Party System

Participation in the ideological and political training of the communist party was one of the fundamental duties for its members and individual organizations. Its primary goal was to maintain the proper ideological level of members, create a scheme for promotion in the party’s hierarchy and indirectly, to gradually increase the party’s influence on society. A training system was permanent, applicable to everyone and perpetual in order to shape and consolidate a uniform communist mentality, along with faithfulness and dedication to the organization. It was not only a way to improve the qualifications necessary for party and bureaucratic work, but above all to maintain party activists in constant ideological readiness. The forms of communist training, which were conducted in voivodeship party structures in Poland in 1975-1990, such as candidates’s training, mass training, activists’ training along with the Evening Univeristy of Marxism-Leninism, circle training, lecturers’ training, prove that the communist party attached great significance to this aspect at that time.
Uczestnictwo w systemie kształcenia ideologiczno-politycznego partii komunistycznej stano-wiło jeden z podstawowych obowiązków członków i poszczególnych organizacji partyjnych. Ich celem było utrzymanie odpowiedniego poziomu ideowego członków, stworzenie schema-tu awansowania w hierarchii partyjnej, a pośrednio stopniowe zwiększanie oddziaływania par-tii na społeczeństwo. System szkoleniowy był permanentny, obowiązywał wszystkich i miał trwać stale, aby ukształtować oraz utrwalać jednolitą mentalność partyjną, a przy tym wier-ność i oddanie organizacji. Stanowił nie tylko sposób na ciągłe podnoszenie kwalifikacji do pracy partyjnej i technicznej, ale nade wszystko utrzymania aktywu partyjnego w ciągłej go-towości ideologicznej. Takie formy kształcenia partyjnego prowadzone w ramach wojewódz-kich organizacji partyjnych w Polsce w latach 1975-1990, jak szkolenia kandydatów, szkole-nia masowe, szkolenia aktywu, wraz z Wieczorowym Uniwersytetem Marksizmu-Leninizmu, szkolenia środowiskowe, wreszcie lektorat, świadczą, że była to sfera, do której partia komu-nistyczna przywiązywała w tym okresie ogromną wagę. Przykładowym obszarem badawczym jest wojewódzka organizacja partyjna funkcjonująca na terenie województwa bialskopodla-skiego.

My paper explores two moments in the recent political history of Chile which have been characterized by the existence of strong political disaffection and anti-party criticism. These are the 1950s, the late period of the Radical Party governments and the second administration Carlos Ibáñez; and the 2010s, during the government of Sebastián Piñera and Michelle Bachelet. In this comparative analysis I will pay attention to both the forms acquired by anti-party discourse and how this was reflected on voters' turnout. Also attention will be paid to the formation and practice of new social organizations and the emergence of new political parties and movements.

The goal of this article is to identify the factors that led the voters of Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) in 2008 to abandon electorally this political party in the 2011 general elections and opt for other alternative. In 2011, PSOE obtained its worst electoral result in history as it lost more than four millions voters with respect to 2008. I argue that the explanation must combine short term (valence issues, party leaders, retrospective evaluation) and long-term factors (party proximity) and that its explanatory power differs depending on the alternative for which the voter opted. Methodologically, I employ multinomial logistic regression as the most appropriate technique for the analysis of individual electoral behaviour with a nominal dependent variable that has more than two categories. I use data from a panel survey study carried out by Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas between November 2011 and January 2012.

En 1846, l’un des plus anciens partis en Europe voyait le jour : le parti libéral belge. Le mr et l’Open vld ont donc commémoré, en 2016, le cent soixante-dixième anniversaire de sa naissance.

Paradoxalement pourtant, la trajectoire et les mutations du libéralisme politique belge n’ont pas bénéficié à ce jour de toute l’attention voulue.

L’ambition de cet ouvrage est de répondre à cette carence en privilégiant cinq thématiques : l’histoire du parti, l’évolution de son modèle organisationnel, les transformations idéologiques et programmatiques, sa géographie et sa sociologie électorales, ses perspectives d’avenir.

