This book provides a cross-country study of the consequences of the expansion of intra-party democracy, the trend towards more inclusive methods of selection for party candidates and leaders, and the impact of these on political elites in terms of sociopolitical profile and patterns of careers. It explores the link between political organizations and political elites, by studying the role of parties in parliamentary and political selection and its impact on the political leadership appointed. Putting an emphasis on primary elections, it analyses the party elites that emerge from those selection processes and those democratized organizational settings. It focuses not only on the analysis of the processes through which party elites are selected and the consequences at the level of the party but also at the level of party elites themselves, i.e. what impact party primaries have on the characteristics parties' candidates and leaders. The book offers a theoretical, comparative, and empirical account of the internal electoral processes of parties and their impact on political recruitment. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political elites, political parties and party systems, electoral politics, democracy, populism, and leadership, and more broadly to comparative politics.

In this volume an international cast of contributors analyze and discuss the role of societal actors in European integration from the creation of the present-day European Union in 1958 to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. Based throughout on newly accessible sources the authors discuss a variety of societal actors from political parties to business groups and civil society organizations demonstrating the scope and limits of their role in European polity-building and policy-making before the Maastricht Treaty, with an outlook on the period since then. This is an important text for students and Scholars of European Studies, European Union Politics and contemporary History.

Native scholars offer clearly written coverage of the relationship between political parties and democracy in Africa and Oceania. Political Parties and Democracy: Volume IV: Africa and Oceania is the fourth volume in this five-volume set. It offers clearly written, up-to-date coverage of the political parties of these two regions from the unique perspective of distinguished indigenous scholars who have lived the truths they tell and, thus, write with unique breadth, depth, and scope. Presented in two parts, this volume overviews African parties, then discusses the realities on the ground in Cameroon, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, and South Africa. The book offers an introduction to the political parties of Oceania, followed by chapters on Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, and the Solomon Islands. Throughout, contributors explore the relationship between political parties and democracy (or democratization) in their respective nations, providing necessary historical, socioeconomic, and institutional context, and clarifying the balance of power among parties—and between them and competing agencies of power—today.

Within three years of the inauguration of the Constitution, its greatest champions found themselves irreparably divided over what that Constitution meant and how to shape the Union it had been created to perfect. Within a decade, the division at the heights of national politics had spread into a full-scale party war, the first, the most ferocious, and perhaps the most instructive in all of American history. Never since have clashing ideologies been quite so central to a party struggle and never has such a giant set of democratic statesmen argued so profoundly over concepts that are at the root of the American political tradition. Conceived in Liberty probes the fundamentals of the great dispute among John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and their followers over the sort of country the United States should be. In clear and concise prose, Lance Banning clarifies the foundations of the first great party struggle-and thus of nineteenth-century America.

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 a comprehensive examination of midterm elections from the lens of communications and media coverage. Using a wide variety of methods, this contributed volume covers the differences, similarities, and challenges unique to midterm elections.

It is a well-known fact that Prime ministers are fond of talking, in fact at times it seems impossible to get them to do anything else. The reason for this constant talking is that Prime Ministers are all too aware of the importance of frequently talking to and communicating with the electorate. Political rhetoric has a central function that goes far beyond the need to rouse people at election time or in times of great crisis but rather persuasive political talk by prime ministers is central to the practice of modern government itself.This book argues that there are institutionalised patterns in the speeches that prime ministers give. Like an old-style jukebox, there are only a certain number of records in the prime ministerial machine. Inevitably, each prime minister will play the same songs in the same order as their predecessor. This repetitive rhetoric has an impact not just on the minds of voters, but also on day-to-day governance in Westminster system democracies.

The Dictionary of Labour Biography has an outstanding reputation as a reference work for the study of nineteenth and twentieth century British history. Volume XIV maintains this standard of original and thorough scholarship. Each entry is written by a specialist drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources. The biographical essays engage with recent historiographical developments in the field of labour history. The scope of the volume emphasises the ethnic and national diversity of the British labour movement and neglected political traditions.

