“Responsible Government,” Separated Powers, and Special Interests: Agricultural Subsidies in Britain and America

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 621-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Roland Pennock
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Responsible Government ◽  
British System ◽  
Separated Powers ◽  
Weak Party

Political scientists today are more cautious than they used to be about comparing forms of government and evaluating their virtues. Moreover, in such comparisons as we do make, we rightly lay more stress on party systems and even more informal aspects of government than on constitutional forms. Yet much of what is said by way of comparing and evaluating the disciplined and programmatic type of political party with the American type carries an undertone of the old arguments. Virtues once attributed to the British style of Parliamentary government, honorifically tagged “responsible government,” are now associated with “party government,” while the evils earlier (and still) attributed to the separation of powers are now frequently laid at the door of a weak party system. To be sure, many who criticize the American constitutional and political arrangements for irresponsibility make no claim that the British system is superior.

Party system erosion: Evidence from Peru

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 581-593
Author(s):  
Christopher L Carter
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Institutional Factors ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Improve Performance ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Weak Party ◽  
Party Brands

Weakly institutionalized party systems are a defining feature of third-wave democracies. Yet, in some countries like Peru, party weakness is not a static equilibrium but rather part of a dynamic process of “party system erosion” in which weak parties become weaker over time as independents come to dominate subnational posts. As I argue, party system erosion is driven by a particular configuration of institutional factors—weak party brands, ease of ballot access, and limited partisan control over resource distribution. These institutional features increase the likelihood that experienced candidates will run as independents. When these candidates are elected, they obtain more intergovernmental discretionary transfers, which are used to improve performance and maintain clientelistic networks. This resource advantage of independent officials further weakens party brands and reduces experienced candidates’ incentives to run with parties in future elections. I test this theory using a data set of 80,000 subnational officials and a regression discontinuity design.

The Electoral System, the Party System and Accountability in Parliamentary Government

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 744-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER KAM ◽  
ANTHONY M. BERTELLI ◽  
ALEXANDER HELD
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Party System ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Electoral Reform ◽  
Electoral Accountability ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Parliamentary Government

Electoral accountability requires that voters have the ability to constrain the incumbent government’s policy-making power. We express the necessary conditions for this claim as an accountability identity in which the electoral system and the party system interact to shape the accountability of parliamentary governments. Data from 400 parliamentary elections between 1948 and 2012 show that electoral accountability is contingent on the party system’s bipolarity, for example, with parties arrayed in two distinct blocs. Proportional electoral systems achieve accountability as well as majoritarian ones when bipolarity is strong but not when it is weak. This is because bipolarity decreases the number of connected coalitions that incumbent parties can join to preserve their policy-making power. Our results underscore the limitations that party systems place on electoral reform and the benefits that bipolarity offers for clarifying voters’ choices and intensifying electoral competition.

Does Corruption End the Dominant Party System? A Comparative Analysis of the Italian and Turkish Cases

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-336
Author(s):  
Gülçın Balamır Coşkun
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Party System ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
Law System ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
System A ◽  
High Level

This article argues that the effects of high-level corruption scandals on the future of a dominant party depend on the existence of a rule of law system based on the separation of powers. The article will study two examples from a comparative perspective to concretise its theoretical claims: the Christian Democracy Party in Italy, which was the dominant party from 1948 to 1992, and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. The comparison will be based on an institutionalist perspective. The first part tries to provide a theoretical clarification of the concepts of predominant party systems and corruption. The second part discusses whether the Turkish and Italian party systems can be classified as predominant and the characteristics of these systems. The final section seeks to draw out similarities and differences between these two systems and the effects corruption has on them.

The Problem

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard S. Katz ◽  
Peter Mair
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Minor Parties ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Basic Argument ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

Most conventional conceptions of what democracy is and of how it should be organized imply particular characteristics and functions for parties and party systems, and particular kinds of relationships among parties, citizens, and the state. Our contention is that the party government model so conceived, while quite powerful prescriptively, has only a marginal connection to the way parties and party system really work in the early twenty-first century. Our basic argument is that at the level of party systems, the mainstream parties, and most minor parties as well, have effectively formed a cartel. While the appearance of competition is preserved, in terms of political substance it has become spectacle—a show for the audience of audience democracy.

Political Parties

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angus Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Local Level ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter examines the emergence, roles, and meanings of ‘party’ within British politics from the late eighteenth century to the present day. It traces the transition from ‘mixed’ government to ‘parliamentary’ government and ultimately to ‘party’ government. The altered function and nature of political parties within these shifting constitutional contexts is assessed. How parties functioned at the parliamentary and local level is also explored. It moves on to consider how historians have approached different aspects of party activity—their organization of the contest for power in Parliament; specific party histories; embodiments of ideology; how parties have organized themselves; winning elections—and evaluates the role of the idea of a ‘two-party system’ within British politics and historiography as the ‘natural’ alignment of party activity.

Party Coalitions in Multiparty Parliaments: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 1093-1117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence C. Dodd
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Party Government ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Game Theoretic

This study focuses on A. Lawrence Lowell's classic thesis that a parliamentary democracy must possess a majority party system if durable cabinets are to exist. The argument of this study is that majority party government is not essential to cabinet durability. Rather, in line with the British analyst W. L. Middleton as well as more contemporary game-theoreticians, the critical factor is held to be the coalitional status of the cabinet: (1) cabinets of minimum winning status should be durable; as cabinets depart from minimum winning status, cabinet durability decreases; (2) the coalitional status of the cabinet that forms is partially a product of party system fractionalization, instability, and polarization. Hypotheses derived from the theory are tested with data drawn from 17 Western parliamentary democracies, from 1918 to 1940 and from 1945 to 1970. The findings generally support the theory. A key to durable government is the minimum winning status of the cabinet. Minimum winning cabinets are possible in multiparty and majority party systems.