L’intérêt du sujet est d’autant plus évident que l’Open vld et, plus encore, le mr sont engagés depuis octobre 2014 dans une expérience gouvernementale inédite et qui pose nombre de questions : le Mouvement réformateur est en effet le seul parti francophone de la majorité fédérale. Qui plus est, être l’un des plus anciens partis européens mérite à l’évidence le respect et une analyse approfondie.

The article discusses a number of cases relating to the latest trends in the development of the party-political systems in the US and EU countries. Article presents analysis of such U.S. movements as
“Occupy Wall Street”, “Tea Party” and M5S and the Alternative for Germany among the European parties.
On this basis, the causes of the contemporary crisis of the party-political system are analyzed. Among the reasons of such a crisis the authors include: the presence of the losers from globalization, especially
in the lower middle class; increased competition from migrants both in terms of access to jobs, and in obtaining social benefits; the psychological readiness of a number of losers of the middle class to explain the deterioration of their socio-economic situation as a consequence of the global “conspiracy of elites”;
the erosion of the traditional structure of industrial society and the consequent degradation of the existing political consensus of the center-right and center-left parties that was an engine of the globalization; the separation of the globalized elite from the middle class of Western countries in the standard of living; virtualization of politics and the emergence of new types of mass communication, low controlled centrally and allowing various alternative forces to easily find contact with a mass audience; tactical errors by mainstream forces and traditional media controlled by them in counter-attempts to demonize new political movements, which intensifies protest moods among the dissatisfied part of the middle class.
As a result, a broad antiglobalistic identity emerges in Western politics. Alternative movements mobilize a significant number of supporters, using the image of the enemy: either a migrant or a global capitalist.
Alternative movements press on their centrist competitors as a result of а “grip from the inside” (in the U.S.) or as a result of a “challenging outside” (in the EU countries). In the EU countries, this trend
has led to partial dismantling of party systems, as well as the distribution of seats in parliament in favor of representatives of new parties. In the U.S., under the influence of the Tea Party Movement and the Occupy movement, the moderate wings within the Republicans and Democrats were weakened, which was one of the important factors that led to the victory of D. Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

The Tweed Ring spawned a vibrant financial sector that was integral to its brief success but has never been previously examined. William “Boss” Tweed and his allies employed banks controlled or comanaged by Tammany politicians to embezzle funds, build political alliances, and invest in a wide array of business ventures. The capital of these savings and commercial banks—city money, deposits from Catholic charities, and the savings of immigrant laborers—was accumulated through political channels. During their operation between 1867 and 1871, politician-bankers engaged in a mix of patronage deals and profit-driven financial speculation. In effect, Tammany banks were ground zero for the Ring's conversion of political hegemony into a windfall of economic capital that fueled party activities and buoyed personal fortunes. Importantly, the anti-Ring mobilization by upper-class reformers was more than a revolt of wealthy taxpayers concerned with abstract goals of good government or rescuing city credit; it was also a reaction by old-line bankers in direct competition with Tammany upstarts. A dramatic bank run catalyzed by reformers in November 1871 drove them into bankruptcy, bringing this novel experiment in political capitalism to an end.

Pouvoirs, 2016, n°157, p.85-103.
Abstract : Les résultats électoraux du Front national depuis 2012 témoignent d’une dynamique électorale positive et interrogent : le FN peut-il l’emporter ? Son ascension électorale permet d’étudier, d’une part, les déterminants de sa victoire dans le système électoral de la Ve République et de questionner, d’autre part, le devenir du système partisan face à l’essor de ce parti.

