scholarly journals Civil Society and the Governance of Water Services: German Political Parties’ Reactions to Right2Water

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 743 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jale Tosun ◽  
Rita Triebskorn
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Water Services ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Election Manifestos ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Water Quality And Quantity

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) Right2Water asked for guaranteed water quality and quantity all over Europe, and demanded that water services remain in the hands of public entities. Support for Right2Water was particularly pronounced in Germany. The German organisers managed to collect 16 times more signatures than the minimum necessary to be counted towards the quorum. How have the German political parties reacted to the overwhelming public support for Right2Water? To answer this question, we examined the election manifestos of the main political parties, published for the federal elections in 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2017, and the elections to the European Parliament in 2004, 2009, 2014, and 2019. We concentrated on one specific goal of Right2Water, which refers to preventing the liberalisation of water services in the European Union. We expected the attention to and positioning of the liberalisation of water services to vary across the individual German parties. Since Right2Water was organised by public service trade unions and pursues an anti-liberalisation agenda, we expected left-wing parties to have laid a greater emphasis on this issue than right-wing parties, and for them to have adopted positions that aligned with the goals of the ECI. Our empirical findings show that a left–right division exists among the parties concerning the attention they paid to this issue as well as how they positioned themselves.

scholarly journals “Morrer por dentro”? Os desafios do populismo e as eleições europeias de 2019

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Paulo Vila Maior
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Centre Of Gravity ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Eu

The results of the 2019 European Parliament (EP) elections cast an unprecedented challenge for the European Union (EU). Growing popularity of right-wing and left-wing, populist and radical political parties and the rising number of members of the parliament materialise the challenge. The article explores the seismic effects of the reconfiguration of the political landscape for European integration. The rising number of populist and radical political parties’ members of the parliament might weaken the political centre of gravity in the EP. Since the EP plays an important role on the legislative process of the EU, populist and radical parties’ Euroscepticism (if not their standpoint against the EU) might pervade the EP and threaten the EU with the prospect of setback, or at least stagnation.

Politicization and security policy: Parties, voters and the European Common Security and Defense Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Angelucci ◽  
Pierangelo Isernia
Keyword(s):  
Security Policy ◽  
Defense Policy ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Potential Force ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Common Security

The Common Security and Defense Policy of the European Union has recently come to the forefront as a potential force of integration. This study explores the consequences (if any) of such a move, investigating how likely it is for Common Security and Defense Policy to be politicized and become a new area of dissent. The article explores conditions of politicization at three different levels of analysis: (a) the systemic level, where Common Security and Defense Policy position in a bi-dimensional political space (left–right and anti-pro EU) is discussed; (b) the party level, where potentially successful issue entrepreneurs of Common Security and Defense Policy are identified; (c) the individual voter level, where the probabilities of being mobilized by issue entrepreneurs of Common Security and Defense Policy are assessed. Our analysis suggests that although Common Security and Defense Policy is prone to be politicized and right-wing parties are the most likely group to do so, this move may backfire as right-wing voters are less likely to be mobilized on Common Security and Defense Policy compared to their left-wing counterpart. We discuss the implications of these results for the conceptualization of politicization and European integration.

Portugal: Left-Wing Single-Party Governments and Right-Wing Coalitions

2021 ◽  
pp. 517-543
Author(s):  
Patrícia Calca
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Institutional Setting ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Governance Mechanisms ◽  
Government Formation ◽  
Coalition Governments

How have Portuguese political parties, especially the ones in coalition governments, operated? The main focus of this chapter is the study of coalition governments in Portugal since the 2000s. This chapter shows how the country’s governments have shifted back and forth from left-wing single-party governments to right-wing coalition governments during this period. It aims to improve the understanding of Portuguese governments by shedding light on their specificities and dynamics. It is thus useful as a standalone chapter or as a source for multi-country comparisons. The chapter is initiated with a brief description of Portugal’s institutional setting. It is developed further by delving into the country’s party system followed by a discussion of government-formation issues. In conclusion, the chapter considers all the previous information going deeper into coalition governance mechanisms.

scholarly journals Digital Ecosystems of Ideology: Linked Media as Rhetoric in Spanish Political Tweets

