This important new book, one of the first to reflect the 1997 election result and its effects, reassesses the major political parties in Britain--their ideals, organizations, finances, electoral prospects and the effect they have upon British society. The authors begin by clarifying the functions of political parties, before examining their policies and the extent to which there is a consensus in modern British politics. The shifting nature of Britain's party system is then dissected, before a much closer look is taken at the structure, leadership and membership of Britain's three major parties. A separate chapter also inspects the parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, offering a fresh perspective on their priorities and internal organization. Although the book has a strong historical content, it also takes a sharp look at British politics under the new Labor government, while considering the state of the Tory party under William Hague. The likely effect of a more intrusive European Union is also embraced.

This comprehensive one-volume guide to politics in Eastern Europe provides a wealth of information on the region. The author outlines the emergent political spectrum of parties and coalitions, which are described in the 20 country chapters that make up the heart of the book. Parties are classified across the political spectrum and discussed individually in terms of programs, leadership, and political activity. Tables at the end of each country chapter present basic political data and electoral results. A concluding essay evaluates democratic development in the region.

The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on political parties is rooted in an incomplete story. Parties are, like voluntary clubs, associations of individuals that are represented by a singular organization. However, as political science has long understood, they are much more than this. Parties are also the voters who choose and support their candidates, the elected officials who govern, the activists and volunteers who contribute their time and energy, and the individual and organizational donors who open their wallets. Unfortunately, the Court's framework for understanding America's two-party system has largely ignored this broader conception of political parties. The result has been a distortion of the true nature of the two-party system, and a body of deeply inconsistent and contradictory constitutional case law. From primaries to campaign finance, partisan gerrymandering to ballot access, law and politics scholar Wayne Batchis interrogates, scrutinizes, and offers a proposed solution to this problematic jurisprudence.

The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on political parties is rooted in an incomplete story. Parties are, like voluntary clubs, associations of individuals that are represented by a singular organization. However, as political science has long understood, they are much more than this. Parties are also the voters who choose and support their candidates, the elected officials who govern, the activists and volunteers who contribute their time and energy, and the individual and organizational donors who open their wallets. Unfortunately, the Court's framework for understanding America's two-party system has largely ignored this broader conception of political parties. The result has been a distortion of the true nature of the two-party system, and a body of deeply inconsistent and contradictory constitutional case law. From primaries to campaign finance, partisan gerrymandering to ballot access, law and politics scholar Wayne Batchis interrogates, scrutinizes, and offers a proposed solution to this problematic jurisprudence.

This textbook for comparative courses on European politics and for courses on the European Union provides a survey of the political parties of Europe. It contains chapters on the main parties of the largest EU countries from the Gaullists in France to PASOK in Greece. The case studies look at parties initially from the domestic perspective and then work outwards, examining the history of each party within Europe, its policies, its awareness of and attitudes to Europe and the cultural environment in which it operates. There are general chapters on Irish political parties and Scandinavian political parties in the context of their relationship with the European Union, and the book also contains comparative chapters which look at specific parties - Communist, Green and extreme-right - across the European Union. The final section of the book discusses the importance of political parties as determinants of European integration, focusing on trans-national federations and the role of the main groups - Christian Democrat and Socialist - within the European parliament. An introduction situates the chapters within an historical, comparative and theoretical framework.

Russia held its first multiparty election in over 75 years in the hope that it would usher in a new democratic political order. However, the success of right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and other anti-reform forces shocked the world. This study analyzes the background, events and main players of the elections, and examines their significance for the Russian political system. Describing in detail the December 1993 voting, it provides historical, political, regional and sociocultural interpretations of the elections and their results. The work attempts to answer such questions as: what were the keys to Zhirinovsky's success?; who are the new players on Russia's political scene?; what role will the new institutions play in Russian politics; and who actually holds power in Russia?

This guide charts national histories and policies, relevant statistics and chronologies, and the identities, programmes, and activities of the full spectrum of ethnically-based parties and organizations in Central and Eastern Europe.

