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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political parties
In the political landscape of the late nineteenth century, the Populist party was recognized even by its critics as being ahead of its time. Its members saw themselves as bearers of a reform message vital to the nation, reflecting agrarian America's anxiety that the country was moving toward a new form of slavery in the face of changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. These issues were for many Americans the "Crisis of the Nineties," and Populists met that crisis with a stand against imperialism, a commitment to human rights, and a deep distrust of big business. While most studies of Populism have focused on regional activities or on its intellectual and social underpinnings, little has been written about the record of this radical party in the national legislature. Now one of our foremost scholars of Populism presents the first comprehensive treatment of the party in Congress, revealing the programs and personalities that shaped and ultimately doomed the movement. Gene Clanton has combed the Congressional Record to document how these visionaries performed on the national stage during that tumultuous decade. He examines the contributions of the fifty Populist legislators elected by sixteen states and one territory from 1891 to 1903-from Senator William Peffer of Kansas to Congressman William Neville of Nebraska-to show how they represented the party line on such issues as the gold standard, taxation, immigration, government railways, and the Spanish-American War. Clanton demonstrates that congressional Populism was a positive and humane force in American politics totally distinct from the reactionary political movement that flourishes today under its name. He also suggests that the issues which Populist congressmen grappled with and the policies they advocated have continued to affect us even into the present. Long awaited by scholars of the Populist movement, Clanton's book is the crowning achievement of a career of research and shows how these forgotten radicals fit into the sweeping panorama of American politics.
Covering key issues ranging from education to political mobilization to racial stratification, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the Obama Presidency. President Barack Obama's election and subsequent reelection represent a critical paradigm shift in American political history. But will there be lasting effects of the election of an African American to the highest office in the land in terms of the United States' economic, educational, political and social realities? A valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, state and federal policymakers, and general readers, this book poses critical questions and offers insightful answers from expert contributors, provides a balanced critique of President Obama's accomplishments and challenges, and considers the national and international impact President Obama's tenure had on politics. The numerous contributors to this book provide a range of perspectives on President Obama's presidency that question conventional thinking, covering key issues that include health care, education, political mobilization, gender, racial stratification, voting patterns, and criminal justice. Readers will come away with a heightened comprehension of the complex relationships between political structures, economic policies, and minority interests; how Congress, traditional and contemporary activists, and domestic and international issues all shaped the Obama Presidency; and how micro and macro issues such as voting rights, voting patterns, and Get Out the Vote (GOTV) initiatives are connected.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has moved from a religion-dominated protest party to a pragmatic party of government in Northern Ireland, the most popular in the region, with more votes, Assembly seats, and MPs than any of its rivals. This book draws upon the first-ever survey of the party's members, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, along with over one hundred interviews, to analyse their views on the transformation undergone by the DUP. The book analyses what categories of individual make up the DUP, ranging from religious fundamentalists or moderates, detailing the religious composition of the party. How Free Presbyterian or Orange is the modern DUP and how is its membership changing? What identity do those members hold? The book then assesses the attitudes of members to the contemporary power-sharing arrangements in a divided society. How comfortable is the DUP to sharing political spoils with the republican 'enemy'? How supportive are members of the Executive and Assembly in Northern Ireland and what progress do they think has been made? The book also dissects the modern fears of DUP members, ranging from the dilution of religious fervour to continuing fears over security and opposition to policing reforms. Attitudes to unity with other Unionist groups are explored, as are the prospects of capturing support from Catholic supporters of Northern Ireland's place in the United Kingdom. Drawing upon unprecedented access to a party traditionally suspicious of outsiders, this book offers a unique insight into how an opposition party grounded in religious principles has accommodated change and broadened its appeal, whilst retaining most of its traditional hardcore membership.
