Territorialising Movement Parties: The Case of Nuevo Encuentro in Buenos Aires

How and why do political parties, seemingly focused on electoral politics, also mobilise within contentious arenas? Drawing on qualitative research with a centre-left Argentine party called Nuevo Encuentro (NE) in the city of Buenos Aires this paper demonstrates the importance of a geographical reading of “movement parties” for responding to this question. Specifically, the paper analyses NE’s territorialisation, understood as a strategy for organisation building via the political appropriation of space, typically by opening branches and mobilising activists in neighbourhoods. Between 2007 and 2019 NE’s strategy of territorialisation mobilised across multiple scales—the neighbourhood, city and national—yet in so doing its organisation became overstretched and struggled to engage across both contentious and electoral arenas. Through an analysis of NE’s territorialisation, grounded in the historical and geographical context of contemporary Argentina, the paper provides an original attempt to spatialise the concept of movement party.     

The role of contextual factors in the electoral resurgence of extreme right-wing forces in Spain: The case of Andalusia

Up until the end of 2018, extreme right-wing parties and their anti-immigration discourse, now a common occurrence in other European countries, had not appeared on the Spanish political scene. However, in December of that year, the Spanish extreme right-wing party VOX reversed this trend and made significant electoral gains in the Andalusian regional elections. This phenomenon has led us to analyse, in this study, the role played by contextual factors (i.e., out-group size, territorial concentration of the immigrant population, demographic change in settlement locations, aggregated educational level and unemployment rate among the receiving society) in the rise in the number of VOX voters. To achieve this, VOX's results from all the polling stations in Andalusia contained in its 5946 census tracts were analysed. At the same time, each census tract was associated with its demographic, economic and educational data, and their relationship was analysed using a multilevel analysis with Mplus. The results show that the presence of economic immigrants is indeed associated with a higher percentage of VOX voters in Andalusia. However, despite this general trend, those census tracts with a high territorial concentration of Maghrebi immigrants are associated with a lower percentage of support for this extreme right-wing party. The opposite is found for Romanian immigrants. Moreover, areas with larger percentages of people with a high level of education influenced greater support for VOX. Thus our findings suggest the traditional explanations for the increased support for extreme right-wing parties in northern Europe do not provide clear patterns that can be extrapolated to Andalusia.     

The executive lawmaking agenda: Political parties,prime ministers,and policy change in Australia

In Westminster systems, governments enjoy a privileged position in the lawmaking process that they can use to deliver on their campaign promises and achieve their policy goals. What policy areas do governments seek to affect through lawmaking? How stable is the executive lawmaking agenda? How responsive is that agenda to changes triggered by elections or by transitions in prime minister? This study uses a dataset of 3982 Australian bills introduced between 2000 and 2017 to answer these questions. While it finds considerable stability in the policy content of executive lawmaking agendas, the analysis also indicates that Australia's executive lawmaking agenda is more responsive to changes in prime minister than to changes in the party in power. As the first application of the comparative policy agendas approaches to government bills in Australia, this article offers new insights into executive lawmaking priorities during an especially turbulent period in Australian politics.     

Reaching across: institutional barriers to cross‐ethnic parties in post‐conflict societies and the case of Northern Ireland

This paper investigates the paradox in post‐conflict societies of continued marginality of cross‐ethnic parties despite significant convergence in public attitudes and identities. In so doing, it examines the argument that parties that attempt to reach across the divide are constrained by consocational institutions designed to accommodate rival identities in such environments. The paper explores this puzzle in the context of Northern Ireland, drawing upon qualitative evidence from elite interviews and focus groups collected in 2012 and 2013. It concludes that cross‐community parties operating in the region do encounter formal institutional barriers, but that such barriers only partially explain the phenomenon and an interplay between formal and informal constraints underlies their position of relatively limited electoral success.     

