Parties, Partisanship, and Public Policy in the Pennsylvania Legislature

1954 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 450-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
State History ◽  
Fruitful Research ◽  
American Party ◽  
The Impact

A significant result of the report “Toward A More Responsible Two-Party System” has been the marked growth of interest in the American party system. It is nevertheless true that our knowledge about the way in which party systems function is far from complete. An area promising fruitful research and presenting many hypotheses susceptible of systematic inquiry is that of the role of party organizations in the legislative process.It is the purpose of this article to examine the legislative role of political parties in the Pennsylvania General Assembly; more precisely, to measure their influence in the formation of the state's public policies in one session of the legislature. The most recent completed session at the time of this study was that of 1951—the longest session in state history.In order to evaluate the impact of party upon legislation, the concept of a “party vote” has been used. This is merely an operating definition by which to measure differences in party attitudes on questions subjected to roll-call votes on the floor. The assumption was made that the interests of the parties can be established best by analyzing the voting behavior of their membership. Questions to which partisan significance is attached will find the parties aligned against each other.

Segmental Volatility in Ethnically Divided Societies: (Re)assessing Party System Stability in Southeast Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Damir Kapidžić ◽  
Olivera Komar
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Party System ◽  
Ethnically Diverse ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
System Stability ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Ethnic Parties ◽  
Stabilizing Factors

Abstract This article examines the role of ethnicity and ethnic parties as stabilizing factors in Southeast European party systems. It compares two ethnically divided countries in Southeast Europe: Bosnia and Herzegovina, where ethnic identities that form the political cleavage are firm, and Montenegro, where they are malleable. Theoretically, it addresses the debate between scholars who either find stability or instability in East European post-communist party systems. The article traces the role of ethnicity in the formation and development of electoral contests and compares the two cases by utilizing measures of block volatility, based on analysis of official electoral data. We argue that party systems in ethnically diverse countries are stable at the subsystems level, but unstable within them. In BiH, firm ethnic identity stabilizes the party system by limiting competition between blocks, leading to closure. Malleable ethnic identity in Montenegro opens competition to non-ethnic parties seeking to bridge ethnic divisions, leading to more instability. We find that party system dynamics in ethnically divided new democracies depend on identity rigidity and cleavage salience, in addition to levels of heterogeneity.

The Democratic and Republican Governors Associations and the Nationalization of American Party Politics, 1961–1968

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Anthony Sparacino
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
State Governments ◽  
National Party ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
American Party

Abstract This article examines the origins and early activities of the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations (DGA and RGA, respectively) from the RGA's initial founding in 1961 through the 1968 national nominating conventions. I argue that the formations of these organizations were key moments in the transition from a decentralized to a more integrated and nationally programmatic party system. The DGA and RGA represent gubernatorial concern for and engagement in the development of national party programs and the national party organizations. Governors formed these groups because of the increasing importance of national government programs on the affairs of state governments and the recognition on the part of governors that national partisan politics was having critical effects on electoral outcomes at the state level, through the reputations of the national parties. To varying extents, the governors used these organizations to promote the national parties and contributed to national party-building efforts and the development of national party brands.

scholarly journals The Centre Does Not Hold: Coalition Politics and Party System Change in the Netherlands, 2002–12

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huib Pellikaan ◽  
Sarah L. de Lange ◽  
Tom W.G. van der Meer
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Coalition Politics ◽  
Coalition Formation Process ◽  
The Impact

Like many party systems across Western Europe, the Dutch party system has been in flux since 2002 as a result of a series of related developments, including the decline of mainstream parties which coincided with the emergence of radical right-wing populist parties and the concurrent dimensional transformation of the political space. This article analyses how these challenges to mainstream parties fundamentally affected the structure of party competition. On the basis of content analysis of party programmes, we examine the changing configuration of the Dutch party space since 2002 and investigate the impact of these changes on coalition-formation patterns. We conclude that the Dutch party system has become increasingly unstable. It has gradually lost its core through electoral fragmentation and mainstream parties’ positional shifts. The disappearance of a core party that dominates the coalition-formation process initially transformed the direction of party competition from centripetal to centrifugal. However, since 2012 a theoretically novel configuration has emerged in which no party or coherent group of parties dominates competition.