Millions of enfranchised people live in abject poverty in democracies around the world. Yet in representative democracies, the success or failure of political parties rests on their ability to effectively engage voters. In today's highly unequal and individualized societies, the diversity of voters along socioeconomic, religious, and other lines presents an obstacle for parties vying for electoral success. How, then, can widespread, crushing poverty still exist in stable democracies, if every citizen has a vote? Two wildly different parties, Chile's right-wing UDI and Uruguay's left-wing Frente Amplio, have achieved stunning victories in this supposedly inhospitable political landscape. They have done so by simultaneously segmenting and strategically harmonizing their linkages to distinct cross-sections of voters in each society. While that electoral strategy makes for a winning hand for parties in fragmented modern societies, it perpetuates the gross inequalities that characterize the social, political, and economic landscapes of the developing democratic world. This book develops a new analytical and conceptual framework to unveil and explain segmented representation, revealing new implications for democratic societies. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
This book analyzes how AKP's embedded intellectuals operate as media spin doctors, exploring their transformation from passionately engaged intellectuals into apparatchiks. This project adapts a post-Soviet geography approach to the media, intelligentsia, and political discourse as derivative of authoritarian regimes to the Turkish context. It offers a fresh look at the Turkish political and intellectual scene and a comparative study of the populist-authoritarian politics of Turkey. Situated in the literature on the post-Soviet authoritarian regimes and their ways of governing, as well as their manipulation of public opinion, the book analyzes AKP-aligned intellectuals as apparatchiks. Gurpinar explores the different constellations of pro-AKP intellectuals vindicating the AKP regime from various angles, including: liberal/progressive intellectuals who initially supported the party for its liberal vistas but continued their support by twisting their progressive rhetoric; Islamist intellectuals blending their Islamism with populism; and national security intellectuals who joined after the AKP came to propagate a national security agenda. The book also provides an overview of the mechanisms of political technology, including the media landscape and its running by the AKP, intellectuals themselves as operators of political technology, and the problem of "cultural power." The book will be of interest to those studying comparative authoritarian politics, populism, political communication, and scholars of Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Americans have a love-hate relationship with negative campaigning, claiming to despise it and ranting about how it turns off the electorate, while at the same time paying an increasing amount of attention to negative ads and tactics during ever-lengthening campaign seasons. Swint gathers the most compelling of these campaigns from the two "Golden Ages" of negative campaigning--1864 to 1892 and 1988 to the present--in addition to some that fall outside those demarcations, and ranks them in descending order, from No. 25 to No. 1. Mudslingers covers presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and mayoral races and chronicles the dirtiest, most low-down campaign tactics of all time. The list includes the presidential campaign of 1800, when the disputed outcome of the race between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had to be decided by the House of Representatives, and the election of 2004, in which George W. Bush beat John Kerry after one of the nastiest showdowns on record. The first round of negative campaigning in American history was driven by post-Civil War politics, the end of Reconstruction, an increasingly corrupt federal government, and a rabid partisan press. The current Golden Age of mudslinging and dirty politics is driven by huge increases in campaign spending, television advertising, decreased civility in public life, and a muckraking mass media. These fascinating stories from the annals of negative campaigning will entertain as well as educate, reminding us, the next time we are tempted to decry the current climate, that it was (almost) ever thus.
Blood, Sweat, and Toil is the first scholarly history of the British working class in the Second World War. It integrates social, political, and labour history, and reflects the most recent scholarship and debates on social class, gender, and the forging of identities. Geoffrey Field examines the war's impact on workers in the varied contexts of the family, military service, the workplace, local communities, and the nation. Extensively researched, using official documents, diaries and letters, the records of trade unions and numerous other institutions, Blood, Sweat, and Toil traces the rapid growth of trade unionism, joint consultation, and strike actions in the war years. It also analyses the mobilization of women into factories and the uniformed services and the lives of men conscripted into the army, showing how these experiences shaped their aspirations and their social and political attitudes. Previous studies of the Home Front have analysed the lives of civilians, but they have neglected the importance of social class in defining popular experience and its centrality in public attitudes, official policy, and the politics of the war years. Contrary to accounts that view the war as eroding class divisions and creating a new sense of social unity in Britain, Field argues that the 1940s was a crucial decade in which the deeply fragmented working class of the interwar decades was 'remade', achieving new collective status, power, and solidarity. Employing a contingent, non-teleological conception of class identity and indicating the plural and shifting mix of factors that contributed to workers' social consciousness, he criticizes recent revisionist scholarship that has downplayed the significance of class in British society.
