Never has the Left held power in so many advanced economies, yet the difference this makes to economic policy proves hard to specify. This book is the first to examine in detail the successes and failures of governments across Europe and Australasia to chart distinctive courses in the face of the neoliberal backlash against state intervention, the welfare state, and guaranteed full employment.

Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience focuses on populist parties as the main agents of populism and examines when these parties turn anti-democratic and when they remain loyal to the democratic system. Following the Brexit referendum, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of populist parties around the globe, many observers suggested that democracy was in serious trouble. Nevertheless, while some democratic systems have been seized by populists, most of them have proven resilient. In this volume, the authors identify the conditions under which populist parties become inimical to political and societal pluralism. They offer in-depth analyses of the trajectory of populist parties in eleven European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain). The book shows that, reflecting the diversity of national contexts, there are multiple pathways whereby populist parties' power can remain contained and subject to democratic checks and balances. Moreover, populist parties can - at times voluntarily, at other times by force of external conditions - come to adhere to the democratic rules of the game. On this basis, the volume outlines different ways in which European democracies can successfully accommodate populist parties through strategies that carefully navigate between the extremes of uncritical acceptance and outright ostracization. Drawing on the literature on democratic theory and comparative politics, this book directly contributes to the public debate on the state of democracy in Europe. It will be of interest to researchers of comparative politics, European politics, party politics, democracy, and populism.

This book addresses the changing electoral and political circumstances in which American political parties found themselves during the 2016 election, and the strategic adaptations this new pressure may require. The respective establishments of both major political parties have found themselves facing serious challenges. Some observers wondered if realignment was in progress, and whether the parties could survive. Both grounded in research and accessible to more than just academics, this book provides important insights into how political parties can move forward from 2016.

An objective and dispassionate study of the oldest religion based regional political party: the Shiromani Akali Dal, participating in the democratic politics and processes of socio-economic development and transformation of the country. It delineates and analyses events and developments from the emergence of the Akali Dal, as a religious movement, its transformation into a religious political party, concerned with safeguarding the political, social and economic interests of the Sikhs as a minority and to represent them in governing institutions, engaged in the struggle for power in secular domain mobilising the community support using the ideology of fusion of religion and politics, yet lacking equal support from different sections of the community. Rather than dwelling on a mere narrative of events and describing strategies, tactics and agitations of the Akalis an attempt has been made to understand why and how social and economic antagonisms arising out of generation and articulation of demands in a pluralistic society, undergoing modernization and democratization may be marked by identity politics. The study is located in the broader framework of rise and growth of regional parties and identity politics in India as a part and consequence of India's adopted model of state and nation building, integration and socio-economic development and transformation.

Populist Parties and Democratic Resilience focuses on populist parties as the main agents of populism and examines when these parties turn anti-democratic and when they remain loyal to the democratic system. Following the Brexit referendum, the election of Donald Trump, and the rise of populist parties around the globe, many observers suggested that democracy was in serious trouble. Nevertheless, while some democratic systems have been seized by populists, most of them have proven resilient. In this volume, the authors identify the conditions under which populist parties become inimical to political and societal pluralism. They offer in-depth analyses of the trajectory of populist parties in eleven European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain). The book shows that, reflecting the diversity of national contexts, there are multiple pathways whereby populist parties' power can remain contained and subject to democratic checks and balances. Moreover, populist parties can - at times voluntarily, at other times by force of external conditions - come to adhere to the democratic rules of the game. On this basis, the volume outlines different ways in which European democracies can successfully accommodate populist parties through strategies that carefully navigate between the extremes of uncritical acceptance and outright ostracization. Drawing on the literature on democratic theory and comparative politics, this book directly contributes to the public debate on the state of democracy in Europe. It will be of interest to researchers of comparative politics, European politics, party politics, democracy, and populism.

