Party competition

This chapter offers the first in-depth study of both structural and agential factors behind the emergence and electoral breakthrough of a new radical left party in Slovenia, the Left. It defines the party's ideological profile and it analyses its tactics of party competition through a selection of concrete examples. It concludes by outlining two possible trajectories for the future electoral and organisational development of the party.

This article presents an original account of the tactical options available to political parties in multi-level settings. It applies that framework to the case of post-devolution Scotland via an analysis of First Minister’s Questions sessions in the Scottish Parliament. It shows how Scottish Labour adopted a less left-leaning justification for its stance on the constitutional issue in the years after the party lost power at Holyrood to the Scottish National Party. Consequently, the party failed to present itself as a clearly left of centre alternative to the SNP and downplayed the progressive case for Scotland remaining in the UK.

Este artigo identifica três princípios centrais do elitismo democrático, da forma como foram desenvolvidos por vários autores. Em seguida, segue a sorte dessas ideias dentro da teoria democrática. Surpreendentemente, eu encontro a aceitação quase universal, embora não reconhecida, dos princípios do elitismo democrático nas teorias contemporâneas da democracia. Entre o público, no entanto, ainda existe um forte anseio por uma democracia mais próxima do ideal e mais aberta à participação pública. Isso se reflete nas críticas públicas a políticos profissionais “distanciados”. Eu argumento que uma solução conceitual para a tensão entre o estado da teoria democrática e as expectativas do público pode, ironicamente, ser fornecida por uma corrente dentro da teoria do elitismo democrático, a saber, a teoria da poliarquia de Robert Dahl.

A l’instar des formations politiques européennes, les partis politiques français sont confrontés à plusieurs défis et soumis à nombre de tensions à l’aube de ce XXIe siècle, alors même que leur attractivité n’a jamais semblé aussi faible.

Longtemps dominée par un agencement autour du Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) et de l’Union pour la démocratie française (UDF) à droite, et du parti socialiste (PS) et du parti communiste français (PCF) à gauche, le système de partis a lui-même considérablement évolué sous l’effet de la recomposition de la droite parlementaire, de l’effondrement du parti communiste ou de la percée de nouveaux venus, tels le Front national ou Les Verts.

Après la séquence des élections présidentielles et législatives de 2012, cet ouvrage analyse en profondeur l’état de chacun des partis actifs dans le système politique. Comment chacun d’entre eux se positionne-t-il au regard des transformations du fait partisan ? Comment les partis interprètent-ils les mutations auxquelles ils font face ? Comment agissent-ils face à la désaffection qu’ils subissent ? Quelles évolutions idéologiques et organisationnelles connaissent-ils ?

Ces questions sont examinées dans ce livre de référence. Les auteurs présentent un tableau d’ensemble original, offrant de manière systématique une analyse des partis à l’œuvre dans le système politique français ; laquelle est complétée par une réflexion sur les grandes transformations de la géographie électorale.

This paper analyses mechanisms and consequences of populist radical right mainstreaming in Central and Eastern Europe, discussing these processes in broader context. It shows that political agency of established parties plays a pivotal role in the spiral of legitimation of PRR politics. Reciprocal mainstreaming by PRR parties and of PRR politics normalizes PRR counter-modernization frames that – especially if internalized by established parties – become legitimized as an illiberal counter-narrative of mainstream values and democracy itself. Hence, while PRR parties effectively use their political agency to 'trump the mainstream', the mainstream is well able of trumping itself.

Depuis le milieu des années 1980, la construction européenne est entrée dans une phase d’accélération qui voit l’affirmation de l’Union européenne comme un espace de décision politique à part entière, dont les prérogatives et les interventions deviennent toujours plus palpables au niveau domestique. Cette thèse explore les conséquences de ce processus sur la compétition partisane. Le questionnement de la distinction populaire entre effets « directs » et « indirects » nourrit une réflexion sur les mécanismes par lesquels les partis sont affectés et nous amène à conceptualiser l’intégration européenne comme une altération de l’environnement et de la structure d’opportunités des partis, à travers l’européanisation des politiques publiques et la mise sur agenda de nouveaux enjeux. Cette perspective permet à la fois de mieux intégrer dans l’étude des partis le tournant interactionniste des recherches sur l’européanisation, et d’enrichir l’analyse en l’inscrivant dans des cadres théoriques depuis longtemps éprouvés pour étudier les partis et la compétition politique. L’européanisation de la compétition partisane en France, en Allemagne et au Royaume-Uni entre 1986 et 2009 est étudiée au prisme des opportunités et des contraintes découlant de l’intégration, puis des réponses apportées par les acteurs partisans à différents niveaux. Notre enquête s’appuie pour cela sur l’analyse d’un vaste corpus de documents, de données et de littérature, notamment sur la couverture médiatique des questions européennes, les orientations européennes discernables dans l’opinion publique des trois pays, l’européanisation des politiques publiques, les discours tenus lors des congrès des partis sociaux-démocrates et les programmes électoraux des différents partis. Nous observons une européanisation différenciée, mais significative, de la structure d’opportunités des partis. En raison des résistances déployées par les acteurs partisans qui dominent la compétition inter- et intra-partisane, cette tendance n’affecte les dynamiques de compétition partisane qu’à la marge.