The Manifesto data are the only comprehensive set of policy indicators for social, economic and political research. It is thus vital that their quality is established. The purpose of this book is to review methodological issues that have got in the way of straightforwardly using the Manifesto data since our two preceding volumes were published and to resolve them in ways which best serve users and textual analysts in general. The book is thus generally about text-based quantitative analysis with a particular focus on the quality of the CMP-MARPOR data and ways of assessing and using them, In doing so the book goes beyond normal data documentation - essential though that is - to confront the analytic issues faced by users of the data now distributed by MARPOR. It also provides concrete strategies for tackling these at the research level, with examples from the field of political representation. The problems of uncertainty, error, reliability and validity considered here are generic issues for political analysts in any area of research, so the book has an interest extending beyond the Manifesto estimates themselves - in particular to other textual analyses. In addition the book widens the range of applications introduced in our two previous volumes and discusses the extension of the manifesto project database to cover Latin America.
New Parties in Old Party Systems addresses a pertinent yet neglected issue in comparative party research: why are some new parties that enter national parliament able to defend a niche on the national level, while other fail to do so? Unlike most existing studies, which strongly focus on electoral (short-term) success or particular party families, this book examines the conditions for the organizational persistence and electoral sustainability of the 140, organizationally new parties that entered their national parliaments in seventeen democracies from 1968 to 2011. The book presents a new theoretical perspective on party institutionalization, which considers the role of both structural and agential factors driving party evolution. It thereby fills some important lacunae in current cross-national research. First, it theorizes the interplay between structural (pre)conditions for party building and the choices of party founders and leaders, whose interplay shapes parties' institutionalization patterns crucial for their evolution, before and after entering national parliament. Second, this approach is substantiated empirically by advanced statistical methods assessing the role of party origin for new party persistence and sustainability. These analyses are combined with a wide range of in-depth case studies capturing how intra-organizational dynamics shape party success and failure. By accounting for new parties' longer-term performance, the study sheds light on the conditions under which the spectacular rise of new parties in advanced democracies is likely to substantively change old party systems. 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.ecprnet.eu.
This is the first ever major study examining of the views of the Conservative Party towards the key aspects of Anglo-German relations from 1905 to 1914. Drawing on a wide variety of original sources, it examines the Conservative response to the German threat, and argues that the response of the Conservative Party towards Germany showed a marked absence of open hostility towards Germany. Overall, this important new study provides a powerful and overdue corrective to the traditional depiction of the Conservative Party in opposition as 'Scaremongers' and the chief source of Germanophobic views among the British political parties.
This book examines the rapidly evolving relationship between the British Labour Party and the emerging Irish nationalist forces, from which was formed the first government of the Irish Free State as both metamorphosed from opposition towards becoming the governments of their respective states.
This book traces the economic ideology of the UK Labour Party from its origins to the current day. Through its analysis, the book emphasises key crises, including the 1926 General Strike, the 1931 Great Depression, the 1979 Winter of Discontent and the 2007/2008 economic crisis. In analysing this history, the ideology of the Labour Party is examined through four core themes: * the party's definition of socialism; * the role of the state in economic decision making; * the party's understanding of inequalities; and * its relationship with the trade union movement. The result is a systematic exploration of the drivers and key ideas behind the Labour Party's economic ideology. In demonstrating how crises have affected the party's economic policy, the book presents a historical analysis of the party's evolution since its formation and offers insights into how future changes may occur.
