Party Politics

This paper focuses on the relationship between the party central office and the party in public office in the relatively new democracies of Southern and East Central Europe. The analysis reveals that, although the party executives are strongly invaded by public office holders, it is, contrary to expectations, not the party in public office but the party central office that emerges as the most predominant of the two faces. It appears that party organizations in these new democracies are largely controlled from a small centre of power, located at the intersection of the extra-parliamentary organization and the party in public office. This phenomenon, it is argued, can probably be best explained as a device to increase party cohesion and to reduce the potentially destabilizing consequences that emerge from a context of weakly developed party loyalties and a general lack of party institutionalization.

In this paper we analyze the two conventional explanations of the Republican Party's adoption of supply-side economic philosophy in the 1977-81 period: first, that the position change was induced by the Sunbelt component of the party; and second, that the doctrinal shift was brought about by widespread concern with tax policy among the public and the Republican mass in particular. We reveal both arguments to be flawed and suggest that the party's advocation of large across-the-board tax cuts was the result of calculated and coordinated decisions by Washington elites within the party. We provide empirical and theoretical justification for a national elite-led explanation of this event. As a result, our study helps solidify contemporary scholarship that counteracts conventional wisdom in comparative politics and suggests that national American parties, at least when it comes to policy formation, can be relatively hierarchical institutions that shape as much as respond to mass and local behavior.

The stabilization of party systems in new democracies is commonly assumed to be a lengthy process. Applying Peter Mair's government-formation-based model of party system development to the three young East Central European democracies of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, the article shows that party systems can stabilize much more quickly than expected. In an analysis of emerging party system patterns, the Hungarian and Czech party systems are found to be far more stable than the Polish, and already nearly as stable as more mature party systems. Examining differences in the three cases, the article makes two primary conclusions about the process of stabilization in new party systems. First, it suggests that stabilization is the product of both electoral system design and consequent patterns of elite behavior. Second, it argues that stabilization not only occurs in spite of on-going volatility in party-voter alignments, but actually serves to reduce it.

This note re-examines the survey data gathered by the Members of Parliament Project (MPP) on the attitudes of British parliamentarians towards European integration. Central to the analysis of the MPP is the idea that within the parties there is at work a dramatic cohort effect: long-serving Labour MPs are Eurosceptic, but the more recently elected Labour MPs are pro-European; whilst long-serving Conservative MPs are pro-European, but the more recently elected are Eurosceptic. The MPP have argued that this cohort effect began at different times in each party: in 1979 for the Conservatives and in 1987 for Labour. This note finds that whilst this is (largely) true for the Conservatives, it is not true for Labour. According to the MPP's own data, pro-European Labour MPs began entering the House of Commons in 1979, 8 years - and two elections - before the MPP have argued.

This paper develops models of minor-party mobilization and electoral success. Models are estimated with data from Australian Senate elections from 1922 to 1998. Existing literature and the Australian experience demonstrate that long-term minor-party activity is conditioned by election rules, economic conditions and other factors. Australian Senate elections have been conducted under a variety of election rules, and thus provide a rare opportunity for modelling the effects of variation in these forces on minor-party activity. Results demonstrate that minor parties mobilize more candidates and receive more votes when electoral rules reduce the proportion of votes necessary to win a seat. Economic decline is also found to increase the mobilization of minor-party candidates and increase voter support.

Why do politicians act in some countries as individual entrepreneurs, seeking a personal vote, and in others as team players soliciting a collective, party vote? This paper argues that different forms of electoral organization are determined by how electoral mechanisms, campaigning regulations and political finance laws structure the career prospects of politicians, as well as the logistical costs they face in communicating with voters.

This paper investigates the factors that determined the party preferences in the 1987 and 1991 general elections and the 1989 local election in Istanbul, Turkey's largest metropolitan city. It argues that party preference is essentially an aspect of individual political behavior, which should be explained by the characteristics of individuals who are, in turn, affected by various macro factors. Theories developed for industrialized western countries are of limited use in developing countries and in need of revision. The research finds evidence for the importance of previous voting preferences and religious attitudes for the 1987 general election and the 1989 local elections. Predictions for the 1991 general election seem to be determined by region of birth, age, media follow-up, job status, political attitudes, years of residence in Istanbul, father's education, social class, the number of steps in migrating to Istanbul and the number of income-earners in the household.