The Liberal Democratic Party in Japan remained in power continuously between 1955 and 1993. In this groundbreaking study of the dominance of the LDP in Japanese politics over the last forty years, Opposition Politics in Japan examines the challenges which were mounted against this regime and explores why they failed. The subjects covered include opportunities for a united opposition during the 1970s, ideological, organisational and electoral aspects of the opposition's lack of response to such opportunities and the causes of opposition fragmentation. The book also looks at attempts at coalition, the influence of the trade unions, the importance of organisational factors and the influence, if any, of the oppositions's Marxist tendencies.
A highly original and thorough exploration of the issues, Opposition Politics in Japan is essential reading for all those interested in Japanese politics.

This work contains a selection of annotated documents, including party platforms and declarations of the major political groupings in the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. The book covers primarily the period from 1991 to 1994, which can be characterized as the first stage in the formation of a pluralistic society in these emerging states. Two divergent trends of developments can be identified from the sources: the first is a tendency toward the creation of independent states based on traditional models; the other towards independent states with Western-style democracies and pro-Russian orientation.

First published in 1946. This title is a clear and concise account of the march of Labour to the control of the London County Council and its work at County Hall in the 1940s. This study explores the rise of the Labour Party in London and the changes and progress in health, education, and social welfare. Labour in London will be of interest to students of history and politics.

First published in 1983. This study draws upon empirical findings on party activists, members and voters. It examines the origins and nature of Labour's crisis in the 1980s, showing how the split leading to the formation of the SDP was merely a manifestation of deeply rooted problems which went back many years. It argues that this crisis had three distinct but interrelated aspects: first, the ideological schism within the party, which had grown in intensity over time; second, the electoral crisis, which produced the worst electoral performance at the 1983 general election since 1918; and, third, the membership crisis arising from the fact that the party had been losing more than 11,000 individual members per year on average since 1945. Using elite and mass surveys the book demonstrates the link between these crises and Labour's policy performance in office set against a background of rapid economic decline.

First published in 1988. The years 1945-51 were crucial to the Labour Party and the Left in Britain. This elegantly written book traces the gradual and painful disillusionment of the Labour Left with the Attlee governments and analyses the alternative, more militant, programme which the Labour Left devised. Never an organised bloc, the author argues that they are best understood as Labour's conscience - a militant tendency is the true sense of the words. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of political history.

First published in 1987. This examination of the career of John Wheatley indicates the way in which one Irishman - reared among Liberal and Radical coal miners and taught by Roman Catholic priests and nationalist leaders to regard obedience to the Catholic Church and promotion of Home Rule as the vital interests for Irish Catholics - became a Socialist and adapted his Radical political views and devotional Roman Catholic convictions to a Parliamentary and Catholic Socialism. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of British and Labour history.

The decade commencing with the great crash of 2008 was a watershed period for Italian politics, involving fundamental and dramatic changes, many of which had not been anticipated and which are charted in this book. This comprehensive volume covers the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the Italian economy and its relationship with the European Union, the dramatic changes in the political parties (and particularly the rise of a new political force, the Five Star Movement, which became the largest political party in 2013), the changing role of the Trade Unions in the lives of Italian citizens, the Italian migration crisis, electoral reforms and their impact on the Italian party system (where trends towards bipolarisation appear to be exhausted), the rise of new forms of social protest, changes to political culture and social capital and, finally, amidst the crisis, reforms to the welfare state. Overall, the authors reveal a country, which many had assumed was in quiet transition towards a more stable democracy, that suffers an immense shock from the Eurozone crisis and bringing to the fore deep-rooted structural problems which have changed the dynamics of its politics, as confirmed in the outcome to the 2018 National Elections. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Parliamentary party groups are central actors in most European democracies. This volume analyzes the manifestations and operations of these actors across thirteen different countries and in the European parliament. The partisan groups in parliament form the link between mass suffrage, parties and parliaments, and are generally accepted today as necessary instruments of parliamentary business. The study of parliamentary party groups (PPGs) is connected with our understanding of liberal, representative democracy. Moreover, debates about the contempt and apathy towards contemporary politics and politicians, in which the alleged gap between voters and representatives, a decline in trust in the political elite, and complaints about partitocrazia prominently figure, have put PPGs in the limelight. How do MPs deal with the tension between being a representative of the people and a member of a political party? And how do they fulful their task to control government when fellow partisans are participating in that government? This book reveals that PPGs have increasing importance. The "parliamentary party complexes", resulting from the growing generosity of the state, and the

