Examining the social, cultural and political foundations of German political parties past and present, this book concentrates on the social context in which the parties operate. German political parties are examined both at regional level and in historical perspective.

This study departs from traditional interpretations of cohabitation in French politics, which suggest French institutions are capable of coping when the President and Prime Minister originate from different political parties. Instead, it offers the opposite view that cohabitation leads to partisan conflict and inertia in the policy-making process.

This handbook provides an empirically rich analysis of referendums in Europe from the end of the Second World War to the present. It addresses a range of perennial theoretical and legal questions that face policy-makers when they offer citizens the chance to take or influence decisions by referendum, not least whether to accept the 'will of the people'. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on historical, philosophical and political science perspectives, the book includes a contextual section on the history of referendums, the theoretical questions underpinning their use, and on constitutional and legal questions about the use of referendums. The empirical sections are divided into those referendums that focus on domestic issues, such as constitutional matters or questions of social policy, and those related to the European Union, including membership referendums and treaty ratification.

In 1912 the Republican Party experienced schism and defeat. The Democrats, led by Woodrow Wilson, captured the presidency and both houses of Congress. This book explains how the Republicans regained power in the elections of 1918 and 1920 under the leadership of the Minority leader of the House, James R. Mann. Mann reorganized the Republicans and placed them strategically on the issues--economic conservatism domestically and military preparedness internationally--that led to an incremental recovery over nearly a decade. Acutely intelligent, active and bold, the Chicagoan exerted extraordinary influence.

Referendums and Democratic Government is the most systematic analysis of the referendum so far. The referendum phenomenon is approached from different perspectives: social choice theory, theories of democracy, a comparative study on 22 democracies, and in-depth case studies of Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. The referendum is not a unitary phenomenon but it serves various functions and different normative goals in the political systems studied. This variation may largely be explained by the differences in the initiating and agenda-setting procedures.

This book explores partisan dealignment in France between 1978 and 2012, with a particular focus on the blue-collar electorate and its relationship with the political parties of the established left (the Socialist Party, or Parti socialiste, and the Communist Party, or Parti communiste francais). It highlights the distinctiveness of blue-collar partisanship in a context of significant political, social and economic change and compares it with patterns of partisanship in the wider electorate. The voter-party relationship is self-evidently a bilateral one which can be modified both on the demand side, because voters change, and on the supply side, because parties change. Four factors are identified as playing a key role in partisan dealignment: value change, policy convergence, political sophistication and political trust. There is compelling evidence that while each of these makes a contribution, it is changes in the behaviour of the parties that are driving partisan dealignment among blue-collar workers in France.

In this book, John Ehrenberg argues that Donald Trump, as both candidate and president, represents a qualitatively new stage in the evolution of the Republican Party's willingness to exploit American racial tensions. Works on Trump's use of race have tended to be fragmentary or subsidiary to a larger purpose. Ehrenberg concentrates his investigation on Trump's weaponized use of race, contextualized through historical and theoretical details, demonstrating that while Trump draws on previous Republican strategies, he stands apart through his explicit intention to convert the Republican Party into a political instrument of a threatened racial order. The book traces the Grand Old Party's (GOP) approach to racial matters from Goldwater's "constitutional" objection to federal activity in the South to George W. Bush's overtures to Black citizens. Ehrenberg examines the role of racial animus in prying loose a significant portion of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition and making possible Trump's overt flirtation with white nationalism. He concludes that the Republican Party will find it difficult to jettison its 50-year history of embracing and amplifying white racial animus and resentment. White Nationalism and the Republican Party will be of interest to academics and students of American politics, voting behavior, American party politics, race and American politics, twentieth-century American history, political leadership, politics of inequality, race and public policy.

Why do French voters vote the way they do? In this book, leading international scholars examine this question from many different angles. Special attention is given to the 2002 national elections, when right-wing extremist Le Pen made such a spectacular showing in the presidential contest. Was the first-ballot success of Le Pen based on issues of law and order, ethnicity, nationalism or on the economy? What about the role of the traditional factors of social class, region, religion and left-right ideology? Do the peculiar electoral institutions of the Fifth Republic foster political extremism, or act as a break on it? The French Voter considers these issues both in relation to the 2002 contest and past elections.

