Search

Copyright of History Studies (13094688) is the property of History Studies 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 the Institute of Croatian History / Radovi Zavoda za Hrvatsku Povijest is the property of Zavod za Hrvatsku Povijest, Filozofski Fakultet 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.)

Objective While selective issue emphasis is a widely recognized strategy of party competition, we have little knowledge about how coalition parties interact with each other when deciding which policy issues to emphasize. Therefore we ask: Who leads and who follows the issue agenda in coalition governments? Methods. We create an issue attention data set using quantitative text analysis from over 40,000 press releases. We use this data set and time series cross-section regression analysis to study the dynamics of coalition parties' issue attention. Results. We find that junior coalition parties are more responsive to their senior partners than senior partners to their junior partners. Hence, while coalition partners generally follow each other, senior partners enjoy a stronger leadership role in the cabinet. Conclusion. Coalition parties indeed coordinate their issue priorities as they respond to each other's issue agenda. However, due the asymmetric power distribution in coalition cabinets, it is not a negotiation process on equal footing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its early months the Soviet republic was governed by the Council of People's Commissars as a dual-party coalition cabinet composed of Bolsheviks and Left S.R.s. This article examines the period of their collaboration in central government, a phase often sidelined in general studies of the Russian Revolution, and attempts a fuller and more positive reassessment of the activity of the coalition. The focus is on the practical functioning of coalition politics inside the council of people's commissars, or 'Sovnarkom', from December 1917 to March 1918, and the formal and informal methods through which the Left S.R.s were able to exercise some degree of influence over government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The forthcoming Assembly elections in Punjab in early 2017 indicate signs of a new phase in the electoral history of this state, largely dominated earlier by various political alliances headed by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) under Jat Sikh leadership. Presented within the wider Indian electoral landscape, this article offers an analytical overview of Punjab’s electoral politics as it has evolved since partition from the vantage point of SAD. It is argued that there are several good reasons why traditional SAD domination and style of leadership are presently being challenged through a combination of new political actors and, significantly, changing awareness among a very diverse electorate about what to expect from any government one elects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on the existence of coalition and poltical coordination in different levels of democratic government in 20th century. Various topics discussed include decision-making mechanism in political institutions, political fragmentation in 1990s, intergovernmental relations (IGR) in coalition governments and subnational governments. Author further discussses decision conflicts between central and subnational governments, leadership in central government and centralization of the public policy.

The article presents the author's views on the strategies adopted by coalition governments for alloting designations to cabinet members. Various topics discussed include mechanism of political literature, investigations on relationship between executive and legislative governments, implementation of government policies and reconceptualization of the governments. Author further discusses ministerial congruence in coalitions, political strategy adopted by presidents and morphology of the government.

The article discusses the foreign relations policy adopted by Australian Prime Minister within the framework of the Coalition government that tool power in 2013. Topics addressed include economic changes that occurred in Asia since the end World War II, the role of Australia in the peaceful re-emergence of China as aregional and global power, and Austrlian cooperation with the U.S. and Japan. The goal of economic diplomacy is assessed.