A long-standing debate in American politics is about the proper structure for political parties and the relative power that should be afforded to party professionals versus issue activists. In this book, Byron E. Shafer and Regina L. Wagner draw systematically on new data and indexes to evaluate the extent to which party structure changed from the 1950s on, and what the consequences have been for policy responsiveness, democratic representation, and party alignment across different issue domains. They argue that the reputed triumph of volunteer parties since the 1970s has been less comprehensive than the orthodox narrative assumes, but that the balance of power did shift, with unintended and sometimes perverse consequences. In the process of evaluating its central questions, this book gives an account of how partisan alignments evolved with newly empowered issue activists and major post-war developments from the civil rights movement to the culture wars.

"[Corn is] a great journalist. I love the way he thinks. I love the way he writes. I'm so glad he's done a super-readable, modern history of the right...We just need smart, digestible history about this stuff right now...[AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS] is perfectly timed...Relevant history for where we are right now." -Rachel Maddow, host, The Rachel Maddow Show "With AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS, David Corn 'did the full homework to take us all the way back to where it really begins.'" -Lawrence O'Donnell, host, The Last Word A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party's interactions with the darkest forces in America. In a compelling and thoroughly-researched narrative, Corn reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fostered fear, anger, and resentment to win elections-and how this led to Donald Trump's triumph and the transformation of the GOP into a Trump personality cult that foments and bolsters the crazy and dangerous excesses of the right. The Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was no aberration. AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS shows it was a continuation of the long and deep-rooted Republican practice of boosting and weaponizing the rage and derangement of the right. The gripping tale in AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics to poison the nation's discourse and threaten American democracy.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and its spread to new territories and states. Today, under the sway of Donald Trump, it is hardly recognizable as the party of Lincoln or even the party of Eisenhower. How and why has the Republican Party changed so drastically? Kenneth Janda sheds new light on the Republican Party's transformations, drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative evidence. He examines nearly three thousand planks from every Republican platform since 1856 as well as candidate statements and historical sources, tracing the evolution of the party's positions on topics such as states' rights, trade, taxation, regulation, law and order, immigration, environmental protection, and voting rights. Janda argues that the GOP has gone through three main phases over the course of its history, transforming from a party committed to governance to one vehemently opposed to government. In its first several decades, the Republican Party emphasized national authority and economic development. By the late 1920s, Republicans had begun downplaying the role of government in favor of a new philosophy steeped in free markets. The nomination of Barry Goldwater in 1964 marked a key turning point. Since then, the party has endorsed states' rights, opposed civil rights, and become increasingly ethnocentric. Richly documented with scores of figures and tables, The Republican Evolution offers new perspective on how the GOP became an antigovernment party-and whether it can step back from the brink of authoritarianism.

Three Tropes on Trump: A Textbook on Applied Marxism, Semiotics, and Psychoanalysis uses the term "trope" in an unusual way-not as an expression in a figurative sense but as a form or method of analysis. This book uses Marxist theory, semiotic theory, and psychoanalytic theory in an attempt to understand what we might call the Trump phenomenon and the Trump style. Each chapter features a primer on its methodology, and it applies concepts from these theories to Trump's candidacy and presidency, covering everything from his hair style, his use of spectacle, his use of insults, his comedic aspects, his personality, and his many psychological problems to help make sense of Trump and his relationship to his base and to the American public.

Pakistan's 2018 general elections marked the second successful transfer of power from one elected civilian government to another-a remarkable achievement considering the country's history of dictatorial rule. Pakistan's Political Parties examines how the civilian side of the state's current regime has survived the transition to democracy, providing critical insight into the evolution of political parties in Pakistan and their role in developing democracies in general. Pakistan's numerous political parties span the ideological spectrum, as well as represent diverse regional, ethnic, and religious constituencies. The essays in this volume explore the way in which these parties both contend and work with Pakistan's military-bureaucratic establishment to assert and expand their power. Researchers use interviews, surveys, data, and ethnography to illuminate the internal dynamics and motivations of these groups and the mechanisms through which they create policy and influence state and society. Pakistan's Political Parties is a one-of-a-kind resource for diplomats, policymakers, journalists, and scholars searching for a comprehensive overview of Pakistan's party system and its unlikely survival against an interventionist military, with insights that extend far beyond the region.