This book analyzes the major post-unification developments that have tested and shaped the "new Germany" from a multilevel perspective. The authors argue that domestic transformation and a heightened role in international politics are consequences, often unintended, of unification, Europeanization, and globalization. Informed by the authors' intimate knowledge of Germany, this book offers a comprehensive, in-depth analysis of a pivotal global player at a critical economic, political, social, and environmental juncture.

How do Democratic and Republican party leaders react after their party has lost a presidential election? Is there a pattern of response to defeat that reflects the distinctive cultures of the two parties? This book answers these questions by examining how the two national party organizations have responded to presidential election defeats between 1956 and 1993. Drawing on party documents, interviews with party officials, and contemporary accounts, Philip Klinkner provides detailed case studies of opposition party politics. He shows that Republican national committees have reacted to losses by making organizational changes to improve campaign technology and fundraising and that losing Democrats have sought to refine or make more democratic their internal procedures for selecting delegates to the national convention or for choosing presidential candidates. Klinkner suggests that the reasons for these reactions stem from the historical development of the parties. The organizational response of the Republican party is the result of its long-term relationship with business, its homogeneity and hierarchical structure, and its minority party experience. The Democrats' emphasis on participation and representation for its constituent elements is based on its characteristic composition of social and economic out-groups, its heterogeneity and decentralization, and its tradition as the majority party.

Analyzing Turkey's electoral geography, this volume evaluates the geographical repercussions of the elections in Turkey since the establishment of multiparty politics in 1950. The book focuses on the last two decades, examining the interaction between electoral behavior and regional dynamics. Various issues related to the geographical connotations of Turkish electoral politics are qualitatively and quantitatively addressed by scholars with diverse backgrounds in social sciences. The chapters herein examine how Turkey's electoral geography has been shaped over the years to correspond with a certain aspect of multiparty politics, such as voting behaviors, political parties and party systems, nationalization and regionalization, redistricting, gender issues, identity dynamics, or ideological polarization. This comprehensive work contributes to the theoretical debates in electoral geography in general. Utilizing notions from electoral geography literature, this book develops new concepts through the Turkish case. Filling an important gap in the literature on Turkish politics, this contemporary analysis will be a key resource to policymakers, students, and scholars interested in political science, Turkey, and the Middle East.

This book examines how social democratic parties have responded to populist radical right parties in the battle for support from working-class voters. It focuses on the paradigmatic examples of social democratic parties in the Nordic countries. Historically these have been the strongest social democratic parties, but they have declined in recent years partly due to the competition from populist radical right parties. In addition, since populist radical right parties tend to support liberal and conservative parties in parliament or in governmental negotiations, social democratic parties' ability to impact broader policy areas has declined as well. The book provides a detailed empirical account of how social democratic parties - and more broadly, labour movement organisations, including unions - have responded to these challenges across Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. This volume will be of interest to scholars of party politics, comparative politics, Nordic politics, and the populist radical right.

This book examines Lebanese political parties and their encounters with modernity. Taking three, mainly Christian parties as an example, the book refutes the idea of Middle Eastern parties being backwards or antiquated. By combining historical and anthropological perspectives, it is shown that these parties stand for normativities of modernity. Lebanese, as well as Middle Eastern parties in general, have a rather poor reputation: they are considered family-based, ideologically meaningless, tailored solely to their leadership, and non-modern. Contrastingly, this book claims that the concept of the "real party" corresponds to an encounter with modernity and that these parties, although dysfunctional in parts, are better than their reputation. Most importantly, Lebanese parties are taking the nation-state as their central reference point, as they recognise it as the legitimate form of societal organization. The volume claims that important constituents of modernity, such as the individual, the nation, secularity, progress, and representing the people (demos), serve for the parties in question as resources of utopian elements informing much of these parties' identities. Bringing Lebanese political parties into a global debate on modernity, the book tackles the notion of parties of the Middle East being non-modern. It will be of interest to scholars researching political science, political history and the Middle East.