This book addresses the meaning of contemporary social democracy and how the centre-left is navigating through its current identity crisis, through a series of cases of social democratic and labour parties across Europe and the Anglosphere. The book examines the ideological, policy, electoral and organisational dilemmas facing the centre-left. Taking in cases including those from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, it outlines and explores the current and future trajectories of the family of centre-left parties. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and interested readers of labour and social democratic politics, centre-left political parties, trade unions, the future of the centre-left, and more broadly to those studying political parties, European and comparative politics.

This book addresses the meaning of contemporary social democracy and how the centre-left is navigating through its current identity crisis, through a series of cases of social democratic and labour parties across Europe and the Anglosphere. The book examines the ideological, policy, electoral and organisational dilemmas facing the centre-left. Taking in cases including those from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, it outlines and explores the current and future trajectories of the family of centre-left parties. This text will be of key interest to students, scholars and interested readers of labour and social democratic politics, centre-left political parties, trade unions, the future of the centre-left, and more broadly to those studying political parties, European and comparative politics.

This volume attempts to examine the many possible causes of Brexit. The conceptual 'peg' on which the volume hangs is that, irrespective of one's views on whether Britain's exit from the EU was a good or a bad thing, Brexit can justifiably be seen as yet another example of a British policy fiasco. Put simply, the British political elite was not at its best. The collective concern of this volume is twofold. First, it advances possible explanations of how the Brexit issue arose. Why was Britain's membership of the EU thought to be so problematic for so many members of the British political elite and ultimately for a majority of voters? How did we get to June 2016 and the Brexit Referendum? Secondly, the volume examines how the issue was managed (or mismanaged) following the referendum result up until the Withdrawal Agreement in March 2019. The contributions to this volume explore these questions by looking at Brexit from different analytical angles. Some authors explore the long-term causes of Brexit, by disentangling the fraught relationship between the UK and the EU, which had provided the Brexit train with steam; others explore the highly conflictual domestic political dynamics in the run-up to the referendum and in the negotiations of a Brexit deal. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy.

The 1970's witnessed the institution of political liberalism in Greece, which went hand in hand with significant social and economic advancement. Four decades later, the same country is a latter-day 'sick man of Europe'. What went wrong? And why did the more recent global crisis plunge Greece into abject misery? This study provides compelling and original answers to these questions through putting populism at center stage. By introducing new concepts, focusing on micro-mechanisms, and empirically analyzing a large variety of sources, the author shows how populism became predominant in Greek politics and contaminated all major political parties, eventually causing a major polity crisis. Besides its particular interest in the specific case of Greece, the text offers new insights about how states may fail, how populism develops at single-nation level, and what could happen when it reigns supreme. It also makes a strong statement about the corrosive power of populism on modern liberal democracy

In the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Christian Right expected major victories in the 1998 elections. Instead, many of its allies lost close contests, and the movement was seen as a liability in some high-profile campaigns. In the only in-depth study of the Christian Right's role in these races, leading scholars analyze the role of the movement in fourteen key states, from Maine to California, and address speculations that the movement is fading from the American political scene.

The book focuses on elections on the state and local levels, where the Christian Right is most influential, and it describes the movement's niche in some detail. Although each campaign described in the book had its unique characteristics, the editors have drawn some broad conclusions about the 1998 elections. While the movement was weak in the areas of candidate recruitment and fundraising, they say, the outcome may have also been related to external factors including a broader turnout of typically Democratic constituencies and the country's boredom with the scandal that conservatives had made the centerpiece of their campaign. Despite the setbacks of 1998, the contributors argue, the Christian Right continues to have an enormous influence on the political dialogue of the country.

Written from an unbiased, nonpartisan perspective, this volume sheds light on a topic that is too frequently mired in controversy.