This book traces the economic ideology of the UK Labour Party from its origins to the current day. Through its analysis, the book emphasises key crises, including the 1926 General Strike, the 1931 Great Depression, the 1979 Winter of Discontent and the 2007/2008 economic crisis. In analysing this history, the ideology of the Labour Party is examined through four core themes: * the party's definition of socialism; * the role of the state in economic decision making; * the party's understanding of inequalities; and * its relationship with the trade union movement. The result is a systematic exploration of the drivers and key ideas behind the Labour Party's economic ideology. In demonstrating how crises have affected the party's economic policy, the book presents a historical analysis of the party's evolution since its formation and offers insights into how future changes may occur.

The shocking election of President Trump spawned myriad analyses and post-mortems, but they consistently underestimate the crucial role of the Tea Party on the GOP and Republican House members specifically. In Reactionary Republicanism, Bryan T. Gervais and Irwin L. Morris develop the most sophisticated analysis to date for gauging the Tea Party's impact upon the U.S. House of Representatives. They employ multiple types of data to illustrate the multi-dimensional impact of the Tea Party movement on members of Congress. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they find that Republicans associated with the Tea Party movement were neither a small minority of the Republican conference nor intransigent backbenchers. Most importantly, the invigoration of racial hostility and social conservatism among Tea Party supporters fostered the growth of reactionary Republicanism. Tea Party legislators, in turn, endeavored to aggravate these feelings of resentment via digital home styles that incorporated uncivil and aversion-inducing rhetoric. Trump fed off of this during his run, and his symbiotic relationship with Tea Party regulars has guided-and seems destined to-the trajectory of his administration.

Offering the first in-depth analysis of the relationship between populism and political meritocracy, this book asks why states with meritocratic systems such as Singapore and China have not faced the populist challenge to the extent that liberal-democratic states have. Is political meritocracy immune to populism? Or does it fan its flames? Exploring this puzzle, the authors argue that political meritocracies are simultaneously immune and susceptible to populism. The book maintains that political meritocracy's focus on the intellect, social skills, and most importantly virtue of political leaders can reduce the likelihood of populist actors rising to power; that meritocracy's promise of upward mobility for the masses can work against elitism; and that rule by the 'meritorious' can help avoid crises, diminishing the political opening for populism. However, it also shows that meritocracy does little to eliminate grievances around political, cultural, and social inequality, instead entrenching a hierarchy - an allegedly 'just' one. The book ultimately argues that the more established the system of political meritocracy becomes, the more it opens the door to populist resentment and revolt. Pitched primarily to scholars and postgraduate students in political theory, comparative politics, Asian studies, and political sociology, this book fills an important scholarly gap.

The fifth edition of Gender and Elections offers a lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2020 elections. This timely yet enduring volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2020 elections and providing an in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding presidential, congressional, and state elections; voter participation, turnout, and choices; participation of African American women and Latinas; support of political parties and women's organizations; and candidate communication. New chapters explore the role of social movements in elections and introduce concepts of gendered and raced institutions, intersectionality, and identity politics applied to presidential elections from past to present. The resulting volume is the most comprehensive and reliable resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.

The fifth edition of Gender and Elections offers a lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2020 elections. This timely yet enduring volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2020 elections and providing an in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding presidential, congressional, and state elections; voter participation, turnout, and choices; participation of African American women and Latinas; support of political parties and women's organizations; and candidate communication. New chapters explore the role of social movements in elections and introduce concepts of gendered and raced institutions, intersectionality, and identity politics applied to presidential elections from past to present. The resulting volume is the most comprehensive and reliable resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.

