Reinforcing or Breaking Party Systems? Internet Communication Technologies and Party Competition in Comparative Context

One of the prime incentives for this dissertation was the renewed interest in the role of party agency for the emergence and structuring of party systems that came up in the course of the discussions about the third wave of democracy and the concomitant challenges to the theoretical fundamentals of common party system theory. In addition, scholarly discourse on the third wave brought up again the question as to how the party system as an independent variable impacts on processes of democratic consolidation, national integration and socio-economic development.Trying to examine the role of party agency in this regard and to assess the role of the party system as the independent variable, the dissertation deals with two regional and temporal contexts and a political phenomenon pertinent to these contexts that most often have ranked as unique or paradoxical in scholarly assessments. Academic accounts of post-colonial India are interspersed with references to a deviant case of, or an empirical anomaly to, party system and democratic theory, and the conventional vocabulary used to describe post-apartheid South African political development frequently resorts to such terms as political miracle or societal exceptionalism. A similar confusion and vagueness prevails with regard to the specific configuration of a democratic and competitive party system characterised by the towering and prolonged dominance of one party. The study is an attempt to shed light on these contexts and their party systems by departing from the conventional �paths� of party system theory as well as from the relativist assessments of post-independent India (1947-67) and post-apartheid South Africa (1994-). This is done by means of a diachronic comparison of the two countries� party systems with a distinct focus on the role of party agency in the shaping and maintenance of one-party-dominance and on the role of the two party systems as independent variables. Chapter 1 deals with the conceptual, theoretical and methodological problems, incentives and questions inherent in the kind of cross-national and diachronic comparison attempted in this study. Chapter 2 gives a brief outline of the regional settings at the time democratic party competition was beginning to take shape, outlines the institutional boundaries within which the two party systems were/are located, looks at the main characteristics of the electorate in post-independent India and post-apartheid South Africa and �takes stock� of the two party systems in terms of a broad outline of the dominant party and the relevant opposition parties. The next three chapters present the bulk of the empirical analysis and deal with the emergence, working and functions/effects of one-party-dominance in India and South Africa respectively. Each chapter refers to the basic outline of the analytical framework depicted above and combines theoretical arguments with empirical, as well as historical, givens of the two party systems under examination. Whereas chapter 3 examines how the two party systems were �shaped from above�, i.e. how party agency helped to achieve the dominant position of the INC and ANC respectively, chapter 4 examines the mechanisms of control employed to maintain dominance and the mechanisms of party competition prevailing in the two regional contexts. Both chapters deal with the party agentive factors identified in the analytical framework as responsible for the achievement and maintenance of one-party-dominance in the form of short analytical narratives. The last of these three chapters (chapter 5) sums up and discusses the effects and (redefined) functions of party systems in changing societies and gives an account of how both countries� party systems have fared with regard to these effects and in terms of fulfilling these functions. Chapter 6 takes up the differences and similarities of the two regional contexts as they have emerged out of the preceding three chapters, relates the �lessons� of the Indian experience to the prospects of one-party-dominance in South Africa by means of a comparison and reassesses the two key theses of the study, namely that a) party agency and strategy were among the most decisive factors in the formation and development of the two regional contexts� systems of one-party-dominance and are, in general, crucial for party system formation and development (they are especially relevant in the shaping of one-party-dominance in changing societies); and that b) systems of one-party-dominance have a potentially (but not necessarily) benign effect on processes of democratisation, national integration and democratic development in the crucial period of changing societies� transition to democracy and democratic consolidation.