From adversaries to allies: ethnic gerrymandering and ethnic party behaviour in local elections in Macedonia

Constitutional designers often construct political institutions to provide greater autonomy to ethnic minority groups. One tool available to constitutional designers is ‘ethnic gerrymandering’, where the boundaries of local government units are altered to provide greater representation to minority groups. This paper analyses the effects of changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities, which occur as a result of ethnic gerrymandering, on ethnic party behaviour. I compare ethnic party behaviour in local elections in the Republic of Macedonia from 2000 to 2013. I expand on a theory initially proposed by Sherrill Stroschein linking ethnic demography to ethnic party behaviour. I find that changes in the ethnic composition of municipalities influence whether rival ethnic parties engage in outbidding or whether ethnic communities unite behind a single ethnic party. My findings have important implications for those tasked with designing political institutions in ethnically divided societies.     

Cleavages,electoral geography,and the territorialization of political parties in the Republic of Georgia

Abstract

This article examines the territorialization of party support in the Republic of Georgia as political parties in Georgia try to territorialize by aligning themselves to existing societal cleavages. The article specifically focuses on the case of the United National Movement (UNM), which from its inception in 2001 was led by Georgia’s former president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and was the country’s governing party from 2004 to 2012. While in power, the UNM enjoyed nationwide support. After being unseated, instead of nationalizing countrywide, the UNM has based its support in national elections on specific areas populated by ethno-linguistic and religious minorities. By analyzing the results of the most recent five national elections and the 2014 national census, the article shows that continuing support for the UNM and the subsequent territorialization of the party is dictated by these existing societal cleavages.     

The Ruini system and ‘Berlusconismo’: synergy and transformation between the Catholic Church and Italian politics in the ‘Second Republic’

This article aims to correlate the political rather than the pastoral action of Cardinal Camillo Ruini with the rise and consolidation of the politician Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 2007, set in the context of the major changes that occurred in the Catholic Church and in Italian republican politics during the 1980s and 1990s. The main theme is an ‘instrumental interaction’ between the two systems, Ruinismo and Berlusconismo, which only coincided at the level of political opportunity and gave rise to important synergies between two men who otherwise had nothing in common.     

新时期多党合作事业发展的新建树--学习《中共中央关于进一步加强中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度建设的意见》

今年年初颁发的《中共中央关于进一步加强中国共产党领导的多党合作和政治协商制度建设的意见》提出了诸多新理论新政策,它是我们党统一战线理论的新发展。认真学习和贯彻《意见》精神,对于我们全面落实科学发展观以及构建社会主义和谐社会具有重要的意义。     

How Electoral Systems Can Influence Policy Innovation

This paper argues that in certain areas of policy, electoral systems can influence policy innovation (how early countries will adopt certain policies). Electoral systems influence the number of parties that win representation and thereby influence the diversity of perspectives included in the policymaking process. It is argued here that this diversity facilitates elite and public consideration of new issues and ideas, and consequently, it leads to earlier debate and action on these issues and ideas. This dynamic is particularly relevant to controversial issues and ideas that major parties may be hesitant to address and that minor parties may be more incentivized to promote. In this paper, two issues/ideas are considered: extending rights to same‐sex couples and making material sacrifices to protect the environment. I show that countries with more proportional electoral systems tend to act earlier to protect the environment and that they tend to be early adopters of civil union legislation. These results are also supported by World Values Survey data showing public preference patterns that support these policy outcomes.     

Economic policy and development in Austrian Lombardy, 1815-1859

The question of economic integration is not new in Europe. Historically, the birth and construction of nation-states was important in stimulating interest in the systematic relationships between political and economic integration. In the case of the multinational structure of the Habsburg monarchy in the nineteenth century, the result was an economic policy that, for political reasons, aimed to unite the material interests of a state that was completely heterogeneous in other respects. Lombardy was a case in point. Traditionally the region had been in the economic vanguard in central Europe. When it again became part of Austria in 1815 it also became subject to the imperial policy of political integration. As a result its economic priorities were partially reformulated. On the one hand, Austria had a protectionist system aimed at autarky which made incentives to industrial production a priority. Lombardy's purely mercantilist outlook, on the other hand, was based around the production of a few highly specialized goods, most notably silk, for export. Conflict between economic interests in Lombardy was the inevitable result. Nevertheless, the imperial government had to take account of the fact that it was impossible to restrict Lombardy's international trade relations exclusively to the Austrian market. And the problems that beset any effort to tie the Lombard economy into a denser network of relationships with the Austrian market were not due to the political formation of the Italian nation because Northern Italy, and Lombardy in particular, continued to occupy an anomalous position within the context of the Italian economy.