Teaching and learning in Brussels: Sinn Féin’s strategic ‘venue shopping’ approach in the European Parliament

Sinn Féin was once staunchly Eurosceptic and has periodically campaigned against the ratification of European Union treaties in Ireland. Since the early 2000s, however, they have rejected the Eurosceptic label and self-described as ‘critically engaged’ with the European Union. This article explores how Sinn Féin have used their membership of the European Parliament and the European United Left/Nordic Green Left parliamentary group since their first Members of the European Parliament were elected in 2004, with a particular focus on the acrimonious post–Brexit referendum period. The article argues that the European Union forum is seen in terms of its utility by Sinn Féin, as a venue to teach and learn from their colleagues on their particular understanding of Irish history, nationalism and party strategy. It concludes by arguing that, in a process beginning before Brexit, the opportunities the European Union platform affords Sinn Féin have led to the adaptation of a particularly novel engagement strategy with European institutions.

No Strong Leaders Needed? AfD Party Organisation Between Collective Leadership, Internal Democracy, and “Movement-Party” Strategy

This article analyses the formal and lived organisation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, Alternative for Germany). We show that the party is exceptional among what is usually understood as the populist radical right (PRR) party family, at least from an organisational perspective: The AfD sharply contradicts the “standard model” of PRR party organisation, which emphasises “charismatic” leadership and the centralisation of power as key features. Instead, studying the AfD’s efforts to adopt some elements of a mass-party organisation and its relatively decentralised decision-making underlines the importance of “movement-party” strategy, collective leadership, and internal democracy—concepts that are usually associated with Green and left-wing parties. Our analysis shows how the party’s organisation is essential for understanding its development more broadly as it reflects and reinforces sharp intra-party conflict. From this perspective, the case of the AfD sheds new light on the relationship between PRR party organisation and electoral success, indicating the importance of strong ties to parts of society over effective internal management as long as demand for anti-immigration parties is high. We conclude that even though AfD quickly built up a relatively inclusive organisational structure, the role of both its leadership and its rank-and-file is still a matter of controversy.

Euroscepticism as a radical left party strategy for success

The European Union has gained salience as an issue in political debate. Recent literature shows that successful radical right-wing parties are frequently in opposition to European integration. This article looks at how radical left-wing parties’ positions on EU integration affect their electoral support. It argues that radical left parties can mobilize voters in their favour through positioning in opposition to EU integration because this allows voters to combine their left-wing economic and anti-EU preferences. Using expert and individual-level survey data, this research demonstrates that radical left-wing parties that position themselves against EU integration are more likely to gain individuals’ vote choice. This finding is surprising, given that traditionally radical left-wing parties are defined through their economic, rather than their non-economic, positions. This article demonstrates that variation in positioning around non-economic issues such as EU integration can explain differences in voter support across radical left-wing parties.

Avoidance, ambiguity, alternation: Position blurring strategies in multidimensional party competition

In a multidimensional environment, parties may have compelling incentives to obscure their preferences on select issues. This study contributes to a growing literature on position blurring by demonstrating how party leaders purposively create uncertainty about where their party stands on the issue of European integration. By doing so, it theoretically and empirically disentangles the cause of position blurring—parties’ strategic behavior—from its intended political outcome. The analysis of survey and manifesto data across 14 Western European countries (1999–2019) confirms that three distinct strategies—avoidance, ambiguity, and alternation—all increase expert uncertainty about a party's position. This finding is then unpacked by examining for whom avoidance is particularly effective. This study has important implications for our understanding of party strategy, democratic representation, and political accountability.

Party Personnel Strategies

The chapter introduces the notion of “party personnel strategies.” The concept refers to the process by which political parties allocate their elected members to legislative committees. The theory is grounded in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. The legislators are the pool of “personnel” from which the party draws when staffing specialized standing committees of the legislature. Party strategy is conditioned by both policy goals and the imperatives of the electoral system under which seats are won. Parties engage in a “personnel practice,” which is their observed pattern of assigning members with certain individual background characteristics to given committees. The chapter establishes the cases on which the book’s arguments are tested: Britain, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and Portugal. The chapter lists the elections and the thirteen major political parties covered for each country.

