Party Ideologies and Regional Inequality: An Analysis of Party Manifestos in Japan

ABSTRACT

Regional inequality within Japan has been a key political issue in Japanese politics throughout the entire postwar period. In this analysis, we examine how Japanese parties have positioned themselves on the question of regional inequality, focusing on how the party system response has been shaped by ideas and ideologies. The article analyses two 15-year periods separated by a quarter of a century (1960–75 and 2000–15) during which regional inequalities became a particularly salient and pressing issue. We compare institutional and socioeconomic contexts, broader governing ideas, and policy responses to this issue by major parties in their election platforms (manifestos). We find that party ideology and broader paradigms continued to shape party responses to regional inequality during both periods.     

Towards a chequebook democracy? Business,parties and the funding of politics in Italy and the United States

This article seeks to establish to what extent Silvio Berlusconi's entry into electoral politics as leader of Forza Italia signals an ‘Americanization’ of Italian politics. It argues that Italian party democracy is moving in an ‘American’ direction in two ways. First, Italian party organizations are declining, leading to a more candidate-centred type of electoral politics. Second, the decline of parties is enhancing the ability of business to use its financial clout to tailor public policy to its own requirements. However, these trends do not have identical effects in Italy and the United States. This article will also show that this process of ‘Americanization’ interacts with the existing political praxis and institutional framework of Italian politics to produce an outcome which differs from both the traditional Western European model and the American model of party democracy. It will be concluded that this outcome seriously undermines representative democracy in Italy.     

Institutionalizing the democratic party-state: political parties as ‘public utilities’ in Italy and West Germany, 1945–75

This article argues that the rise of parties as ‘public utilities’, that is, semi-state organs crucial in the functioning of democracy, which is currently observed by political scientists, has long historical roots. It looks from an institutionalist perspective to the development of party–state relations in Germany and Italy since the Second World War, paying specific attention to how institutional reform corresponded to changing normative assumptions about the position of political parties in twentieth-century democracy. The first notions on the ‘statist’ dimension of parties were put forward as an answer to the challenges of mass politics in the interwar era. After 1945, politicians and constitutional judges drew upon this tradition in their efforts to stabilize mass democracy. They deliberately constructed ‘party-state democracies’, in which parties influenced the state and the state managed individual parties and the party system. This became visible in the constitutionalization of political parties, as well as in the enactment and normative justification of party (finance) laws in the 1960s and 1970s. The advent of parties as public utilities, even though fiercely criticized today, was therefore embedded in an ideological tradition that sanctioned the ‘party-state’ as crucial for the stability of modern democracy.     

The power of words: the changing role of the Italian head of state during the Second Republic

Many authors use the metaphor of an accordion to describe the enlargement of the constitutional functions of the Italian head of state: because of the weakness of the political parties the president is able to ‘open and play the accordion’ according to his own interpretation of his institutional powers. While useful, this metaphor does not take into account the structural changes that have occurred over the last 30 years, as well as the informal powers that recent presidents have resorted to, which were the most important factors in the metamorphosis of the presidential figure. Structural changes include the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the First Republic and the mediatisation and personalisation of politics and party structure. Informal powers include those of ‘esternazione’ (a term that roughly means ‘to render public personal statements without previous consultation with the cabinet’) and of moral suasion. By analysing the development of these two powers, this article aims to describe the changing role of the head of state during the Second Republic. It also defines a typology of presidential moral suasion, which is proposed as a useful tool to analyse presidential style and strategy in influencing law-making. The analysis of the innovative use of communicative powers by the last two presidents, Ciampi and Napolitano, shows how the transformation of the Italian presidency can probably be considered permanent.     

Politics of place: political representation and the culture of electioneering in the Netherlands,c.1848–1980s

Abstract

This article is a first attempt to explore how a politics of place has manifested itself in Dutch electoral culture since the middle of the nineteenth century. It aims to move beyond a narrow interpretation of a politics of place as an ‘old-fashioned’ feature of electoral politics to be associated with a distinct, long-gone era of political representation. Instead, this article shows how it was continuously negotiated. This gives us a better understanding of the changing nature of political representation in the Netherlands. Compared to Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century, local senses of community and their clash with ideology-based party politics were far less prominent. There was, however, on-going debate about the degree to which Parliament should reflect the various regions of the country, so that local party associations and voters could feel represented and address ‘their’ MP for issues pertaining to their locality. Moreover, after 1918 parties were concerned about the need to maintain political communication on the spot to counter lack of political involvement and feelings of alienation among the electorate. The article ends with a call for further reflection on the nature of clientelism in the Netherlands by exploring direct interaction between voters and their representatives.     

