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Examines whether the role of parties in policy‐making has changed substantially since the 1950s. The chapter uses data from the Comparative Manifestos Project and aggregate policy measures to assess long‐term trends in parties’ policy positions, and governing parties’ impacts on policy outcomes for 15 advanced industrial democracies. The chapter first analyses how the parties’ policy profiles have changed over time. Second, it examines whether parties are becoming increasingly flexible in terms of the issues they emphasize, moving from a strategy of selling a consistent package of policies toward marketing an increasingly volatile variety of issues. Third, it analyses changes in the degree of partisan impact on policy outputs, concluding that despite a pattern of ideological convergence, there is less evidence that the policy impact of parties has eroded over time.

This chapter examines the ideological congruence between parties and independent, partisan, and median independent voters. The chapter shows that partisans are more polarized ideologically than are independents. Moreover, the connections between ideology and specific issue positions are stronger among partisans than independents. Three overarching patterns emerged when we examine the absolute distance of parties to partisans and independents. First, systematic differences in how far away parties are to each voter group show how important this partisan/independent distinction is to assessing the quality of representation. Second, parties are considerably more distant to their own independent voters than their partisan voters, attesting to their difficulty to be simultaneously close to different voter groups. Third, there are few differences between West and East in party-voter distance, setting up an important ‘meta-question’ of this study: why is congruence so similar given the myriad of contextual differences? The chapter addresses this question in the conclusion.

This chapter establishes the extent to which the four sets of explanations of electoral fortunes may account for the performance of right-wing extremist parties in Western Europe. It is suggested that the type of ideology right-wing extremist parties embrace, the organization and leadership of the parties, and the different patterns of party competition at work in the various political systems under investigation are all likely to be important factors in an overall explanation for the variation in the right-wing extremist party vote. Party ideology is also significant in an overall explanation for the variation in the right-wing extremist party vote. The electoral laws governing access to the ballot, the broadcast media and state subventions play no role in an overall account of the uneven electoral fortunes of the West European parties of the extreme right. A substantial factor in the success of extreme right-wing parties is beyond the influence of established politics.

This chapter discusses the historical transformation of the modern regulatory state and suggests that the expansion of bureaucratic authority is an institutional innovation rather than a result of changes in the American economy. It examines three novel characteristics that distinguish the postbellum state from prior forms of American government. First, the level of government was altered, and new forms of authority were placed in the hands of federal officials. Second, there was a shift in power from legislatures and courts to executive bureaucrats and independent commissions. Third, the federal state pursued regulatory objectives that increasingly focused on the market price system. The chapter considers this institutional shift within the context of party ideologies before the Civil War, with particular emphasis on the political parties' positions on issues ranging from federal power to the role of respective branches of government, along with the types of government action they endorsed.

While the preceding chapter focused on RILE, the Manifesto Left-Right scale, this chapter examines the validity of the specific measures included in the dataset, by seeing how well they locate individual parties within the traditional family groupings when used in a discriminant analysis covering both Western and Eastern Europe. They achieve 80 per cent predictive success, thus demonstrating that the programmatic codings derived from election manifestos do measure what they are intended to measure. In fact they can be used to refine specialist judgements about family memberships. The analysis reveals that parties are assigned to families on the basis of two or three prominent and enduring policy commitments. By combining these as weighted by the analysis, we can build quantitative indices which not only refine judgements about family membership but also allow ‘niche’ parties to be distinguished from ‘mainstream’ parties – a recent concern in analysis of party movement.

This chapter turns to superstition, and specifically to the role of superstition in the religious, political, and economic realms. The author agrees with the Enlightenment view that superstition has its roots in the unbound nature of imagination, and with its ability to combine its infinite power with affects such as love, hate, fear, and hope. However, in the chapter the author nuances the Enlightenment critique in two ways: One concerns the seemingly clear-cut opposition between philosophical (or scientific) rationality and superstition, reason and imagination, or clarity and confusion. Following thinkers as different as Baruch Spinoza and Sigmund Freud, the chapter argues that the boundary between the two faculties is far from clear or stable. Furthermore, it argues that imaginary and superstitious constructions are inevitable in the social and political realms. The other point of divergence from the traditional and especially Enlightenment critique of superstition concerns the object or target of the critique in today’s world. The chapter focuses not on religion but on politics and economics. Specifically, it turns to commodity and financial fetishism as the most significant expression of superstition. But it also highlights the superstitions inherent to historical Marxism and party ideology.