Issue yield and party strategy in multi-party competition

The issue yield model introduced a theory of the herestethic use of policy issues as strategic resources in multidimensional party competition. We extend the model by systematically addressing the specificities of issue yield dynamics in multiparty systems, with special regard to parties’ issue yield rankings (relative position) and issue yield heterogeneity (differentiation) on each issue. Second, we introduce a novel research design for original data collection that allows for a more systematic testing of the model, by featuring (a) a large number of policy issues, (b) the use of Twitter content for coding parties’ issue emphasis, and (c) an appropriate time sequence for measuring issue yield configurations and issue emphasis. We finally present findings from a pilot implementation of such design, performed on the occasion of the 2014 European Parliament election in Italy. Findings confirm the soundness of the design and provide support for the newly introduced hypotheses about multiparty competition.

The Political Exploitation of Covid-19: The AfD as Challenger Party and the Impact on Parliament

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an issue ready for political exploitation, and it has con­tributed to political polarization in western democracies . In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) adapted its policy positions and performative style and took advantage of the changing circumstances in the pandemic . The pandemic situation thus provided a political opportunity for the AfD to grow its own political repertoire, acting as a challenger party . An overview of evolving party strategy and a content analysis of select legislative debates held in the Bundestag between the outbreak of the pandemic in February 2020 and August 2021 shows that the AfD behaved as an “issue entrepreneur” in the months after the onset of the public health crisis and that it used its populist critique of the government­managed response to the public health crisis to inform a parliamentary strategy of disrup­tion . The party’s behavior led to more adversarial and polarized parliamentary politics . This is relevant to the broader study of pressures imparted by the pandemic crisis on parliamen­tary governance as well as of today’s populist far-right parties and their impact on parlia­mentary democracy .

Measuring competitive intelligence Network and its role on Business Performance

Changes and uncertainties have compelled a dramatic change in organizational fundamentals over the last two decades. Owing to internal and external pressures, businesses have been forced to closely track their environments in order to build awareness of opportunities and obstacles in order to stay competitive. The aim of this study is to look into the role of competitive intelligence in small and medium businesses in Iraq's Kurdistan region making business performance. However, the researchers measured the direct impact on business performance at small and medium businesses using five competitive intelligence dimensions (extensiveness' network, third-party strategy, Homophily, Issue awareness, and promotion effort). Furthermore, the researchers used competitive intelligence as a mediator to quantify its impact on business performance, allowing the analysis to explore the indirect role of competitive intelligence. To investigate the role of competitive intelligence in making business performance at small and medium businesses in Iraq's Kurdistan region, the researchers used hierarchal multiple regression and the Sobel test. However, the researchers measured the direct impact on business performance at small and medium businesses using five competitive intelligence dimensions (extensiveness network, third-party strategy, homophily, issue awareness, and promotion effort). Furthermore, the researchers used competitive intelligence as a mediator to quantify its impact on business performance, allowing the analysis to explore the indirect role of competitive intelligence. Competitive intelligence dimensions (extensiveness network, third-party strategy, homophily, issue awareness, and promotion effort) were used to assess the direct and indirect effect of competitive intelligence on business performance at small and medium businesses.

High rejection, low selection: How ‘punitive parties’ shape ethnic minority representation

Evidence suggests that as public opinion towards immigration becomes more negative, so the descriptive representation of ethnic minority groups is increasingly restricted. Recently, some initial research into the causal mechanism hinted that this effect is driven by patterns of candidacy. This suggests that political parties are creating an ‘ethnic penalty’ of their own in the selection stage. This paper investigates the relationship between patterns of candidacy, party strategy, and public opinion in Great Britain from 1997 to 2019, and proposes that ‘punitive parties’ are strongly responsible for shaping the representational outcomes of minority groups. I find support for earlier suggestions that parties are increasingly likely to place ethnic minority candidates away from ‘winnable’ contests as anti-immigrant hostility rises. These findings are important for our conceptions of ethnic penalties, of party behaviour in selection processes, and for the study and cause of improving political representation.