This book examines the seismic impact of Brexit on the British political system, assessing its likely long-term effect in terms of a significantly changed political and constitutional landscape. Starting with the 2015 general election and covering key developments up to "Brexit Day", it shows how Brexit "transformed" British politics. The unprecedented turmoil - two snap elections, three Prime Ministers, the biggest ever defeat for the Government in Parliament, an impressive number of rebellions and reshuffles in Cabinet and repeated requests for a second independence referendum in Scotland - as a result of leaving the EU, calls into question what sort of political system the post-Brexit UK will become. Taking Lijphart's "Westminster model" as its reference, the book assesses the impact of Brexit along three dimensions: elections and parties; executive-legislative relationships; and the relationship between central and devolved administrations. Based on a wealth of empirical material, including original interviews with key policymakers and civil servants, it focuses on the "big picture" and analytically maps the direction of travel for the UK political system. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Brexit, British politics, constitutional, political, and contemporary history, elections and political parties, executive politics, and territorial politics as well as more broadly related practitioners and journalists. Chapters one and two of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by the University of Trento and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies.

This book explores the "Turkish paradox" - women's lower representation in local politics than in parliament. By analyzing life stories of 200 female municipal councilors and party representatives, it offers a comprehensive assessment of what makes local politics in Turkey particularly inaccessible to women. It places women's pathways within the cycles of exclusion, starting by political socialization, going through the candidate recruitment process and continuing after the election. The research presented here brings together gender studies and political sociology and offers novel applications of concepts including intersectionality and biographical availability. It covers all major political parties and diverse local configurations in Turkey, and reveals political strategies of women in conservative parties as well as the reasons behind the exceptionally high representation of women within the pro-Kurdish political parties. The book further sheds some light on the intricate relationship between women's political activity and regime change in the context of democratic backsliding.

Covers an extraordinary political event of having four national elections in two years. The book relies on empirical analysis, including extensive use of the Israel National Election Studies data; on theoretical rigor; and on the contextualization of the elections from comparative and long-term perspectives. Ideal for students and researchers of Israeli politics and society, electoral studies and the crisis of democracy more generally.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book explores how the United States institutions of democracy have affected a citizen's ability to participate in politics. The 2000 election and the ensuing decade of research demonstrated that that the institutions of elections vitally affect participation. This book examines turnout and vote choice, as well as elections as an institution, administration of elections and the intermediaries that affect a citizen's ability to cast a vote as intended. Kropf traces the institutions of franchise from the Constitutional Convention through the 2012 election and the general themes of how institutions have changed increasing, democratization and production federal growth over time in the United States.

What role does the concept of political knowledge have in democratic theory? What according to democratic theorists should the ordinary citizen know about politics? What do empirical studies about political knowledge teach us? And why should we care what people know about politics in the first place?
By asking these important questions, this book offers the reader a quick yet comprehensive overview of the steps that have been taken toward understanding the concept of citizen knowledge in democratic theory over the past several decades. The book summarizes and explains the essentials of a vast body of literature while the empirical studies offer data on a number of Western democracies. Furthermore, the reader is taken through the theoretical foundations of political knowledge from Ancient Greece to modern representative democracy. Clear and concise, the book offers a cutting edge insight into our current understanding of citizen knowledge in democratic theory.

The British general election of 1931 marked the culmination of a period of political and economic crisis, and has long been regarded as a watershed in twentieth-century British history. In the summer of 1931 a struggling Labour government collapsed; its leader, Ramsay MacDonald, stayed on to form a National government supported mainly by Conservatives and Liberals. Within six weeks the decision to call an election was taken, and in the ensuing contest the Nationals won an overwhelming victory. Labour was left with a rump of 46 MPs, a decade in opposition, and an enduring sense of betrayal. Andrew Thorpe argues that, while 1931 changed much, the general trends towards Conservative hegemony and two-party politics were little disturbed by the crisis. He traces the background to the events of 1931, and examines their implications in detail. His scholarly analysis is the first full-length study of the election to benefit from unrestricted access to contemporary documents, and will be of value to all students of twentieth-century British politics.

