The Logic of Inter-Party Competition and Cooperation

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-26
Author(s):  
Fernando Casal Bértoa ◽  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Competition And Cooperation ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Three Components

The first chapter lays the foundation for a cooperation-focused way of thinking about party politics. It provides reasons why its analysts should go beyond individual parties and consider blocs of parties. It introduces the concept of poles, as distinct from blocs, and builds a party system typology around them. The second part of the chapter elaborates the concept of party system closure, relating it to the wider notion of party system institutionalization, and identifies its three components: alternation, innovation, and access. The chapter ends by considering the most likely causes and most important political consequences of closure.

Party Politics Triumph over Substantive Scrutiny and Principled Policy: Examining Czech MPs’ Voting Behaviour in Regard to EU Affairs

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Martin Kuta
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
The Eu

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances – which are expressed through voting – towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties’ behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system.

The Whole Is More than the Sum of the Parts

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-168
Author(s):  
Fernando Casal Bértoa ◽  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
Regional Trends ◽  
Systemic Level ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
Level Analysis

The seventh chapter establishes a theoretical distinction between the party- and the systemic-level analysis of party politics. We introduce new measures of party institutionalization, describe cross-temporal and cross-regional trends, and establish the degree of covariance between closure and party institutionalization. Even though there are many indications that high closure presupposes continuously existing, well-organized parties, we identify countries in which parties are highly institutionalized but the system is not, and cases where parties are relatively weak, but the system can be considered to be strong. The chapter shows how party institutionalization and closure (party system institutionalization) differ from each other. For the recent period, the former shows a steeply declining trend in Europe, while the latter is decreasing only marginally.

The ‘(party) politics of attention.’ Party competition and decentralist reforms: the Italian case

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Basile
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Italian Case

AbstractThis paper sheds light on the role played by political parties in influencing policy change, by connecting literature on party competition and agenda-setting and focusing on a single-issue domain, namely decentralization in Italy from 1948 to 2013. The article argues that major decentralist reforms usually followed electoral campaigns in which most parties focused attention on the issue. Such shifts in attention are caused by, among other things, the issue entrepreneurship activity undertaken by individual parties that are trying to influence the party system agenda and obtain electoral, office, or policy advantage. Contrary to the expectations of the issue entrepreneurship model, however, the analyses reveal that the entrepreneurship role on decentralization in Italy was not played by those parties that can be classified as ‘political losers’ in the party system; rather, in the case of the policy of decentralization in Italy, issue entrepreneurship activity is mostly explained by strategic considerations other than purely electoral ones.

Founding Coalitions in Southern Europe: Legitimacy and Hegemony

1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Di Palma
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Broad Agreement ◽  
Easy Answer ◽  
Europe Today

ULTIMATELY, POLITICAL PARTIES ARE FOR GOVERNING; BUT who shall govern? In some countries the decision rests by broad agreement on the normal waxing and waning of electoral sympathies. Not so in Southern Europe today. Hopes or fears ofcontinuismo, have combined since the mid-1970s to raise divisive issues about the governing credibility of many parties, as Portugal and Spain inaugurated a party system after decades of no-party politics, Greece reinstated party competition after a briefer military rule, and Italy's parties underwent the most complicated electoral and coalitional test in thirty years of democracy.Otherwise said, the complexity of coalitional preferences does not reflect a generic situation of competitive multi-party politics. It reflects a specific situation of crisis of founding coalitions, and therefore points to a lingering issue of legitimation. Who then, shall govern in Southern Europe, and with what legitimacy? The question admits no easy answer.

Comparing Indonesia's party systems of the 1950s and the post-Suharto era: From centrifugal to centripetal inter-party competition

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 431-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Mietzner
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The 1950S

AbstractThis article compares Indonesia's party systems of the 1950s and the post-Suharto period. It explores the question of why the party system of the 1950s collapsed quickly, while that of the contemporary polity appears stable. Challenging established assumptions that party systems fail if their individual parties are weakly institutionalised, I submit that the fundamental difference between the party politics of the 1950s and today's democratic system is related to the character of inter-party competition in both periods. While inter-party contestation in the 1950s took place at the far ends of the politico-ideological spectrum, the competition between parties in the contemporary democracy exhibits centripetal tendencies, stabilising the political system as a whole.

The Norwegian Electoral System and its Political Consequences

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernt Aardal
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
Party System ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

The electoral system is an integral part of any representative democracy, and the choice of system is an important framework for individual behavior and party competition. An electoral system is a result of compromise between parties with vested interests in the system setup. However, no system satisfies all ideal claims. This article is an introduction to the electoral system used in parliamentary elections in Norway; it emphasizes the political consequences of vital elements such as the balance between provincial and compensatory seats, and the geographical distribution of seats and electoral formulae. In sum, the system introduced in 2003 is more proportional in terms of the parties’ share of seats compared with votes, and the geographical distribution has become more systematic and less skewed, although the ideal of one vote-one value has not been achieved. Both the present and previous electoral systems combine elements reflecting different principles and concerns such as increased proportionality, on the one hand, and the fear of a fragmented party system on the other. The analyses show a complex interplay between different parts of the system. One and the same system may have different effects depending on the balance between the parties and between electoral districts. Thus, in order to study the effect of changes in the electoral system one needs to use simulations based on election outcomes over time.

scholarly journals The Politics of Fission: An Analysis of Faction Breakaways among Italian Parties (1946–2011)

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Ceron
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Theoretic Model ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Game Theoretic Model

This article investigates intra-party politics and explores the determinants of factional breakaways, going beyond the unitary actor assumption. It presents a game-theoretic model that focuses on intra-party competition and bargaining dynamics to analyse the interplay between party leaders and minority factions. It tests several hypotheses based on the formal model using a new dataset that contains information about the strength and policy positions of factions inside Italian parties, from 1946 to 2011, measured through quantitative content analysis of motions presented during party congresses. The results show that office, policy and electoral motives influence factions’ decisions to break away. Other elements – such as intra-party democracy, the electoral system and party system competitiveness – also affect leaders’ attitudes toward compromising and alter the likelihood of a split.

The Modern British Party System

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Political System ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
System P ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Party Funding

This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview and account of the changing nature of party politics in Britain today. It draws on models of comparative politics to conduct a wealth of new empirical analysis to map and explain the ways in which the party system has evolved and the parties adapted to a changing political environment. Themes covered include the nature and extent of party competition, the internal life and organizational development of parties, the varieties of party system found across the UK, and the roles played by parties within the wider political system. The book also addresses the crisis of popular legitimacy confronting the parties, as well as assessing the scope for potential reform. While parties remain central to the functioning of Britain’s democracy, public disaffection with them is as high as it has ever been; reform of the system of representation and party funding is warranted, but there are unlikely to be any panaceas.

The evolution of party funding in Italy: a case of inclusive cartelisation?

Modern Italy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Pizzimenti
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
System Level ◽  
Italian Case ◽  
Party Funding ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Collusive Behaviour

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolution of the Italian public funding regime, in the light of the assumptions of the cartel party thesis. In the mid-1990s, the debate on party and party system change was revitalised by R. Katz and P. Mair (1995), who introduced the concept of the ‘cartel party’ as a means to study the increasing influence of the state on party politics. Among the main analytical dimensions of the cartel party argument, the system-level variables have received little attention with respect to the Italian case. In what follows I try to find out empirical evidence for the hypothesised changes in the relationship between parties and the state and in the patterns of inter-party competition. I will analyse the trends of the law-making process in the domain of party funding (1948–2014), by combining these observations with data on parties’ reliance on state funds and party collusive behaviour.

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