Blair's community, available in paperback for the first time, is an exciting and timely book which challenges the accepted wisdom about the role of communitarian thought in the development of New Labour under Tony Blair. From the mid-1990s there has been a widespread view that Labour policies have reflected, or even been influenced by, the work of communitarian writers like Amitai Etzioni and John MacMurray, and philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Sandel. The book begins by establishing that such a view was widely, and frequently unquestioningly, held, in both popular and academic forums. It then identifies reasons for the persistence of this impression, the evidence on which it was based, and the understandings of communitarianism used by commentators. The book argues that existing accounts of New Labour's communitarianism' fail to present an accurate picture because they are - in some cases explicitly - working with a generic or composite conception of communitarianism which bears little relation to the work of the communitarian writers whose names have been associated with the party. -- .

Most party systems are relatively stable over time. Yet in the 1980s and 1990s, established party systems in Peru and Venezuela broke down, leading to the elections of outsider Alberto Fujimori and anti-party populist Hugo Chavez. Focusing on these two cases, this book explores the causes of systemic collapse.
To date, scholars have pointed to economic crises, the rise of the informal economy, and the charisma and political brilliance of Fujimori and Chavez to explain the changes in Peru and Venezuela. This book uses economic data, surveys, and experiments to show that these explanations are incomplete. Political scientist Jason Seawright argues that party-system collapse is motivated fundamentally by voter anger at the traditional political parties, which is produced by corruption scandals and failures of representation. Integrating economic, organizational, and individual considerations, Seawright provides a new explanation and compelling new evidence to present a fuller picture of voters' decisions and actions in bringing about party-system collapse, and the rise of important outsider political leaders in South America.

Americans today are affectively polarized: they dislike and distrust those from the opposing political party more than they did in the past, with damaging consequences for their democracy. This Element tests one strategy for ameliorating such animus: having ordinary Democrats and Republicans come together for cross-party political discussions. Building on intergroup contact theory, the authors argue that such discussions will mitigate partisan animosity. Using an original experiment, they find strong support for this hypothesis - affective polarization falls substantially among subjects who participate in heterogeneous discussion (relative to those who participate in either homogeneous political discussion or an apolitical control). This Element also provides evidence for several of the mechanisms underlying these effects, and shows that they persist for at least one week after the initial experiment. These findings have considerable importance for efforts to ameliorate animus in the mass public, and for understanding American politics more broadly.

Offering a broad historical perspective, Selfa shows how the Democratic Party has time and again betrayed the aspirations of ordinary people while pursuing an agenda favorable to Wall Street and U.S. imperial ambitions. He examines the relationship between party leaders and social movements, from the civil rights struggle to the movement to end the Iraq war; reveals the unhappy marriage between U.S. labor and the "party of the people;" and assesses the mixed record of attempts to build a third party alternative. Further, Selfa argues that the Democrats' record of backing the rich and breaking promises to its voting base is not a recent departure from an otherwise laudable past, but results from its role as one of two parties serving the interests of the U.S. establishment.

This study traces the history of the national committee chairmanships of the two major political parties in the United States, emphasizing the national conventions and presidential campaigns - where national factions often reveal themselves. Candidate and ideolological factionalism, as the evidence of this volume demonstrates, has been the principal engine of convention action. Factional conflicts have had consequences not just for the political parties but for the party system itself. The institutional history of the two national committees and their chairmanships reveals a previously unrecorded aspect of United States national party development.

This book is concerned with global communications revolution and political power. It offers a fascinating combination of astuteness together with intellectual provinciality.

The desire for the 'core' leader has been imbedded in the ruling philosophy of the Chinese Communist Party. As the role of the 'core' leader and his interactions with other ruling elite are important in understanding Chinese politics, this book attempts to focus on the role of the party chief and how he could become the 'core' of the leadership. Xuezhi Guo provides the most detailed and comprehensive scrutiny of the 'core' of the Chinese Communist Party leadership and meticulously analyses the cultural, philosophical, and ideological origins as well as its evolution throughout the party's history. This study introduces an eclectic approach that integrates the most useful analytical perspectives and insights from Chinese political history, philosophy, and mainstream Western methodologies in order to explain the consistent patterns of elite politics and the behavior of the party's high-ranking leaders during times of cooperation and conflict from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping.

This book focuses on the consequences of internal conflict for electoral competition and demonstrates why the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in alliance with the Liberals, "lost from the inside" during two general election campaigns in Great Britain.