Spain's party system evolved from a swift transformation during the fi rst years after democratic transition, towards increasing stability and strong institutionali-zation from 1990 onwards. Alas, the 2008 economic and fi nancial crisis aborted this smooth evolution and triggered several alterations in the Spanish political landscape. Although the institutional framework has contributed so far to limit the scope of these changes, the 2015 and 2016 legislative elections brought many novelties to the traditional patterns of partisan competition, electoral behavior and government formation. This chapter will assess how the gradual evolution of the Spanish party system experienced an accelerated mutation during the last decade, and how the economic turmoil and the institutional malaise became catalysts of those systemic changes. Party system stability was favored for years by the continuity of the institutional framework designed during the "Transition" to democracy. Spain is nowadays a parliamentary democracy featured by a combination of majoritarian and consociational institutions. These institutional arrangements were set by the 1978 Constitution precisely to avoid some of the main burdens of past democratic experiences , like low party system institutionalization, government instability and centre-periphery tensions (Gunther et al. 2004 ; Magone 2009). On the one hand, national politics is driven by strong concentration of power around the executive , and particularly the prime minister (Presidente del Gobierno) vis à vis the cabinet and the parliament. Asymmetrical bicameralism is dominated by the low chamber (Congreso de los Diputados), where parliamentary parties play a strong role favored by internal rules promoting party cohesion and the predominance of the party in central offi ce. This is also facilitated by a PR electoral system with a strong majoritarian bias due to the low magnitude of most districts, favoring the main national parties and their respective central offi ces. This institutional setting, together with the organizational evolution of Spanish parties, and the fact that the prime minister has generally been also party leader, have produced a highly "presidentialized" political system (Biezen and Hopkin 2005). On the other hand, consociationalism is strongly fueled by the process of devolution set by the Constitution that ended up in a highly decentralized state with 17 different

In the mid-1990s, New Zealand underwent underwent an electoral system transformation from a single-member district plurality (SMDP) to a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system of representation. Because so much was held constant within the country over the course of this transition, the case provides a natural experiment for measuring the effects of proportional representation on legislative consensus. Analysis of an original legislative vote dataset from the period shows that, while vote outcomes under SMDP consistently reflected a government-vs-opposition minimal-winning coalition divide, a new set of supermajority vote outcomes emerged following the transition to MMP. Part two of the study shows that consensual vote outcomes are explained in part by new opposition veto-powers under MMP: a supermajority vote outcome was significantly more likely on bills referred to legislative committees chaired by opposition party representatives. The remaining variation in consensus is attributed to a new consensual cultural which emerged under MMP.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Abstract: This article is an overview of recent developments in the liberal party family. It
examines the fortunes of the party family in selected countries. It presents a qualitative survey
of certain selected new political parties, which are either too new or too obscure to have been
formally classified, and/or which have not appeared in the Comparative Manifesto Project. The
article provides arguments as to why these parties may be candidates for future inclusion in
the liberal party family. It also examines Marie Demker’s (2008) conception of the virtue party,
a scheme for examining certain

The Spanish executive centralized political power to manage the politics of austerity better in the aftermath of the Great Recession. This paper analyses the reinforcement of the power of the central government and argues that three explanatory variables - economic crisis, ideology and party politics - account for re-centralization, which is defined as fiscal consolidation, concentration of competences, bureaucratic rationalization and ideological convergence. The debate about the motives and nature of re-centralization (de jure vs. de facto) further polarized the center-periphery cleavage. Regional pro-sovereignty parties interpreted the reversal of decentralization as another sign that accommodation within Spain was not possible and that contestation was the way forward.

This article is writing so as to remind those who may have forgotten or are un-aware of the struggle and embedded history of one of Africa largest political party of the 21st century.  It is important to always have a good moment of reasonable reflection, on how the country achieved its democratic transition, and the socio-political progress made so-far in the cause of stabilizing and consolidating the new found democratic fame among great nations of the world.

This article refutes the conventional wisdom that Duverger's classification of pluralistic party systems is simplistic because it recognises only bipartism and multipartism as categories. It demonstrates, first, that by 1951 Duverger had already introduced a more sophisticated typology of pluralistic party systems, one which resembled the one later developed by Sartori; second, that Duverger's concept of the "paradox of the centre" is no less "counter-intuitive" than Sartori's concept; third, that-like Sartori-Duverger emphasises the "functioning" of party systems. Sartori, however, dissociated himself from Duverger and attempted to propagate the belief that his approach was fundamentally different. Finally, the article makes the argument that we should revise our simplistic understandings of the development of political science and recognise Duverger's contribution to the theory of party systems as fundamental. There is an official English translation of this article in the English electronic version of Revue française de science politique ("Competitive party systems: Where do Duverger and Sartori diverge?", Revue française de science politique, 2015/3, (Vol. 65), p. 451-471, ISBN : 9782724634181, DOI : 10.3917/rfsp.653.0451, http://www.cairn-int.info/ article-E_RFSP_653_0451-competitive-party-systems.htm). However, I was not provided with the proofs of this official translation. Hence, the official English translation of my article contains errors and inaccuracies. That is why I am making available a corrected English translation in which the errors and inaccuracies are removed. Please do use only this corrected and authorized English version of my article (or my original in French, of course).