This book offers a fascinating, thought-provoking and ground-breaking study of post-communist political life. It is published just as the countries of Central and Eastern Europe mark thirty years since gaining freedom and have embarked on the path of democracy. This book is one of the first full-length academic works to explore the question of how informal structures, headed by bosses, godfathers and oligarchs, affect formal party politics and democracy. The unique post-communist transition is observed as a specific historical moment of disorder, offering a window of opportunity for the large-scale exploitation of public resources in the sense of a kind of "Klondike Gold Rush." Phenomena of corruption, clientelism, patronage, party capture and state capture are topical themes that are deeply explored. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Central and Eastern European politics, democratisation, transitional societies, clientelism, party systems and more broadly of comparative and European politics.

Delving into Turkey's political playing field, this book examines how an ethnic party increased its vote shares. The case study looks at the rise of the Kurdish party in Turkey's 2011 national elections in relation to the mainstream political parties' strategies. The research explores the strategy of the dominant Justice and Development Party that garnered the majority in three consecutive elections, introduced a new political issue, and even initiated an opening process. Investigating the reasons behind why such a dominant party would put itself at risk with this bold strategy and why it still lost votes to the ethnic party in the process, the book traces Turkey's handling of the Kurdish issue. Combining a detailed analysis of election results, speeches, and social survey findings, the volume offers a novel approach and a rare example of the application of process-tracing methodology. Additionally, the study is one of the first to utilize unsupervised model of scaling texts on the ethnic issue dimension. As the first systematic analysis of the Kurdish opening process, the book will be of interest to students and scholars researching in qualitative methodology, text analysis, ethnic and party politics, Turkey, and the Middle East.

Much is written about China and the role of the Chinese Communist Party, but without exploring in detail the nature of the party and how it operates. This book provides an in-depth assessment of the current state of the Chinese Communist Party. It outlines the huge size of the party - 88 million members with 4.3 million organizations at the grassroots level. It sets out how the party has developed over time, how the party is organized and how its ideology is formed and transmitted. It discusses how the party acts in the different areas of China's economy, society and government, at local, regional and national levels. It explores the party's role in the formation of policy, including foreign policy, and assesses the impact of different factions and of the current anti-corruption campaign. Overall, the book demonstrates how embedded the Communist Party is in all aspects of Chinese economy, society and politics, and how its position continues to be consolidated.

Coalition governments are the norm in most of the world's parliamentary democracies. Because these governments are comprised of multiple political parties, they are subject to tensions that are largely absent under single-party government. The pressures of electoral competition and the necessity of delegating substantial authority to ministers affiliated with specific parties threaten the compromise agreements that are at the heart of coalition governance. The central argument of this book is that strong legislative institutions play a critical role in allowing parties to deal with these tensions and to enforce coalition bargains. Based on an analysis of roughly 1,300 government bills across five democracies (Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands), the book paints a detailed picture of the treatment of government legislation in contemporary parliaments. Two central contributions emerge. First, the book forces a reconsideration of the common perception that legislatures are largely irrelevant institutions in European democracies. The data presented here make a compelling case that parliaments that feature strong committee systems play an influential role in shaping policy. Second, the book contributes to the field of coalition governance. While scholars have developed detailed accounts of the birth and death of coalitions, much less is known about the manner in which coalitions govern between these bookend events. Parliaments and Coalitions contributes to a richer understanding of how multiparty governments make policy. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr

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

This edited volume affords conceptual and analytical convergence in the study of political incivility by bringing together theoretical and empirical work of scholars from various (sub)disciplines studying political incivility within European countries and the USA. It addresses the needs and challenges of comparative research, adding to a more generic theory on political incivility. Recent years have witnessed growing attention to issues of political incivility in the parliamentary, electoral and media arenas, with rudeness, hostility and vulgarity being highly prevalent in interactions between politicians, journalists and citizens. This book analyses what constitutes this political incivility, its occurrence, causes and effects in these various arenas, using several country-specific contexts, and presenting a cohesive edifice of knowledge on political incivility. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of parliamentary studies, political behaviour, political communication and political psychology, as well as more broadly to political science, communication science, media studies, psychology, sociology and to (non-) governmental institutions and those that are concerned about the quality of democracy or public debate.

