An assessment of the recent unprecedented Taiwanese democratic elections, which, despite threats from Beijing, set the stage for genuine democracy in Taiwan. A firsthand account of three crucial elections in the 1990s, two of which were unprecedented: the 1994 election of the first governor of Taiwan and the 1996 presidential election. The latter marked the first direct election of a chief executive in Taiwan or any Chinese nation in 5,000 years of Chinese history. This study considers the political environment in which these elections were held, particular political issues, party strategies and campaigns, and election results.

Taiwan is now in the final stage of democracy, and its impressive political modernization is one proof of its new status. The 1995 legislative election and the 1996 presidential election were held amidst Beijing's intimidation in the form of missile tests close to Taiwan's shores, massive military excercises, and verbal threats. Such posturing forced the United States to send aircraft carriers to the area in response. Taiwan's remarkable progress has begun to draw the attention of the leaders of developing countries who have come to see Taiwan's political modernization as a model for their own nations.

This book explains the development of the Conservative Party's immigration policy during the seven decades since 1945, up to today. By bringing together existing theories from the fields of political science and migration studies, this book offers a new model of party policy-making, which could be modified and tested in other contexts. Grounded in rigorous scholarship, but of interest to general readers as well as specialists and students, this book provides a thoughtful and engaging account of the making of modern Britain. The book draws on 30 interviews with figures who were at the heart of policy-making, from Kenneth Clarke and Douglas Hurd, to Damian Green and Gavin Barwell, to reveal that the 'national mood' often has more impact on policy-making than the empirics of the situation. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and readers interested in British politics; immigration and migration studies; Conservative Party politics; and, more broadly, public policy, political parties and European and comparative politics.

This book seeks to understand and classify differences that exist between a variety of elections in Britain. It moves beyond first- and second-order classifications developed following the European Parliamentary Elections in 1979 to include elections of devolved administrations such as the Scottish Parliament, local mayors or the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections. Drawing upon a range of elections, the book develops a new classification based on the interactions that exist between voters, the media and political parties. In doing so, it argues that alongside voters, political parties and the media can, and do, prioritize certain elections. The author explores the role of each group within elections individually through case studies. The final chapter then offers an overall means of understanding the levels of salience attached to each election.

This book analyzes practical and moral influences on voting decisions. Undermining the widespread assumption that economic self-interest is the key determinant of voting choices, it discovers that moral considerations rooted in religious traditions are often the more decisive. This finding is confirmed through a close analysis of tangible problems, such as child neglect and crime, problems which one would expect to trouble practical voters. Further, this book suggests that political ideologies influence party affiliation, rather than the other way around. It defines four categories of states in terms of human development and income equality-South, Heartland, postindustrial, and "balanced." It then explains why political color (red, purple, or blue) and societal problems vary across these categories. Voters' moral ideologies, it shows, combine with a state's measure of income equality and human development to shape a state's readiness to pursue practical solutions to societal problems. Finally, it shows that moral ideologies of the religious right and authoritarianism, two very different concepts, are in fact intertwined empirically. This book thus suggests that education-a key driver of human development, anti-authoritarianism, and deliberative voting-should begin in preschools that are both nurturant and instructive.

This book provides a systematic overview and in-depth analysis of the effects of rebel group inclusion on democracy following the end of conflict across the globe. It examines different types of rebel groups, addressing the subject matter through the lens of three dimensions - democracy, stability and governance - which structure the book and the individual chapters. As such, it affords a rare opportunity to bring together two heretofore separate research traditions - conflict studies and political parties. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party theory, civil wars and peacebuilding, democratization studies and state building and more broadly to comparative politics, development studies, and security studies.

This book answers the question why London has been a stronghold for the Labour Party for relatively long periods of the last century and continues to be so to this day to an extent that surprises contemporaries. The book draws on evidence from history and political sociology as well as the personal experience of the author in London local government during the 1980s. It argues that while changes in the London economy, plus the ability of the party to forge cross-class alliances, can go some way to explain the success of the Labour Party in London, a range of other demographic and social factors need to be taken into account, especially after the year 2000. These include the size of London's growing black and ethnic minority communities; higher concentrations of well-educated younger people with socially liberal values; the increasing support of the middle-classes; the impact of austerity after 2008; and the degree of poverty in London compared to non-metropolitan areas. This book will be of key interest to readers interested in the history of the Labour Party, the politics of London, Socialist politics/history, British politics/history, government, political sociology, and urban studies.