Legislative Parties in Volatile, Nonprogrammatic Party Systems: The Peruvian Case in Comparative Perspective

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 57-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Alemán ◽  
Aldo F. Ponce ◽  
Iñaki Sagarzazu
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Empirical Analysis ◽  
Weak Party ◽  
Legislative Parties

AbstractThis article extends the analysis of political parties in electorally volatile and organizationally weak party systems by evaluating two implications centered on legislative voting behavior. First, it examines whether disunity prevails where weakness of programmatic and electoral commonalities abound. Second, it analyzes whether inchoate party systems weaken the ability of government parties to control the congressional agenda. The empirical analysis centers on Peru, a classic example of a weakly institutionalized party system, and how its legislative parties compare to those of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States. The results lend support to the view that lower unity characterizes weakly institutionalized settings. The agenda-setting power of government parties, however, appears to be influenced more by the majority status of the government than by the level of party system institutionalization.

Parties and Party Systems

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunghack Lim
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Weak Party

Since the late 1980s, South Korea has established democratic rules and institutions to protect the political freedom and civil rights of its citizens. In this process, political parties played a pivotal role in building democratic institutions and became a necessary actor for democratic governance. The characteristics of South Korean political parties and party system such as non-ideological regional factionalism, personality-based party organization, growing electoral volatility due to party changes, and a cartelized two-party system have contributed to weak party system institutionalization (PSI). Despite weak PSI, South Korea successfully underwent three peaceful power transfers, thus exceeding Huntington’s two turnover test of democratic consolidation. The stability of interparty competition has been maintained despite moderate electoral volatility. While regionalism is still the most important factor in voter decisions, the ideological linkage between parties and voters has been tightening. The South Korean parties and party system have a long way to go before achieving the levels of PSI seen in the West, but they have followed in these countries’ footstep to some extent. More sophisticated measures and concepts should be developed to analyse political parties and party systems in new democracies.

scholarly journals Designing Democratic Constitutions: The Search for Optimality

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 243-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Ganghof
Keyword(s):  
Coalition Formation ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Majority Party ◽  
Parliamentary Government ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Models Of Democracy

This article analyses salient trade-offs in the design of democracy. It grounds this analysis in a distinction between two basic models of democracy: simple and complex majoritarianism. These models differ not only in their electoral and party systems, but also in the style of coalition-building. Simple majoritarianism concentrates executive power in a single majority party; complex majoritarianism envisions the formation of shifting, issue-specific coalitions among multiple parties whose programs differ across multiple conflict dimensions. The latter pattern of coalition formation is very difficult to create and sustain under pure parliamentary government. A separation of powers between executive and legislature can facilitate such a pattern, while also achieving central goals of simple majoritarianism: identifiable cabinet alternatives before the election and stable cabinets afterward. The separation of powers can thus balance simple and complex majoritarianism in ways that are unavailable under parliamentarism. The article also compares the presidential and semi-parliamentary versions of the separation of powers. It argues that the latter has important advantages, e.g., when it comes to resolving inter-branch deadlock, as it avoids the concentration of executive power in a single human being.

Federal and Subnational Elections in Russia: Coherence and Divergence in Electoral Outcomes

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-353
Author(s):  
Rostislav Turovsky ◽  
Marina Sukhova
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Regional Parties ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Electoral Authoritarianism ◽  
Subnational Elections ◽  
Effective Number Of Parties ◽  
Number Of Parties ◽  
Regional Elections

Abstract This article examines the differences between Russian voting at federal elections and regional legislature elections, both combined and conducted independently. The authors analyse these differences, their character and their dynamics as an important characteristic of the nationalisation of the party system. They also test hypotheses about a higher level of oppositional voting and competitiveness in subnational elections, in accordance with the theory of second-order elections, as well as the strategic nature of voting at federal elections, by contrast with expressive voting during subnational campaigns. The empirical study is based on calculating the differences in votes for leading Russian parties at subnational elections and at federal elections (simultaneous, preceding and following) from 2003, when mandatory voting on party lists was widespread among the regions, to 2019. The level of competitiveness is measured in a similar way, by calculating the effective number of parties. The study indicates a low level of autonomy of regional party systems, in many ways caused by the fact that the law made it impossible to create regional parties, and then also by the 2005 ban on creation of regional blocs. The strong connection between federal and regional elections in Russia clearly underlines the fluid and asynchronic nature of its electoral dynamics, where subnational elections typically predetermine the results of the following federal campaigns. At the same time, the formal success of the nationalisation of the party system, achieved by increasing the homogeneity of voting at the 2016 and 2018 federal elections, is not reflected by the opposing process of desynchronisation between federal and regional elections after Putin’s third-term election. There is also a clear rise in the scale of the differences between the two. At the same time, the study demonstrates the potential presence in Russia of features common to subnational elections in many countries: their greater support for the opposition and presence of affective voting. However, there is a clear exception to this trend during the period of maximum mobilisation of the loyal electorate at the subnational elections immediately following the accession of Crimea in 2014–2015, and such tendencies are generally restrained by the conditions of electoral authoritarianism.

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