The demise of the French Communist Party (PCF) has been a recurrent
feature of overviews of the Left in France for the past two
decades, and yet the Communists survive. This study examines the
factors that undermined the position of the PCF as the premier
party of France, but also highlights the challenges that the party
faces in a society disillusioned with politics, and the new
strategies that it is developing in order to revive its
fortunes.
Across the West, the explosion of social movement activity since the late 1960s has constituted a "participatory revolution" that has posed profound challenges for formal political parties. Through an analysis of new interviews, institutional documents, and a host of other largely unexploited sources, Daniela R. Piccio provides a rich and empirically grounded exploration of the wide-ranging responses to these movements. Focusing on Italy and the Netherlands since the 1970s, Party Responses to Social Movements demonstrates how political parties have incorporated the demands of movements to a surprising extent, even as both have grappled with fundamental and inevitable tensions between their respective roles and aims.
The Senate of the mid twentieth century, which was venerated by
journalists, historians, and senators alike, is today but a distant
memory. Electioneering on the Senate floor, playing games with the
legislative process, and questioning your fellow senators' motives
have become commonplace.
The left is dead. Its ailments cannot be cured. The only way to resurrect what was once valuable in leftist politics is to declare the left dead and begin from the beginning again. Winlow and Hall identify the root causes of its maladies, describe how new cultural obsessions displaced core unifying principles and explore the yawning chasm that now separates the left from the working class. Drawing upon a wealth of historical evidence to structure their story of entryism, corruption, fragmentation and decline, they close the book by outlining how a new reincarnation of the left can win in the 21st century.
Coalitions are the commonest kind of democratic government, occurring frequently in most countries of Western Europe. It is usually assumed that political parties came together in a government coalition because they agree already, or can manage to reach an agreement, on the policy it should pursue. This book checks this idea out, in 12 countries of Western Europe plus Israel, using evidence from party election programmes and government programmes. It demonstrates that party policies do influence government programmes, but not to the extent they would if policy-agreement were the sole basis of coalition.
As Jacob Zuma moves into the twilight years of his presidencies of both the African National Congress (ANC) and of South Africa, this book takes stock of the Zuma-led administration and its impact on the ANC. Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma combines hard-hitting arguments with astute analysis. Susan Booysen shows how the ANC has become centred on the personage of Zuma, and that its defence of his extremely flawed leadership undermines the party’s capacity to govern competently, and to protect its long term future. Following on from her first book, The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Power (2011), Booysen delves deeper into the four faces of power that characterise the ANC. Her principal argument is that the state is failing as the president’s interests increasingly supersede those of party and state. Organisationally, the ANC has become a hegemon riven by factions, as the internal blocs battle for core positions of power and control. Meanwhile, the Zuma-controlled ANC has witnessed the implosion of the tripartite alliance and decimation of its youth, women’s and veterans’ leagues. Electorally, the leading party has been ceding ground to increasingly assertive opposition parties. And on the policy front, it is faltering through poor implementation and a regurgitation of old ideas. As Zuma’s replacements start competing and succession politics takes shape, Booysen considers whether the ANC will recover from the damage wrought under Zuma’s reign and attain its former glory. Ultimately, she believes that while the damage is irrevocable, the electorate may still reward the ANC for transcending the Zuma years. This is a must-have reference book on the development of the modern ANC. With rigour and incisiveness, Booysen offers scholars and researchers a coherent framework for considering future patterns in the ANC and its hold on political power.
This is the most up-to-date and comprehensive anaysis of the organization of the major political parties of France, Spain, Italy, and Greece. Conceived and framed with a common theoretical approach, four national teams of researchers followed a structural approach to the study of party organization, and they have underlined the various characteristics of the parties. The party analyses are not limited, however, to the usual measures of party organization-number of members, local branches, elected officials-or to their formal rules. Rather, the chapters highlight the power relationships among the various actors, leaders, and factions. This major work will be invaluable to all researchers and scholars dealing with contemporary European politics and party systems.
