scholarly journals Political Parties and Participative Approaches to Democracy

Author(s):  
Cristiano Gianolla

Representative democracy is currenty facing strong social criticism for its incapacity to envolve people in a way that makes them part of the decision-making process. An existing gap between the representatives and the represented is hereby emphasized. In this space, the role of political parties is central in order to bridge society with institutions. How much are parties concerned about this issue? How and in which context do they interact more with their electorate and the wider society? Participatory democracy is emerging throughout the world in different forms and with different results, but the dominant pattern of democracy remains the liberal western democratic paradigm in which people can contribute barely through electing candidates. In order to achieve what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls ‘democratisation of democracy’ the role of political parties is therefore fundamental in particular to achieve a more participative democracy within the representative model. This article approaches this theme through a bibliographic review comparing social movements and political parties with a focus on the innovation of the Five Star Movement in Italy. Finally, it provides a reading of the relationship between political parties andparticipation, including good practice and perspectives.KEYWORDS: Participation, political parties, social movements, political movements, representative democracy, participatory democracy.

Author(s):  
András Sajó ◽  
Renáta Uitz

This chapter examines the relationship between parliamentarism and the legislative branch. It explores the evolution of the legislative branch, leading to disillusionment with the rationalized law-making factory, a venture run by political parties beyond the reach of constitutional rules. The rise of democratically bred party rule is positioned between the forces favouring free debate versus effective decision-making in the legislature. The chapter analyses the institutional make-up and internal operations of the legislature, the role of the opposition in the legislative assembly, and explores the benefits of bicameralism for boosting the powers of the legislative branch. Finally, it looks at the law-making process and its outsourcing via delegating legislative powers to the executive.


2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin

This article addresses the relationship between political decentralization and the organization of political parties in Great Britain and Spain, focusing on the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, respectively. It assesses two rival accounts of this relationship: Caramani's `nationalization of politics' thesis and Chhibber and Kollman's rational choice institutionalist account in their book The Formation of National Party Systems. It argues that both accounts are seriously incomplete, and on occasion misleading, because of their unwillingness to consider the autonomous role of political parties as advocates of institutional change and as organizational entities. The article develops this argument by studying the role of the British Labour Party and the Spanish Socialists in proposing devolution reforms, and their organizational and strategic responses to them. It concludes that the reductive theories cited above fail to capture the real picture, because parties cannot only mitigate the effects of institutional change, they are also the architects of these changes and shape institutions to suit their strategic ends.


2021 ◽  
pp. 97-132
Author(s):  
Frank W. Munger ◽  
Peerawich Thoviriyavej ◽  
Vorapitchaya Rabiablok

Women lawyers are increasing seen among the leading legal defenders of human rights and social movements in Thailand. Increasing visibility is partly a result of news coverage and social media, but women lawyers activism has far older roots. In this article, we examine two related processes of change that contribute to women’s emergence as leading social cause practitioners. First, we discuss the relationship between Thailand’s legal system and its social and political development since the end of the nineteenth century. Second, we employ career narratives of three women lawyers with innovative practices for social causes as a lens through which to examine how lawyers transform available resources into an identity, law practice, and law. We discuss not only the role of prior generations of women lawyers, connections between influential elites and social cause lawyers, and the founding of a few key organizations within the NGO community, but also the role of the women as architects of their own careers. We conclude that they have become successful by aligning their practices with emerging social movements and progressive bureaucrats, unexpectedly creating professional identities with somewhat different relationships to the rule of law.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Reni Kumalasari

This article tries to explain how the relationship between Islam and politics after the conflict between the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). After the peace agreement between the two parties with the signing of the Helsinki MoU, the Indonesian government interpreted the agreement in Law No. 11 of 2006 concerning the Government of Aceh (UUPA). The presence of the act makes the ulama a partner of the government in running the wheels of government by giving fatwa on issues of government, development, community development, and the economy. Furthermore, after peace, the role of the ulama was not only to give knowledge to the community, some ulama participated in practical politics. This was one of the effects of the UUPA, where Aceh was given the privilege of establishing local political parties. At present some ulama have occupied various positions in party management, and even participated in the regional head election (PILKADA), where religious values are used as a means of gaining power.