In the last decades, a growing awareness has emerged in progressive social movements about the relevance of corruption as a hidden factor that negatively influences political and economic decision-making processes in both liberal-democratic and authoritarian regimes. Rampant corruption has been denounced by social movements, which have developed specific diagnostic and prognostic frames as well as knowledge and practices for the social accountability of political and economic powers. This contribution maps some of the characteristics of civil society as anti-corruption actors, reflecting on the theoretical challenges they present for social movement theory and for research on corruption and anti-corruption. In order to understand the emergence and outcomes of these mobilizations against corruption, it bridges two bodies of literature which have only very rarely crossed paths: corruption studies and social movement studies. Departing from the traditional visions of anti-corruption from below within corruption studies , the article brings upon social movement studies in order to synthetize some of the main context, organizational forms and framing of (anti-)corruption in today's contentious politics.

Durante décadas la derecha española se ha coordinado exclusivamente en torno al Partido Popular. En los últimos años, sin embargo, han irrumpido dos partidos nuevos (Ciudadanos y Vox) que han reestructurado el bloque electoral de la derecha. En este trabajo investigamos las dinámicas de esta nueva competición tripartita en la derecha española, poniendo un especial énfasis en Vox. Nuestros hallazgos parecen apuntar hacia un escenario en el que Ciudadanos disputaría al Partido Popular un electorado más joven, urbano, acomodado y liberal, y Vox un electorado también joven pero más conservador y residente en municipios más castigados por la crisis. Adicionalmente, también encontramos evidencia empírica de que los resultados de Vox son significativamente mejores en contextos donde se combinan un crecimiento del desempleo respecto a antes de la crisis y una presencia alta de extranjeros.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

El Apra es el partido más antiguo y gravitante de la política nacional. Es la organización que genera odios o amores, es decir, existen opiniones muy marcadas sobre el Apra y los apristas. Sin embargo, ¿conocemos al Apra por dentro? Los libros producidos hasta la fecha nos han mostrado muy poco sobre las prácticas cotidianas de sus militantes. En cambio, la investigación del sociólogo Moisés Rojas, a través de su reciente libro, nos aproxima al mundo interno y fascinante de este histórico partido. ¿Cómo organizan sus mítines? ¿Por qué se hacen apristas? ¿Qué los mantiene unidos? ¿Cómo son los espacios donde militan? Son algunas de las preguntas que se responden en este libro.

Moisés Rojas, el autor, realizó durante 3 años un minucioso recojo de información sobre las prácticas cotidianas centradas en la Casa del Pueblo, el local central del Apra ubicado en la avenida Alfonso Ugarte (Lima, Perú). Desde de este local describe cómo viven los apristas la “crisis política más profunda de su historia” al finalizar el segundo gobierno de García. Con un marco conceptual propio de la sociología, explica cómo es que la dirigencia aprista, a pesar de adolecer de legitimidad, tiene casi todo el control del partido.

En 350 páginas, el libro presenta una crítica a la forma en la que se han estudiado a los partidos políticos. La mayoría de investigadores no conocen ni han vivido la dinámica interna, como los militantes, y por ello es muy difícil que alcancen conclusiones certeras. Esta mirada desde adentro no solo es una innovación metodológica, sino que además intenta demostrar la importancia de los objetos en el ejercicio político. El autor señala que son importantes la administración de los espacios y la gestión de la parafernalia para comprender cómo es que los apristas se adhieren de por vida al partido. Esta aproximación muy concreta a la política, desde la gestión de los objetos, también representa una innovación teórica.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

Contesting election is exciting but winning an election is exhilarating
because the voters believed in you and your ability to deliver the promises
you have made during the campaign.
In this dynamic book Godson systematically enlightens the politician in
what to do and how to do it when one wants to get elected. He carefully
lays down the strategy and tactics of beating all opponents including the
incumbent if there is one.
Certainly, this is a must read for the new contestant in the political arena.
All the spices of example included would drive the point’s home for the
serious politician.