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630512092663
Author(s):  
Vanessa Ceia
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
General Elections ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Popular Party

That Twitter is a major form of political mobilization and influence has been well documented. But what is the role of linked media—references to newspapers, photos, videos, and other external sources via URLs—in political Twitter messaging? How are linked references employed as campaign tools and rhetorical devices in messages published by political parties on Twitter? Is there a quantifiable relationship between a party’s ideology and linked media in tweets? With the spread of fake news, threats to a free press, and questioning of the legitimacy of political messaging on the rise globally, the sources on which parties draw to convince voters of their online messaging deserve critical attention. To explore the above questions, this article examines uses of linked media in tweets generated by the official accounts of Spain’s top five political parties during, in the lead-up, and in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish General Elections held on April 28, 2019. Grounded in a corpus of 10,038 tweets collected between March 1 and May 15, 2019, this study quantifies, compares, and critiques how linked media are integrated and remixed into tweets published by the left-leaning Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (@PSOE), right-wing Popular Party (@populares), left-wing Podemos (@ahorapodemos), neoliberal Citizens (@CiudadanosCs), and far-right Vox (@vox_es) parties. Evidence reveals that each party links to media from somewhat homophilic groups of news outlets, journalists, and public figures, an analysis of which can shed light on how parties construct their digital self-representations, ideological networks of information, and attempt to sway voters.

scholarly journals Does Government Support Respond to Governments’ Social Welfare Rhetoric or their Spending? An Analysis of Government Support in Britain, Spain and the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 1407-1429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Bernardi ◽  
James Adams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Welfare Spending ◽  
Left And Right

Issue ownership theory posits that when social welfare is electorally salient, left-wing parties gain public support by rhetorically emphasizing social welfare issues. There is less research, however, on whether left-wing governing parties benefit from increasing social welfare spending. That is, it is not known whether leftist governments gain from acting on the issues they rhetorically emphasize. This article presents arguments that voters will not react to governments’ social welfare rhetoric, and reviews the conflicting arguments about how government support responds to social welfare spending. It then reports time-series, cross-sectional analyses of data on government support, governments’ social welfare rhetoric and social welfare spending from Britain, Spain and the United States, that support the prediction that government rhetoric has no effects. The article estimates, however, that increased social welfare spending sharply depresses support for both left- and right-wing governments. These findings highlight a strategic dilemma for left-wing governments, which lose public support when they act on their social welfare rhetoric by increasing welfare spending.

scholarly journals Zionist Approaches to the Palestinian Question

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Hamed Mousavi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Gaza Strip ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The West ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Gaza Strip ◽  
The Right ◽  
Palestinian Question

Liberal Zionists blame Israel’s five decade long occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip primarily on Revisionist Zionist ideology and its manifestation in right wing parties such as the Likud. They also argue that the “Two State Solution”, the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, will forever solve this issue. This paper on the other hand argues that while the Israeli left have divergent opinions from the revisionists on many issues, with regards to the “Palestinian question” and particularly on the prospects of allowing the formation of a Palestinian state, liberal Zionists have much closer views to the right wing than would most like to admit. To demonstrate this, the views of Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, David Ben-Gurion, the most important actor in the founding years of the state, as well as the approach of left wing Israeli political parties are examined. Finally, it is argued that none of the mainstream Zionist political movements will allow the creation of a Palestinian state even on a small part of Palestine.

Mobilization Against the Left? Partisan Consequences of Voter Turnout in the Post-Communist Context

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Nový
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Election Results ◽  
Explanatory Mechanism

AbstractDoes higher turnout support left-wing parties, as many previous studies assume? Theoretical discussions thus far have been relatively inconclusive. This study proposes three different explanatory mechanisms for examining an aggregate-level relationship between turnout and electoral support for political parties in the post-communist milieu. The conventional hypothesis, based on the assumptions of a successful re-stratification of society and the relevance of class voting, states that higher turnout benefits the left. The second hypothesis is derived from the Michigan model of party identification. In this case, political parties with less loyal electorates would be expected to profit from higher rates of electoral participation. However, this article makes the case for a third possible explanation, termed simply “mobilization against the left,” which reverses the conventional hypothesis. The idea is that the more people come to the polls, the stronger the post-communist right-wing parties will be. This analysis includes two Czech regions that can be said to be farthest away from each other in terms of their socioeconomic and political characteristics. Having analyzed the 2010 Czech parliamentary election results across 1444 electoral districts in two regions, Central Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia, we conclude that there is certain empirical evidence that supports the proposed explanatory mechanism regarding the relationship between voter turnout and share of votes for political parties.

