Multi‐member electorates and the development of Australian party politics

Australian political scientists have paid little attention to voting in multi‐member electorates apart from the working of Proportional Representation in Tasmania and the Senate. Yet the existence of such electorates and the methods of voting therein probably helped Labor parties gain their first representation in the colonial parliaments.

The strength of their organisations meant that those parties often fared well in the state‐wide electorates for the Senate after federation. From 1902 the prohibition of plumping in Senate elections fostered ticket voting. It not only introduced the first coercive element into the electoral system, but, by establishing a ‘winner‐take‐all’ method of voting, encouraged a two‐party system at federal level.     

The communist party of Australia and the eighty‐one parties conference

In November 1960 a conference of eighty‐one communist parties convened in Moscow to try to resolve serious differences which had arisen between the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Communist Party of China (CPC or CCP). It was ‘probably the most important gathering of its kind in the entire history of Communism’ (Zagoria 1962:343).

Several years later the position adopted at that conference by the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) became the subject of an acrimonious and inconclusive controversy between pro‐Soviet and pro‐Chinese elements in the Australian party.

Of various scholars who commented on the CPA's stance, almost all ([Rigby] 1964:37; Mayo‐Wren 1981:87; Turner 1961:7; Turner 1965:154) claimed categorically that the CPA's delegates, Sharkey and Dixon, backed China. However in one exhaustive account of the conference (Griffith 1962) the CPA did not appear among the CPC's partisans. Most observers outside Australia relied heavily on Kremlinologist Edward Crankshaw. Crankshaw originally omitted the CPA from his list of pro‐Chinese parties (1962:10) but later revised his account (1963:61; 1965:120, 134).¹

In the standard historical work on the CPA Davidson (1969:160,152) qualified the notion that the CPA had supported China. ‘After a careful study of various views’ he concluded:

At the conference of eighty‐one communist parties in Moscow in 1960 the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) supported the Chinese interpretation of Marxist‐Leninist doctrine in preference to that of the Soviet party. Previous emphasis on the CPA's commitment to international communist unity has tended to obscure and even deny this.     

Becoming the ‘party of civil rights’: the Radical Party, 1962–1979

ABSTRACT

The article reconstructs how the Italian Radical Party became, from the mid-1960s, the party of ‘civil rights’, and what its main battles for these rights were between 1967 and 1979. In the Italian political system the Party played a crucial role in the process of re-institutionalization that took place in the 1970s, helping to transfer demands formulated in social and cultural terms since the 1960s to the legislative-institutional level. Making the battle for civil rights the object of their own political action had a systemic meaning for the Radicals – namely, to undermine the dominion of the Christian Democrats and redefine the relations between the political sphere and society. This was closely linked to the political strategy of the party and to the organizational form it gave itself from 1967 onwards. These aspects, however, did not remain unchanged between 1967 and 1979; rather, they fed on the Radicals’ evolving vision of Italian society (on its social turmoil) on the one hand, and on the other they reacted to the evolution of the Italian political scenario, in particular to the possibility of building a parliamentary alternative to the Christian Democracy.     

The Italian party system’s three functional arenas after the 2018 election: the tsunami after the earthquake

The aim of this article is to assess to what extent the ‘change’ after the 2018 Italian election can be observed in the electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas. We use the indicators of party ‘volatility’ and ‘innovation’ to measure the change in each arena. The time span is the period 1948–2018, with a specific focus on the time after the watershed election of 1994. In this respect, we have identified a crucial difference between the 1994 change and that of 2013–18: if 1994 was the single moment of passage from one party system to another, in the 2010s the change did not happen in a single moment. Only after the next election, if volatility and innovation in the three arenas is reduced substantially, could we claim that a new party system has developed, that could be considered the ‘third party system’ of the Italian Republic.     

Brazilian cultural policies during the workers’ party governments: challenges for the development of cultural citizenship

ABSTRACT

The presidential elections that brought the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) to federal power represented a new moment for Brazil with the implementation of democratic, inclusive and sovereign policies. In the area of culture, the Ministry of Culture reclaimed a leadership role for the State and developed public policies with the critical participation of civil society. During the administrations of presidents Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, culture finally reached a new level. This article seeks to determine to what extent the cultural policies undertaken by these administrations promoted cultural citizenship. Based on a study of the course of cultural policies in the country, we argue that despite a conceptual and ideological orientation in this direction, the Ministry was unable to surpass certain barriers and overcome longstanding problems.     