This chapter addresses the relation between some ideological and organizational features and several leadership selection methods. The main hypothesis is that differences in ideology, party family, size, and other contextual factors such as the age of democracy (new and long established democracies) and time play a relevant role in explaining differences in the leadership selection methods adopted by political parties. The rationales linking each factor with the type of selectorate are detailed though six hypotheses in the theoretical framework. The results of the bivariate tests show the confirmation of most of the hypotheses, pointing out that ideological and (to a lesser extent) organizational features are relevant factors influencing party leadership selection methods. The chapter also finds that these factors are, in turn, shaped by the democratic trajectory of the country and, more broadly, by time.

Jana Morgan and Magda Hinojosa examine women’s representation within parties as leaders, candidates, and officeholders and find that these positions are increasingly accessible to women. They argue that candidate selection procedures are important for women’s presence within parties, while gender quotas and ideology matter less than we might expect. They also evaluate whether parties advocate for women’s issues or employ strategies to articulate women’s concerns. They find that even as descriptive representation has advanced, parties rarely offer substantive linkages for women. As a result, women are less likely to identify with parties than men. To improve women’s descriptive representation in parties, they argue for better candidate selection processes, candidate training programs, and increased state funding for female candidates. To advance substantive representation, they advocate for parties to craft policy and organizational ties with women and to align gender issues with existing partisan divides, thereby integrating rather than isolating gender issues.

This chapter analyses the relationship between class and the vote in the Australia over forty years from the mid-1960s until 2007 using a six category EGP measure of class. It finds substantial declines especially during the 1970s but also during the late 1980s and 1990s. Two types of explanations are examined to account for the decline: socio-structural, that is, the changing social composition of the electorate; and party position where class voting changes in response to the parties’ ideological positions. There is evidence for both explanations. Part of the decline can be attributed to declines in trade union membership and working class identification, and increases in ‘no religion’ and education. There were also changes in the political allegiances of educational groups and working class identifiers. In addition, however, there is evidence that when the ideological positions of the major parties converge, class voting decreases.

This concluding chapter explains that the suffering endured by political exiles did not come only from the state and its agents: it was also self-imposed. Indoctrinated with Party ideology, many political exiles acknowledged their offence, wished to cleanse their minds of “erroneous thoughts,” and worked hard to show their repentance and to achieve self-redemption through manual labour. This struggle for redemption was a self-imposed affliction. When they discovered that their fate was decided more by Party policies than by their individual efforts at labour reform, many exiles found themselves in psychological agony. Internecine strife exacerbated their misery and led to moral corruption.

This chapter delves into the psychological world and behavioural patterns of political exiles. It shows that many of them, especially the rightists, still identified with Party ideology and accepted the notion of ideological remoulding through labour; many worked hard in order to show repentance and achieve self-redemption. Some, although not all, of the political exiles transformed the Party's ideological battle into self-affliction. Moreover, the chapter's most important theme is the ultra-activism of the exile community. Both on the army farms and in the Xingkaihu labour camp complex, some of the intellectual inmates attacked others in order to advance themselves and to show their loyalty to the authorities.

This chapter details the Composers' Union's reaction to the cultural bureaucracy during Andrei Zhdanov's ideological campaigns (the Zhdanovshchina, 1946–48). This period witnessed the disintegration of the theoretical congruence between the priorities of professionals and party ideologues, which had peaked during the war. Though the Composers' Union was not a direct target of the early phases of the Zhdanovshchina, professional leaders' ability to set their own professional agenda, so strong during the war, came under assault. They responded with a revealing two-part effort: first to preserve distinct professional and political spheres and then to use their control over the professional sphere to fulfill the tasks assigned to them according to the party's agenda. This effort shows the importance of agency in understanding how the profession operated. The professional leadership worked to keep political and professional spheres intact, but they did so as loyal party members.

Bridging insights from comparative political economy, the study of welfare states, party politics, and electoral studies, the aim of this introductory chapter is to provide an analytical framework that locates Europe’s contemporary challenges within the longer economic and political trajectories of its “welfare democracies,” that is, by the way economies, labor markets, welfare states, and politics interact. The chapter argues that the reactions of countries to common challenges and changes are shaped by its model of welfare democracy. The chapter identifies four distinct welfare democracies and examines the systematic variation in the way political competition and voter–party links cluster across the four types. The chapter identifies the electoral dilemmas of center-left and center-right parties in a multidimensional space with volatile voter–party links, and how the strategic configuration and the rise of new challenger parties shape their responses to challenges and crises.