This book explores the party politics and political system of Japan, which since 1955 has been dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with a particular focus on the evolution of LDP governments between the 1990s and 2010s. Through its evaluation of the legacy of post-war opposition parties, the politics of electoral reform and the crucial importance of foreign policy (especially in relation to China), this volume argues that Japan has 'lost its way', and that for recovery it needs to move away from single-party dominance. Despite the failures of the Democratic Party (DPJ) government 2009-2012, the reasons for which are explored, the need to combat economic, social and political stagnation requires a more pluralist political environment, in which LDP monopoly of policy and personnel can be realistically challenged by vigorous opposition parties. Comparisons are made with other parliamentary democracies, in particular the United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden, to indicate that single-party dominance is an inadequate substitute for competition between genuine political alternatives. As an analysis of opposition party politics in post-war Japan, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Political Science, International Relations, Asian Studies and Japanese Studies.

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.

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.

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.

Is today's left really new? How has the European radical left evolved? Giorgos Charalambous answers these questions by looking at three moments of rapid political change - the late 1960s to late 1970s; the turn of the millennium; and post-2008. He challenges the conventional understanding of a 'new left', drawing out continuities with earlier movements and parties. Charalambous examines the 'Long '68', symbolised by the May uprisings in France, which saw the rise of new left forces and the widespread criticism by younger radical activists of traditional communist and socialist parties. He puts this side by side with the turn of the millennium when the Global Justice Movement rose to prominence and changed the face of the international left, and also the period after the financial crash of 2008 and the rise of anti-austerity politics which initiated the most recent wave of new left parties such as Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. With a unique 'two-level' perspective, Charalambous approaches the left through both social movements and party politics, looking at identities, rhetoric and organisation, and bringing a fresh new approach to radical history, as well as assessing challenges for both activists and scholars.

Party Influence in Congress challenges current arguments and evidence about the influence of political parties in the US Congress. Steven S. Smith argues that theory must reflect policy, electoral, and collective party goals. These goals call for flexible party organizations and leadership strategies. They demand that majority party leaders control the flow of legislation; package legislation and time action to build winning majorities and attract public support; work closely with a president of their party; and influence the vote choices for legislators. Smith observes that the circumstantial evidence of party influence is strong, multiple collective goals remain active ingredients after parties are created, party size is an important factor in party strategy, both negative and positive forms of influence are important to congressional parties, and the needle-in-the-haystack search for direct influence continues to prove frustrating.

Features interviews with many of the leading experts on this most controversial of issues. Offers the possibility to make sense of a global phenomenon in a complete and accessible way. Gives an overview of the evolution of populism through history and across continents, detailing its causes and consequences.

Features interviews with many of the leading experts on this most controversial of issues. Offers the possibility to make sense of a global phenomenon in a complete and accessible way. Gives an overview of the evolution of populism through history and across continents, detailing its causes and consequences.

This book explores the discourses, attitudes and behaviours of professional politicians and ordinary citizens alike characterized by hostility towards the political sphere, political parties and, above all, professional politicians. It furnishes a clear, consistent depiction of the anti-politics phenomenon in general using Italy as a "laboratory" where anti-politics is widespread. After an original reconstruction of the concept of anti-politics, the author charts the rise of Silvio Berlusconi, the success of Umberto Bossi's Northern League, the resounding electoral victories of the Five Star Movement and the League (La Lega), all rooted in the anti-political rhetoric of Italy's leaders and the anti-political sentiment of its population. The author also traces the socio-political profile of the anti-political citizens of the main European democracies. This broad, consistent view of anti-politics will attract academics, journalists and policy makers interested in anti-politics in Italy and elsewhere. Students and scholars of party politics, party leaders, democracy and political participation will also find the volume of great interest.

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.

Dominant theories of regulatory choice privilege the goals and actions of district-oriented legislators and organized groups. Presidents, Parties, and the State challenges this conventional frame, placing presidential elections and national party leaders at the centre of American regulatory state development. Historically the 'out-party' in national politics between 1884 and 1936, the Democratic party of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt confronted a severe political quandary, one which pit long-term ideological commitments against short-term electoral opportunities. In short, Democrats, when in power, were forced to choose between enacting the regulatory agenda of their traditional party base, or legislating the programs of voting blocs deemed pivotal to the consolidation of national party power. Coalition-building imperatives drove Democratic leaders to embrace the latter alternative, prompting legislative intervention to secure outcomes consistent with national party needs. In the end, the electoral logic that fuelled Democratic choice proved consequential for the trajectory of American state development.