Formulation of the problem. The urgency of a comprehensive study of the institute of political parties is conditioned by several illustrative circumstances. The past election campaign in the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 was marked by the fact that it was held under the old "rules of the game." It is known that the parliamentary election campaigns of 1998, 2002, 2007, 2012 also used a mixed system of elections, in which 50% of parliamentarians were elected in majority constituencies and 50% of people’s deputies were elected on a proportional basis for party lists. According to the current rules of elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, candidates for the People’s Deputies will be nominated by a political party, which were registered in accordance with the established procedure no later than one year before the elections. Despite the fact that the institute of self-nomination of candidates for the People’s Deputies remains, political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. The purpose of this article is to reveal the history of political party formation in order to gain a better understanding of the essential nature of these important political entities and to identify promising moments in the development of parties in Ukraine. Analysis of recent research and publications. In the world and Ukrainian partology, it should be noted that well-known foreign experts J. Sartori, M. Duverge, A. Leiphart, S. Avineri, G. Almond, E. Wind, S. Lipset, S. Rokkan, S. Neumann in characterization the current state and prospects of the development of parties as political institutions indicate a direct connection and mutual influence between the party and electoral systems. Particular attention of domestic partologists M. Primus, N. Goncharuk, A. Pakharev, I. Kresina, O. Erzhov, V. Lytvyn, G. Malkin, Y. Shvedy focuses on the problem of the influence of the electoral process on the formation of the party system in Ukraine. Recently, in connection with the growing role of parties in the political life of our country, studies of new aspects of their activity have appeared: L. Gonyukova considers political parties as an institute of state policy and governance, O. Sakiri concentrates attention on the principles of constructing the image of a political party, O.Nikogosyan considers the peculiarities of the development of political parties and party systems in the post-communist space, A. Tetyanich explores the constitutional and legal principles of state control over the activities of political parties, etc. The article deals with the history of the formation and development of political parties as socio-political institutions, from the time of antiquity to the emergence of mass parties in the second half of the nineteenth century. The latest trends in the evolution of the institution of political parties as subjects of democratic politics in polyarchy systems are analyzed. It is noted that political parties have become the main political players, the only active actors in the electoral process of Ukraine and have received a strong impetus for their development. Modern political parties emerge as institutions of democratic politics, they "grow" from the bottom, are created by politically active citizens for the protection of their own interests, and therefore represent first and foremost an important segment of civil society, which unites it with public authorities. For a long time, the division of the parties into the left was adopted (the Communists, the Social Democrats were referred to here), the centrists (those who tried to defend the interests of the majority), the right (who stood for an elitist understanding of politics). However, as most political parties shifted to the middle class in the 20th century, only two of them became right-wing: center-right and center-left. At the same time, the ranking scale itself remained the same. At the end of the twentieth century. significant changes occurred in the political sphere of society. Political parties began to lose their traditional class character and appeal not so much to certain social strata as to all groups of the population. American political scientist J. Lapalambara called this type of political party a "grab all party" and then a "voter party". This trend is also confirmed in modern Ukraine (Party of Servants). Parties have stopped offering ways to develop society, politicians are only interested in voter votes, not ideological issues. It is concluded that modern Ukrainian parties need to go a long way in their development to meet all the criteria of a democratic political party. Ukrainian parties must undergo a transformation from political additions of oligarchic holdings to truly mass popular structures based on the principle of modernization, and then there will be a significant increase in real support. A promising direction for further research is to consider the organizational foundations of the functioning of political parties in polyarchies and under hybrid political regimes. Remarks are made about the prospects of party building in contemporary Ukraine.

This article examines the structure and stability of public opinion between the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections. The data consist of a four-wave panel study of 800 residents in Dearborn, Michigan; interviews were conducted in the spring of 1974, 1975, and 1976 and in the fall of 1976 immediately after the presidential election. The paper focuses on the structure of political attitudes, the stability of attitudes, and the impact of attitudes on the presidential votes. A central thesis is that public opinion can be disaggregated into two clusters—the Disintegration Cluster and the Alignment Cluster—one of which disrupts and one of which reinforces partisan voting. On the basis of correlations between the seven factors making up the clusters, we anticipate neither a rapid realignment nor a disintegration of the party system, but instability, with election outcomes affected by attitudinal factors salient to a specific campaign. We find signs of increased crystallization of political attitudes compared to the 1956–1958–1960 national panel. Finally, our voting studies indicate that the Disintegration Cluster had a significant effect on the 1972 election, but that issues in general had little impact in 1976, once controls were introduced for party identification and candidate image.