Owner parties and party institutionalisation in Italy: is the Northern League exceptional?

Studies on party institutionalisation commonly argue that parties with personalist leadership and weak organisation are unlikely to remain in power beyond leadership succession. In other words, these parties will rarely attain their own institutionalisation. From this perspective, the recent Italian political reality represents a conundrum. Three parties of this type – Northern League; Forza Italia; Italy of Values – confronted significant resignation issues concerning their leaders, but only the League, contrary to the theory, made a decisive step toward institutionalisation by removing its founding father and remaining an actor with national blackmail potential. This article addresses this challenge and provides a solution to this conundrum. In particular, the article demonstrates that an approach that considers both party factors and critical events is necessary to account fully for the variance of outcomes and, more generally, for party change.     

Rational behaviour,economic conditions and the Australian country party, 1922–1937

This article analyses the electoral support of the candidates of the Australian Country Party at Commonwealth (Senate) elections between the First and Second World Wars. It differs markedly, in terms of its premises, method and conclusions, from ‘orthodox’ analyses of the party's electoral support. Orthodox analyses state implicitly that rational (ie. goal‐directed, income‐maximising) considerations do not underlie the behaviour of the supporters of the Country Party; in contrast, I state explicitly that these considerations do underlie this behaviour. Further, orthodox analyses do not collect the evidence or data which they require in order to corroborate their claims; in contrast, I do so. Finally, unlike the Orthodox analyses, I specify as clearly as possible the techniques which I utilise in order to confront my data and hypotheses. I conclude that the behaviour of the supporters of the Country Party between the First and Second Wars is consistent with the postulate of rational behaviour, and that it is inconsistent with the arguments of orthodox studies.     

Political party support in the Korean fifth republic: An ecological analysis 1981–1985

The absence of surveys detailing the voting intentions and past voting behaviour of Koreans has left obscure important aspects of party development during the Fifth Republic. Ecological analysis of district level voting returns for the 1981 and 1985 National Assembly elections is used to find two distinct patterns of voter continuity. In 1985 the ruling Democratic Justice Party was able to hold its 1981 voters while attracting considerable support from former opposition party voters. The opposition parties, in contrast, showed great turmoil, lost voters being compensated for by gains from other parties. These two patterns are attributed to a pro and anti‐government cleavage in Korean society. The pro‐government voters had a natural home in the ruling party while the anti‐government voters lacked a single focus and, hence, were more volatile.     

The election of Emmanuel Macron and the new French party system: a return to the éternel marais?

This article applies Maurice Duverger’s 1964 thesis of the éternel marais to the French party system following Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the 2017 presidential election. Duverger argued that for around 80 per cent of the period from 1789 to 1958, France had been governed from the centre, which he called the marais, with power shifting not between the left and the right, but between governments of the moderate left and the moderate right. At the time, Duverger believed that this tendency might be about to end due to social change and the then recent introduction of the direct election of the president that created the potential for a bipolarisation of the party system. In retrospect, Duverger’s argument was very prescient. We update his figures to show that from 1959 to 2017 marais governments all but disappeared. However, Macron’s election seems to mark a change. We show that there has been a return to a Duverger-style marais government. Moreover, Macron’s election has challenged the established bipolarisation of the French party system, suggesting the potential for a new three- or four-pole system. In this context, we argue that the chances of a return to a new and ongoing period of marais governments are high.     

The ALP and the union movement: ‘Catch‐all’ party or maintaining tradition?