When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet, despite the egalitarian dream at the heart of its founding, the Republican Party quickly became mired in a fundamental identity crisis. Would it be the party of democratic ideals? Or would it be the party of moneyed interests? In the century and a half since, Republicans have vacillated between these two poles, with dire economic, political, and moral repercussions for the entire nation. In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the present, revealing the insidious cycle of boom and bust that has characterized the Party since its inception. While in office, progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln's vision of economic freedom and expanded the government, attacking the concentration of wealth and nurturing upward mobility. But they and others like them have been continually thwarted by powerful business interests in the Party. Their opponents appealed to Americans' latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. The results of the Party's wholesale embrace of big business are all too familiar: financial collapses like the Panic of 1893, the Great Depression in 1929, and the Great Recession in 2008. With each passing decade, with each missed opportunity and political misstep, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles. Now with a new epilogue that reflects on the Trump era and what comes after it, To Make Men Free is a sweeping history of the Party that was once considered America's greatest political hope, but now lies in disarray.

This book provides a novel account of the Labour Party’s years in opposition and power since 1979, examining how New Labour fought to reinvent post-war social democracy, reshaping its core political ideas. It charts Labour’s sporadic recovery from political disaster in the 1980s, successfully making the arduous journey from opposition to power with the rise (and ultimately fall) of the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Forty years on from the 1979 debacle, Labour has found itself on the edge of oblivion once again. Defeated in 2010, it entered a further cycle of degeneration and decline. Like social democratic parties across Europe, Labour failed to identify a fresh ideological rationale in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews and unpublished papers, the book focuses on decisive points of transformational change in the party’s development raising a perennial concern of present-day debate – namely whether Labour is a party capable of transforming the ideological weather, shaping a new paradigm in British politics, or whether it is a party that should be content to govern within parameters established by its Conservative opponents. This text will be of interest to the general reader as well as scholars and students of British politics, British political party history, and the history of the British Labour Party since 1918.

This book provides a novel account of the Labour Party's years in opposition and power since 1979, examining how New Labour fought to reinvent post-war social democracy, reshaping its core political ideas. It charts Labour's sporadic recovery from political disaster in the 1980s, successfully making the arduous journey from opposition to power with the rise (and ultimately fall) of the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Forty years on from the 1979 debacle, Labour has found itself on the edge of oblivion once again. Defeated in 2010, it entered a further cycle of degeneration and decline. Like social democratic parties across Europe, Labour failed to identify a fresh ideological rationale in the aftermath of the great financial crisis. Drawing on a wealth of sources including interviews and unpublished papers, the book focuses on decisive points of transformational change in the party's development raising a perennial concern of present-day debate - namely whether Labour is a party capable of transforming the ideological weather, shaping a new paradigm in British politics, or whether it is a party that should be content to govern within parameters established by its Conservative opponents. This text will be of interest to the general reader as well as scholars and students of British politics, British political party history, and the history of the British Labour Party since 1918.

A National Bestseller! Canada's Only Full-Time Political Campaign Manager - 50 Campaigns in 45 Years with 30 Victories John Laschinger opens the doors to the backrooms and war rooms of the political campaigns he has run, providing lessons for aspiring campaign managers, and exposing what really happens behind the scenes.

The Four Faces of the Republican Party clearly describes how Republican Presidential nominating contests unfold. Its focus on party factions allows readers to understand the process and to predict who the eventual nominee will be. In particular, the authors explore why a conservative party always nominates candidates favored by the party's establishment and why evangelical conservatives always emerge as one of the two final contenders for the nomination. This book is essential reading for anyone - professor, student, journalist, consultant, or candidate - who wishes to understand, report on, or influence a Republican Presidential nomination contest.

While most of the scholarship on populism and populist political communication is focused on Western European countries with a long tradition of populist parties' appearance on the political scene (such as Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, or Sweden), this volume offers an insight into populist political communication in countries less frequently covered in the English-language literature, namely Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, France, Israel, Poland, and Romania. With the main focus on Eastern and Southern Europe, this book contributes to answering key questions regarding the relations between populist actors, media, and citizens. The publication represents an interdisciplinary approach to the populist political communication. The co-existence of different research methods and tools in that book allows us to capture the multi-dimensional nature of populism.