This book focuses on the varied support for the populist radical right in the Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Despite many common characteristics, right-wing populist parties have historically been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders than in Luxembourg and Wallonia. This book argues that the variation in the success of right-wing populist parties depends to a large extent on the way in which they are perceived and received in a given polity. In the Netherlands and Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have contributed to politicising issues pertaining to immigration and national identity, thereby tilling the field for the populist radical right. In Luxembourg and Wallonia, mainstream parties and the media have resolutely limited the opportunities for right-wing populist challengers to influence the public debate. This volume will be of interest to practitioners as well as students and scholars of party politics, the media, the populist radical right and the Benelux region.

First published in 1980, Paris and the Provinces explores why reforms of central-local relations in France have been so ineffectual. Professor Gourevitch discovers the cause in party politics and personal rivalries. The struggle for dominance among different parties (Gaullists, Communists, Socialists, Christian Democrats, Independents and others) and individuals (De Gaulle, Giscard, Chirac, Mitterand, Marchais, etc.) has influenced virtually every aspect of institutional reform, from the creation of the regional administration and delineation of its powers to the delegation of specific responsibilities to cities and towns. Conflict over the mechanisms that link local life to the national government is by no means limited to France. This book closely examines comparable events in Italy and analyses the factors that differentiate the strength of 'ethnically' based challenges to central authority in Britain, Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Canada, from the relative weakness of such challenges in France, Italy and Germany. By evaluating the territorial distribution between the capital and the countryside as both an influence on and an object of policy, Paris and the Provinces contributes significantly to understanding the connections between party politics and policy formation and will be of interest to students of political science, government, and public policy.

On 18th April 2017, Theresa May stunned Britain by announcing a snap election. With poll leads of more than 20 points over Jeremy Corbyn's divided Labour Party, the first Tory landslide since Margaret Thatcher's day seemed certain. Seven weeks later, Tory dreams had turned to dust. Instead of the 100-seat victory she'd been hoping for, May had lost her majority, leaving Parliament hung and her premiership hanging by a thread. Labour MPs, meanwhile, could scarcely believe their luck. Far from delivering the wipe-out that most predicted, Corbyn's popular, anti-austerity agenda won the party 30 seats, cementing his position as leader and denying May the right to govern alone. This timely and indispensable book gets to the bottom of why the Tories failed, and how Corbyn's Labour overcame impossible odds to emerge closer to power than at any election since the era of Tony Blair. Who was to blame for the Tories' mistakes? How could so many politicians and pollsters fail to see what was coming? And what was the secret of Corbyn's apparently unstoppable rise? Through new interviews and candid private accounts from key players, political journalists Tim Ross and Tom McTague set out to answer these questions and more, piecing together the inside story of this most dramatic and important of elections.

The author plans to compare the gender gap in Palestine with that in other MENA countries, making this a unique contribution to the existing literature. Expands knowledge of this field beyond the Western context.

This book analyses the coverage of elections that occurred between September 2015 and February 2016 in six European countries (Greece, Portugal, Poland, Croatia, Spain and Ireland). The sample examined includes all news stories published during the official electoral campaign in different types of media outlets: three newspapers per country covering centre-left and centre-right wing political leaning, as well as reference and tabloid papers; three main television news broadcasts covering commercial/private and public broadcast television channels; and three papers that are published only online, taking into account their levels of audience and importance within each national media and political system. The book also examines different connections to the EU and to the Euro Crisis. Questions such as the following guide the overall analysis: In what ways is news election coverage similar and different in these countries? Which issues are mostly covered by the news media and how? Are there patterns of election news coverage in these six European countries? This book is indispensable reading for researchers and students in the field of the media coverage of election campaigns, political communication and populism. Chapters 4 and 8 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book focuses on the emergence of new frames of political engagement underpinned by concepts in marketing, management, and organisation. It goes beyond political electioneering and campaigning and considers business theories such as market research, segmentation, social media, brand architecture, and human resources. With contributions from a range of skilled experts, Political Marketing and Management in Ghana emphasises and provides insights on the symbols-oriented approach of political campaigning in Africa, and distinguishes this from the technology-driven process of the west. Offering a total understanding of African politics and its supply and demand interactivity between key actors, this book is of great use to academics interested in political science, communications, marketing, and business and management.