How right-wing versus cosmopolitan political actors mobilize and translate images of immigrants in transnational contexts

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Doerr
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
People's Party ◽  
The Right ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis

This article examines visual posters and symbols constructed and circulated transnationally by various political actors to mobilize contentious politics on the issues of immigration and citizenship. Following right-wing mobilizations focusing on the Syrian refugee crisis, immigration has become one of the most contentious political issues in Western Europe. Right-wing populist political parties have used provocative visual posters depicting immigrants or refugees as ‘criminal foreigners’ or a ‘threat to the nation’, in some countries and contexts conflating the image of the immigrant with that of the Islamist terrorist. This article explores the transnational dynamics of visual mobilization by comparing the translation of right-wing nationalist with left-wing, cosmopolitan visual campaigns on the issue of immigration in Western Europe. The author first traces the crosscultural translation and sharing of an anti-immigrant poster created by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a right-wing political party, inspiring different extremist as well as populist right-wing parties and grassroots activists in several other European countries. She then explores how left-libertarian social movements try to break racist stereotypes of immigrants. While right-wing political activists create a shared stereotypical image of immigrants as foes of an imaginary ethnonationalist citizenship, left-wing counter-images construct a more complex and nuanced imagery of citizenship and cultural diversity in Europe. The findings show the challenges of progressive activists’ attempts to translate cosmopolitan images of citizenship across different national and linguistic contexts in contrast to the right wing’s rapid and effective instrumentalizing and translating of denigrating images of minorities in different contexts.

scholarly journals From Paramilitaries to Parliamentarians: Disaggregating Radical Right Wing Extremist Movements

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Blazakis ◽  
Colin Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Academic Community ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
The Individual

The global far right is extremely broad in nature and far from monolithic. While the “far right” is often used as an umbrella term, using the term runs the risk of over-simplifying the differences and linkages between white supremacist, anti-immigration, nativist, and other motivating ideologies. These beliefs and political platforms fall within the far-right rubric, and too often the phrase presents a more unified image of the phenomena than is really the case. In truth, the “far right” and the individual movements that comprise it are fragmented, consisting of a number of groups that lack established leadership and cohesion. Indeed, these movements include chauvinist religious organizations, neo-fascist street gangs, and paramilitary organs of established political parties. Although such movements largely lack the mass appeal of the interwar European radical right-wing extreme, they nevertheless can inspire both premeditated and spontaneous acts of violence against perceived enemies. This report is intended to provide policymakers, practitioners, and the academic community with a roadmap of ongoing shifts in the organizational structures and ideological currents of radical right-wing extremist movements, detailing the difference between distinct, yet often connected and interlaced echelons of the far right. In particular, the report identifies and analyzes various aspects of the broader far right and the assorted grievances it leverages to recruit, which is critical to gaining a more nuanced understanding of the potential future trajectory of these movements.

scholarly journals INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AND ITS IMPACT ON IDEOLOGICAL STRUCTURING OF POLITICAL PARTIES

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 251-255
Author(s):  
Roland Lami
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
The Right ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

One of the institutions that has played a very important role in the post-communist period in Albania, is the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For pragmatic reasons or for guaranteeing their legitimacy, political parties have found it indispensable to cooperate with this institution. But, if we consider the role of the IMF from ideological perspectives, we would find that regardless of which party was in power (Socialist Party or Democratic Party) the respective government still has to follow its instructions and recommendations of a neoliberal nature.  This behavior has prevented political parties, especially those of the left wing, to get structured from the perspective of ideological profile.  For this reason, the entire discussion is mainly focused on the left-wing political perspective, as the principles of the right wing are closer to the IMF’s neoliberal philosophy, from the ideological standpoint.

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