The institutional design of the Brazilian electoral system touts political parties to occupy a seat in the legislative houses to reach the electoral quotient, which is the ratio of the number of valid votes by the number of existing seats. In practice this device acts as a barrier clause, since this number is difficult to achieve. One way to minimize this problem is through the institutional arrangement of the party coalition in proportional elections, from the maxim that unity is strength. The data from this study suggest that this design creates two problems: high party fragmentation in the legislative chambers, and electoral success of candidates with a limited number of votes. Since these two phenomena are associated, respectively, with problems of governance and representation, which calls into question the efficiency of the electoral system. Data pertain to the municipal elections in Brazil in 2004 and 2008 regarding 5,565 municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of coalitional presidentialism have focused on the question of how presidents in multi-party systems manage to establish stable governments. Some authors have argued that in the case of Indonesia, post-authoritarian presidents have prioritized inclusivist alliance building, with all parties offered cabinet seats and other rewards in exchange for loyalty. However, as this article demonstrates, President Joko Widodo has opted for a more coercive approach: reactivating power tools not used since the days of Suharto's autocracy, he intervened in the internal affairs of at least two opposition parties and eventually forced them to declare their support for his administration. This method, while designed to obstruct the anti-democratic agenda of the opposition, has in itself had detrimental effects on Indonesia's democratic quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014 the Coalition government announced a 320 million dollar package for drought-hit farmers. In describing this initiative as a 'hand-up' not a 'hand out' Prime Minister Tony Abbott encapsulated more than 150 years of tension over whether government drought response should be unconditional limited relief or conditional longer-term assistance. This paper considers the long history of drought assistance in Australia as seen through government legislation, year books, newspapers and personal papers. It argues that despite changing political and social circumstances, contradictions in the approach to government drought response, as well as in public and personal reactions to those policies, have remained remarkably consistent. We further suggest that lack of consensus over the inherent nature of drought is not sufficient to explain the dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following paper shall discuss the implementation of the Coalition Governments Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms in 2014 by focusing on the impact of these reforms on the desistance narratives of high risk intensive probationers, paying particular attention to the division of probation work between the National Probation Service (NPS) and the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRC). It is argued that the reallocation of offenders between the NPS and CRC altered high risk probationers’ perceptions of self, caused probationers to question the occupational competence of CRC offender managers and saw probationers evidence the emergence of an attitudinal dissonance between the two services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a critical review and analysis of the recent emergence of wellbeing discourses in UK national politics and their relationship with localism agendas. In 2011 the UK Coalition Government initiated a national programme to measure wellbeing. Despite a stated desire to consult the public as widely as possible on what matters for wellbeing, policy discourse is currently dominated by particular framings of wellbeing, predominantly within the arenas of subjective wellbeing research, positive psychology and individual behaviour change, where community participation and volunteerism narratives feature heavily. Ideas of wellbeing are enmeshed within narratives of reducing bureaucracy and creating the Big Society. This argument is backed up by a discourse analysis of government documentation on wellbeing and localism, which illustrates how discursive boundaries are being created around the concept of wellbeing which in turn demarcates clear boundaries of responsibility. The explicit desire on the part of the UK Coalition Government to devolve more responsibilities to the 'local community' is justified by appeals to particular ideas of wellbeing which are evidenced by particular sorts of research, limiting room for other, more progressive, accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In power since 2009, Moldova's pro-democracy and pro-European ruling coalition has been unable to implement effectively much-needed reforms. Presenting the details of recent key events and using quantitative assessments, this article argues that the main cause of Moldova's present problems is state capture. Cynical elites have engaged in a fierce competition for the capture of state institutions and for the control of policymaking in order to promote their own private economic interests. The ensuing delegitimation of state institutions and of the Moldovan state itself is highly detrimental to the country's democracy and sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Electoral success during the reform process requires maintaining a prudent balance in meeting the requirements of the two basic state functions ofaccumulationandlegitimacy. Initially, the Congress-led UPA government was the unintended beneficiary of the economic acceleration resulting from a global boom and the earlier economic reforms in aid of accumulation. The growth acceleration, however, also escalated rising expectations. In the effort to advance its legitimacy in order to assure continuance in power, the UPA government emphasized a distributive strategy to the neglect of accumulation. However, the rupture in growth acceleration because of external shock and internal economic mismanagement aggravated the loss of legitimacy stemming from a series of corruption scandals. The consequence was the emergence of an enormous “gap” between rising expectations and the existing reality of economic stagnation and high inflation. It is in the context of this gap that the Congress Party suffered its most severe electoral defeat in history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In contrast to some other jurisdictions, in Australia, governments relying on minor parties and independents to enact policies and especially to hold power, are readily characterised by oppositions and commentators as unstable, even chaotic and an undesirable deviation from the stability of majority parliaments. The almost unremarked exception is the Liberals' long and frequent reliance on the National Party and its predecessors to form government. This paper explores the role of the National Party in minority Coalition governments and considers why this form of minority government attracts so little comment, noting the inter-party and intra-party systems and strategies that give the appearance of stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa has traditionally been marginal to the Australian foreign policy agenda, aside from British colonial and Commonwealth ties and later efforts to end minority rule in southern Africa. Yet a resources boom, strong economic growth, increasing democratisation and reformed governance institutions have created new international interests in engaging with Africa and made it difficult for aspiring global players like Australia to ignore the continent's opportunities and challenges. Under Labor (2007-13), Canberra pursued substantial 'new engagement' with this 'new Africa', enhancing political and diplomatic relations, supporting major Australian commercial interests and quadrupling the Africa aid budget. Following the election of the Abbott Coalition government in September 2013, the article argues that while commercial opportunities and some specific security and humanitarian concerns will keep the Coalition interested in Africa, the enhanced level of engagement with the continent pursued under Labor is unlikely to be sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Modern Turkish History Studies / Cumhuriyet Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi (CTAD) is the property of Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History 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, building on previous research into earlier Australian pork-barrel schemes, uses data from Australia's Regional Partnerships Program (RPP), and its apportioning of $104 million in constituency-level grants in 2003-4, to explore the distinctive logic of parliamentary pork-barrel politics. Results show that the Liberal-Nationals Coalition's distribution of these funds was consistent with three electoral priorities - to reward its own MPs and show voters that the government 'can deliver'; to provide vote-winning assets in the Coalition's most marginal seats, where even small vote gain can make the difference between victory and defeat; and to try to re-establish its credibility at the local level in regional seats that had proven vulnerable to inroads made by Independent candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between parties’ campaign messages and government action is essential to theories of representative democracy. This article offers the first evaluation of how different empirical approaches alter results regarding the fulfilment of mandates by governments. Three commonly used operationalisations of the notion of election promise are applied to the case of Sweden. The conclusion is that results are not significantly altered depending on the approach that is taken. By studying only certain subsets of promises in election manifestos, overall government fulfilment of election promises can be estimated. By performing the analyses on the case of Sweden, the study also gives focus to two cabinet formations that have received little scholarly attention but are common in the European context – namely minority single-party cabinets and coalitions formed pre-election. The article argues that such cabinet situations are particularly efficient when it comes to election pledge fulfilment, no matter how the notion of election promise is defined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1969, the newly elected coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) in West Germany announced plans to reform Paragraph 218, the law that regulated women's access to abortion. This announcement prompted a public debate in West Germany on the state's obligation to protect unborn life—a debate that continues today in reunified Germany. Through an analysis of key events in that debate between 1969 and 1989, this article makes a twofold argument. First it argues that despite West Germany's increasingly secular orientation, the Catholic Church exercised significant political influence with respect to abortion policy throughout the history of the Federal Republic. Second, it argues that the West German Church's participation in these debates exposed deep rifts within the Catholic community, which, in turn, contributed to the formation of a smaller, more activist, and conservative Church. This smaller Church has achieved a remarkable degree of political success in reunified Germany by mobilizing its conservative core constituency, embracing new arguments, and pursuing issue-specific alliances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses various issues related to Australian foreign policy between July and December 2013, focusing on the Australian government's bilateral relationships, former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and the policies of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Liberal-National Party coalition government. Australia's foreign relations with nations such as China are mentioned, along with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