This thesis examines the way the populist radical left reacts to the populist extreme right’s rhetoric on immigration issues. Greece is my case study, as it has both a popular radical left governmental party (SYRIZA) and a nativist, extreme right party, which is also a parliamentary member (Golden Dawn). Moreover, Greece has received a large amount of immigrant populations during the last decade, especially from Arab and Muslim Balkan countries. I argue that both SYRIZA and Golden Dawn appeal to the same electorate; people who are disappointed by austerity measures and are against the old party system, which has, however, cultivated a condition of clientelism between voters and party stake holders. Thus, competition between both parties is based on their ideological differences. Immigration is an issue that provides with a fertile ground for such discussion, as it is the main topic discussed by the Extreme Right, while the Radical Left is expected to avoid being exposed to the electorate by drawing attention to its rival’s ideology. In order to prove this argument, I analyze the content of 120 parliamentary questions and answers posed by Golden Dawn and SYRIZA between 2012 and 2018 about immigration issues, when both parties are able to interact in the parliament. 116 of them are questions posed by Golden Dawn to SYRIZA’s government. The answers of the ministries are revealing; Golden Dawn ties immigration with concerns regarding criminality, culture and economy, however, SYRIZA excludes Golden Dawn from the discourse, by enhancing the latter’s criminal past and nativist values. However, when it comes to the content of SYRIZA’s policies, little information is available. These findings confirm my initial argument.

Depuis quelques années, le PTB – le PVDA en Flandre – défraie la chronique politique et médiatique.  Le Parti du travail est parvenu à s’imposer comme un interlocuteur,  désormais régulier, de la presse audiovisuelle et écrite, et a  décroché des résultats d’estime aux élections fédérales de 2010  et aux scrutins communal et provincial de 2012. Paradoxalement  pourtant, le PTB – parti marxiste-léniniste et maoïste né dans les  années 1960 – est tout sauf un nouveau parti.
C’est à la suite d’une grave crise interne, après les élections de mai  2003, que le PTB décide d’adopter une toute nouvelle stratégie  de communication. Il s’agit désormais d’occulter les éléments qui  « fâchent » – son identité marxiste-léniniste, sa proximité avec  certains régimes, son projet révolutionnaire, sa piètre considération envers la démocratie représentative – et de ne présenter aux citoyens et aux médias que la « face lumineuse » du parti. 
Fruit d’un long travail de recherche enrichi par les interviews de nouveaux et d’anciens militants, cet ouvrage présente l’histoire du PTB et de son réseau d’organisations, le contexte qui a présidé à sa naissance, et propose une analyse spécifique de ce parti dans la période contemporaine.

Pytlas, Bartek (2015): Radical Right Parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Mainstream Party Competition and Electoral Fortune. Abingdon: Routledge
[Paperback in Winter 2017]

In Central and Eastern Europe, radical right actors significantly impact public debates and mainstream policy agenda. But despite this high discursive influence, the electoral fortune of radical right parties in the region is much less stable. It has been suggested that this may be due to the fact that mainstream competitors increasingly co-opt issues which are fundamental for the radical right. However, the extent to which such tactics play a role in radical right electoral success and failure is still a subject for debate.

This book is the first to provide a systematic theoretical framework and in-depth empirical research on the interaction between discursive influence, party competition and the electoral fortune of radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that in order to fully explain the impact of mainstream party strategies in this regard, it is vital to widen the analysis beyond competition over issues themselves, and towards their various legitimizing narratives and frame ownership. Up-to-date debates over policies of collective identity (minority, morality and nationalizing politics) in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia serve as best cases to observe these under-researched phenomena. The analytical model is evaluated comparatively using original, primary data combined with election studies and expert surveys.

