scholarly journals Attitudes and opinions of Italian middle-level elites in the new millennium. Adaptation, innovation, or persistence?

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Paola Bordandini ◽  
Rosa Mulé
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Change ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Unique Data

The literature on party politics has generally conceived of party change as party adaptation. Building on the theories of institutional change based on critical juncture analysis, our work contributes to the literature in two ways. Theoretically, by unpacking the concept of party change in three dimensions: adaptation, innovation, and persistence. This multidimensionality has been unduly neglected in the literature, too exclusively focussed on party adaptation. Empirically, the article analyses whether the attitudes and opinions of middle-level elites reveal adaptation, innovation, or persistence in their belief system at the beginning of the third millennium. Drawing upon a unique data set of national party delegates of 15 Italian political parties, regression results suggest that high entry barriers in party organizations may hinder Schumpeterian innovation.

Digital revolution and party innovations: An analysis of the Spanish case

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-253
Author(s):  
Francesco Raniolo ◽  
Valeria Tarditi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Organizational Models ◽  
Party Change ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
New Information ◽  
Information And Communication

AbstractThe literature on party change has shown how the advent of the digital revolution and the diffusion of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the democracies of the 21st century have influenced the way political parties communicate and perform their functions. Less investigated, however, is the organizational reaction of political parties to the challenges posed by the transformation of the communications environment. The aim of this paper is to scrutinize whether parties evince a transformative tendency towards virtual models in which new digital ICTs are used as ‘functional equivalents’ of the old organizational infrastructures. To this end, the paper focuses on the Spanish democracy – a paradigmatic case of the political transformations that European democracies have undergone since the 2008 economic crisis – comparing the organizational models of the main political parties: the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the Partido Popular, Podemos and Ciudadanos. Particularly the analysis – through the use of parties' documents – focuses on whether and how digital tools are used by the Spanish parties in three dimensions: the participants in the organization, the organizational configuration and the decision-making process. The main conclusions are: new challenger parties make a more intense and radical use of new ICTs introducing ‘disrupting innovations’ in their organization, while old and mainstream parties gradually adapt their organization to the new digital environment introducing ‘sustaining innovations’; parties on the left make greater use of ICTs in order to foster greater internal democracy when compared to their corresponding parties on the centre-right.

scholarly journals Why do parties support emigrant voting rights?

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Østergaard-Nielsen ◽  
Irina Ciornei ◽  
Jean-Michel Lafleur
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
External Voting ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
The Right ◽  
Party Family

AbstractPolicies allowing enfranchisement of non-resident citizens (emigrants and their descendants) are now implemented in the majority of states worldwide. A growing number of case studies show that the extension of voting rights to non-resident citizens is often contested among country of origin political parties. However, there is no systematic comparative study of why different political parties support or oppose external voting rights and how this position is framed by the parties. Drawing on a unique data set based on 34 debates across 13 countries, we estimate the extent to which ideology and party family are correlated with the positioning and framing of parties. Among the findings are that the more to the right is a party, the more it tends to support external voting rights, except in the case of radical right parties. The position on emigrant voting rights is largely framed along more pragmatic arguments.

scholarly journals El régimen constitucional de los partidos políticos en el derecho de la Unión Europea: un equilibrio sui generis

2016 ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Ángel Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
National Party ◽  
Member States ◽  
European Elections ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Eu

El equilibrio en la regulación de los partidos políticos en las democracias contemporáneas se alcanza cuando la atribución a estos de funciones políticas relevantes se compensa con mecanismos de control. La aplicación de este principio a la regulación de los partidos políticos en el derecho de la UE pone de manifiesto una situación de equilibrio sui generis: las funciones de los partidos políticos europeos en las elecciones europeas o en el proceso legislativo del Parlamento Europeo está fuertemente limitada por el protagonismo de los Estados miembros y la política de partidos nacionales; por otro lado, los mecanismos de control establecidos sobre los partidos políticos europeos, incluidos los de democracia militante, deben coexistir con las normas nacionales al respecto, generando los problemas típicos de los escenarios multinivel.Balance in political parties regulation is met in contemporary democracies when the attribution of relevant political functions to political parties is counterweighed with mechanisms of control. The application of this principle to the regulation of political parties under the EU legal order reveals a sui generis balance: the functions of European political parties in European elections or in the legislative process within the European Parliament is significantly limited by the leading role played by member States and national party politics; besides, the mechanisms of control on European political parties, including those of militant democracy, must coexist with national laws governing the same subject, creating the typical problems of multilevel scenarios.