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

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter 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 article discusses the grand coalition government which ruled Italy from 2011 to 2013, focusing on voter attitudes to the government and its activities and policy decistions. Topics mentioned include research on public opinion data related to voter attitudes and turnout, the interaction of the major political parties Partito Democratico and Popolo della Libertà in the parliament, and the impact of the political parties on voter apathy and turnout.

Since the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, more than 60 per cent of governments in Central and Eastern Europe have terminated prematurely. This article argues that the character of party system development in the region has facilitated the emergence of a polarised pattern of party competition and that competition for government now takes place in distinct ideological blocs. Parties seek to form governments within these blocs but not across them and therefore there is little incentive to defect from a governing coalition due to the lack of viable alternatives. As a result, more polarised party systems produce more durable governments. The empirical evidence shows that polarisation and ideological diversity of the government are significant indicators of government duration in Central and Eastern Europe. Ideologically compact governments formed within narrow blocs in the party system survive longer than ideologically diverse coalitions that emerge from less polarised party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses Italy's 2013 parliamentary elections, in which the centre-right coalition gained the parliamentary majority over the Italian political party the Popolo della Libertà (PdL) and the coalition led by the former Prime Minister Mario Monti. An overview of the election campaign, including including that of the Italian political party Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and the PdL leader and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is provided.