Advancing an innovative, fine-grained approach on the mechanisms and effects of party competition between radical right and mainstream parties, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching the far right and European party politics, as well as political contestation and framing.

This paper examines the territorialisation of party behaviour in Scotland since devolution, and in particular the "contagion effect" of the national question on the positions of Scotland"s political parties. It is argued that the traditional class-based understandings of party competition have limited application in Scottish politics unless they are considered in tandem with the strength, and often pre-eminence, of a territorial dimension (in similarity to Quebec and many other substate nations where territorial concerns and demands for self-government are central). Yet, far from constituting a divisive cleavage between parties in Scotland, we argue that the national question has become more of a valence issue in Scottish politics, whereby no party would dare to speak against the political empowerment of the Scottish nation. Instead, parties have adopted a range of positions in favour of increased territorial autonomy, including support for fiscal autonomy, the creation of a cosmopolitan Scottish identity, and increased control over welfare and social services. With all of the bluster between the "yes" and the "no" campaigns in the independence referendum in 2014, it would be easy to ignore the fact that, in terms of a national yardstick, all of the parties in Scotland are moving in the same direction: towards greater selfdetermination. This has not always been the case. The "national question" has often proved a divisive issue in Scottish politics, with the leading British mainstream parties the Labour Party and the Conservative Partytaking (often bitterly) opposing positions to Scottish "home rule" at different points in time.

Radical right parties in Western Europe have traditionally shown little support for redistributive policies and have thus been typically classified as economically right wing. Yet, they are contesting the votes of a (formerly) key electorate of the social democratic parties: the working class, who supports welfare redistribution. In this study, we argue and empirically demonstrate that radical right parties have adapted their programmatic preferences to this key segment of electorate by progressively promoting redistributive policies. For our analyses we use mixed methods and rely on a combination of data sources. Firstly, we assess the salience of welfare issues in the manifestos of major West European radical right parties over the last three decades based on CMP data. Secondly, we examine their positions on welfare issues based on recent euandi data. Thirdly, we analyse the most recent manifestos of two successful radical right parties (Austrian FPÖ and French FN) qualitatively. Our findings show that for a majority of radical right parties welfare state expansion has become a salient issue, and that they do not position themselves anymore on the right regarding redistributive issues; however, these parties promote a specific kind of solidarity: exclusive solidarity.

Inter-party conflict management is a typical coalitional problem in parliamentary governments. To study how and why conflicts in coalitions emerge and how parties cope with them can enhance our knowledge of coalition governance. Here, I propose a framework for comparative studies on the topic. The framework is based on the conception of coalition politics as politics of exchange. It looks at inter-party interactions, but also accounts for the impact of intra-party politics. Moreover, I provide a classification of inter-party conflicts in coalitions and point out when they are more likely. The process of conflict management is operationalized with two proxies - actors and arenas - and a taxonomy of conflict terminations is presented. The viability of the framework is tested both mapping coalition governments according to their modes of managing internal conflicts and, after deriving research hypotheses, through empirical inquiries of conflict management in diverse coalitions

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist; anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region's political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties' thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia, we concurrently find that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.

En 2013, le Front de gauche rassemble neuf composantes : le parti communiste français -de loin la plus importante -, le parti de gauche, la Gauche unitaire, la Fédération pour une alternative sociale et écologique, République et socialisme, Convergences et alternative, le parti communiste des ouvriers de France, Gauche anticapitaliste et les Alternatifs. Ce nombre ne doit pas faire illusion. Il atteste plutôt de la difficulté à réaliser une véritable structuration à la gauche de la gauche que de la force de cette sensibilité. Parmi ces neuf organisations, seul le parti communiste français (pcf) a une assise territoriale digne de ce nom. Avec quelques milliers de militants, le parti de gauche compte surtout par le professionnalisme et l'engagement de ses membres et, bien sûr, par la personnalité emblématique de la gauche radicale lors du scrutin présidentiel de 2012, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Whereas radical right-wing parties in Central-Eastern Europe have not proven to be as successful in electoral terms as their western counterparts, there seems to be an ongoing diffusion of radical right ideology onto national electoral arenas of the region. For the purpose of political competition, mainstream parties – while per se not belonging to the party family in question – tend to reconstruct and adjust their rhetoric appeal and ideological repertoire to embrace elements of the radical right mindset. In the case of Poland the conservative PiS has managed to successfully attract voters from the rightmost edge of the electoral spectrum. In Slovakia, on the other hand, the social-populist ruling Smer has until now not been able to take similar advantage of their radical right-wing junior coalition partner, SNS. In this context, the following paper aims at analyzing the extent and shape of discursive strategies behind the successful takeover of radical right voters‟ support by mainstream parties. The extent to which mainstream parties were able to establish ownership over culturally resonant elements of radical right ideology is seen to have an effect on facilitating or impeding the radical right voters‟ support takeover.