How far right local party organizations develop

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (6) ◽  
pp. 804-820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonis A Ellinas ◽  
Iasonas Lamprianou
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
National Level ◽  
Organizational Outcomes ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Local Party

The literature on far right parties emphasizes the importance of party organization for electoral persistence. Yet, a lot is still unknown about the organizational development of these parties. This article examines the microdynamics of organizational development and explores why some party organizations succeed and others fail. It focuses on the local rather than the national level and analyzes grassroots activities rather than party leadership, institutions, or members. To analyze organizational development, the article uses an original and unique data set of 3594 activities of the Greek Golden Dawn (GD) supplemented by interviews with the GD leadership and activists as well as with evidence from hundreds of newspaper reports. It uses this evidence to trace local party activism and to document variation in local organizational outcomes. To account for why some local party organizations succeed or fail, it suggests that, rather than solely following electoral logic, the organizational development of far right parties also relates to the way they respond to challenges from antifascist groups and state authorities.

Three Worlds of Representation: A Linkage-Based Typology of Parties in Western and Eastern Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Wineroither ◽  
Gilg U. H. Seeber
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The West ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Policy Representation ◽  
Democratic Experience ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies

This article is part of the special cluster titled Parties and Democratic Linkage in Post-Communist Europe, guest edited by Lori Thorlakson, and will be published in the August 2018 issue of EEPS Have Eastern European democracies developed patterns of accountability similar to those existent in their established counterparts? While most accounts of convergence are confined to the world of programmatic reasoning and policy representation, we use a unique data set to cover the wealth of instrumental and emotional modes of linkage building. We apply advanced techniques of model-based cluster analysis to establish a linkage-based typology of political parties. In the East, the contrast of programmatic and clientelistic parties is most essential in the absence of strong regional subdivisions. In the West, the structure of linkage building is characterized by an all-encompassing divide that separates mainstream and challenger parties. Parties in Southern Europe form a distinct Mediterranean type of “machine politics.” The results for affluent post-industrial societies both support and contradict premises of the cartel party hypothesis. For third-wave democracies in the East, our results suggest the persistence of legacies of pre-communist and communist rule against the weight of cumulative democratic experience. In sum, patterns of accountability remained markedly different in the two regions on the eve of the economic crisis in 2008–2009.

Do regional party primaries affect the ideological cohesion of political parties in multilevel systems? Evidence from Spain

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 770-782
Author(s):  
Marc Debus ◽  
Rosa M Navarrete
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
National Party ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Multilevel Systems ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Selection Of

Parties have strong incentives to present a relatively cohesive policy position to the voters across different levels of a political system. However, the adoption of inclusive forms of candidate selection methods like primaries could result in the selection of top candidates for elections on the subnational sphere who are not favoured by the party leadership. This is often seen as a threat to high levels of intra-party programmatic cohesion. Because subnational party organizations depend to a significant degree on the support from their national party, we argue that regional party branches that selected their top candidates by means of a primary adopt a policy position that deviates less strongly from the one of their national party. However, candidates selected by primaries might need to be responsive to the preferences of their regional selectorate, so that the incentives for parties at a regional level to deviate substantially from the position of their national party organization could increase. By analysing the content of 150 regional election manifestos of Spanish parties, we find that if a party’s top candidate for a regional election is selected in a primary, then the policy distance between the respective regional and national party decreases. However, this effect is not observable for recently founded parties.