Studies on coalition formation assume that political parties have two major goals: they aim to maximise office and policy payoffs. This paper shows that decision-making in the government formation game is also determined by the voters’ coalition preferences. Since the coalition formation process is not a one-shot game, parties have to take the coalition preferences of the electorate into account when they evaluate the utility of potential coalitions. If parties fail to comply with the coalition preferences of voters, they are likely to be penalised in future elections. The argument is tested by an analysis of government formation in the 16 German states between 1990 and 2009. The results support the argument: the formation of coalitions – at least in the German states – is not only determined by office- and policy-seeking behaviour of political parties, but also by the preferences of voters regarding their preferred outcome of the coalition game. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the social reform agenda and social policies of the National Coalition government of the Fine Gael and Labour political parties in Ireland from 1973 to 1977. It examines a fourteen-point programme outlined by the coalition, which encompassed housing policy, education policy, and taxation policy. The author particularly comments on the introduction of a wealth tax in 1975 and efforts to end discrimination against women and provide for the sale of contraception. Politicians discussed include Liam Cosgrave and Declan Costello.

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

Territorial reforms have been on the political agenda in Italy for the last two decades, becoming a stable issue of party competition. The breakthrough of Lega Nord (LN) in the party system has represented the main driver for federal reforms. The article argues that the bipolar and majoritarian institutional environment of the Second Republic has compelled the main state-wide parties to adopt an electoral logic that led them to accommodate the LN’s claims. However, the ideological orientations and the territorial interests of centre-left coalition proved more compatible with this accommodative strategy than those of the centre-right coalition. The majoritarian and adversarial style of government–opposition relations has made compromise on territorial reforms difficult, contributing to their rising salience in party competition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to Gamson’s Law, the allocation of cabinet portfolios in parliamentary democracies is proportional to the legislative seat shares of the governing parties. However, portfolio allocation departs systematically from perfect proportionality. This paper proposes a theory of portfolio allocation that seeks to explain the variance in proportionality across different bargaining situations. It argues that the degree to which the coalition formation process is characterised by uncertainty and complexity influences portfolio allocation. In uncertain and complex bargaining situations, parties that otherwise would be in an advantageous bargaining position will have a difficult time exploiting their bargaining advantage. As a result, portfolio allocation in such circumstances will be closer to proportionality. These patterns are observed in data on coalition formation in 14 West European parliamentary systems in the period 1945–1999. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Societes Contemporaines is the property of Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques 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.)

Coalition governments are the norm in the German multilevel-system. Their existence not only affects the political process and policy-making, but also increases the complexity of voting: The behaviour of voters at the polls is not only based on the evaluation of the parties, but also influenced by their opinion on the coalitions that the parties could form after the election. But we still know little about the determinants of voters' coalition preferences. In this paper, we combine theories of voting behaviour, government formation and policy learning to derive expectations regarding factors that may impact voters' coalition preferences. For example, we expect that voters prefer coalitions that are most likely to implement their policy preferences. At the same time, we assume that voters adopt the patterns of party competition and anticipate how realistic individual coalitions are - given the existing patterns of government formation. We test our hypotheses by analysing survey data from 78 election studies from the German state level. The results support our arguments: the coalition preferences of voters depend not only on the programmatic proximity of potential coalitions, the parties' coalition statements and party identification, but also on the characteristics of coalitions that were formed in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Austrian foreign policy toward the United States during the government of Austrian chancellor Alfons Gorbach, focusing on Gorbach's state visit to the United States in May 1962. The author traces preparations for the visit, which began in late 1961, the visit itself, which took place from May 2-5, 1962, and the domestic political context of the visit in Austria, particularly with regard to conflicts among the parties participating in Gorbach's coalition government, the Österreichische Volkspartei (Austrian People's Party, ÖVP) and the Sozialistische Partei Österreichs, SPÖ), about Austrian neutrality and Austrian relations to the European Economic Community (EEC/EWG).

The present paper discusses various aspects of party system in India with an emphasis on the analysis of the coalition politics in historical perspective. The paper tries to find out the ways and means of successful implementation of coalition dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines Britain's national unity coalition of 1794, focusing on the relationship between the duke of Portland and the then Prime Minister William Pitt, Jr. Analysis of the relationship between the two; Factors that contributed to the strained relationship; How the duke overcame his political antagonism towards Pitt; Significance of this transformation for the emergence of the Conservative (Tory) party.

The article reports on the dispute between the king emperor of Austria-Hungary and the leaders of the Hungarian coalition parties in Hungary. They had a conference with the goal of fixing their conflict but just get worse than before. King-emperor Francis Joseph did not only concede the use of language of command in the army, but has also included among the conditions of establishing a coalition cabinet the implementation of a program that he formulated.