Comparative political science has largely ignored the marked cross-national variation in Green party electoral performance. This article uses a unique aggregate dataset of 347 parliamentary elections from 32 countries over the course of 45 years to test competing theories about the causes of Green party success. The findings show that voter demand, institutions and mainstream party strategy all affect the Green vote. Green parties do well in societies with post-materialist conflicts caused by high levels of wealth or the presence of a tangible environmental dispute. The article also shows that regional decentralisation helps Green parties, but electoral systems have little effect on their vote share. Most importantly, it demonstrates that the impact of mainstream party strategy on Green electoral strength is dependent on the age of the Green party. While mainstream parties can undermine young Green parties by adopting the environmental issue, this effect is reversed once the Greens ...

During the economic crisis, the radical left, especially in countries of the European South, continued its course from marginality to mainstream while social democracy found itself trapped in its previous strategic orientations. This article examines the two political families in a relational and comparative perspective, focusing on the interaction of social democratic and radical left parties that evolved in a series of national cases (Greece, Portugal, Spain and France) and in particular within the political and electoral cycle of 2015–17. The ideological, programmatic and strategic responses of these parties to the critical juncture of the crisis, which mark a convergence or deviation in the paths of the two ‘enemy brothers', shed light on their political and ideological mutations, transformations and/or adaptations.

co-authored with Oliver Kossack

Democracies in Central Eastern Europe continuously struggle against the upsurge of radical right parties. Yet, scholarly research on this topic has hitherto largely omitted their influence on agenda-setting, policy making or the party system. Departing from empirical observations of party competition between radical right parties and their mainstream competitors along the socio-cultural cleavage, this contribution seeks to shed light on the influence of these parties on positional shifts – disseminated into spatial and narrative ones – within the party systems in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. First, an evaluation of expert survey data will be carried out to identify spatial shifts in the field of politics of collective identity. Second, qualitative observations of political competition shall reveal the mechanisms, timing, and extent of these shifts. We argue that a viable threat of a radical right party will lead to either an overall rightward shift in the party system or to increasing polarization between a left and a right camp. In contrast, the decline of radical right parties is accompanied by a convergence of the mainstream parties. In any case, the nearby competitors of the radical right always shifted towards the right, following a strategy of issue and frame co-optation.

La compétition entre projets partisans est souvent citée comme un élément constitutif de toute démocratie représentative. Si les littératures francophone et anglo-saxonne ont appréhendé différemment le lien entre compétition partisane et politiques publiques, les partis sont partout le parent pauvre des théories de l’action publique. S’inspirant des théories de la mise sur agenda et de la compétition sur enjeux, cet article plaide pour une reconsidération du poids de la variable partisane, en adoptant une approche à la fois globale et différenciée visant à établir dans quelles conditions les partis aux affaires influencent les politiques publiques. Pour cela, les données du Comparative Agendas Project offrent un instrument privilégié, dont nous illustrons les potentialités en testant plusieurs hypothèses sur le cas des activités législatives françaises entre 1981 et 2009.

This paper examines issue ownership as a mechanism for understanding how voters' expectations of parties' issue competence impact retrospective voting. On the one hand, issue ownership can represent a stock of credit for parties to draw on, which may help incumbent parties escape punishment for poor performance. On the other hand, prior issue competence associations may set certain expectations in voters' minds. This lends to the idea that parties might be even more severely punished for poor performance when they own the issue. This contribution sets out to test these two propositions. Our results suggest that since voters expect the party to perform well, especially on the issue it owns, positive performance reaps no reward, while negative performance is more severely punished. There are, however, differences across parties, with the chancellor party in government held as the main actor responsible for positive or negative economic developments.