American politics today is in an uproar: loud, angry, and bitter, bristling with us-versus-them. This is not exactly new. The history of our political life is teeming with nastiness, violence, intolerance, and cheating. Yet we can sense that there is something genuinely different about the current turmoil. Politics has turned tribal in an unprecedented way. What changed? The answer, according to renowned political scientist James Morone, lies in the way political parties have operated throughout American history. From the beginning, parties sowed division and discord, but the deepest, most contentious issues facing our society -- questions about who we are -- didn't split along partisan lines. So for a time, parties actually assuaged these conflicts. One side defended slavery but welcomed immigrants; the other side called for abolition but harbored deep hostility for Irish, German, and Italian newcomers. Then, as the United States underwent a series of profound societal transformations -- from reconstruction, to the explosion of populism, to the Great Migration, to the Civil Rights movement -- the alignment slowly shifted. African Americans switched sides to support the Democrats, the party that had fought tooth and nail against expanding their rights, while the Republicans turned whiter and more nativist. In this sweeping, revelatory work of political history, Morone shows how these changes upended the role of parties, creating a single division that would consume every debate. Rich with absorbing vignettes, Republic of Wrath explains our current state of unrest with bracing clarity -- and tells the story of American politics as we've never heard it before.

The "British Elections and Parties" series publishes research on parties, elections and voting behaviour in Britain, providing analyses of current and historical developments. It is produced under the auspices of the Political Studies Association's Election, Public Opinion and Parties study group.
Volume 9 includes research based around four themes: electoral reform; partisanship and voting; parliamentary behaviour; and the attitudes of the young. It provides a source of data on public opinion polls, a summary of local election results, UK referendums, key economic indicators, political parties and a chronology of major political events in 1998.

The election on 9 May 2018 ended six decades of rule by the ruling coalition in Malaysia (Barisan Nasional or BN, formerly the Alliance). Despite this result, the BN's longevity and resilience to competition is remarkable. This book explores the mechanisms behind the emergence, endurance, fight for survival and decline of the party's dominance. Using a systematic analysis of key resources (budgets, posts, and seats), Washida challenges the conventional argument that a punitive threat to exclude opposition supporters from distributive benefits sustained the loyalty of the masses as well as the elites. He also calls into question whether the mere existence of party organization in and of itself enables leaders to credibly commit to power-sharing. Instead he posits a theory of mobilization agency, in which a party leader needs to design an effective incentive mechanism. In addition, he explains how the BN had manufactured legislative dominance by tactical gerrymandering and malapportionment. The insights drawn from the Malaysian case can help deepen our understanding of the rise and fall of authoritarian parties and distributive politics in general.

The stability of divided societies often depends on whether the elites of rival subcultures are willing and able to engage in compromise, as opposed to confrontation. This was demonstrated in 1968 by Arend Lijphart's seminal work on "consociational democracies", or societies characterized by both subcultural segmentation and elite accommodation. This volume offers a comparative analysis of such societies 30 years on. Contributors use a combination of Lijphart's model of consociational democracy and late-1990s literature on political parties to examine the pivotal role played by political parties within and between divided socities. A comparative framework is advanced for the analysis of this role, then applied in turn to the cases of Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Israel. This is followed by comparative chapters and the editors conclude by underlining the findings of the analysis 30 years on from Lijphart's work. This study highlights the nature and amount of change in consociational democracy and the extent to which it has been promoted or hindered by the behaviour of party.