This pioneering work offers a theoretical perspective on two new variables that shape presidential voting behavior in America. It does this through an exploration of the impact that native son presidential candidate Jimmy Carter had upon his home state electorate in Georgia. The work fully documents the electoral support that Carter received in his twelve elections in the state of Georgia and the support he garnered for his former vice president in the 1984 presidential election.

This is the first longitudinal study to examine the impact of native son candidates on voting behavior. It concludes that native son presidential candidates do affect voting behavior in their states and that this effect sometimes extends such behavior throughout their region. This study and its conclusions will be of interest to scholars and historians in political science and presidential studies.

The 2020 US presidential race was one of the most hotly contested and contentious in recent American history. While the election produced the greatest turnout in American history and the highest percentage turnout in 60 years, the election still came down to a handful of swing states that ultimately decided the election. In their third edition of Presidential Swing States, Rafael Jacob and David Schultz examine the 2020 presidential election, keying in on the few critical states that actually decided the election and why. With cases studies written by prominent political scientists who are experts on these swing states, Presidential Swing States also explains why some states were swing states but no longer are, why some continue to be swing states, and what states beyond 2020 may be the future swing states that decide the presidency. The book contains in-depth case studies of the swing-states and swing-counties that decide presidential elections in the United States. Students in classes on American Politics and Government, Parties, Campaigns and Elections, State Politics, and the Presidency will all be well-served by the analyses in this volume, as will journalists reporting on presidential elections, and the general public.

This book offers a systematic and far-reaching account of party system institutionalization in Western Europe. Drawing upon a wide array of data and through a comparison of 20 countries from the end of WWII to 2019 across three arenas of party competition (electoral, parliamentary, and governmental ones), the empirical analysis shows that, over the past decade, the level of institutionalization in the Western European party systems has dramatically declined compared with previous decades. Electoral, parliamentary, and - in some cases - governmental instability and unpredictability have reached record-high levels. Although the impact of the 2008 Great Recession has certainly worked as a catalyst, this process of de-institutionalization has been mainly driven by long-term factors, such as cleavage decline and length of democratic experience. Moreover, its consequences are relevant not only for the relationship between parties and voters, but also for the very quality of democracy, as party system deinstitutionalization causes a decline in the citizens' satisfaction of the way democracy works and even an erosion of the 'objective' democratic standards. In a nutshell, Western Europe, once seen as the land of stability and the cradle of democracy, may have become the land of party system deinstitutionalization and incipient democratic backsliding.

In this book, John Ehrenberg argues that Donald Trump, as both candidate and president, represents a qualitatively new stage in the evolution of the Republican Party's willingness to exploit American racial tensions. Works on Trump's use of race have tended to be fragmentary or subsidiary to a larger purpose. Ehrenberg concentrates his investigation on Trump's weaponized use of race, contextualized through historical and theoretical details, demonstrating that while Trump draws on previous Republican strategies, he stands apart through his explicit intention to convert the Republican Party into a political instrument of a threatened racial order. The book traces the Grand Old Party's (GOP) approach to racial matters from Goldwater's "constitutional" objection to federal activity in the South to George W. Bush's overtures to Black citizens. Ehrenberg examines the role of racial animus in prying loose a significant portion of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition and making possible Trump's overt flirtation with white nationalism. He concludes that the Republican Party will find it difficult to jettison its 50-year history of embracing and amplifying white racial animus and resentment. White Nationalism and the Republican Party will be of interest to academics and students of American politics, voting behavior, American party politics, race and American politics, twentieth-century American history, political leadership, politics of inequality, race and public policy.

The study of elections, voting behavior and public opinion are arguably among the most prominent and intensively researched sub-fields within Political Science. It is an evolving sub-field, both in terms of theoretical focus and in particular, technical developments and has made a considerable impact on popular understanding of the core components of liberal democracies in terms of electoral systems and outcomes, changes in public opinion and the aggregation of interests. This handbook details the key developments and state of the art research across elections, voting behavior and the public opinion by providing both an advanced overview of each core area and engaging in debate about the relative merits of differing approaches in a comprehensive and accessible way. Bringing geographical scope and depth, with comparative chapters that draw on material from across the globe, it will be a key reference point both for advanced level students and researchers developing knowledge and producing new material in these sub-fields and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Elections, Voting Behavior and Public Opinion is an authoritative and key reference text for students, academics and researchers engaged in the study of electoral research, public opinion and voting behavior.