This book explores how experienced party organisers in the UK work to recruit and to retain party activists for local campaigning. Local door-to-door campaigning is widely regarded as being a key element in a successful election campaign. However, for door-to-door campaigning to work, a large number of volunteer activists are required. The question then is: How can parties identify, recruit and retain such volunteer activists? Based on interviews with highly experienced campaigners, original party documents, the wider campaigning and volunteering literature, numerous informal conversations and the author's own experience of local campaigning over a 20 year period, this book provides an answer to that question. It shows how potential activists are identified, encouraged to become active and supported through their initial encounter with local campaigning. The author also shows how local parties can encourage activists to remain active by creating a 'retention enhancing campaigning environment' and what that involves.

On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama stood before the Illinois capital building and announced his potentially historic presidential bid. The next day, he was in Iowa Falls, campaigning. He was far from the first--Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, and Mitt Romney were already swarming the Hawkeye State, seeking votes behind every hay bale.
Why Iowa?
After all, in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential primary, both Iowa and New Hampshire have come under significant fire--as usual. Critics like Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have charged that these early contests dominate the nomination process, yet are badly out of step with the ideology and demographics of the party and the country writ large. However, while New Hampshire has suffered a serious setback, Iowa has once again emerged as the first presidential primary contest, in part by arguing that its Precinct Caucus was a time-honored tradition that helped winnow the field with good old retail politicking and grassroots activism.
This debate comes to a head this coming Winter, when tens of thousands of Iowans will troop to libraries and churches, prepared for an hour or more of party business. Each of these party meetings, or "caucuses," will hold straw polls, the results of which will be broadcast around the world. One analysis found that the Caucus generates 143 times as much media coverage as other presidential primary contests, controlling for the date and size of the contest. In other words, being first thrusts the Iowa Caucus onto a towering public stage with extraordinary public interest.
Both of these factors--the normative public debate and the empirical public frenzy--demonstrate the need for a veryclose look at the Caucus, in all its warts and beauty. Grassroots Rules" was written to provide just such a study.

This book considers how we reveal ourselves in the language we employ and the action in which we engage. Maria-Ionela Neagu argues that our conceptualization of the world via metaphor should no longer be taken for granted. On the contrary, it must be critically challenged and evaluated, steering argument towards a particular line of action. This book places political discourse at the crossroads of cognitive linguistics and transpersonal psychology to highlight the role of conceptual metaphors in and as arguments. Exploring the interface between argumentation theories and cognitive semantics, Neagu integrates the analysis of conceptual metaphors into the framework of practical reasoning, arguing that political discourse bridges the mental void engendered by people's needs and frustrations. This empirical investigation is centred on the corpus of the American Presidential debates in 2008, as well as Barack Obama's 'State of the Nation' (2009), and 'State of the Union Address' (2010, 2011).

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.

Since 1952, the social bases of the Democratic and Republican parties have undergone radical reshuffling. At the start of this period southern Blacks favored Lincoln's Republican Party over suspect Democrats, and women favored Democrats more than Republicans. In 2020 these facts have been completely reversed. A Tale of Two Parties: Living Amongst Democrats and Republicans Since 1952 traces through this transformation by showing: How the United States society has changed over the last seven decades in terms of regional growth, income, urbanization, education, religion, ethnicity, and ideology; How differently the two parties have appealed to groups in these social cleavages; How groups in these social cleavages have become concentrated within the bases of the Democratic and Republican parties; How party identification becomes intertwined with social identity to generate polarization akin to that of rapid sports fans or primitive tribes. A Tale of Two Parties: Living Amongst Democrats and Republicans Since 1952 will have a wide and enthusiastic readership among political scientists and researchers of American politics, campaigns and elections, and voting and elections.