CONTINUITY RATHER THAN CHANGE WAS CHARACTERISTIC OF THE Turkish party system during its formative years in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Now, however, party competition in Turkey appears to be approaching a new phase of development. While some political analysts have described the emerging trends in the 1970s with reference to a ‘critical realignment’ in mass electoral behaviour, others have characterized the party system as going through a period of ‘flux and transition’. Indeed, the recent course of electoral politics in Turkey displays some significant changes. First, with the termination of the Justice Party's UP) dominant position in party competition, there has been a transition from a predominant party system to one of moderate pluralism in which the likelihood of coalition government has significantly increased. Secondly, the trend toward greater fragmentation in the party system which partially accounted for the JP's loss of dominance in 1973, appears to have been reversed in the 1977 parliamentary election as the two major parties made substantial gains at the expense of the minor parties. Thirdly, these changes have been accompanied by the increase of ideological polarization in the party system and the intensification of ideological cleavages among the party elites.

Party competition in Germany has become more fluid and unclear. In the recent past, the party systems of the federal states have lived up to their reputation as a laboratory for experimentation and innovation in party competition. But how have the state party systems developed and how regionalised have they been over the decades? And what does this mean for the German multi-level party system? This book addresses these questions and analyses the dynamics of the party systems in the German states over more than seven decades in terms of their temporal and spatial dimensions based on a systematic review of political science theory on party systems.

The literature on strategic voting has provided evidence that some electors support large parties at the voting booth to avoid wasting their vote on a preferred but uncompetitive smaller party. In this paper we argue that district conditions also elicit reactions from abstainers and other party voters. We find that, when ballot gains and losses from different types of responses to the constituency conditions are taken into account, large parties still benefit moderately from strategic behaviour, while small parties obtain substantial net ballot losses. This result stems from a model that allows for abstention in the choice set of voters, and uses counterfactual simulation to estimate the incidence of district conditions in the Spanish general elections of 2000 and 2008.

Party Systems

In the modern House of Representatives party competition for seats is not strongly correlated with or predictive of party voting behavior. The most plausible explanation for this weak relationship is that less than 20 per cent of House seats are competitive from one census to the next. In this study the Hasbrouck-Jones Fluidity Index was applied to House elections in the 1890—1900 period, and almost 50 per cent of House seats in this era were found to have been competitive at that time.From the 1892—1900 period the 55th and 56th U.S. Houses were selected for analysis. A varimax factor analysis was run on the party votes in these Congresses, and the resultant factor scores formed a unidimensional measure of the number of times a member voted with a party majority. A multiple regression analysis was run, with these party support scores used as the dependent variable and with party competition and occupational composition of the district used as the independent variables. The results showed that in both houses party competition was strongly correlated with and predictive of party support scores. The same analysis on the 89th House yielded much weaker correlations and showed little predictive ability.

Employing neo-Downsian theory, the article seeks a party system explanation for the difficulties experienced by political actors in seeking to reform the declining German economy. Taking the UK as a comparator, it investigates the linkages between voter preferences, party positions and government programmes in relation to the market economy and welfare. Whilst the main German parties have recently leapfrogged their UK counterparts in the emphasis placed on the market economy, there is still a ‘welfare bias’ that inhibits them from adopting sharply defined market positions. Welfare bias is attributed to voter preferences, and, in particular, to the diffuse distribution of voter preferences across the party system.