This book provides a systematic overview of the prevalence, causes, and stability of left-wing and right-wing extremist attitudes in Germany between 1994 and 2017. It shows that there are many similarities between left-wing and right-wing extremists, both in terms of their ideologies and their individual experiences. Overall, these causes can be traced back to three factors: unmet individual needs (e.g., deprivation or disenchantment with politics), access to ideological narratives that promise simplified solutions to individual problems, and the larger social circumstances of life (e.g., transformation processes, unemployment, or immigration). Although extremist attitudes are relatively rare, they are also shown to be highly stable: once acquired, individuals are difficult to bring back onto the democratic path. This book is the first to systematically compare left-wing and right-wing extremist attitudes, to provide an intensive methodological contribution to the measurability of such attitudes, and to relate their causes and stability.

This book explores the opportunities and obstacles to a presidential system in Turkey as proposed by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Since the formation of Turkey's parliamentary system in 1909, there have been many attempts to replace it with an elected executive branch. After the referendum for constitutional amendment to elect the president by the people in 2007 and the elections of 2014, these discussions have increased in intensity. The author explores these debates chronologically and discusses the broader theoretical framework of these different government systems. He also adds a comparative analysis of elections and democratic transition between Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt.

This Pivot explores the mechanism of election manipulation in ostensibly democratic but essentially authoritarian systems called the hybrid regime, using the 2018 parliamentary elections in Bangladesh as an example. The 2018 election has delivered an unprecedented victory to the incumbent Bangladesh Awami League. Elections pose serious dilemmas for the leaders of hybrid regimes. While contested elections bolster their claims of democracy and augment their legitimacy, they can also threaten the status quo. Faced with the challenge, the incumbents tend to hold stage-managed elections. This book offers incisive examination of Bangladesh's political environment, rigorous scrutiny of the roles of state institutions including the law enforcing agencies, and meticulous analysis of election results. It also fills in a gap in the extant hybrid regime literature which seldom explores the strategies of engineered elections.

This volume considers corruption as a multidimensional, complex phenomenon in which various forms of corruption may overlap at any given time. Extending the seemingly paradoxical notion of "legal corruption" to such settings as the USA, Spain, and the Czech Republic, the book seeks to augment our understanding of corruption in democracies by focusing on conduct that is considered by large segments of the population to be corrupt even though they are not explicitly defined as such by the law or the governing elites. Such behaviors are not often captured by corruption perception indexes or identified by scholars who regard corruption as a single category-usually restricted to bribery. However, they are liable to incur a heavy price both in terms of trust in specific governments and of general system support. As illustrated by developments in Spain, the Czech Republic, and the corrosive presidential campaign of 2016 in the USA, these actions are liable to endanger both the quality and actual viability of democratic orders. This volume looks into the possibilities of legal reforms and anticorruption campaigns aiming to correct the consequences of such corruption on government legitimacy. A comparison between the anticorruption campaigns in the competitive authoritarian context of Russia and the fully authoritarian setting of China helps to identify both the difficulties and the possibilities of such efforts in democratic regimes.

This book provides an analytical guide to the modern political campaign, chronologically covering key federal, state, and local campaign laws, election commission rules, and the court decisions interpreting them. While the media and the public tend to focus on the personalities and foibles of the candidates and the horse-race elements of political campaigns, election outcomes often depend as much on the rules that limit candidates' activities and advertising as on the candidates' platforms and personal appeal. How much money may candidates raise? From whom can they accept money? When and how may they spend their campaign funds? What are they allowed to say in their ads? Informed voters who understand the constraints under which campaigns operate can see past the headlines and the hype to assess the quality of the candidates' campaign decisions and their management skills. The approximately 100 documents gathered in this reference guide put the essential information in readers' hands. After introducing 18th- and 19th-century efforts to regulate American election campaigns, this book examines the 20th-century evolution and refinement of election campaign laws in era-by-era chapters and concludes with a chapter on 21st-century developments. Each chapter opens with a short essay highlighting politically relevant historical events of the era to place the subject matter in context. Analytical essays and suggested print and electronic resources accompany every documentary entry

This book examines the practice of international election observation in a Caribbean context. It presents a survey of the Commonwealth Caribbean perspective and a concise case study of Guyana between 1964 and 2015. This research traces the roots of election observation and how this practice became integrated into the landscape of Caribbean electoral politics. More specifically, the study examines the process by which election observers have become key actors in elections in the Commonwealth Caribbean. One of the issues the book contemplates is why Caribbean countries accept the imposition of observation within the context of sovereignty. The case of Guyana and other Anglophone Caribbean states shows the costs of not having observers have been multidimensional and have eclipsed concerns of respecting state sovereignty.

