Search Results

General Charles de Gaulle, founder of the Fifth French Republic in 1958, was a bitter opponent of the unchecked power of political parties, for which he blamed the failure of earlier Republics, but his vision of the future was as naïve as his diagnosis of the past was tendentious, for the problem of the Third and Fourth Republics was rather the weakness of parties. The main surprise of the Fifth Republic was the emergence, from 1962, of the secure parliamentary majorities that France had hitherto lacked; in addition, since 1965, when de Gaulle himself found that he needed party support to campaign for re‐election, the presidency itself has been a key stake in party competition. These two developments transformed the role of parties, and the party system of the Fifth Republic may now be described as one of bipolar multipartism. This contains two distinct and opposed sets of dynamics (pressures): bipolarity, (which is encouraged in important ways by France's political institutions), and forces in the party system pointing towards fragmentation and multipartism; these pressures exist in every party system, but the French case is unusual because they are so evenly balanced. The introduction discusses this situation; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength (finance and staffing, and activism, and parties in civil society), and party functionality (in political recruitment, governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, and political communication and education).

Why do we see the emergence of strong, cross-ethnic opposition parties in some democratizing regimes, while opposition parties in other countries remain organizationally underdeveloped and often fragment on ethnic lines? Chapter 2 provides a more detailed account of the book’s two major arguments. It begins by defining party strength, focusing especially on the organizational qualities of strong, durable parties. It then turns to the theoretical framework fleshed out in the remainder of the book. The first argument is that authoritarian strategies of rule left in place institutional structures that either facilitated or impeded cross-ethnic collective action. Where authoritarian states relied on alliances with organized labor, they created mobilizing structures that could later be used by opposition parties. Secondly, the book argues that polarizing and confrontational strategies build stronger parties. These kinds of appeals and tactics, however, also raise the likelihood of violence and authoritarian backlash. The book, therefore, underlines one of the ambiguities inherent in democratization: democracy requires strong parties, but party-building is more effective where it intensifies conflict.

This chapter summarizes the key points raised by the book, with particular emphasis on questions of organizational control, party-building, and party strength in Congress. It begins with a discussion of the role that the party caucus has played in hastening a consistent House organization by the majority party. It then considers the organizational cartel's relationship with the procedural cartel and the applicability of the organizational cartel mechanism in other legislatures, including the U.S. Senate, American state legislatures, and parliaments around the world. The chapter also examines Martin van Buren's legacy, focusing on his role in developing the organizational capacity of the Democratic Party and his efforts in building the American party system, before concluding with some final thoughts on political parties and congressional organization.

Chapter 6 offers the final empirical test of party identity and institutional partisanship using roll call votes in the state legislative chambers. Party identity pervades roll call voting, in that votes on women’s issues legislation typically divide women and men legislators along party lines or pass with near unanimity between partisans. Rarely do partisan women step outside of their party identity to cross lines and support a women’s issue position with women of the other party. The strength of institutional partisanship determines women legislators’ voting to some degree; on several women’s issues votes it appears even more difficult for women legislators to abandon a party position on a vote because of a closely held party majority. However, because the underlying effect of party identity splits women’s votes along party lines on women’s issues even in weak institutional party chambers, it remains somewhat difficult to separate the effect of party identity from that of institutional partisanship on roll call voting.

This chapter makes three claims and pursues them though the historical record. One is that factional conflict at the nomination stage is a sign of party strength rather than weakness. Another is that factions have endowed the presidential selection process with much more continuity than most analysts have argued. Despite major changes in the mode of presidential nominations over the last one hundred and forty years, factions have consistently been important pieces in the presidential nomination puzzle. Finally, the historical account presented here suggests that the decline-of-parties thesis—as seen through the lens of presidential nominations—is wedded to a questionable historical periodization.

This chapter examines the crucial role that political parties play in maintaining a unified voting bloc in parliament. This party-based approach sets it apart from most existing studies in this area. The focus of this chapter is on the factors that incentivize MPs to vote in a unified manner. The chapter tests three hypotheses: (1) whether party unity is improved by greater party organizational strength; (2) whether the greater threat of disciplinary sanctions increases party unity; and (3) whether greater access to resources by MPs reduces party unity. The authors use the Political Party Database (PPDB) dataset to test these hypotheses in thirteen of Europe’s democracies, finding strong support for the third hypothesis, some support for the first hypothesis, but little support for the second hypothesis. This study adds an important new dimension to research on how institutions affect party unity by showing the distinct role party organizations can play in this regard.

Electoral institutions drive the political strategies and economic policies of incumbents in developing states where democracy is consolidated over time. This chapter develops a theoretical model that identifies the most critical set of electoral institutions that are likely to affect trade politics and trade policy choices of politicians in consolidated democracies across the developing world. The model suggests that “political particularism” – that drives the discipline, internal strength and centralization of political parties – is the single most important electoral institutional factor that drives trade politics and the political relationship between labor and capital in established developing country democracies. Using the logic of game-theory, the model shows that political leaders in candidate-centered democracies (which have weak political parties) are more likely to weigh the trade policy of interests of labor over protectionist owners of import-competing industries. The model is further extended to show that incumbents in party-centered democracies are more susceptible to lobbying by protectionist industries and are also more likely to pander to the interests of capital over labor. The substantive implications of the theoretical model developed in this chapter are presented and discussed in detail.