In May 2015, 19 million Italians were called to renew the legislative assemblies and presidencies of seven regions, thus concluding an electoral cycle begun in February 2013 that involved all the 15 ordinary statute regions. Beyond their immediate relevance – of the 15 incumbent presidents only three were confirmed in office – these elections represented a turning point for regional party systems, paralleling the earthquake of the 2013 general elections. The ‘fragmented bipolarism’ characterising elections in Italy at the two levels since the mid-1990s, has been replaced by a multipolar competition, as a consequence of the consolidating presence of the Movimento 5 Stelle and the internal divisions of the centre-right coalition. At the same time, fragmentation of regional councils has remained high. The evolution of regional party systems and patterns of competition are analysed in this paper, taking into account the electoral offer, turnout and results in the majoritarian and proportional arenas of the 15 ordinary statute regions.

According to scholarly wisdom, party competition at the subnational level plays a negligible role in national elections. We provide theory and evidence that qualifies this view. Subnational elections determine entrance into subnational assemblies, which is accompanied by organizational resources. Since in most cases the same political actors compete at all levels of government, they can make use of region specific resources to improve their status in national party competition. We test our argument employing the discontinuities generated by the five percent electoral threshold in German state elections. We find that parties that marginally cross the threshold for state parliamentary representation perform better in subsequent national elections in that state. We also present evidence regarding the mechanism: Consistent with organizational explanations, bottom-up effects take some time to materialize, are more pronounced where parliamentary parties receive more resources, and as a result of entering subnational parliament, state party organizations recruit more members.

This paper proposes a simple model of political supporters in an envi-ronment of spatial political competition. We assume that supporters are driven by sympathy for a candidate with similar preferences on their side of the policy space and by fear of a candidate with different preferences on the other side. If parties maximize support in their candidate selec-tion, political platforms can diverge significantly. We show that radical candidates have a positive effect on support for the other party. If can-didate choice internalizes this externality, platforms converge and overall support decreases to a minimum.

The article analyses the consequences of elite polarisation at the mass level. We study the electoral realignment within the right-wing Spanish electorate in recent years, whereby support for the long-predominant Partido Popular has been eroded dramatically to the bene t of new challengers. Measuring ideological polarisation at the party system level and at the individual level, we show how the polarising strategy implemented by the liberal Ciudadanos-and imitated by PP-to gain support from the right-wing electorate paved the way for a massive transfer of conservative voters to the radical-right Vox. The results provide counter-intuitive evidence about the electoral e ects of elite polarisation: those individuals who perceived party polarisation less tended to vote more for the radical right party, while those who perceived greater polarisation among parties were more likely to vote for moderate forces.

Resumen El presente artículo analiza las dimensiones estructurales y actitudinales de la institucionalización del sistema de partidos en México con base en datos electorales agregados y de diversas encuestas de opinión pública. Pese a ser considerado como uno de los más estables de la región, el sistema de partidos mexicano ha sufrido una significativa desinstitucionalización durante la etapa de competencia partidista democrática (1997-2018). Durante la mayor parte de lo que va del siglo el sistema presentó una volatilidad electoral moderada y relativamente estable, aunque ésta se disparó de manera considerable en las elecciones de 2018 alcanzando niveles históricos por el masivo apoyo electoral recibido por el partido Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (Morena) en detrimento de los tres partidos tradicionales. La desinstitucionalización también se ha hecho evidente por la consecuente pérdida significativa de la fuerza electoral y legislativa de los partidos que tradicionalmente habían estructurado la competencia política durante la mayor parte de la etapa posterior a la alternancia. Mucho de esta desinstitucionalización se debe al proceso de desalineamiento partidista respecto de los principales partidos. Los ciudadanos que no se identifican con ningún partido político se han incrementado considerablemente en la presente década hasta constituir la mayor parte del electorado. Este declive del partidismo ha tenido a su vez importantes consecuencias para la competencia política y la configuración actual del sistema, incentivando una creciente fragmentación partidista, competitividad y volatilidad electorales, así como un menor grado de institucionalización, que paradójicamente ha tenido lugar a la par del aumento constante y considerable de los subsidios estatales a los partidos. Palabras Clave: Sistema de partidos mexicano, Desalineamiento partidista, Institucionalización de sistemas de partidos, Partidos cartel