The Routledge Handbook of Far‐Right Extremism in Europe is a timely and important study of the far and extreme right-wing phenomenon across a broad spectrum of European countries, and in relation to a selected list of core areas and topics such as anti‐gender, identitarian politics, hooliganism, and ideology. The handbook deals with the rise and the developments of the far‐right movements, parties, and organisations across diverse countries in Europe. Crucially it discusses the main topics and features issues pertaining to the far‐right ideology and positioning, and considers how central and less central actors of the far‐right milieus have fared within the given context. Comprising a wide range of subject expertise, the contributors focus on far-right organisations on the margins of the electoral sphere, as well as street‐level movements, and the relationship between them and electoral politics. The handbook spans nearly twenty European country‐cases, grouped according to geographical/regional area. It includes case studies where the far right has gained increased momentum, as well as countries where it has been much less successful in mobilising public opinion and electorate. Another important feature is the inclusion of street‐level mobilisations, such as football firms, thereby expanding and updating existing research, which is primarily focused on political parties and organisations. Multidisciplinary and comprehensive, this handbook will be of great interest to scholars and students of Criminology, Political Science, Extremism Studies, European Studies, Media and Communication, and Sociology.
What I saw during the time I was employed at the Pass Office – I mean the ill- treatment of Africans – affected my heart and stirred my soul ... I would be of some service to my down-trodden people. Richard Victor Selope Thema was voorsitter van die komitee wat ’n nuwe grondwet vir die South African Native National Congress opgestel het, die eerste redakteur van The Bantu World (nou The Sowetan) en lid van die Native Representative Council (NRC). Thema was in 1919 ook een van die eerste swart mans wat Engeland besoek het om voorspraak te maak vir swart Suid-Afrikaners. Die boek, in Thema se eie woorde, beskryf sy vroe lewe en volg sy denke en skryfwerk van radikaal na pasifis – Thema het geglo dat amper enigiets met onderhandeling en gesprek opgelos kan word en nie almal in die ANC het met hom saamgestem nie. Hy is ’n intellektuele voorvader van beide die ANC-jeugliga en die Pan-Afrikane van die 1950’s, en een van die vergete leiers van die ANC.
Despite any evidence against it, political parties still represent the most important collective actor in a democratic political system. Their role in representing pluralism and their electoral centrality is not undermined, even when it is strongly questioned. As long as political parties can be understood as representative actors articulating political demands, this book focuses on the capacity of Italian political parties to mobilize resources and financial resources in particular. Through the analysis of private financial donations to political parties, a neglected source of information that will be fundamental in the near future, the author assesses their connective capability with specific interests' representatives in the last decades in order to provide evidence of their changing representational role as collective actors.
Political Parties in Palestine is an up-to-date elucidation of
the Palestinian political landscape. The book offers vital
background information on movements such as Hamas and Fatah, as
well as smaller political factions that have defined the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades but, due to lack of
available information, have not been subject to academic
scrutiny.The book provides a comprehensive discussion of the
ideological outlook, historical development, and political
objectives of all major political actors in the Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC). A well-informed but accessible overview,
it combines analytical introductions with engaging profiles of
party founders, interviews with current party leaders,
organizational charts, and excerpts from party programs previously
unavailable in English.
Richard Nixon's election to the presidency in 1968 was an improbable vindication for a man branded as a loser after unsuccessful presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Yet during the 1966 mid-term elections, he emerged as the critical figure who united the fractured Republican Party after the disastrous 1964 presidential election. Along the way, he sensed how large swaths of the American public were moving against the Democrats, and how a candidate could take advantage of this. Filling an important gap in the Nixon literature, this book explores his dynamic reinvention during the dark days of the mid-sixties-a period that mirrored his 1946-1952 rise from obscure congressman to Eisenhower's vice-president. Beginning with his 1962 press conference after losing the California governor's election and ending with his 1968 presidential victory, a far more human Nixon is revealed, unlike the familiar caricature of the shady politician and orchestrator of Watergate who would do anything to win. |
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