This book examines the process of presidentialisation of political parties in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkan countries deserve to be analysed in a comparative perspective due to their distinctive features in terms of processes of democratization, forms of government and institutional assets, the presence of social cleavages (religious, linguistic, ethnic), and, of course, the nature of political parties which differs from other European cases, especially in terms of origins, organization and structure. However, Western Balkan political parties do show certain similarities with other West European cases where power is centralised and held by the parties' leadership. The book ultimately attempts to test whether and to what extent the influence of institutional variables affects the level of presidentialisation of political parties, also considering the parties' organization features.

This book examines the political parties which emerged on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg empires and not only took over government power but merged with government itself. It discusses how these parties, disillusioned with previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, justified their takeovers with programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development, including acting as the mediators between the various social and ethnic groups in the respective territories. It pays special attention to nation-building through the party, to institutions (both constitutional and de facto), and to the global and comparative aspects of one-party regimes. It explores the origins of one-party regimes in China, Czechoslovakia, Korea, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and beyond, the roles of socialism and nationalism in the parties' approaches to development and state-building, as well the pedagogical aspirations of the ruling elites. Hence, by revisiting the dynamics of the transition from the earlier imperial formations via constitutionalism to one-party governments, and by assessing the internal and external dynamics of one-party regimes after their establishment, the book more precisely locates this type of regime within the contemporary world's political landscape. Moreover, it emphasises that one-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states, and that although some state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989-1991, in other places historically dominant parties and new parties have continued to monopolize political power. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party is a richly detailed, comprehensive, and provocative account of presidential party leadership in the turbulent 1960s. Using many primary sources, including resources from presidential libraries, state and national archival material, public opinion polls, and numerous interviews, Sean J. Savage reveals for the first time the influence of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson on the chairmanship, operations, structure, and finances of the Democratic National Committee. Savage further enriches his account with telephone conversations recently released from the Kennedy and Johnson presidential libraries, along with rare photos of JFK and LBJ.

This is a political history of Labour's use of the tax system from 1906 to 1979: an epilogue brings the story up to the present, surveying New Labour's tax policies and dilemmas. Richard Whiting's broad-ranging, lucid and readable study examines how Labour used tax to further its political aims of funding welfare, managing the economy, promoting fairness and achieving greater equality. Whiting also shows the limits of Labour's ability to achieve a more equal society in this way, assesses the ability and standing of key figures in the Labour movement, and delineates the problems caused by the political role of the trade unions. This study provides an original perspective on Labour's history, and is a valuable contribution to understanding both the tax structure and the politics of twentieth-century Britain more generally.

No one could have predicted that a peaceful sit-in to counter government plans to raze Istanbul's Gezi park would escalate into a country-wide protest movement, arguably the most serious political crisis Turkey, a country often hailed as a 'model' in the region, has faced in the last ten years.
The protests left 8 dead, more than 8,000 wounded, and the country deeply polarized. Much ink has been spilled since June 2013 to explain the Gezi protests in the media, most of it based on hasty analogies and banal platitudes, referring to a 'Turkish spring'. Yet no academic analyses of the protests have been published so far and it is in this context that this collection of essays, the first academic book on the topic in English, is both timely and important.
This collection offers a preliminary analysis of the Gezi protests and addresses the following key questions: 'How can we account for the protests?' 'Who were the protesters?' 'Why did the Justice and Development Party government choose to suppress the protests instead of meeting the demands of the protesters?' and 'Were Gezi protests in any way connected to protest movements in other parts of the world?'

When it was originally published in 1984, Militant was widely acclaimed as a masterly work of investigative journalism. Although the rise of Jeremy Corbyn is to be attributed to more than hard-left entrism, to some within the party, Crick's book must seem like a lesson from history.Militant was a secret Trotskyite organisation that consistently denied being a party, though at its peak in the mid-1980s it could boast around 8,000 members, all of whom also belonged to the Labour Party. Militant operated clandestinely inside the Labour Party, edging out moderates at grass-roots level and recruiting people to its own ranks. Whilst eventually most of its leaders were expelled, it caused damaging rifts within Labour. Crick's book explores the origins, organisation and aims of Militant. It also explores the famous boss politics of Derek Hatton and Militant in Liverpool, and the party hierarchy's determined and ultimately successful attempts to squash the tendency.An important historical document, it is today seen as a field guide to how hard-left factions can infiltrate the Labour party, with some in the centre of the party allegedly urging its supporters to treat the long unavailable book as a 'war manual'.