Abstract This article analyzes the structural and attitudinal dimensions of party system institutionalization in Mexico based on aggregate electoral data and various public opinion polls. Although the Mexican party system has been considered one of the most stable systems in the region, it has undergone significant de-institutionalization during the period of democratic party competition (1997-2018). Despite the fact that during most of this century, the system exhibited moderate and relatively stable electoral volatility, it skyrocketed considerably in the 2018 elections, reaching historic levels due to the massive electoral support received by Morena to the detriment of the three mainstream parties. Deinstitutionalization has also become evident due to the consequent significant loss of the electoral and legislative strength of the parties that had traditionally structured political competition during most of the postalternation period. Much of this deinstitutionalization is due to the process of partisan dealignment with respect to the main parties. Citizens who do not identify with any political party have increased considerably in this decade to constitute the majority of the electorate. This decline in partisanship has in turn had mayor consequences for political competition and the current configuration of the party system, encouraging increasing party fragmentation, electoral competitiveness and volatility, as well as a lower degree of institutionalization, which paradoxically has taken place alongside the constant and considerable increase of the state subsidies to parties. Key Words: Mexican Party System, Partisan Dealignment, Party System Institutionalizacion, Cartel Parties

Disponible en:
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https://www.culturascontemporaneas.com/articulos.htm?revista=86
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Abstract: In this article we want to see what accounts for the level of radicalism of the Ethno-regionalist parties in Western Europe. This comparative empirical contribution to the study of ethno-regionalism is based on 44 party cases from 9 countries, covering 28 regions. The hypotheses are based on the theory of naturalized constructionism, contesting the power-sharing theory that assumes that Ethno-regionalist parties are zero-sum political actors, prone to radicalization when poorly represented in legislative or executive. We look at ERPs’ ideologies as subject to intra and the inter group party competition strategies, and we prove moderation in territorial politics is viable.

Mussolini's Fascists staged their "March on Rome" in 1922 and bluffed their way to power.

GERMAN / DEUTSCH Mit dem inszenierten „Marsch auf Rom“ tricksten sich Mussolinis Faschisten 1922 an die Macht.

KEYWORDS / SCHLAGWÖRTER
Ästhetisierung, Bewegung, Demokratie, Duce, fascismo, Faschismus, Film, Frankreich, Gewalt, Gewerkschaften, Großbritannien, Hitlerputsch, Italien, Journalismus, Marsch auf Rom, Medien, Mostra della Rivoluzione fascista, Mussolinismo, Nationalismus, Nationalsozialismus, Öffentliche Meinung, Personenkult, Presse, Propaganda, Propagandaministerium, Rechtsextremismus, Risorgimento, Ritual, Sozialismus, Straßenterror, Symbolik, Syndikalismus, Terrorismus, Vereinigtes Königreich, Volksempfänger, Zeitungen

ORGANISATIONEN: Fasci d’azione rivoluzionaria, fasci di combattimento, Faschistische Partei, Istituto Luce, Partito Nazionale Fascista, Schwarzhemden, Sozialistische Partei Italiens (PSI), Squadrismo, Squadristen, Squadristi

PERSONEN: Italo Balbo, Gustave Le Bon, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Cesare Maria De Vecchi, Emilio De Bono, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Adolf Hitler, Giacomo Matteotti, Benito Mussolini, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Sorel, Viktor Emanuel III (Vittori Emanuelle III)

PUBLIKATIONEN: Avanti, Il Popolo d’Italia
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The rise of the radical right has presented a challenge to mainstream parties in a number of European countries. As Bartek Pytlas writes, one of the strategies mainstream parties have adopted in several cases has been to co-opt the platforms of radical right parties in the hope of colonising their support. Based on an analysis of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, he argues that adopting the policies of the radical right can prove counterproductive as it legitimises the underlying narrative used by radical right parties. Mainstream parties can see off this challenge to their electoral support only by simultaneously taking ownership of the broader narrative of the radical right. He notes that this strategy nevertheless poses a challenge for the quality of democratic discourse in Central and Eastern Europe.

Published as: Pytlas, Bartek (2015): “Hungary, Poland and Slovakia show the risks associated with mainstream parties co-opting the platforms of the radical right”. LSE EUROPP Blog, 3. November 2015.

Do parties matter for policies? Despite the vast number of contributions to this old question, empirical findings remain highly contrasted and fail to demonstrate a substantial partisan influence. Nevertheless, this article argues that we should not conclude that parties are irrelevant for understanding policies. After an overview of the available empirical findings, it emphasizes that studies of legislative and governmental politics provide solid reasons for expecting a partisan influence and that we could make sense of the contradictory results by exploring the conditions under which parties matter. The final section identifies potential institutional, political, contextual and issue-specific determinants of partisanship in policymaking.