This research explores one of the baffling mysteries in contemporary non-Western democracies. The conversion to a mixed system of the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation for the Japanese House of Representatives in 1994 has not realised the widely spread desire for recurrent changes of government, as the Liberal Democratic Party have maintained their grip. Dr Nagatomi monitors Japanese politics with the theories and methodologies of electoral geography. From a comparative perspective, the operation of the electoral system can mostly be explained by the geographical distributions of party supports, the arrangements of electoral constituencies and the candidacies of parties. Packed with a volume of the analyses unpublished elsewhere, this book will offer food for thought to political scientists, Asian watchers and broadly comparative researchers.

Local government in the New England states has historically been regarded as a style of government that most closely embodies the spirit of American democracy. Although models of local government vary from one town to the next, the common thread which unites all New England towns is that the people are empowered to choose their own form of government, and in doing so control their own destiny. In this fresh and insightful book, Professor Gary L. Rose, a well known commentator on American politics and native New Englander, introduces readers to local government in Connecticut. Rose takes readers on a journey showcasing the origin of Connecticut towns, the different models of government in existence among the state's 169 communities, the means by which towns and cities finance public services, the status of party politics in urban, suburban, and rural communities, the creative endeavors currently underway at the local level of government, and the serious challenges facing local media with respect to performing their "watchdog" role over the affairs of local decision makers. Intended for students, political practitioners, and a general audience, Professor Rose's book not only fills a void in the literature on local government, but will also serve to inspire those who want to make a positive difference in the political life of their local communities.

This volume explores the conflict between two forces: party polarization and party factionalism. The major change in America's two political parties over the past half-century has been increased polarization, which has led to a new era of heightened inter-party competition resulting in stronger and more cohesive parties. At the same time, elections, particularly primaries, often reveal deep internal factional divisions within both the parties, and the 2020 election was no different. The Democratic coalition typically pits moderate or establishment candidates against progressive activists and candidates, while the Republican Party in 2020 was, at times, polarized not only between moderates and conservatives but between those willing to criticize President Trump and those who would not. How did these two opposing forces shape the outcome of the 2020 election, and what are the consequences for the future of American party politics and elections?

Everyday People provides a comprehensive assessment of Trump supporters including white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, the Christian right, and cult followers and offers students a discussion of how this group is a symptom of a much larger social issue and movement in the United States. McNamara examines the appeal of Trump as a president and explains why so many people voted for him in the first place. The text reviews the most recent and relevant literature on Trump supporters and their makeup including historical documents, government reports, research studies, and media sources, to unpack and understand the issues in an objective and empirical way. Students will understand the source and substance of the controversies surrounding Trump and his followers and understand how fear and complacency causes people to suspend rational thinking and to develop misguided loyalties.

This work provides a concise, authoritative, and illuminating overview of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. This reference work surveys and explains all aspects of the Presidency, including the Founding Fathers' conception of the position, the evolution of the specific powers and responsibilities residing in the Oval Office over time, the relationship between the executive branch and the other two branches of the federal government, and the evolution of presidential election campaigns in U.S. history. It also discusses major historical events and controversies surrounding the Presidency and explains how the party affiliation of the president often colors White House priorities, policies, and attitudes of governance. This book is part of ABC-CLIO's Student Guides to American Government and Politics series. Each volume in the series provides an accessible and authoritative introduction to a distinct component of American governmental institutions and processes and shows how it pertains to America's current political climate and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Everyday People provides a comprehensive assessment of Trump supporters including white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, the Christian right, and cult followers and offers students a discussion of how this group is a symptom of a much larger social issue and movement in the United States. McNamara examines the appeal of Trump as a president and explains why so many people voted for him in the first place. The text reviews the most recent and relevant literature on Trump supporters and their makeup including historical documents, government reports, research studies, and media sources, to unpack and understand the issues in an objective and empirical way. Students will understand the source and substance of the controversies surrounding Trump and his followers and understand how fear and complacency causes people to suspend rational thinking and to develop misguided loyalties.