Small and marginal parties are seldom the focus of studies in political science and are usually excluded from analyses altogether. However, an increase in the number of these ‘other’ parties can be observed during federal elections, though their chances of gaining seats are almost non-existent. Moreover, small and marginal parties can have an impact on the party system by diffusing topics and posing a potential electoral threat to established parties, with whom they face the challenging task of competing. One way of increasing their chances of getting votes is by gaining issue ownership over a niche topic. In this study, we use a quantitative content analysis and a dictionary approach to investigate 16 small and marginal German parties in order to determine whether they aim to cater to a niche or act as ‘failed’ mainstream (topic) parties. Our analysis reveals that small and marginal parties indeed have incentives to cater to a niche in order to gain electoral advantages, though the same strategy also contributes to their small and marginal existence.

The topic of electoral volatility was not at the center of academic work in Latin America until Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully’s seminal 1995 work Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium). Preceding analyses primarily focused on explaining the breakdown of democratic politics in the region during the 1960s and 1970s. Conventional wisdom that departed from the classic work of Sartori in Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), maintained that stable party systems are crucial for the durability of democracies, focusing his attention on aspects such as party system polarization and fragmentation. Mainwaring and Scully shift the discussion, arguing that previous literature on the region neglected and inadequately conceptualized an equally important property of party systems: their level of their institutionalization. According to Mainwaring and Scully, party system institutionalization (PSI) is formed by four different dimensions. The first is stability in the patterns of party competition. Thus, institutionalized party systems are those in which actors develop expectations, orientations, and behavior based on the premise that practices and organizations will prevail into the foreseeable future. Mainwaring’s 2018 work, Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), argues that this is the only relevant dimension in PSI, while considering that the other three are just underpinnings that facilitate it. So according to this work, an institutionalized party system is the one in which a stable set of parties interacts regularly in stable ways. This stability of interparty competition is traditionally measured with the Pedersen volatility index, a comprehensive measure of the net systematic shift in levels of electoral support for parties across elections. As volatility is negatively correlated with this important dimension of party system institutionalization, conventional wisdom holds that political representation deteriorates when there is persistent high volatility. To this debate, the well-cited 2006 article by Mainwaring and Torcal, “Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization” (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), adds the idea that this lack of stability in the patterns of competition in party systems, measured by electoral volatility, is a typical characteristic of new and developing democracies. According to that study, the most important defining characteristic of party systems in less developed countries is captured by their lack of institutionalization, in other words, the amount of electoral volatility in their party systems. Since the publication of these three contributions, the debate on party system dynamics in the region has focused on cross-national levels of electoral volatility, their relationship with other indicators of party system stability, and their consequences for democratic quality and performance, while also broadening the analysis to Europe.

Owning the issue agenda: Party strategies and vote choices in British elections

What is the impact of small parties on electoral outcomes? This articles aims at contributing to the literature on party systems by proposing a new method to classify political parties. The methodology is applied to Brazil by focusing on the description of the election results of small parties. Cluster analysis is employed to classify political party size based on their percentage of votes in the Brazilian states. The main findings indicate that classifying parties through cluster analysis is more objective than previous classifications. As a result of this method, the article shows that small parties exert little effect on electoral volatility in Brazil as well as small parties benefit less from the disproportionality between votes and seats than the larger ones.