Critical queer regionality and LGBTQ politics in Europe

This article examines what a critical focus on the region can contribute to the study of LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is argued that a regional lens can challenge methodological nationalism in existing studies of European LGBTQ politics. It can also contribute towards a broader examination of the politics of scale in relation to the Europeanisation of LGBTQ politics. The article discusses alternative theoretical approaches to the region and examines the queer affinities of these approaches in turn. The argument proceeds to consider the political effects of these alternative theoretical framings of the region in contemporary LGBTQ politics in Europe. It is suggested that a regional critical lens can foreground sub-national and transnational regional political formations, which otherwise may be overlooked in an uncritical focus on the national scale of LGBTQ politics. A regional perspective can also help unsettle Anglo-American framings of sexual politics.     

Immigrant ‘space’ in Italy: When an emigrant sending becomes an immigrant receiving society

This article examines the social and political responses to the new flow of immigrants to Italy from outside the European Union. First, the Italian experience is compared with the rest of Europe with respect to such questions as the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, and the response to them on the part of political parties, the church, the unions, and the state at local, regional and national levels. Next, broader comparisons are drawn between the Italian case and that of classic ‘societies of immigration’, particularly with regard to the structure of economic opportunity available to the extracomunitari in Italy.     

Parties,promises and politics: exploring manifesto discourse on arts policy in Westminster,Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections 1945–2011

This study addresses a key knowledge-gap by exploring the role of electoral politics in shaping public policy on the arts. Analysis of the prioritisation and use of language in party manifestos in state-wide and regional elections in the UK reveals that over recent decades there has been a sharp increase in the attention parties give to arts policy as they compete for the political centre-ground. It also shows how the framing of arts policy has broadened from an initial concern with social policy objectives to emphasise economic benefits and boosting international standing. However, parties have generally failed to advance comprehensive arts strategies raising accountability issues in relation to future government policy. Against the backdrop of a global trend of state restructuring, the analysis reveals how devolution is leading to the territorialisation of policy – as framing is contingent on ‘regional’ party politics, including nation-building by civic nationalist parties.     

The Decline of the Scottish Conservatives in North‐East Scotland, 1965–79: A Regional Perspective

This article takes a fresh look at the decline of the Conservative Party in post‐war Scotland, a phenomenon that has provoked much debate. The analysis presented here is innovative in that it takes a regional approach, whereas other contributions to this field have tended to ignore the considerable regional diversity of Scottish political behaviour. By examining one particular region of Scotland – the rural north‐east – this article demonstrates that the Conservatives’ decline occurred at the hands of parties – the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalists – that did not brand themselves as left wing or right wing; the latter in particular eschewed conventional political labels. This marks another departure from the established literature, which has tended to discuss the decline in terms of the Conservative Party or the Scottish electorate moving ‘left’ or ‘right’. Furthermore, the article makes it clear that a serious decline befell the party between 1965 and 1979: before the advent of Thatcherism that has widely been held responsible for the Scottish Conservatives’ electoral woes. This analysis is conducted by examining the local press coverage of the region, as well as the national and regional records of the parties concerned. It therefore seeks to make a contribution to the wider study of post‐war British politics, by demonstrating the benefits of local and regional approaches in this period where they have been largely overlooked. This article demonstrates that even in the 1960s and 1970s, when politics seemed so nationally uniform, there is considerable diversity to be appreciated in different parts of the country.     

Another Meditation on the Third Commandment

This article presents several normative and conceptual challenges to the prospects of the creation of a Christian political party in American politics. Given that political parties differ from interest groups insofar as they seek to govern, and as governing includes the exercise of coercive force, constructing a Christian political party that is recognizably and uniquely Christian and capable of successfully wielding political power will be an exceedingly difficult task.     

Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni

The article studies trasformismo (party-switching) in Italian regional councils, examining Lombardy, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, and Puglia from 1970 to 2010. Although lato sensutrasformismo – enrollment in the mixed group and party switches among the electoral lists – also has empirical relevance at regional level, stricto sensutrasformismo – the transition from the majority to the opposition, or vice versa – was quantitatively negligible. In the transition from the first to the second phase of the Italian Republic (after 1994), the regional system was reorganized according to a government model in which there is a clear distinction between the roles of the majority and the opposition, by virtue of the direct election of presidents from 1995 onwards. Thus, the thesis formulated by Giovanni Sabbatucci is confirmed: trasformismo is a pattern of government from the ‘center’ of the political space, which is a very different option from the adversarial model of democracy which has emerged in the regions over the last two decades. As a result, this also seems to confirm the neo-institutionalistic thesis expressed by Robert D. Putnam in his classic Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993), according to which ‘institutions shape politics’ and the behavior of its actors.     

Partisan politics and the public sphere: The civil war north

The Civil War North presents an interesting case study of the relationship between a highly politicized public sphere and partisan electoral politics. Although the two‐party system remained intact throughout the war, the concept and practice of partisanship was challenged by the social experience of Northerners who ‘acted politically’ when they took part in the war effort. The creation of a mass citizen army and the mobilization of women and men on the home front meant that parties lost their function as the crucial mediating channel between citizen and government. The more that politics mattered, the less partisanship seemed to be relevant. The war exposed the latent non‐partisan political energies of Northern society. These conclusions bolster the arguments of those scholars who, questioning whether partisanship was as deep or as widespread as previously supposed, have begun to suggest that the ‘party period paradigm’ does not capture the entirety of the nineteenth‐century political experience.     

Rethinking small political parties: from micro to peripheral

It is frequently suggested that ‘micro parties’ are opportunist organisations out to ‘game the system’. These parties are regularly compared with supposed minor parties. There are two problems with this approach. First, attempts to operationalise ‘micro party’ have been ad hoc. Second, comparisons between ‘micro’ and minor parties are erroneous as a party type is being compared with a classification based on the relevance of parties in the party system. In rethinking small parties, the term ‘micro party’ should be discarded as it lacks utility. Parties referred to as ‘micro parties’ should be re-classified, and the classification of parties in the party system needs refinement. In particular, we should include an additional class of party in these classifications, peripheral parties.     

A Christian democratization of politics? The new influence of Catholicism on Italian politics since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana

A paradox exists in relation to contemporary European Christian democracy. Its ideological influence has increased as Christian democratic parties have declined. This is particularly evident in Italy since the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC). By investigating the ideological development of Italian parties and some key policy reforms that they introduced after the fall of the DC, this article explains this ‘Christian democratization of politics’, a process by which Catholic ideals and symbols acquire a decisive impact on the Italian party system. Three types of Christian democratization are individuated and analyzed: the gradual replacement of liberal values with Catholic political ideas in the positions taken by liberal-oriented parties; the novel synthesis between social Catholicism and social democracy by moderate left-wing coalitions; and the Lega Nord’s use of Catholic values to stress populist positions and identity issues.     

Italian regionalism or ‘Padanian’ nationalism — the political project of the Lega Nord in Italian politics

The resurgence of regionalist political parties has had a considerable, though variable, impact on contemporary European politics in recent decades and there are numerous examples of such parties across Europe. In Italy, there are several regionalist parties, however, it is the emergence in the last 15 years or so, of the Northern League (Lega Nord) (LN) political party, in the North of Italy, which has given a new impetus to debates about the significance of regionalism in Italy as well as across Europe. This paper discusses the different approaches to defining regionalism as well as the common features and driving forces of contemporary political regionalist projects. It then focuses upon the political discourses of the LN in order to discuss the ways in which the party resembles other regionalist projects, while having certain key, distinct and rather unique differences. This is because the LN's political project is not based in an area that has historic claims to nationhood. Instead, the LN has attempted to invent an ethnicity for the North of Italy (or ‘Padania’) in order to justify its political claims for the protection of the economic interests of the region. ‘Padania’ (which is the Latin term which refers to the basin of the River Po), has never ‘existed’ as an administrative or political unit but the LN has attempted to construct (and invent) a geography and a history in order to justify its territorial and political claims.     

