This comprehensive collection addresses the important question of political parties in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Written by historians, political scientists, and sociologists of the region, the book provides a pertinent analytical framework to understand the often complex and turbulent histories of these political parties, their role within the region, and their prospects in the wake of the post-2011 Arab Uprisings. The authors explore a rich and varied range of case studies including Iran, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco. This book examines where political parties and organizations have been crucial to shaping contemporary historical events and political contestation, but also highlights their shortcomings and failures to deliver on the ambitions and hopes they had often evoked amongst their supporters. Furthermore, it looks at how political parties and their activities have intersected with important issues and themes such as gender, human rights, international solidarity, revolution and social transformation, and sectarian identity. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of political science, particularly within the MENA region. It was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

While the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has dominated Turkish politics for a decade and a half, recent years have seen a qualitative change, culminating in the 2017 referendum on the move to a presidential system. This volume focuses on the later years of AKP rule after the first direct presidential election in 2014. It shows how during this period the AKP has changed the political system and societal dynamics, maintained its electoral predominance, and ultimately opened the way for regime change. This collection of key chapters offers indispensable reading for everyone who wants to understand current Turkish politics and the continued hegemony of the AKP in the country's political life. Chapters 2-10 previously published as articles (Vol 19: issue 2 to Vol 22: issue 3) in South European Society and Politics.

Militancy continues to be characteristic of many supporters of the Russian far right, encompassing a belligerent rhetoric, a strong perception of participants as political warriors and often the use of physical violence. How serious a threat does Russian militant right-wing extremism pose to Russia and the World, and how has the level of threat changed over time? This book addresses this question by exploring right-wing extremism in Russia, its historical context and its resurgence over the past thirty years. Outlining the legacies and forms presented by current right-wing extremism, with a particular focus on militant extremism, it employs a historical, descriptive method to analyse the threats and risks posed. Presented within the framework of research on extremism and political violence related to the Russian political thought, the book outlines the key criteria of identifying threats, such as the level of violence, ability to gain supporters and penetration of governing elites. Primarily aimed at researchers and academics in political science, extremism, security studies and the history of Russia and Eastern, Central and South-East Europe, this book will also be of interest to political journalists and practitioners in international security.

European social movements have become increasingly visible in recent years, generating intense public debates. From anti-austerity and pro-democracy movements to right-wing nationalist movements, these movements expose core conflicts around European democracy, identity, politics and society. The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary European Social Movements offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview of the analysis of European social movements, helping to orient scholars and students navigating a rapidly evolving field while developing a new agenda for research in the area. The book is divided into eight sections: Visions of Europe; Contemporary models of democracy; Historical evolution of major European movements; Feminism and sexualities; Movement diffusion within and beyond Europe; Anti-austerity movements; Technopolitical and media movements; and Movements, parties and movement-parties. Key theories and empirical trajectories of core movements, their central issues, debates and impacts are covered, with a focus on how these have influenced and been influenced by their European context. Democracy, and how social movements understand it, renew it, or undermine it, forms a core thread that runs through the book. Written in a clear and direct style, the Handbook provides a key resource for students and scholars hoping to understand the key debates and innovations unfolding in the heart of European social movements and how these affect broader debates on such areas as democracy, human rights, the right to the city, feminism, neoliberalism, nationalism, migration and European values, identity and politics. Extensive references and sources will direct readers to areas of further study.

This book examines VOX, the first major and electorally successful populist radical right-wing party to emerge in Spain since the death of General Franco, and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s. In December 2018, VOX, a new party on the populist radical right, entered the Andalusian regional parliament, and played the role of kingmaker in the ensuing government formation discussions. Since then, under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, VOX has earned political representation in numerous local, regional and national elections. The party attracted more than 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, making VOX the third largest party in the Spanish Congress. In two years, the party has become a key political challenger and an important player in Spanish politics. This book explains the origins of the party, its ideology and relationship with democracy, its appeal with voters, and its similarities with (and differences from) other populist radical right parties in Europe. It draws upon a rich source of domestic as well as cross-national survey data and a systematic analysis of party manifestos which provide a detailed account of the rise of VOX and what its emergence means for Spanish politics. This volume will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political parties, voters and elections, Spanish politics, the populist radical right and populism in general.

This book examines VOX, the first major and electorally successful populist radical right-wing party to emerge in Spain since the death of General Franco, and the restoration of parliamentary democracy in the late 1970s. In December 2018, VOX, a new party on the populist radical right, entered the Andalusian regional parliament, and played the role of kingmaker in the ensuing government formation discussions. Since then, under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, VOX has earned political representation in numerous local, regional and national elections. The party attracted more than 3.6 million votes in the November 2019 general election, making VOX the third largest party in the Spanish Congress. In two years, the party has become a key political challenger and an important player in Spanish politics. This book explains the origins of the party, its ideology and relationship with democracy, its appeal with voters, and its similarities with (and differences from) other populist radical right parties in Europe. It draws upon a rich source of domestic as well as cross-national survey data and a systematic analysis of party manifestos which provide a detailed account of the rise of VOX and what its emergence means for Spanish politics. This volume will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political parties, voters and elections, Spanish politics, the populist radical right and populism in general.