The economic and political conditions that have led to the rise of radical right parties exist in similar form and intensity all over Europe. Yet, radical right parties have only been successful in a few countries. The Republikaner party's less than 2 per cent of the vote is much lower than the National Front's high of 15 per cent and the Freedom Party's 27 per cent of the vote in national legislative elections. Why do such a small percentage of voters choose the radical right in Germany? Why is the radical right winning more seats in Austria than in France and Germany? The main argument in this book is that radical right parties will have difficulty attracting voters and winning seats in electoral systems that encourage strategic voting and/or strategic coordination by the mainstream parties. The analysis demonstrates that electoral systems and party strategy play a key role in the success of the radical right.

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.

Examining the Green Party Taiwan (GPT) since its establishment through the aftermath of the most recent national elections in January 2020, this book focuses on Taiwan's most important movement party over the last two and a half decades. Despite its limited electoral impact, its leaders have played a critical role in a range of social movements, including anti-nuclear and LGBT rights campaigns. Plotting the party's evolution in electoral politics as well as its engagement with the global green movement, this volume analyses key patterns of party change in electoral campaign appeals, organisation and its human face. The second half of the volume concentrates on explaining both the party's electoral impact and why the party has adjusted ideologically and organisationally over time. Based on a wide range of material collected, including focus groups, interviews and political communication data, the research relies heavily on analysis of campaign material and the voices of party activists and also considers other Green Parties, such as the splinter Trees Party and GPT-Social Democratic Alliance. Applying a wide range of theoretical frameworks to plot and explain small party development, this book will appeal both to students and scholars of Taiwan's politics and civil society but also to readers with an interest in small parties and particularly environmental parties and movements.

This book provides a comparative analysis and a systemic categorization of the Populist Radical Left Parties (PRLPs) in Western Europe. Institutional and socio-economic aspects have transformed the political culture of many modern democracies, leading to the creation of radical left-wing parties who, by combining a strongly populist political offer with the historical demands of the traditional left wing, are capable of electoral success. This book analyzes a range of different Populist Radical Left Parties (PRLPs) in Western Europe through in-depth case studies. The author uses statutes, internal documents, programs, election results, membership data, and international political literature combined with interviews with executives and national secretaries to describe and interpret the main features of PRLPs, their paths of formation and political transformation. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of political science and political sociology, media studies and anyone interested in trying to better understand European populism and the distinctions among its different forms.

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 examines Hezbollah's transition from a domestic into a regional armed non-state actor (ANSA). Taking its point of departure in Hezbollah's historiography on the military and political levels in Lebanon, it focuses on the participation of Hezbollah's troops in Syria's sect-coded civil war. Initially limited, Hezbollah's intervention in the Syrian conflict gradually increased into a full-scale engagement across vast swathes of Syrian territory, with Hezbollah instrumentalizing its sectarian (Shi'a) identity to justify its engagement. Sect-centric narratives and victimhood were a mere tool for what was a geopolitical confrontation, and Hezbollah's involvement launched it to becoming a regional ANSA. The book outlines that this transition was only plausible because of the interplay between three factors: Hezbollah's sectarian mobilization and instrumentalization of its sectarian identity; the shift into a quasi-army combining classical with guerrilla tactics and formations; and its embedding as a partner in the axis which now extends from Beirut to Tehran. It was in 2018 that a set of conditions, impossible to reproduce, allowed Hezbollah to reach its culmination on both the domestic and regional theatres. This book shows that ANSAs are playing prominent roles in the regional order in the Middle East. Meticulously researched, Hezbollah is a comprehensive study ideal for upper-level undergraduates and above with an interest in Middle East studies, Middle East politics, and international relations.

The fifth edition of Public Opinion: Measuring the American Mind provides a comprehensive, accessible introduction to public opinion in the United States and describes how public opinion data are collected, how they are used, and the role they play in the U.S. political system. Bardes and Oldendick introduce students to the history of polling and explain the factors a good consumer of polls should know in order to critically evaluate public opinion data. Public Opinion: Measuring the American Mind is the only text to devote significant space to the history of polling, the use of polling in America today, and to explain the methods used for survey research. In addition, the authors engage students by providing in-depth coverage of public opinion on such issues as political ideology, health care, race, and foreign policy, as well as an update and discussion of the major changes that have taken place on controversial issues such as gay marriage, gun control, and immigration. Updated to include the latest data from the American National Election Study and the General Social Surveys in 2012 and 2014, this lively, engaging text combines a comprehensive grounding in the nuts and bolts of the field with relevant, real-world examples.