Author(s):  
Peter Smuk

<p>La regulación de los partidos políticos parece un tema ligeramente descuidado en la literatura constitucional húngara. Así, a pesar de que hay un gran número de cuestiones que deben analizarse y entenderse en los ámbitos de la democracia representativa, en el sistema electoral y en la financiación de los partidos, derivadas de las particularidades del cambio del régimen político, y que hace necesaria la interpretación de nuestro sistema político actual. Un análisis sustantivo de estas cuestiones en términos de derecho constitucional (y desde las ciencias políticas) podría contribuir a una mejor comprensión de la democracia representativa húngara, el estado constitucional, así como la relación entre la sociedad civil y el Estado. En este documento voy a ofrecer una visión general de las normas constitucionales relativas a los partidos políticos europeos y comparar la redacción de la Ley Fundamental de Hungría con las normas constitucionales creadas en 1989.</p><p>The regulation of political parties seems a slightly neglected topic in the Hungarian constitutional literature. It is so despite the fact that there are a large number of questions to be analysed and understood in the fields of representative democracy, election system and party financing arising from the particularities of the change of the political regime, the recent constitution-making or the necessary interpretation of our current political system. A substantive analysis of these questions in terms of constitutional law (and political science) could contribute to a better understanding of the Hungarian representative democracy, constitutional state as well as the relationship between civil society and the state. In this paper I will provide a rough overview of constitutional rules relating to European political parties and compare the wording of the Fundamental Law of Hungary with the constitutional rules created in 1989.</p><div> </div>


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-143
Author(s):  
Vania Markarian

This paper – focused on a deep analysis of the student movement that occupied the streets of Montevideo in 1968 – aims at proposing some analytical lines to understand this and other contemporary cycles of protest in different places of the world. After locating these events in a wide geography characterized both by political acceleration and the dramatic display of cultural change, four relevant themes in the growing body of literature on the «global Sixties» are raised. First, it is addressed the relationship between social movements and groups or political parties in these «short cycles» of protest. Second, the idea that violence was rather a catalyzer of political innovation rather than the result of political polarization is proposed. Third, it breaks down the diversity of possible links between culture, in a broad sense, and the forms of political participation in youth mobilizations. Finally, it can be more rewarding to look at different scales of analysis of these processes, from the strictly national to the transnational circulation of ideas and people.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 376-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xenia Chiaramonte

The relationship between social movements and the legal field is controversial and complex. This paper begins by recognizing that the concept of social movement does not belong to legal doctrine and then synthetically reconstruct the relevance of it for a legal understanding. In fact, even if this concept is not formally taken into account by constitutions or by legal codes, a socio-legal approach underscores the need for the comprehension and inclusion of collective phenomena into legal theory. First, the paper explores the way in which ‘social movement’ has been taken up and translated in the legal field through the concept of social change and constitutional change. Second, this research goes through various cases in which social movements use law strategically, from the phenomenon of cause lawyering to the litigation strategy. Finally, it stands for a theoretical understanding of the role of social movements in legal theory as a lively expression of ‘becoming-constituent’.


Author(s):  
Andrea Oelsner ◽  
Mervyn Bain

This chapter examines the main features of the undemocratic regimes that were in power in Latin America from the late 1960s, along with the democratization processes that followed since the 1980s. The nature of the non-democratic governments varied throughout the region, and consequently the types of transition and the quality of the resulting democracy varied as well. The chapter focuses on four cases that reflect these differences: Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. For each country, the chapter reviews a number of dimensions that have been relevant in the democratization processes: the historical and international contexts, the role of economic factors, political culture and society, political parties and social movements, and the institutional challenges that still lie ahead.


2020 ◽  
pp. 318-335
Author(s):  
Herbert Kitschelt ◽  
Philipp Rehm

This chapter examines four fundamental questions relating to political participation. First, it considers different modes of political participation such as social movements, interest groups, and political parties. Second, it analyses the determinants of political participation, focusing in particular on the paradox of collective action. Third, it explains political participation at the macro-level in order to identify which contextual conditions are conducive to participation and the role of economic affluence in political participation. Finally, the chapter discusses political participation at the micro-level. It shows that both formal associations and informal social networks, configured around family and friendship ties, supplement individual capacities to engage in political participation or compensate for weak capacities, so as to boost an individual’s probability to become politically active.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Coticchia ◽  
Valerio Vignoli

The role of political parties in foreign policy is gaining increasing attention. Nonetheless, despite an extraordinary interest in ‘populism’, the foreign policy of populist parties has rarely been investigated. This article provides an innovative theoretical framework, applying it on a rare example of a ‘pure’ populist party: Italy’s Five Star Movement. How has Five Star Movement positioned on Italian contribution to military operations abroad? What does such positioning say about its ideological leaning? In order to address such questions, the article analyses Five Star Movement’s MPs’ votes and speeches on foreign policy during its first term in Parliament (2013–2018). We find that, notwithstanding some ambiguities, the Movement’s stance has been mostly pacifist and humanitarian, resembling more a ‘left-libertarian populist party’ than a ‘sovereigntist far-right one’. Through these findings, the article contributes to the debate on populist parties and foreign policy in Europe, clarifying also the elusive ideological leaning of the Five Star Movement.


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