New Perspectives on British Local Government

1973 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-138
Author(s):  
Howard A. Scarrow
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Pressure Group ◽  
Party Organization ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
American Party

It is both humbling and encouraging to recall notions that Americans once entertained of the British political system. Critics of F.D.R. looked enviously at the British Parliament for its reputed ability to hold the executive firmly accountable for its actions. Somewhat later, observers on both sides of the Atlantic supposed that Britain was blessed with an absence of pressure groups. Would-be reformers of the American party system further implied that British voters cast their ballots according to the content of party programs, and that party cohesion was the result of discipline imposed by a centralized party organization able to deny renomination to recalcitrant M.P.'s. Careful analyses of intra-party workings, pressure-group activity, and voting behavior have now dispelled these and other mistaken impressions, and it seems likely that the contours of our understanding of these subjects have now been established. However, additional frontiers of knowledge of the British political system remain to be charted; one of these is government at the local level.

Diminished Parties

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Developing Democracies ◽  
Party Organizations ◽  
Definition Of

Many contemporary party organizations are failing to fulfill their representational role in contemporary democracies. While political scientists tend to rely on a minimalist definition of political parties (groups of candidates that compete in elections), this volume argues that this misses how parties can differ not only in degree but also in kind. With a new typology of political parties, the authors provide a new analytical tool to address the role of political parties in democratic functioning and political representation. The empirical chapters apply the conceptual framework to analyze seventeen parties across Latin America. The authors are established scholars expert in comparative politics and in the cases included in the volume. The book sets an agenda for future research on parties and representation, and it will appeal to those concerned with the challenges of consolidating stable and programmatic party systems in developing democracies.

Party Systems in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Wills-Otero
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
The Third ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Political Configuration ◽  
American Party ◽  
Over Time

Since the beginning of the third wave of democratization in the late 1970s, Latin American party systems have confronted several challenges, and they have frequently been transformed. There have been various types of changes. While some systems collapsed in the 1990s (e.g., Venezuela and Peru), others realigned (Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay), or expanded (Argentina and Mexico), or were able to become consolidated and ensure their stability over time (e.g., Brazil). What factors explain the transformations in party systems during the past three decades, and how can Latin American party systems be classified according to their attributes? In trying to answer these questions, scholars of Latin America have undertaken studies that are both theoretically and empirically rich. Their work has increased our knowledge of the party systems and representative democracies in the region. Different factors have been highlighted in order to explain the changes these systems have undergone since the third wave of democratization. Some works emphasize the importance of institutional reforms introduced by politicians or by constitutional assemblies. The questions they address are the following: What political reforms have been introduced into Latin American political systems, and what effects have they had on the party systems in different countries? The researchers do not limit their attention to reforms of electoral systems. For example, some of them also study decentralization processes and their effects on party systems. From a different perspective, other authors focus on changes in electoral preferences and their effects on the configuration of political power, exploring how regional economic, political, and social changes have affected voter preferences and the political configuration of party systems. Still others consider the crises of democratic representation in these countries, underlining the decline in the programmatic character of parties as an explanatory variable for the crises and noting that the level of institutionalization of a party system declines when parties abandon this distinctive feature and become clientelistic or personalistic instead. On the other hand, in order to describe party systems and to observe the changes they have undergone, academics have proposed a set of concepts and measurements that make it possible to identify their levels of institutionalization (i.e., stability vs. volatility), nationalization, and programmatic structuration, among other aspects. The operationalization of these concepts has provided researchers with useful data for describing, comparing, and analyzing the party systems of the region transversely over time. Understanding the transformation and characteristics of Latin American party systems over time sheds light on both the progress democratic regimes have made and the setbacks they have suffered within specific countries and in the region at large.

scholarly journals Active and passive: two ways party systems influence electoral outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-467
Author(s):  
Miroslav Nemčok
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Set Size ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Choice Set