Considerable debate continues over whether the Hawke government has been loyal to or betrayed the ‘Labor tradition’. This article argues that two important ideological influences upon Labor are ‘labourism’ and ‘social democracy'; both depend upon the union movement for ideas and practical support While labourism explains much about the accord process and suggests that the ‘Labor tradition’ was not betrayed by the Hawke‐Keating axis, it cannot capture the complete ideological landscape of the contemporary labour movement Labourism fails to explain the more social democratic aims of the Australian Council of Trade Union's objective of ‘strategic unionism’. Yet, ironically, strategic unionism may well fail due to the steady decline in union membership over the last fifteen years. The influence of social democracy and labourism upon the Australian Labor Party (ALP) would diminish should unions’ coverage of the work force continue to decline and with it arguably, so would the'Labor tradition’.     

‘That mad hatters tea party on the East River’: Conservative journals of opinion and the United Nations 1964–1981

During the 1960s and 1970s the Right viewed the United Nations as an institution that had lost its way. Writers for the journals of conservative opinion believed America’s complacent position toward the UN’s anti-western attitudes were representative of a nation that was no longer confident as a leader in the world. It was a course they were determined to change. The actions of National Review, Human Events and Commentary were not singularly responsible for the success or failure of American policy at the UN, but the language they employed contributed to the tone Ronald Reagan used during his presidency.     

A “Southern interference in the North's affairs”: the prospect of Fianna Fáil as an all-Ireland party, 1926–2011

This article demonstrates that Fianna Fáil's efforts in 2007 and thereafter to reconfigure as an all-Ireland party represented a volte-face in policy. From an historical perspective, since Fianna Fáil's establishment in 1926, consecutive leaders from Éamon de Valera to Albert Reynolds in the 1990s consistently refused to remodel the party on an all-Ireland basis. Rather than participating in Northern Ireland mainstream politics, Fianna Fáil was fixated with firstly securing, and then maintaining, a republican government in the south of Ireland. Accordingly, in the words of Lemass speaking in 1964, any “Southern interference in the North's affairs” was habitually ruled out by the Fianna Fáil leadership.     

Citizens and soldiers: party competition and the debate in Pennsylvania over permitting soldiers to vote, 1861–64

Political historians of the Civil War era frequently downplay the role of the Democratic Party. Studies of the Democrats in wartime often describe the loyal opposition as able to do little more than react to the policies of the Republicans in power. This has been particularly true regarding the debate over whether or not soldiers should be allowed to vote. Most historians assume that Republicans supported permitting soldiers to vote because it was the patriotic, ‘right’ thing to do, and that Democrats then opposed soldier voting because soldier suffrage bills were Republican war measures and because the Democrats believed the Union army would vote overwhelmingly Republican. In point of fact, the Democrats developed their arguments against soldier voting before the Republicans developed their position in favor of it. Moreover, the Democratic position was rooted in deeply held beliefs, dating back to seventeenth‐century England. Democrats opposed permitting soldiers to vote because they believed soldier voting would destroy the republican liberty of American citizens.     

Compulsory voting,turnout and party advantage in Australia∗

Who votes or does not vote in a voluntary system has long been thought to have distinct benefits for different political parties. High turnout has been seen as aiding parties of the left, low turnout parties of the right. Although Australia has a compulsory system of voting, this paper shows tha there are still party advantages and disadvantages associated with the 5 percent of the eligible electorate who fail to vote. When turnout is high, Labor makes a net gain in votes, and when turnout is low, the Liberal‐National coalition benefit. Making estimates of nonvoting in Britain and applying them to Australia indicates that this pattern would persist if voluntary voting were applied to Australia, giving the Liberal‐National coalition an inbuilt advantage.     

Geolocation and voting: Candidate–voter distance effects on party choice in the 2010 UK general election in England

The effect of geographical distance between candidate and voter on vote-likelihood in the UK is essentially untested. In systems where constituency representatives vie for local inhabitants' support in elections, candidates living closer to a voter would be expected to have a greater probability of receiving that individual's support, other things being equal. In this paper, we present a first test of this concept using constituency data (specifically, notice of poll address data) from the British General Election of 2010 and the British Election Survey, together with geographical data from Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail, to test the hypothesis that candidate distance matters in voters' choice of candidate. Using a conditional logit model, we find that the distance between voter and candidates from the three main parties (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) matters in English constituencies, even when controlling for strong predictors of vote choice, such as party feeling and incumbency advantage.