74CIVIL WAR HISTORY Koistinen divides his book into two parts. Part I discusses what he terms the "pre-industrial phase" of warfare. The American Revolution is the focus of this section. For Koistinen, the mobilization for the American Revolution was the most complex in American history because "the process of warfare created the nation" (? i). The Mexican War, and especially the American Civil War, represent the transitional phase between the preindustrial and industrial stages ofwar mobilization. Although the title indicates that the volume begins with the colonial era, the book, in fact, starts with the Revolution. But the main focus is on the Civil War period. Indeed, the author devotes six of his ten chapters to the mobilization efforts, both military and civilian, ofthe Union and the Confederacy. Koistinen's argument is not particularly new or revisionist. Rather, he has synthesized an enormous amount of literature on war mobilization. For example, his coverage of Confederate mobilization echoes the work of Richard Goff, Robert C. Black III, and Douglas Ball. Although he states in his notes that he utilized primary sources extensively, the citations are composed overwhelmingly of secondary literature. Still, those notes are invaluable, for they approximate a bibliographic essay (in the absence of a comprehensive bibliography). Koistinen states that his research interests he in the twentieth century and that he views nineteenth-century warfare and its political economy from a twentiethcentury perspective. That bias is reflected in his treatment of the Civil War years. Indeed, the book's emphasis on the roots oftotal war in the Civil War period allows Koistinen to lay the groundwork for his second volume. Beating Plowshares Into Swords does not conclude with any startling revelations or path-breaking interpretations. Nonetheless, it provides the scholar and student with a comprehensive synthesis of some of the best monographs on war, mobilization, and the evolution of the American political economy. Mary A. DeCredico United States Naval Academy Parties, Politics, and the Sectional Conflict in Tennessee. 1832-1861. By Jonathan M.Atkins. (Knoxville: University ofTennessee Press, 1997. Pp. xviii, 371. $38.00.) The republican synthesis has come at last to Tennessee. Jonathan M. Atkins's aim is to reshape our understanding ofantebellum politics in theVolunteer State by drawing on the insights of modern political historians who have traced the long-lasting influence of the Founding Fathers' ideology. He has succeeded admirably. Atkins rejects the notion, put forth by Richard P. McCormick and others, that the Whig and Democratic parties were essentially vote-getting machines devoid of ideological substance. In Tennessee at least, says Atkins, the parties BOOK REVIEWS75 were highly ideological. They shared a republican worldview that depicted America's cherished liberties as perpetually threatened by corrupt, self-seeking interests. Where the two parties differed was in their response to the continuing crisis of freedom: Whigs believed that economic development and an activist government would safeguard liberty, while Democrats feared that too much of either would destroy it. This basically chronological study thoroughly analyzes the political maneuvering and propagandizing that marked Tennessee's first party system from its birth in the late 1830s to its demise after the i860 election. (Scholars will still want to consult Paul H. Bergeron's Antebellum Politics in Tennessee, however, especially for detailed analysis of election returns.) Atkins challenges the assertion of William J. Cooper, Jr., that at the heart of antebellum Southern politics was the defense of slavery. In Atkins's view, the defense of slavery was but one element ofthe republican agenda. Whig and Democratic politicians got elected not simply by assuring the voters of their fidelity to slavery but by promising that their party's measures would better protect the citizens' freedoms, including the freedom to own slaves. Until 1861 the overwhelming majority of Tennessee voters of both parties rejected Southern-rights extremism and agreed that slavery and liberty would be safe only in an undivided Union. Atkins offers a persuasive explanation for the state's consistently conservative response to the sectional conflicts that drove many other Southern states toward fire-eating radicalism and secession. Likewise , he makes clear how and why the state abruptly changed course with the outbreak of war. Most Tennessee citizens immediately aligned themselves with the...

Party politics in India display numerous paradoxical features, which reveal the blending of Western and modern forms of bureaucratic organization and participatory politics with indigenous practices and institutions. India's leading political party, the Indian National Congress, is one of the oldest in the world, yet it has not succeeded in providing the nucleus for an institutionalized party system which can be fitted easily into any one of the conventional categories of party systems known in the West. There has been a strong Marxist and Communist revolutionary tradition in modern Indian political history. However, unlike other such traditions in most parts of Asia, its dominant parties and movements have neither succeeded in threatening the stability of the Indian state nor been threatened with physical extinction as in Indonesia, but have instead been integrated in the form of reformist political parties within routine politics in the country. The diversities and social fragmentation of Indian society have produced a proliferation of regional and other political parties which often give to each state in the Indian Union a unique party system imperfectly integrated into the “national party system.” Some characteristically Indian features pervade virtually all parties in the country — factionalism, dynastic succession to leadership, and the presence of ideological differences among the parties without ideological cleavage in the party system.