The book explores the organization, conduct and supervision of elections in emerging democracies. It covers the broad spectrum of the democratic electoral process. This project is a synthesis of the author's practical knowledge and experience in the management of elections with the United Nations and other international organizations in Africa and Asia. The author addresses election practitioners, political parties, and all other stake holders, and provides a vision for building and blending indigenous traditions and systems of election into universally accepted norms and practices.

Political Rhetoric, Social Media, and American Presidential Campaigns explores how social media influenced presidential campaign rhetoric. The author discusses media use in American presidential campaigns as well as social media campaigns for Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. This book addresses how presidential candidates adapted their rhetorical performances for newspapers, radios, television, and the Internet. Scholars of rhetoric and political communication will find this book particularly useful.

As he has done for each presidential campaign since 1992, Robert E. Denton, Jr. gathers a diverse collection of communications scholars to analyze specific areas of the most recent campaign season. Topics include early campaign rhetoric, the nomination process and conventions, candidate strategies, presidential debates, political advertising, the use of new media, news coverage of the campaigns. This volume looks at the 2020 Presidential campaign from three categories. The first section addresses the major political campaign communication areas to include pre-primary/candidate surfacing, the conventions, the debates, political advertising, social media and news coverage of the campaign. The second section includes two unique aspects of political branding and the politics of food in the 2020 campaign. The final section of the volume provides the broad overviews of campaign spending and finance as well as the national perspective of explaining the vote. Thus, the chapters cluster around the themes of campaign communication, studies of unique or special topics relevant to the campaigns.

The Democracy Manifesto is about how to recreate democracy by replacing elections with government that is truly of, by and for the people. Written in engaging and accessible dialogue form, the book argues that the only truly democratic system of government is one in which decision-makers are selected randomly (by sortition) from the population at large, operating much the way trial juries do today, but 100% online, enabling people to govern together even across great distances. Sortition has a storied history but what sets The Democracy Manifesto apart is its comprehensive account of how it can be implemented not only across all sectors and levels of government, but throughout society as well, including the democratization of mass media, corporations, banks, and other large institutions. The resulting Sortitive Representative Democracy (SRD) is the true heir to ancient Greek democracy, and the only means of ensuring 'we the people' are represented by our fellow citizens rather than by the revolving groups of elites that dominate electoral systems. In the process, the book grapples with myriad hot topics including economic issues, international relations, indigenous rights, environmentalism and more.

This book explores Twitter communication about the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK in the run-up to the event. The mixed-method, computational analysis of over twelve million tweets reveals how Twitter worked in shaping political discourse and its potential for fuelling populism in the month leading to the referendum. Our findings show while polarised public opinion was explicitly expressed, populist sentiments were mainstreamed into the debate about the referendum and widely spread on Twitter. Populist politicians, supported by pro-Brexit users, tactically used Twitter to promulgate their populist ideas. In contrast, despite their active use of Twitter, the Remain camp appeared to have misunderstood the mechanisms of Twitter for shaping political discourse. Twitter communication, in this case, showed dangerous potential for reflecting and reinforcing existing social tensions and divisions, being influenced or even manipulated by individuals and interest groups to serve their own interests. It is important to be well aware of this capacity of Twitter for the wellbeing of democracy, especially in the politically turbulent times since 2016 when the UK voted to leave the EU.

This volume employs a comparative approach to cast light on representation and representative processes from a communications perspective. It focuses on online constituency communication, aiming to provide a perspective from which to empirically study the changes taking place in the relationship between citizens and their representatives. The (hyper)mediatisation of politics and society is here considered a relevant enabling factor, because it creates the conditions leading to change in the nature of democratic processes. The chapters discuss Podemos, the Lega, Law and Justice, and the Five-star Movement as good examples of this phenomenon. Populist and nationalist forces have emerged as bottom-up and top-down entities aiming to embody the will of the people, or to push for democratic processes to be more inclusive. Until now, however, the intersection between populist and nationalist discourses and the related question of representation have been largely ignored. By analysing the transformations that have taken place in MPs' communication practices in non-election periods, the contributors illuminate how social media is affecting MPs' communication and examine the strains in the relationship between executives and legislatures that populist and nationalist parties exploit.