This article presents an original dataset of direct public funding (DPF) of political parties across 27 post-communist regimes from the outset of transition until 2020. It represents the first systematic, and detailed account of the actual level of DPF provided to parties outside established democracies in terms of geographical and temporal coverage. The dataset has a panel format and includes information on DPF per registered voter and cast ballot separately and in aggregate for more than 800 country-year observations and more than 200 election campaigns. The analysis unveils substantial cross-national and within-country variation in the level of DPF, as well as between statutory and election financing. Despite an increasing reliance of political parties on the state, no pattern exists regarding the dynamics of access and distribution rules. It also highlights the limitations and risks entailed by the extensive use of various proxies such as dichotomous indicators, composite regulatory indexes, or perception-based measures that do not capture cross-national and within-country variation either in DPF or other dimensions of political financing regime.

The crisis of social democracy has been the subject of numerous articles and books from different fields such as party politics, political sociology, and political economy. This article contrasts two competing explanations prevalent in the related literature. According to the postindustrial dilemmas hypothesis, the crisis of social democracy is the inevitable result of the transition from industrial to postindustrial society and the electoral trade-offs social democrats are facing as a consequence. The neoliberal contamination hypothesis instead emphasizes social democracy’s neoliberal turn and the resulting loss of trust in social democracy, especially among working-class voters. It is argued that both hypotheses are not only based on diverging conceptions of partisan politics, pitting Downs against Gramsci, but also on different theories of capitalist development (modernization theory vs Polanyian “double movement”). As a result, each explanation captures important aspects of the ...

This article combines political analysis with ethnographic fieldwork to theorise Communist party's construction of political allegiance and their persistence of power in the democratic context at a local village level in the state of Kerala in India. We provide an inaugural scholarly conceptualisation of an empirical phenomenon, known in Kerala popular parlance as 'party gramam' or the 'party village', as the focus of analysis. As we explain, a 'party village' is an administrative unit where a particular political party dominates not simply electorally but in all lived experience. We posit that the concept of 'party village' is of specific value in our understanding of various forms of current (Communist) politics. The original ascendancy of communism in the village (as in many regions of Kerala) during the twentieth century was due to its progressive ideological challenge to feudal structures of class and caste oppression. However, in democratic post-independence India, the overwhelming dominance of Communist Party in the 'party village' presents the paradox of a party with an egalitarian ideology having adapted to a persistent Hindu caste hierarchy. After situating our work within the conceptual problematisations of political party competition, and in conversation with wider communist studies literature, we provide a background to the politics of Kerala and explain the unique phenomenon of 'party villages' in Kerala. We then provide an insight into the social and economic structures of one such village, explaining the salience of these structures in relation to political allegiances. Next, we illustrate the paradox of continued caste hierarchies in a Communist Party village, and the multiple ways in which Hindu religion and caste structures are important to performing individual identity in social settings. We dissect the various means through which the grassroots Communist Party apparatus in the village maintains its dominance by adapting itself to regressive caste hierarchies for political profit at the same time as laying claim to having challenged them. In our concluding section, we place our village observations in the longer frame of historical north Kerala village politics, noting the changes over time and offering theoretical perspectives upon them. In this sense, through a mix of empirical observation with historical context and theorisation, we highlight the importance and the implications of unconventional democratic dynamics more generally.

This analysis is drawn from "The Right-Wing Alliance at the Time of the Covid-19 Pandemic: All Change?", co-written with Daniele Albertazzi and Mattia Zulianello, and published in Contemporary Italian Politics. The full academic article can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23248823.2021.1916857

Due to key differences in the policy priorities of the League and the Five Star Movement, the formation of the yellow-green cabinet appointed in Italy after the general election of March 2018 is inadequately explained by interpreting the main axis of party competition in terms of the classical left-right divide. Relying on a multi-dimensional spatial approach to party competition, this article attempts to account for the formation of the Conte cabinet by looking at the policy positions of political parties on a number of substantive policy dimensions. We analyse changes in the dimensionality of the policy space of party competition by using data from an expert survey fielded in the aftermath of the 2018 election and by comparing these data with similar expert survey data collected since 2001. Results highlight dramatic changes in the last two decades, showing a gradual decline in the salience of economic issues vis-à-vis an increase in the salience of non-economic domains such as Euro-pean integration and immigration. We show that the formation of the Conte executive can be understood in light of the closeness of the two coalition partners' policy positions on non-economic policy dimensions.