Published in 1998. Was the Italian Communist Party (PCI) a typical Social Democratic party in tune with the programmatic principles of the Second International? What is the appropriate context within which the strategies of 'historic compromise' and Eurocommunism in the 1970s can be analyzed and understood? In what form and to what extent has the process of European integration and the crisis of Keynesianism contributed to the transformation of the party in 1989-91? What caused the collapse of the ruling political class of the First Italian Republic? Why did the transformed PCI, the PDS (Democratic Party of the Left), fail to lead the transition to the Second Italian Republic between 1992 and 1996? Is there any link between the party's historical factions and the current divisions in the Italian Left? Is it possible to theorize and speculate upon these divisions? Italy, Europe, the Left seeks to answer these questions, debating conventional views and examining the extent to which the end of the Cold War has contributed to a redefinition of the Left's identity in Italy and Europe. The exemplary methodological framework and the wider European perspective adopted throughout, make the book an indispensable reading in the field of Italian and European politics.

Western analysts have become increasingly concerned with President Putin's centralization and control, with the term 'managed democracy' becoming a byword for the state of the Russian polity. In this important exploration, David White examines the gradual electoral decline of Russia's leading liberal party, the Yabloko Party. In doing so, he provides fascinating insights into the role of opposition, the development of the party system and, above all, the quality of democracy in Russia under President Putin. As an overtly democratic, liberal reformist party with a strong pro-Western orientation, the place and role of Yabloko in Russian politics is of concern to those interested both in the establishment of democratic norms and the relative strength of political forces promoting democratic and market reforms in Russia.

The elections of 1998 bear out the thesis of this book: so far, the Republicans in Congress are operating more like an old minority party than the new majority party they've become. Still, Congress has changed under Republican leadership and the Republicans have changed, too. This volume of original essays by leading congressional scholars explores the impact of the Republican majority on Congress with attention to the history of the institution and party characteristics present and future. For students and scholars alike, the new majority of an old minority provides a laboratory for political analysis that demonstrates lasting effects. As Republicans learn to govern, the country will no doubt learn something, too.

How has the economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 affected European integration? Observers have been speculating about whether the crisis will ultimately lead to a strengthening or weakening of the European Union. This book studies the effects of the crisis on EU policy-making and institutional arrangements on one hand, and citizens' EU attitudes and political parties' electoral strategies on the other. It concludes that, at least in the short run, the crisis has overall created an opportunity for European integration rather than an obstacle. First, it has triggered events of proposed and actual far-reaching policy and institutional change. Second, negative effects on public opinion have not (yet) systematically translated into tendencies of stagnation or disintegration. The book brings together established scholars of European integration whose diverse research expertise contributes to an improved theoretical and empirical understanding of how the economic and financial crisis has affected EU policies, institutions and citizens. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

An important comparative study of Japanese politics that reveals that green issues have yet to displace the traditional urban politics of post-industrial Japan. This is unlike the rise of green parties and politics in Europe. Unlike Europe, it seems that political values in Japan are still informed by the conservative values of hierarchy and deference.

The principle of self-government through political parties, the cornerstone of democracy, has come to be regarded as a solution to the problem of nationality. This is because the principle of nationality entails the acceptance of the idea of popular government. The importance of the principle of nationality is undeniable, and most of the national questions of Western Europe might be solved in accordance with this principle. Matters are complicated by geographical and strategical considerations, such as the difficulty of determining natural frontiers and the frequent need to establish strategic frontiers. Moreover, the principle of nationality cannot help us where nationalities barely exist or where they are entangled in inextricable confusion.

The present work is a critical discussion of the problem of democracy. Michels believes that democracy, as an intellectual theory and as a practical movement, has entered upon a critical phase from which exit will be extremely difficult. In this book he analyzes the tendencies that oppose the realization of democracy, and claims that these tendencies can be classified in three ways: dependence upon the nature of the individual; dependence upon the nature of the political structure; and dependence upon the nature of organization.

This edition, described by Morris Janowitz as a "classic of modern social science" and by Melvin Tumin as "the beginning of a tradition," offers a landmark study in political science. Following its original publication in 1910, the study and analysis of political parties was established as a new branch of science. Political Parties continues to be a foundation work in the literature and is a necessary addition to the libraries of contemporary political scientists, sociologists, and historians.