AbstractParties can not only actively adjust the electoral rules to reach more favourable outcomes, as is most often recognized in political science, but they also passively create an environment that systematically influences electoral competition. This link is theorized and included in the wider framework capturing the mutual dependence of electoral systems and party systems. The impact of passive influence is successfully tested on one out of two factors closely related to party systems: choice set size (i.e., number of options provided to voters) and degree of ideological polarization. The research utilizes established datasets (i.e., Constituency-Level Elections Archive, Party System Polarization Index, Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and Manifesto Project Database) and via regression analysis with clustered robust standard errors concludes that the choice set size constitutes an attribute with passive influence over electoral systems. Thus, it must be reflected when outcomes of electoral systems are estimated or compared across various contexts.

The impact of populist radical right parties on foreign policy: the Northern League as a junior coalition partner in the Berlusconi Governments

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 525-546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertjan Verbeek ◽  
Andrej Zaslove
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Party System ◽  
Coalition Partner ◽  
Northern League ◽  
The People ◽  
Radical Right Parties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Common Understanding

Despite the populist radical right’s (PRR) popularity among political scientists, little scholarship has focused on its influence on foreign policy. This lack of study is due, in part, to a general lack of attention to the role of political parties in foreign policy, both in comparative politics and international relations (IR). This is unfortunate because, due to Europeanization and globalization, the domain of foreign policy has expanded, making foreign policy increasingly a domestic concern and, most importantly, touching on major themes of PRR parties. Combining insights from comparative politics and IR, we theorize the mechanisms, which may facilitate the impact of such parties on foreign policy. Subsequently, we examine whether the Italian Northern League (LN), as a prime example of a PRR party participating in a coalition government, has had an impact on Italy’s foreign policy and, if so, what accounts for this (lack of) influence. This paper concludes that, unlike common understanding, the PRR is not persistently anti-internationalist/anti-EU; rather, its position depends on the extent to which international politics helps or hinders the promotion of ‘the people’. Second, despite the LN’s strong coalition position, it pursued an effective foreign policy mainly regarding immigration policy. Third, IR theories of junior coalition partners and foreign policy should address the nature of the party system and how inter-party electoral competition affects the strength of a junior coalition partner. Fourth, these theories need to acknowledge that party preferences are sometimes trumped by national concerns, as suggested by more systemic IR theories.

The Role of the “Outsider” in Quasi-Legislative Systems: The Potential Utility of a Legislative Model

1973 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Volgy
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The Political ◽  
Potential Utility ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
To Come ◽  
Legislative Model ◽  
The Impact

As periodic stock–taking efforts would indicate,1students of international organizations have become increasingly sophisticated in the methods and techniques used for assessing the dynamics of international efforts at cooperation, and the impact of these efforts on the general stream of international politics. Nowhere has this been more true than in attempts by scholars to come to grips with the political processes acted out in the General Assembly of the United Nations. To para–phrase Keohane,2we have come to witness a change of focus from a somewhat static description of structures, rules and regulations, to analyses of patterns of voting behavior (and correlates thereof) to, finally, systematic analyses of patterns of interactions leading to votes and resolutions.

Party Systems and Government Stability in the Indian States

1977 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1384-1405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Brass
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
State Governments ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Leadership Skill ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Degree Of Fragmentation

This paper contributes to the substantive and methodological discussion of the issues concerning the causes of cabinet instability through analysis of data from Indian state politics. The focus of the analysis is on explaining the duration of Indian state governments in days with variables measuring the degree of fragmentation and cohesion in the party system, the composition of the cabinet, the characteristics of the opposition, and the role of ideological differences. A substantial amount of the variation in the durability of coalition governments is explained with variables that measure the degree of party system institutionalization and the extent of political opportunism, but ideological factors do not explain much of the differences in durability of governments. It is also found that none of the measures used can explain much of the variation in one-party majority governments for which, it is argued, explanations must be sought that focus on leadership skill and on relationships between leaders and factions in a dominant party.

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