Richard Oastler,Toryism, Radicalism and the Limitations of Party,c.1807–46

Richard Oastler (1789–1861), the immensely popular and fiery orator who campaigned for factory reform and for the abolition of the new poor law in the 1830s and 1840s, has been relatively neglected by political historians. Few historians, however, have questioned his toryism. As this article suggests, labelling Oastler an ‘ultra‐tory’ or a ‘church and state tory’ obscures more than it reveals. There were also radical strands in Oastler's ideology. There has been a tendency among Oastler's biographers to treat him as unique. By comparing Oastler with other tories – Sadler, Southey, and the young Disraeli – as well as radicals like Cobbett, this article locates him much more securely among his contemporaries. His range of interests were much broader (and more radical) than the historiographical concentration on factory and poor law reform suggests. While there were periods when Oastler's toryism (or radicalism) was more apparent, one of the most consistent aspects of his political career was a distaste for party politics. Far from being unique or a maverick, Oastler personified the pervasive anti‐party sentiments held by the working classes, which for all the historiographical attention paid to popular radicalism and other non‐party movements still tends to get lost in narratives of the ‘rise of party’.     

Transnational Advocacy Networks and Affirmative Action for Dalits in India

In India, movements and parties representing the lowest ranking dalit caste groups have followed different strategies in their struggle against social, economic and cultural discrimination. In this article, a new dalit movement making use of a ‘transnational advocacy network strategy’ will be compared to a more ‘classical’dalit political party. The main policy target for the new movement is an extension of existing affirmative action policies, while the dalit BSP party focuses more on emancipatory issues. Based on an analysis of the impacts of the BSP and of the new movement at the grassroots level, it is argued that the achievements of the new movement are tempered by the fact that in order to make use of international discourses and political pressure, the movement has had to develop a strategy and policy proposals compatible with existing mainstream neoliberal discourses. This depoliticizes the policies, and hence makes them of less importance strategically. It is argued that this is likely to be a difficulty for transnational advocacy networks in general.     

Change and Continuity in Irish Politics: The General Election of 2007

Bertie Ahern, the incumbent Taoiseach or Prime Minister of Ireland, was elected to a third term in the general election of 24 May 2007. While Ahern's party, Fianna Fáil, was able to retain its governing coalition, the level of support of some of the other parties changed dramatically. Fine Gael, the principal opposition party, saw its number of seats in the parliament, Dáil Éireann, increase by nineteen. Some of the minor parties did less well than expected or compared to previous elections. Only the Greens maintained their six representatives. As a result, they were rewarded with a share in the new government. This election suggests that, while Irish society is changing rapidly, the political system is changing more slowly and subtly. This article examines the election results in terms of the fate of the political parties and focuses on one constituency, Tipperary South, to illustrate trends in Irish electoral politics.     

Parties in Parliament in the 18th Century: The Demolition of Robert Walcott and its Consequences*

The failure of Robert Walcott's attempted ‘Namierisation’ of Queen Anne's house of commons in the 1950s is now an accepted historiographical fact. Scholars working on late Stuart politics inevitably dismiss Walcott's work as misguided and misleading, and instead take as a given the existence of a two‐party structure as delineated by the standard authority on the subject, Geoffrey Holmes. This article returns to the controversy over ‘party’ in the 1960s, which reached a climax in 1967 with the publication of Holmes's magnum opus and J.H. Plumb's Ford Lectures. The purpose is not to revisit the debate, which was decided conclusively at the time, but to explore the context in which Walcott and his critics were writing; more specifically the connection between Walcott's work and the approach to 18th‐century political history pioneered by Sir Lewis Namier. Using private correspondence between the principals, it argues that Walcott did not properly follow Namier's methods, and was identified as a Namierite largely because Namier was unwilling, for personal reasons, to disown him. In the long run, this reluctance proved damaging, accelerating the decline in Namier's reputation in the 1960s and the shift towards different forms of political history.     

当代加拿大华人精英参政模型分析

论文将当代加拿大华人精英的参政情况概括为五种模型：选举型和委任型、全国型和地方型、象征型和实在型、主流政党型和华人政党型及华人选票型和非华人选票型,并运用这五种参政模型对当代加拿大华人精英的参政情况进行归纳与分析。认为华人精英无论采取何种模型参与加拿大政治,只要能成功进入主流社会,对改善华人在加拿大社会的公共政治形象,提高他们的社会政治地位和维护他们的合法权利都十分有益,对华裔新生代未来参与政治的热情也是一个激励。