what if the matching algorithm is biased? We first present data from real opinion matching websites, showing that responding at random to their online quizzes can produce significantly higher proportions of recommendations for one political party or ideology than one would expect by chance. We then describe a randomized, controlled, counterbalanced, double-blind experiment that measured the possible impact of this type of matching on the voting preferences of real, undecided voters. With data obtained from a politically diverse sample of 773 eligible US voters, we observed substantial shifts in voting preferences toward our quiz's favored candidate–between 51% and 95% of the number of people who had supported that candidate before we administered and scored the quiz. These shifts occurred without any participants showing any awareness of having been manipulated. In summary, in the present study we show not only that OME is a large effect; we also show that biased online questionnaires exist that might be shifting people's opinions without their knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This article presents a model of political competition in which political parties, through clientelism strategies, vie for control of legislative seats. Parties exercise political violence to prevent potential rivals from gaining power and threatening their position within the hybrid political regime. The theory suggests that the degree of political violence exerted by parties in hybrid regimes will increase (decrease) as they concentrate more (less) power in the legislature. Methods: Using the methodology of analytical narratives, we examine the narrative on political violence in the Colombian political regime to identify key actors, strategies, information sets, and institutional changes. From these identified elements, we construct a theoretical model of political competition within the mathematical theory of games to explain the institutional changes highlighted in the narrative. Finally, we develop an econometric model to find statistical evidence supporting the predictions of the theoretical model derived from the narrative. Results: The narrative and the analytical narrative indicate that, in a hybrid regime, a higher degree of political power concentration causes a higher rate of political violence. The estimation of the Vector Auto-regression model allows us to analyze the response of the violence rate to a shock in the concentration index. Following an unexpected increase in the concentration of political power, the violence rate shows an initial increase of approximately 0.3 percentage points above its initial value. Subsequently, the effect attenuates slightly and stabilizes at around 0.2 percentage points above the baseline, maintaining this level throughout the period. Discussion/Conclusion: The theoretical model proposed in this paper suggests an explanation of political violence that diverges from the explanations offered by traditional theories. We suggest that the theoretical model proposed here captures the historical logic of the relationship between violence, political clientelism, and exclusion in Colombia, a country with a relatively long tradition as a formal democracy (since 1958), leading us to interesting conclusions that have not been proposed so far in the literature on violence in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angola is governed under a presidential system characterised by a weakly institutionalised parliament ruled by the MPLA liberation movement since independence. UNITA, the largest opposition party in parliament, is also a liberation movement and former belligerent in the protracted Angolan civil war. Despite facing an uneven playing field, UNITA has seen its share of parliamentary seats increase in successive post-war elections. This makes it a relevant case study to understand patterns of elite formation and political representation more broadly. This article examines the composition of UNITA parliamentary elites in Angola in post-civil war legislatures, and how UNITA members of parliament (MPs) perceive representation tasks and engage in constituency-focused activities. We do so through a longitudinal study of post-civil war legislatures (from 2008, 2012, 2017 and 2022), drawing on new biographical data and interviews with MPs. We argue that, following the transition from rebel movement to political party, parliament became an arena in which UNITA was able to achieve a nationwide reach by integrating MPs with diverse backgrounds and by engaging with constituents. Additionally, while institutional rules favour national over local representation, MPs seem to invest in and value links with constituents. The study highlights how nationwide recruitment and connections with constituents contribute to elite formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractScholars have paid scant attention to how state–society relations are shaped in contexts where democratic and authoritarian institutions co-exist under new forms of authoritarianism. Furthermore, the realm of youth citizenship in such regimes is a nascent area warranting deeper exploration. This study draws on the case of Turkey to address these gaps by investigating why political parties, which previously marginalised young voters, have fervently mobilised youth during elections that paradoxically coincided with the process of autocratisation. We employ a content analysis of party programmes, election manifestos, and social media campaign content of major political parties, as well as secondary sources on Turkish and youth politics spanning from 1983 to 2023, to address this puzzle. Our analysis unveils three key findings. Firstly, transformative events such as the Gezi Park Protests and digital activism have invigorated youth political involvement, compelling both government and opposition parties to prioritise youth electoral engagement. Secondly, the shift from a parliamentary to a presidential system has heightened political parties’ focus on securing the youth vote to win elections. Lastly, political parties strive to align youth political values with their own ideologies, and the process of election campaigning provides ample opportunities for such a goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the harshest phase of the Cold War between the end of the Second World War and the death of Stalin, the Italian Communist Party, in line with the orientation of international communism, stuck to a model of militancy forged in the 1930s and based on the submission of individual choices and behaviour to the rules dictated by the party. This claim was never fully realized: the discipline operated by the party was not a one-way process, and had to deal with the cultural, familial, existential and affective factors that make up each individual’s life. However, the case of the communist leader Emilio Sereni shows how the higher up in the organizational structure one went, the more the identification of the individual with the party intensified, through a logic that affected even the most intimate sphere of feelings and family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article addresses the party politics of foreign policy through a theoretically informed analysis of the political survival imperative in a domestic context. Building on recent research on party ideologies and political survival/power-seeking, it offers a fresh perspective on the influence of partisan politics on foreign policy. Drawing on qualitative data, including expert interviews, the article uses the case of Turkey as a hybrid, and thus unstable, regime to examine the partisan aspects of foreign policy with a focus on two basic links between party politics and foreign policy behaviour: party ideologies and party leadership. Specifically, the article argues that the ruling AKP’s need for domestic survival led to increasingly nationalist, populist behaviour and the formation of an alliance with the main nationalist party MHP, which in turn led to the dominance of a nationalist discourse in Turkish foreign policy, contributing to coercive or risky international moves. This is best exemplified by the AKP government’s strong support for Azerbaijan in the 2020 Karabakh war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, extreme parties have gained increasing electoral success in European party systems. While this party polarization is often associated with its negative consequences, recent studies have suggested its potential benefit for remobilizing the electorate by offering clear political alternatives. However, it remains unclear which groups of citizens may be mobilized by broader supply and whether this positive effect is generalizable to multiparty systems. This article contributes to this debate arguing that the system multidimensionality matters when assessing the relationship between polarization and voter turnout. Through a multilevel analysis and two studies at the aggregate and individual levels, this article provides evidence that party polarization is associated with increased turnout only when parties polarize on the cultural dimension of party competition. This effect is moderated by the party system unidimensionality and mobilizes voters at large, regardless of their level of extremism, political awareness or partisanship. These findings support previous research suggesting a ‘realignment’ of party systems, meaning that the main line of political conflict for parties and voters is shifting towards the cultural dimension of party competition across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]