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Chapter 2 presents a series of hypotheses about how centre–periphery party competition occurs based on a combination of the spatial and saliency models of party behaviour. One of the two main theses of the book is introduced, namely that peripheral and state parties compete strategically for votes by partly assimilating each other’s programmatic agenda. Therefore, the chapter discusses the conditions under which state parties are likely to engage in the defence of pro-periphery policies and the reaction of peripheral parties to the pro-periphery strategies of state parties. Unlike what most authors in the literature assume, it is argued that peripheral parties are not single-issue parties and that they can and do emphasize issues beyond the centre–periphery conflict in order to compete more effectively against their state adversaries.

This chapter returns to the paradoxes discussed at the beginning of the book in order to assess them critically. The chapter concludes that the main rationale behind devolution was the protection of the state parties’ electoral majorities and that devolution did not appease the secessionist demands. In the four cases under analysis, devolution encouraged peripheral parties further in their demands. The question then is not how much decentralization is enough to make peripheral parties redundant but whether the spiral of radicalization can be stopped. And the chapter’s answer is that only full independence can completely remove the give-and-take politics of decentralized states. Anything short of independence leaves space for the pro-periphery grievance whereas the neutralization of the peripheral party threat requires a degree of consensus among state parties that the dynamic of electoral competition disincentives.

This chapter explains the hypotheses regarding state violence, with respect to the choice situations faced by leaders at election time. State and state-affiliated actors, including incumbent political leaders, have the greatest degree of latitude in selecting electoral strategies, and in particular deciding whether to use violence. The hypotheses are tested empirically on the basis of global data sets of electoral violence and covariates drawn from a variety of sources, supplemented by case studies based on qualitative data. The quantitative analyses confirm the connection between the structure of power (the relative strength of democratic and informal institutions) and electoral violence, and find also a strong empirical link between state-initiated violence and electoral misconduct in contexts where democratic constraints are lacking. Case studies of Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus, and Paraguay show how state-initiated electoral violence forms part of political economies regulated by informal institutions of corruption and patronage.

This chapter discusses the 1950 election results, which did nothing to quell Republican factionalism as both Taft and Dewey saw the outcomes as further justification for their electoral strategies. As the GOP made preparations for the 1952 presidential campaign, the national political climate remained fairly static. The Korean conflict continued in stalemate, while McCarthy's crusade grew more aggressive and maintained high levels of public support. The economic picture looked to be one of ever-increasing prosperity with inflation weighing lightly on the minds of the voters. Inside the Republican organization, however, the mood transformed dramatically with rumors that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day, would seek the nomination. “Ike” regularly voted as a Republican, but since military code prevented him from making public political statements while on active duty, his party affiliation was largely unknown.

This chapter examines the effects of public funding on the strategic decisions that candidates make. Participation in public funding is likely to change the strategic considerations that candidates make since it dramatically affects the costs—in several areas—that they must pay to wage a viable campaign. The recognition of this dynamic is important because an altered cost-benefit calculus will almost certainly affect what candidates think and do during the course of an election. Indeed, if public funding leads to broader shifts in electoral competition or interest group influence, these changes are likely to be the result of altered strategy and candidate behavior.

This chapter examines how northern racial liberals' commitment to the language of tolerance obscured their unself-conscious embrace of aspects of the racially unequal status quo that they understood to be the products of sociological and cultural truths rather than political choices. White liberals instead turned that language to their own ends, using it as an electoral strategy and as a way to signal their inherent commitment to fair-mindedness. They embraced the idea that their promotion of racially tolerant discourse, alongside the gradual integration of African Americans into city institutions, could do the work of producing a more racially egalitarian urban terrain. However, they did not reshape the stark racial imbalances that characterized either the local government or city space, even when they controlled the state.

Baldwin is a central figure in the emergence of modern Conservative and British politics. Despite denying being an orator, Baldwin’s public utterances are often cited as critical in developing and articulating a ‘tone’ appropriate to the new post-1918 mass democracy and responsible in part for transforming the Conservatives into a mass party. Baldwin was acutely conscious of the power of words and saw oratory as vital in both educating the new democracy and his own party. He therefore took great care to develop a ‘rhetorical strategy’, whose central rhetorical device was the sophisticated use of commonplaces (topoi, knowledge or sentiments shared by an audience as part of a community) to structure his appeal and fix it in the mind of the new electorate through the innovative exploitation of the new technologies of mass communication. This chapter focuses on Baldwin’s rhetoric in the 1920s, a time when the Conservative Party was coming to terms with the post-1918 electorate and the nature of the ‘new’ democracy which, Baldwin argued, required a ‘new’ conservatism.