This book argues that it is now the generational gap that is key to understanding and defining contemporary American politics, with an individual's age cohort being one of the most important predictors of difference in political behavior. Utilizes quantitative data in the form of American National Election Studies, the 2020 national Election Pool exit polls, A.P Votecast surveys, and numerous Pew research Center surveys to demonstrate findings. One of the first books to factor in the arrival of Generation Z into the electorate during the 2020 election, identifying how they differ to previous generations, includign millenials.

The Presidential Election of 2020: Donald Trump and the Crisis of Democracy places the election of 2020 within the context of the Trump presidency, a chaotic and tense time in American politics and a dangerous one. The election is analyzed in depth and its meaning for the state of American society is made clear. A major theme in the book is a critique of Donald Trump's leadership, his incompetence in office, his appeal to followers and the danger this has proven to represent. Among other things, he was accused of mental instability during his presidency. Yet he received the second highest vote total in American history, exceeded only by winning candidate Joe Biden's. Trump was impeached twice for his actions in office but both times not held responsible for what he had done by a Republican-controlled Senate. The election is placed in an on-going context. It was followed by strenuous attempts by Trump and associates to have states reverse their results and declare him the winner and by the Trump-organized seditious assault on the Capitol in which five people died. The objective was to force Vice President Mike Pence, who was chairing a Joint Session of Congress, normally a formality, to instead reject the Electoral College vote outcome. Pence would not do it. His life and that of Speaker Nancy Pelosi were threatened by the rioters. The threat of a coup, a new development in American politics, and one led by Trump and others who share his views, remains. Meanwhile President Joe Biden in his efforts to reconstruct America has introduced the most ambitious policy agenda since the New Deal.

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.

India's over 200 million Dalits, once called "untouchables," have been mobilized by social movements and political parties, but the outcomes of this mobilization are puzzling. Dalits' ethnic parties have performed poorly in elections in states where movements demanding social equality have been strong while they have succeeded in states where such movements have been entirely absent or weak. In Mobilizing the Marginalized, Amit Ahuja demonstrates that the collective action of marginalized groups-those that are historically stigmatized and disproportionately poor - is distinct. Drawing on extensive original research conducted across four of India's largest states, he shows, for the marginalized, social mobilization undermines the bloc voting their ethnic parties' rely on for electoral triumph and increases multi-ethnic political parties' competition for marginalized votes. He presents evidence showing that a marginalized group gains more from participating in a social movement and dividing support among parties than from voting as a bloc for an ethnic party.

Whether or not voters consciously use their votes to send messages about their preferences for public policy, the Washington community sometimes comes to believe that it has heard such a message. In this 2006 book the authors ask 'What then happens?' They focus on these perceived mandates - where they come from and how they alter the behaviors of members of Congress, the media, and voters. These events are rare. Only three elections in post-war America (1964, 1980 and 1994) were declared mandates by the media consensus. These declarations, however, had a profound if ephemeral impact on members of Congress. They altered the fundamental gridlock that prevents Congress from adopting major policy changes. The responses by members of Congress to these three elections are responsible for many of the defining policies of this era. Despite their infrequency, then, mandates are important to the face of public policy.

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.

Can electoral and parliamentary arenas be used toward revolutionary ends? This is precisely the question that held Lenin's attention from 1905 to 1917, leading him to conclude that they could-and would. This book explores the time in which Lenin initiated his use of the electorate, beginning with the Marxist roots of Lenin's politics, and then details his efforts to lead the deputies of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the First and Second State Dumas, concluding with Russia's first experiment in representative democracy from 1906 to 1907. During this time, Lenin had to address issues such as whether to boycott or participate in undemocratic elections, how to conduct election campaigns, whether to enter into electoral blocs and the related lesser of two evils dilemma, how to keep deputies accountable to the party, and how to balance electoral politics with armed struggle. Lenin later said that the lessons of that work were 'indispensable' for Bolshevik success in 1917, which means that this detailed analysis of that period is crucial to any thorough understanding of Leninism.