This book offers the first comprehensive, comparative and coherent perspective on parliamentary candidates in contemporary representative democracy. Based on the unique database of the 'Comparative Candidate Survey' project which interrogated parliamentary candidates in more than 30 countries, it fills a significant lacuna by focusing on the thousands of ordinary candidates that participate in national elections. It examines who the candidates are in terms of their socio-demographic background and political career patterns, how they were selected by their parties, what their policy preference are and whether these are congruent to those held by their voters, who they seek to represent and how they intend to do so once elected, and what their visions are on representative democracy and party government. Last but not least, it investigates how they go about reaching out to their potential voters during the election campaign. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party politics, political elites, political communication, political participation, elections, theories of democracy and representation, legislative studies, voting behaviour and more broadly to European politics, as well as to political and policy professionals throughout Europe.

This ground-breaking book examines the Soviet ruling elite over the entire period of Communist rule. It serves as a collective biography of nearly two thousand people who served on the Communist Party's Central Committee from 1917 to 1991. The book is based on archival research, only available after the collapse of communism, and extensive interviews with former Central Committee members.

In Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam, Hai Hong Nguyen investigates the correlation between independent variables and grassroots democracy to demonstrate that grassroots democracy has created a mutually empowering mechanism for both the party-state and the peasantry.

Most comprehensive and up-to-date book available on the extreme right and anti-fascism in Australia. Multidisciplinary contributions from historians, political scientists and sociologists.

Indian party politics, commonly viewed as chaotic, clientelistic, and corrupt, is nevertheless a model for deepening democracy and accommodating diversity. But if these perspectives are contradictory, they do have one thing in common: the perception of Indian politics as non-ideological in nature. In Ideology and Identity, Pradeep K. Chhibber and Rahul Verma argue that the Western European paradigm of what constitutes an ideology is not entirely applicable to many multiethnic countries in the twentieth century. In these more diverse states, the most important ideological debates center on statism-or the extent to which the state should dominate society, regulate social norms, redistribute private property, and accommodate the needs of various marginalized groups. Using survey data from the Indian National Election Studies (NES) and other studies along with evidence drawn from the Constituent Assembly debates, this book shows how education, the media, and religious practice transmit the competing ideas that lie at the heart of the ideological debates in India.

This book examines the impact that nostalgia has had on the Labour Party's political development since 1951. In contrast to existing studies that have emphasised the role played by modernity, it argues that nostalgia has defined Labour's identity and determined the party's trajectory over time. Jobson outlines how Labour, at both an elite and a grassroots level, has been and remains heavily influenced by a nostalgic commitment to an era of heroic male industrial working-class struggle. This commitment has hindered policy discussion, determined the form that the modernisation process has taken and shaped internal conflict and cohesion. More broadly, Labour's emotional attachment to the past has made it difficult for the party to adjust to the socioeconomic changes that have taken place in Britain. In short, nostalgia has frequently left the party out of touch with the modern world. In this way, this study offers an assessment of Labour's failures to adapt to the changing nature and demands of post-war Britain and will be of interest to both students and academics working in the field of British political history and to those with a more general interest in Labour's history and politics. -- .

This book examines how social media have transformed politics in established democracies. Specifically, the authors examine the influence of the unique qualities of social media on the power balance between and within parties. They present a general theory as well as an in-depth case study of the Netherlands and compare it to the US and European democracies. The authors show how and why social media's introduction leads to equalization for some and normalization for others. Additional to national politics, Jacobs and Spierings investigate often-overlooked topics such as local and European politics and the impact on women and ethnic minorities.

As the last decade has shown, ideological polarization in Congress has reached historic levels. Yet, spatial theory has become increasingly important for how scholars understand Congress and legislative elections. In spatial models, candidates select positions along an ideological spectrum, and voters choose candidates based on those locations. However, the central tendency of these models is for the candidates to converge to the location of the median voter, so polarization has become increasingly problematic for spatial theory, even as scholars have come to rely increasingly on these models. In Incremental Polarization, Justin Buchler provides a unified spatial model of legislative elections, parties, and roll call voting to explain the development of polarization in Congress. His model moves beyond elections and factors in legislators' roll call voting, where a different but related spatial process operates. By linking these models, Incremental Polarization fills a critical gap in our understanding of the strategic, electoral, and procedural roots of polarization-and the role that parties play in the process.

