The evolution of party funding in Italy: a case of inclusive cartelisation?

Modern Italy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Pizzimenti
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
System Level ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Collusive Behaviour

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the Italian public funding regime, in the light of the assumptions of the cartel party thesis. In the mid-1990s, the debate on party and party system change was revitalised by R. Katz and P. Mair (1995), who introduced the concept of the ‘cartel party’ as a means to study the increasing influence of the state on party politics. Among the main analytical dimensions of the cartel party argument, the system-level variables have received little attention with respect to the Italian case. In what follows I try to find out empirical evidence for the hypothesised changes in the relationship between parties and the state and in the patterns of inter-party competition. I will analyse the trends of the law-making process in the domain of party funding (1948–2014), by combining these observations with data on parties’ reliance on state funds and party collusive behaviour.

The Paradox of Party Funding

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid van Biezen ◽  
Petr Kopecký
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
State Funding ◽  
Private Donations ◽  
State Subsidies ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter addresses the role of public funding in party organizational transformation. Focusing mainly on European democracies, and using the new systematic data obtained from the Political Party Database, this chapter makes two contributions to the party politics literature. First, a range of existing findings about the importance of state subsidies for party life are re-examined, probing in particular the extent to which party incomes depend on public funding, as opposed to private donations and membership fees. Second, the association between parties’ dependence on state subsidies and party organization is explored, probing in particular the relationship between public monies and the size of parties’ memberships. Unlike the first exploration, which largely confirms most existing conclusions about the patterns of party financing, the findings from the second exploration appear to be more challenging: contrary to usual expectations, state funding of political parties does not necessarily undermine party membership.

The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Basile
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Italian Case

AbstractThis paper sheds light on the role played by political parties in influencing policy change, by connecting literature on party competition and agenda-setting and focusing on a single-issue domain, namely decentralization in Italy from 1948 to 2013. The article argues that major decentralist reforms usually followed electoral campaigns in which most parties focused attention on the issue. Such shifts in attention are caused by, among other things, the issue entrepreneurship activity undertaken by individual parties that are trying to influence the party system agenda and obtain electoral, office, or policy advantage. Contrary to the expectations of the issue entrepreneurship model, however, the analyses reveal that the entrepreneurship role on decentralization in Italy was not played by those parties that can be classified as ‘political losers’ in the party system; rather, in the case of the policy of decentralization in Italy, issue entrepreneurship activity is mostly explained by strategic considerations other than purely electoral ones.

Money, organization and the state: The partial cartelization of party politics in Slovenia

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 199-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alenka Krašovec ◽  
Tim Haughton
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Party Funding

A detailed analysis of party organization, party funding and voting behaviour in parliament in Slovenia indicates a partial cartelization of Slovene party politics. In line with the cartel thesis, parties in Slovenia are heavily dependent on the state for their finances and there is evidence that parties have used the resources of the state to limit competition. Nonetheless, there is much less evidence of cartelization in terms of party organization indicating more cartelization in the party system as a whole than within individual parties.

The Modern British Party System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
System P ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Party Funding

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview and account of the changing nature of party politics in Britain today. It draws on models of comparative politics to conduct a wealth of new empirical analysis to map and explain the ways in which the party system has evolved and the parties adapted to a changing political environment. Themes covered include the nature and extent of party competition, the internal life and organizational development of parties, the varieties of party system found across the UK, and the roles played by parties within the wider political system. The book also addresses the crisis of popular legitimacy confronting the parties, as well as assessing the scope for potential reform. While parties remain central to the functioning of Britain’s democracy, public disaffection with them is as high as it has ever been; reform of the system of representation and party funding is warranted, but there are unlikely to be any panaceas.

Party Politics Triumph over Substantive Scrutiny and Principled Policy: Examining Czech MPs’ Voting Behaviour in Regard to EU Affairs

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Martin Kuta
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
The Eu

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances – which are expressed through voting – towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties’ behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system.

Between Legitimation and Decentralisation

2016 ◽  
pp. 400-440
Author(s):  
Gustavo Xavier Bonifaz
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Party System ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
The State ◽  
Process Tracing ◽  
American States ◽  
Country Case Study ◽  
Political Legitimation ◽  
The Relationship

The present paper aims at answering why a country that shared, with other Latin American states, a centralist tradition that was even strengthened in the aftermath of its 1952 revolution, became one of the most radical and complex decentralisers in the region. The present is a country case study in which, using a process-tracing analysis, the evolution of decentralisation in Bolivia will be explained up to its current complex structure from a perspective of the relationship between political legitimation under competitive elections and the way in which the party system processed longstanding tensions between the state and different segments of society.

scholarly journals Do Populist Parties Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence From Over 40 Years of Electoral History in 31 European Democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 003232172092325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arndt Leininger ◽  
Maurits J Meijers
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
The Relationship

While some consider populist parties to be a threat to liberal democracy, others have argued that populist parties may positively affect the quality of democracy by increasing political participation of citizens. This supposition, however, has hitherto not been subjected to rigorous empirical tests. The voter turnout literature, moreover, has primarily focused on stable institutional and party system characteristics – ignoring more dynamic determinants of voter turnout related to party competition. To fill this double gap in the literature, we examine the effect of populist parties, both left and right, on aggregate-level turnout in Western and Eastern European parliamentary elections. Based on a dataset on 315 elections in 31 European democracies since 1970s, we find that turnout is higher when populist parties are represented in parliament prior to an election in Eastern Europe, but not in Western Europe. These findings further our understanding of the relationship between populism, political participation and democracy.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pradeep K. Chhibber ◽  
Rahul Verma
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
Social Cleavages ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Ideological Space

Indian party politics is typically characterized as centered around leaders, based on social cleavages, and not ideological. This book challenges those views and asserts that, as in many other parts of the world, a deep ideological divide frames the Indian party system. It claims that the paradigm of state formation based largely on class politics is not entirely applicable to many multiethnic countries in the twentieth century. In more diverse countries, the most important debates center on the extent to which the state should dominate society, regulate social norms, and redistribute private property and on whether and how the state should accommodate the needs of various marginalized groups and protect minority rights from assertive majoritarian tendencies. These two issues—the state’s role in transforming social traditions, and its role as accommodator of various social groups—constitute the dimensions of ideological space as it exists in Indian party politics today.

The Logic of Inter-Party Competition and Cooperation

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-26
Author(s):  
Fernando Casal Bértoa ◽  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Competition And Cooperation ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Three Components

The first chapter lays the foundation for a cooperation-focused way of thinking about party politics. It provides reasons why its analysts should go beyond individual parties and consider blocs of parties. It introduces the concept of poles, as distinct from blocs, and builds a party system typology around them. The second part of the chapter elaborates the concept of party system closure, relating it to the wider notion of party system institutionalization, and identifies its three components: alternation, innovation, and access. The chapter ends by considering the most likely causes and most important political consequences of closure.

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