South  Tyrol,  together  with  the  province  of  Trentino,  forms  one  of  the  five  Italian  regions  with  a  special statute, out of 20 regions in total. It is often considered to be a model region in terms of how to deal with violent ethnic conflict through the implementation of group rights and territorial autonomy. Implemented to tame centrifugal tendencies, the consociational system has for a decade been losing its balance, with pro-autonomy stances ceding ground to secessionist pressure in the German-speaking arena. Focusing on  their  strategic  behaviour,  this  brief  examines  the  centre-periphery  dynamics and  the  sovereignty proposals  of  South  Tyrolean  ethnic  minority  parties. Challenged  by  the  electoral  success  of  the secessionist  opposition,  the hegemonic  and  autonomist  South  Tyrolean  People’s  Party  (SVP)  is responding with a new pro-European devo-max objective. The rise of secessionism is accompanied by an end to the pro-European elite consensus.

I investigate whether the strength of the class cleavage in Western Europe still "translates" into the electoral mobilization of the left. This research question is addressed through comparative longitudinal analysis in nineteen Western European countries after World War II. In particular, the impact of class cleavage is investigated by disentangling its socio-structural (working-class features) and organizational (corporate and partisan) components, thus accounting for its multidimensional nature. Data show that both components have a significant impact in Western Europe after 1945. However, while the socio-structural element is still nowadays a substantial predictor of left electoral mobilization, the impact of the organizational element has decreased over time and has become irrelevant in the last twenty-five years. Therefore, the class cleavage is not entirely lost in translation, but left electoral mobilization is no longer dependent upon the organizational features of trade unions and political parties that originally emerged to represent working-class interests.

Across Europe, a substantial amount of parties have appeared which are characterised by a criticism of mainstream ideologies or the political elites more generally. Some of these parties have even succeeded in securing executive power. This paper examines the conditions underlying the electoral survival and demise of a broad range of ‘challenger parties’ after their first term in office. The central puzzle is why some newly governing challenger parties were able to survive reasonably well in the subsequent parliamentary election, while others failed to shield themselves from the electoral hazards of office. The paper presents the results of a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of 25 newly governing parties across Europe. It shows that survivors did not necessarily leave a great impression in office, but that they were generally characterised by a higher degree of organisational cohesion and rootedness than their less successful counterparts.

Parties craft their campaign messages to mobilize diverse constituencies. Theories of election strategy find that parties choose their tactics dependent on their electoral context. However, analyses on the electoral consequences of party competition have only begun to explore the dependency between context and tactic. Building on theories of party competition, I predict that the broad electoral context, such as incumbent status or the state of the economy, decides the effect of electoral tactics on the votes parties receive. Parties benefit from branching out to a wider range of issues when they are in the opposition. Instead, government parties have less control of their reputation. Economic conditions limit the incumbent's ability to selectively construct its policy message. However, these parties profit from pairing down their policy appeals when the economy grows. Using evidence from the Comparative Manifestos Project for 24 OECD countries over a 60 year period, I find that conditioning party campaign messages on their economic environment demonstrates a clear and strong electoral impact. Individual level evidence from 12 OECD countries in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems adds evidence consistent with the underlying mechanism. Governing parties earn a reward for focusing their platforms when the economy grows more than the economy alone would predict. The results from this analysis complement a growing literature on the effect of parties' election tactics and help explain evidence that voters only respond to parties' election strategies.

This paper studies how government policy agendas react between elections by focusing on a dilemma: what do governments do when they are electorally vulnerable? Do they emphasise those issues the public is more concerned about or do they emphasise those issues they are competent on? Using Comparative Agendas Project data on issue emphases in executive speeches in Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US, we find that when the issue is salient to the public and the government is perceived as competent on the issue, electoral vulnerability does not have any enhancing effect on responsiveness. Vulnerability matters to the extent that the government is not associated with the issue. Second, governments rely on issues that are salient to the public and, more heavily, on those in which they are competent on, independently of their vulnerability. Our findings have important implications for governing parties’ electoral strategies and to mass-elite linkages.

This paper studies whether governments adjust their legislative priorities to public priorities between elections conditional on electoral incentives and uses time-series cross-sectional data from the Comparative Agendas Project on enacted legislation in Spain, the UK, and the US. The paper confirms that public priorities have an impact on legislative priorities of governments. However, the effect of electoral incentives is mixed. First, the beneficial effect of gov- ernment electoral vulnerability on legislative responsiveness to public priorities is confirmed only in the UK, while, in the US, it is government popularity that increases responsiveness. Second, evidence from the UK suggests that legislative responsiveness is higher in the election year compared to other years. Third, this paper finds no support for the expectation that responsiveness is more likely when the government is associated with the issue. These findings have implications for the application of party competition theories to law making.