Upturning the typical view of Turkey's democratic trajectory as a product of authoritarian assault or unfortunate circumstances, this book argues that the AKP, first elected in 2002, has consistently advanced a narrative of democracy as the work of an elite working for the 'National Will'. Beginning with an analysis of the historical processes that led to the AKP's rise at the beginning of the 21st century, the book then focuses on the AKP since 2002. Though Turkey's democratic transition was originally characterised by Western co-operation, the author outlines the gradual deterioration of these relations since the 2010s, as well as the decline of political rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law. However, bringing in theoretical perspectives of democracy, it is argued that the AKP has adopted an alternative definition based on the 'National Will' throughout its rule, resistant to the Western essentialist view. As such, the AKP's story highlights that the root of this crisis lies within democracy itself. The book will appeal to historians and analysts of Turkish politics, as well as to political scientists interested in theories of democracy. Moreover, for those interested in the global contemporary crisis of democracy, the book provides an important case-study.

Upturning the typical view of Turkey's democratic trajectory as a product of authoritarian assault or unfortunate circumstances, this book argues that the AKP, first elected in 2002, has consistently advanced a narrative of democracy as the work of an elite working for the 'National Will'. Beginning with an analysis of the historical processes that led to the AKP's rise at the beginning of the 21st century, the book then focuses on the AKP since 2002. Though Turkey's democratic transition was originally characterised by Western co-operation, the author outlines the gradual deterioration of these relations since the 2010s, as well as the decline of political rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law. However, bringing in theoretical perspectives of democracy, it is argued that the AKP has adopted an alternative definition based on the 'National Will' throughout its rule, resistant to the Western essentialist view. As such, the AKP's story highlights that the root of this crisis lies within democracy itself. The book will appeal to historians and analysts of Turkish politics, as well as to political scientists interested in theories of democracy. Moreover, for those interested in the global contemporary crisis of democracy, the book provides an important case-study.

Newly accessible communist archives in Britain and Moscow have given us a fuller and richer picture of the membership of the British Communist Party than of any other British political party, and indeed of most other communist parties. This project presents the fullest and most authoritative details of the Communist Party in Britain yet assembled. It tracks down British communists: who they were, where they came from, how their allegiances were forged and sustained, how communist identities were created and dissolved, the diverse roles party members played in British society. A truly collaborative project led by academics with sustained research experience, this book will not simply deepen our understanding of one of the key social movements of the twentieth century, it will provide a social history of left-wing activism in Britain, from the social ferment and grassroots militancy of the interwar period to the cultural politics and 'designer socialism' of the 1980s.

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 comprehensively describes the impact of modern technologies on political leadership by providing a new paradigm of the phenomenon of neo-leadership, that is political leadership oriented on creating both the image and political influence on the Internet. It examines its functioning in the new media environment and identifies the most important transforming trends, taking into account their impact on political and social relations in an era of dynamic technological development. Systematically exploring various dimensions of leadership, it presents new notions relevant in a networked world where leaders are created and conduct themselves against the backdrop of a technological revolution, including the development of AI, automation, algorithms and ultrafast networks, all of which strengthen or disrupt their impact and create a new set of virtual authorities exerting an increasing impact on society, ethical considerations and political life and requiring new methods for study. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of leadership and elite studies, media and communication studies, political marketing, political science, international relations; public policy, and sociology.

This book explores and reconstructs how the principal parliamentary parties in Britain confronted and responded to events that unfolded during the Falklands War in the spring of 1982. The author begins by situating the Falklands Crisis within the wider context of the breakup of the British Empire and discusses the fluid political situation in Parliament at the time. Following this, the book examines in detail each of the parties - the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the SDP-Liberal Alliance - and their actions during the crisis. The chapters focus on each party in turn and follow a chronological narrative to reconcile the evolution of the diplomatic and military picture with the internal political one.

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.