France Votes analyzes the French elections of 2012 in the context of a France and Europe in crisis. With regard to the economy, Irwin Wall describes the ways in which the country's adherence to the common currency in the Eurozone has stripped France of its freedom of manouver. France Votes shows how a European-wide economic crisis was reflected in political crisis at home and the rise of new political extremism combined with mass disaffection from politics altogether. The result of all of this, posits Wall, is that France has become a no-choice democracy.

This book presents the main results of an electoral panel survey, one not only unique and innovative in French electoral research but also among the most detailed panel studies in Europe. The survey was conducted among a sample of 1,846 French voters interviewed in four waves during the 2007 presidential and legislative elections in the context of Nicolas Sarkozy's victory. The analysis provides an understanding of how decisions on voting are made, the process of electoral decision-making, and the mechanisms used by voters to make choices, and attempts to identify the social, political, and psychological factors at play.

This book looks at issues on Gender and LGBTQ matters in political elections in both institutional and communication contexts. Examining wins and losses in elections and assessing accountabilities in those results this broad and international collection analyses how the issue of gender and LGBTQ identity is both factored into, and determines electoral success, not only in consolidated democracies such as the United States, New Zealand, and Norway, but also in a country facing an undemocratic turn such as Poland. . Does raising the subject of gender and LGBTQ issues affect electoral processes? Are there countries where gender and LGBTQ issues are more likely to be instrumentalised in the electoral process? Can common patterns between countries be detected? This book seeks to answer these questions and center gendered issues through a range of topics including party loyalty, voter participation, gendered media coverage, and discourses on electoral defeat, and leadership. This book is suitable for students and scholars in LGBTQ Studies, Politics, Social Sciences and Gender Studies.

Explores who votes for Radical Left Parties in contemporary Western Europe, and why. Analyzes the radical left electorate in 17 West European countries for a period of 18 years (2000-2018). Considers not only voter characteristics, but also the characteristics of the parties themselves and of the political and economic context in which they compete for votes.

Landing Votes explores the conditions under which democratic Latin American governments address persistent political and economic inequities. The book points out a surprising 'coincidence': nearly every extension of suffrage to the rural poor occurred at the same time as land reform. Politicians did not merely react to peasants' demands rather, they sought political power by extending the right to vote while redistributing land. The book concludes that party institutionalization enhanced the prospects for reforms by holding politicians accountable. More significant reforms occurred which benefited more of the rural poor where institutionalized parties competed for their votes. MARKET 1: Latin American Studies; Latin American Politics

Across Western Europe, the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath not only brought economic havoc but also, in turn, intense political upheaval. Many of the political manifestations of the crisis seen in other Western and especially Southern European countries also hit Spain, where challenger parties caused unprecedented parliamentary fragmentation, resulting in four general elections in under four years from 2015 onwards. Yet Spain, a decentralised state where extensive powers are devolved to 17 regions known as 'autonomous communities', also stood out from its neighbours due to the importance of the territorial dimension of politics in shaping the political expression of the crisis. This book explains how and why the territorial dimension of politics contributed to shaping party system continuity and change in Spain in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with a particular focus on party behaviour. The territorial dimension encompasses the demands for ever greater autonomy or even sovereignty coming from certain parties within the historic regions of the Basque Country, Catalonia and, to a lesser extent, Galicia. It also encompasses where these historic regions sit within the broader dynamics of intergovernmental relations across Spain's 17 autonomous communities in total, and how these dynamics contribute to shaping party strategies and behaviour in Spain. Such features became particularly salient in the aftermath of the financial crisis since this coincided with, and indeed accelerated, the rise of the independence movement in Catalonia.