Right-wing populism is a global phenomenon that challenges several pillars of liberal democracy, and it is often described as a dangerous political ideology because it resonates with the fascist idea of power in terms of anti-pluralism and lack of minorities' protection. In Western Europe, many political actors are exploiting the fears and insecurities linked to globalization, economic crisis, and mass migrations to attract voters. However, while right-wing populist discourses are mainstream in certain countries, they are almost completely taboo in others. Why is right-wing populism so successful in Italy, Austria, and France while in Germany it is marginal and socially unacceptable? It is because each country developed a certain collective memory of the fascist past, which stigmatizes that past to different levels. For this reason, right-wing populism can find favorable conditions to thrive in certain countries, while in others it is considered as an illegitimate and dangerous idea of power. Through a comparative study of eight European countries, this book shows that short-term factors linked to levels of corruption, economic situation, and quality of democracy interact with long-term cultural elements and collective memories in determining the social acceptability of right-wing populist discourses.

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.

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 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.

This book focuses on the varied support for the populist radical right in the Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Despite many common characteristics, right-wing populist parties have historically been more successful in the Netherlands and Flanders than in Luxembourg and Wallonia. This book argues that the variation in the success of right-wing populist parties depends to a large extent on the way in which they are perceived and received in a given polity. In the Netherlands and Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have contributed to politicising issues pertaining to immigration and national identity, thereby tilling the field for the populist radical right. In Luxembourg and Wallonia, mainstream parties and the media have resolutely limited the opportunities for right-wing populist challengers to influence the public debate. This volume will be of interest to practitioners as well as students and scholars of party politics, the media, the populist radical right and the Benelux region.

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 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.

This book is a major analysis of the role of political parties in the development and promotion of democracy. Alan Ware offers a discussion of an area of political life which has remained underexamined - the impact of parties on democratic life. Ware's work combines a comparative study of parties with a comprehensive discussion of democratic theory. He examines the role of parties in one-party political systems, focussing on the issue of whether there can be democracy in one-party systems. These party systems are then contrasted with those found in representative democracies. Ware offers a detailed analysis of the development, evolution and structure of political parties in the West, exploring such issues as the nature of voter-choice in two-party and multi-party systems, and who exactly controls the political system - the voter or the parties, the political elite or the grass-roots activists? Finally, Ware looks at the internal operations of political parties and the fate of attempts to democratize them. He draws extensive conclusions about the proper place of parties and party systems in democratic theory. This book will be of interest to academics and students in political science, government, current affairs and international relations. Politicians and party activists.

Enemy Of The People is the first definitive account of Zuma’s catastrophic misrule, offering eyewitness descriptions and cogent analysis of how South Africa was brought to its knees – and how a nation fought back.

When Jacob Zuma took over the leadership of the ANC one muggy Polokwane evening in December 2007, he inherited a country where GDP was growing by more than 6% per annum, a party enjoying the support of two-thirds of the electorate, and a unified tripartite alliance. Today, South Africa is caught in the grip of a patronage network, the economy is floundering and the ANC is staring down the barrel of a defeat at the 2019 general elections. How did we get here?

Zuma first brought to heel his party, Africa’s oldest and most revered liberation movement, subduing and isolating dissidents associated with his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Then saw the emergence of the tenderpreneur and those attempting to capture the state, as well as a network of family, friends and business associates that has become so deeply embedded that it has, in effect, replaced many parts of government. Zuma opened up the state to industrial-scale levels of corruption, causing irreparable damage to state enterprises, institutions of democracy, and the ANC itself.

But it hasn’t all gone Zuma’s way. Former allies have peeled away. A new era of activism has arisen and outspoken civil servants have stepped forward to join a cross-section of civil society and a robust media. As a divided ANC square off for the elective conference in December, where there is everything to gain or to lose, award-winning journalists Adriaan Basson and Pieter du Toit offer a brilliant and up-to-date account of the Zuma era.

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.

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.

This publication focuses on the characterization of the Slovak party system and its analysis from the perspective of cleavages and emerging government groups. The monograph also includes a description of the individual types of emerging government coalitions and their politological analysis on the basis of the RILE index (right-left positioning). The said index is used to specify the programmatic differences of the emerging coalition governments and the impact of the development of the party system in Slovakia on their nature in the period from 1990 to 2012. The work is focused on the development trends of the Slovak party system on the background of programmatic heterogeneity of the individual coalition groups and the overall development of the variable tensions in the party system. The categorization of the government groups is based on the positional and programmatic orientation of the parties, which was published in the framework of the international database CMP (Comparative Manifestos Project). The Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung (WZB) database processes, inter alia, the data relating to the political programs of the parties within the framework of their comprehensive ideological orientation. The Center for Social Research in Berlin thus contains relevant internationally acceptable comparisons of the party systems and their development. The aim of this publication is to characterize the format and type of the party system in Slovakia, its consolidation and the resulting operational problems between the election system and party system. The aim is also to extend the analysis of the Slovak party system to the specification of positional values and programmatic orientation of the parties in Slovakia based on the internationally accepted database and the RILE criteria. The publication also contains the tables with data on the proximity of variable tensions in the party system after each parliamentary elections and the relevant quantification on the RILE scale. The RILE scale will help us assess the programmatic heterogeneity of the government coalitions also in view of the political discourse on this issue. The work will also verify the hypothesis that the programmatic convergence of the parties in the left-right spectrum creates space for the emergence and establishment of extremist and antisystemic parties in the parliamentary establishment.

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.

The volume contains the most systematic documentation available in English of the Nazi programmes of racial and eugenic extermination, including a case study of the occupation of Poland. There is a general account of the Nazi empire and of the development of German occupation policies, and the book also covers German foreign policy 1933-1945. Following the opening up of the archives in Eastern Europe, the past decade has seen the publication of important research on the Nazi extermination of the Jews, and three chapters have been substantially revised in the light of this research.

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.