Personal leaders and party change: Italy in comparative perspective

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fortunato Musella
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Party Change ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
New Procedures ◽  
Selection Of

IntroduzioneParty leaders have become more powerful and autonomous actors in recent years by developing a direct and personal relationship with citizens. As anticipated in the United States (Lowi, 1985), the rise of the ‘personal leader’ seems to have occurred in many European democracies, both in old parties and in more recently formed parties, with a widespread tendency for them to be promoted and controlled by individual leaders. Nevertheless, party leadership remains quite a neglected theme in political science. Through a data set including ~500 party presidents in 13 democracies, this article focusses on the personalization of party leadership by comparing Italy with other Western countries. More particularly, new procedures for the selection of party chairs, the centralization of power in political parties, and the new role of party leaders in the legislative/governmental arena are analysed, given their importance to such a process. The article summarizes new data on the party leaders’ characteristics, with regards to their political backgrounds, how they are elected, how long they stay in office, and whether they become prime minister or enter the executive. In this way, we are able to see how some new parties are created from the outset as highly personalized and centralized parties (Forza Italia being the paradigmatic case), whereas other older parties have also evolved in a personalized direction.

scholarly journals Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Bhutta ◽  
Aurel Hizmo
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rate ◽  
Interest Rates ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Discount Points ◽  
The Interest Rate ◽  
Mortgage Lenders

Abstract We test for racial discrimination in the prices charged by mortgage lenders. We construct a unique data set from which we observe the three dimensions of a mortgage’s price: the interest rate, discount points, and fees. Although we find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, these gaps are offset by differences in discount points. We trace out point-rate schedules and show that minorities and whites face identical schedules, but sort to different locations on the schedule. Such sorting may reflect systematic differences in liquidity or preferences. Finally, we find no differences in total fees by race or ethnicity.

The neglected variable. The coevolution of public administration and political parties in the UK and Italy (1950–2010)

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-124
Author(s):  
Eugenio Pizzimenti ◽  
Enrico Calossi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Organization Theory ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Research Question ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Party Change ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Party Organizations

AbstractThe relationships between the State and political parties have often been analysed in dual terms. Yet, as Katz and Mair already noticed in their well-known (and criticized) article on the emergence of the cartel party, a clear separation between parties and public institutions has never been completely achieved, in the evolution of liberal democracies. In contrast, while parties act as agencies of institutionalization, public institutions recognize (de jure or de facto) parties as the legitimate actors of political representation. From this perspective, it is worth considering party change as a process intertwined also with institutional change. To date, however, the analysis of such a relationship has been neglected by political scientists, who have privileged explanations of party change based on other factors, whether at systemic or at a micro level. By avoiding a priori assumptions about causality, our main research question is the following: is it possible to identify patterns of co-evolution between State institutions – more specifically, public administration – and party organizations? Building on a new institutional approach to organization theory, the aim of this article is to investigate to what extent the evolution in the size of party organizations and in the size of public administration has followed similar trajectories. Our study focuses on the United Kingdom and Italy, from 1950 to 2010. Our findings confirm that parties' external face expands when public spending and the number of public employees increase, and vice-versa. The same holds for parties' internal face, at least in the Italian case.

To which extent do political parties utilize similar frames?

2021 ◽  
pp. 135406882110288
Author(s):  
Camilla Bjarnøe
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Public ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Coalition Partner ◽  
Mainstream Party ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Very High ◽  
Degree Of Overlap

How parties compete by utilizing frames in the public debate is not well understood. A widespread understanding is that parties tend to compete by talking past each other, i.e. when they utilize dissimilar frames. This article relies on a unique data set of parties’ framing of four individual policy questions over two decades in Denmark to examine frame overlap, i.e. when parties adopt similar frames. Results show that parties utilize similar and dissimilar frames in the public debate. However, a high degree of frame similarity was generally found across parliamentary blocs (between the leading mainstream party from each bloc, their leading junior coalition partner, and the two blocs) and most often a very high degree of overlap was found within parliamentary blocs (between the leading mainstream party and its junior coalition partner). This result suggests a need to rethink thoroughly how to understand and study interaction among parties utilizing frames.

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