Southern Europe has been at the heart of the European sovereign debt crisis and in the vanguard of the programmes of radical economic austerity implemented to confront it. During the first two crisis years, the consequences for domestic political stability were dramatic. Across the region, 2010-11 saw the overthrow of incumbent governments, the breaking down of established political affiliations and the emergence of new political actors. The culmination was the simultaneous downfall of three South European governments in the space of eighteen days in November 2011. This volume offers a collection of case studies of the twelve popular votes during this period in Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Cyprus and the Turkish Cypriot community. The contests include legislative, presidential and sub-national elections and a national-level referendum. In our control case, Turkey, there was no economic crisis and no government change. Elsewhere in Southern Europe, the studies indicate the progression of the crisis, from the limited disapproval of Berlusconi government registered in the Spring 2010 Italian regional election to the electoral collapse of the Spanish socialists in late 2011. The volume indicates a build-up of popular frustration with the democratic process which can only be dangerous for the future of South European democracy. This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, originally published in 1902, represented the first serious attempt to analyze the consequences of democratic suffrage by a comparative analysis of political systems. As such, Ostrogorski's two-volume study of the party system in Britain and the United States exerted profound influence on the subsequent writings of Max Weber and Robert Michels. A descriptive analyst of the party system in these two countries, Ostrogorski developed concepts and methods that an-ticipated by nearly half a century those later used by American and British political scientists. The core of Ostrogorski's analysis is a detailed history of the rise of and changes within the party system in Britain and the United States, the first nations to introduce mass suffrage. While the emphasis of Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties is on the similar trends in the political parties of both countries, Ostrogorski also showed concern with the sources of differences between them. Seeking to explain these variations, he suggested a number of fundamental hypotheses about these two societies that con-tinue to be of relevance today. Lipset's substantial introduction places Os-trogorski's work within its historical context and assesses Ostrogorski's im-pact and influence on both his contemporaries and on later political scien-tists.

After the Labour Party's landslide victory in 1997, the results were analyzed. Issues at the top of the agenda included party leader image, campaign strategy, the sleaze factor, the effect of the media and changes in the electoral geography of Britain. This volume records the discussion.

Americans have debated the efficacy of our two-party political system since the founding of the nation. Generations of political scientists have asked: Is the two- party system an antiquated arrangement, so entrenched in our political structure that any third party is destined to be peripheral, or is it an essential component of the political and constitutional order articulated by our founders? This book forces readers to decide for themselves. Theodore J. Lowi and Joseph Romance debate the promises and pitfalls of the two-party system and provide readers with the strongest available arguments for and against the two-party system of government. Lowi argues that the inability of the existing parties to provide adequate representation for our diverse nation is rapidly causing the obsolescence of the two party system. Romance counters that the two-party system is vital for unifying a divided country and instructs Americans about the compromises necessary to maintain a democratic government. With an introduction by esteemed political scientist Gerald Pomper that outlines the history, evolution, and current status of this perennial debate, and a collection of primary documents that covers the entire history of the controversy, this book will be indispensable for classes on American government, political parties, elections, and political science.

In today's "trial by media" election campaigns, do you have to be crazy to run for higher office? Looking back over the past 25 years, Stanley Renshon provides the first comprehensive account of how the issue of character has come to dominate presidential campaigns. He traces two related but distinctive approaches to a candidate's psychology: mental health and character. Drawing on his clinical and political science training, Renshon has devised a theory which will allow the public to better evaluate the personal and leadership qualities of presidential candidates.

The study of Marxism in Britain throws light on what many historians have referred to as `the enemy within'. In this book, David Burke looks at the activities of Russian political emigres in Britain, and in particular the role of one family: the Rothsteins. He looks at the contributions of Theodore and Andrew Rothstein to British Marxism and the response of the intelligence services to what they regarded as a serious threat to security. With access to recently released documents, this book analyses the activities of early-twentieth century British Marxists and brings to life the story of a remarkable family.