We will never know the precise identity of America's first political consultant. It is likely that candidates were seeking favorable coverage in colonial newspapers as early as 1704; it is also likely that by 1745 candidates were using handbills and pamphlets to augment press coverage of campaigns; and we know that one successful candidate, George Washington in 1758, purchased refreshments for potential voters. These traditional approaches to winning votes have in recent years been amplified by consultants who have shown how cable networks, videocassettes, modems, faxes, focus groups, and other means of communication can be put to partisan use. In this book, Robert V. Friedenberg examines all of the communication techniques used in contemporary political campaigning.

After providing a history of political consulting, Friedenberg examines the principal communication specialities used in contemporary campaigns. Throughout, political consultants discuss their approaches and evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of these methods. An invaluable text for what is arguably the most rapidly changing field of applied communication, this work is must reading for students and researchers of American politics, applied communication, and contemporary political theory.

This book presents the first analytical study of the levels of professionalism of campaigns in the 2012 Egyptian presidential elections. It considers the extent to which the election was professionalised and how far the levels of professionalism impacted the democratisation process of Egypt. It provides the story of the five main campaigns by applying the professionalisation index to analyse their structures (hardware) and strategies (software). The book also evaluates the application of the professionalization index to nascent democracies, and the impact of campaign professionalism on such democracies. The book encourages further studies within similar fragile democratic systems as well as offering campaigners practical guidance when approaching future elections.

The "secret garden of politics", where some win and others lose their candidate selection bids, and why some aspirant candidates are successful while others fail have been enduring puzzles within political science. This book solves this puzzle by proposing and applying a universally applicable multistage approach to discover the relationship between selection rules, selectors' biases, aspirants' attributes, and selection outcomes. Rare party and survey data on winning and losing candidates and insider views on what it takes to win a selection contest at multiple selection stages are compared and used to reveal the inner workings of the secret garden. With a primary focus on the British Labour party over several elections, the findings challenge many long-held assumptions about why some aspirant candidate types are successful over others and provides real-world and controversial solutions to addressing women's and other marginalised groups' descriptive underrepresentation. As such, it provides a much-needed fresh look at party selection processes and draws new conclusions as to why political underrepresentation occurs and should inform policies to remedy it. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of gender and ethnicity in politics, political parties and candidate selection, and more broadly to the study of political elites, comparative politics, sociology, labour studies, gender, race, and disability studies, and to practitioners.

One of the truisms in American politics has been that "divisive" primaries hurt the party's prospects of winning the presidency in the general election. However, traditional definitions of divisive primaries focus too much on candidate behavior and not enough on the actual divisions and fractures within a party. The Invisible Hands of Political Parties in Presidential Elections proposes a new measure of party cohesion that instead looks at individual donors who are willing to contribute to multiple candidates during the early stages of the presidential primaries. The authors of this collection reveal how these preprimary donor networks can serve as an accurate barometer of party unity, providing a significant perspective on the changing roles of political parties in American government today.

On 14th September 1996, against the background of the Dayton agreement, six different elections took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This book covers in detail what was observed on the ground by 900 international observers: the voting process and the count of votes. Did the Polling Station Committee act impartially and competently? What representatives of parties or candidates were observing the elections? In which aspects do the regions in the entities Republica Srpska and the Federation Bosnia-Herzegovina differ? Did observers report specific problems in municipalities split by the Inter Entity Boundary Line? The book contributes to a clear understanding of the political climate, the role of the OSCE, and whether the elections were conducted properly. It should be of interest to students, scholars and others working in observation and analysis of elections, the political situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, ethnic conflicts, and the role of international organisations in democratisation and peace processes.

Big data and microtargeting steal the headlines about campaigning. But how important are they really to the way that political parties campaign? This book provides a fine-grained account of the campaign practices of three Australian political parties. It explores how prevalent data-driven campaigning is, introduces an original theoretical framework to understand these practices, and demonstrates that there is a disconnect between what Australian voters think about these issues and the way that parties campaign in the 21st century. Drawing on 161 interviews, participant observation and original survey data, it shows that the reality of contemporary campaigning is often different to what we are led to believe.