Browsing by Subject "Political parties"
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Item A report on the operations of FUSADES : promoting neoliberalism via relationships to parties, governance, transnational institutions, and mainstream media in El Salvador(2018-11-30) Cordova, Sherley Katherine; Auyero, Javier; Fridman, DanielFUSADES is the largest think tank in El Salvador, and has been successful in influencing policy towards a neoliberal direction since it was founded in 1983. Guided by four dimensions--cooperative and competitive relationships with political parties, the revolving-door between governments and think tanks, media presence, and transnational ties--pointed out in think tank scholarship, I point to the ways FUSADES is able to influence policy in El Salvador, and how they are limited by the FMLN’s rise to power. Using Thomas Medvetz’s argument--that think tanks are able to exercise influential power in various ways through their purposeful ambiguity, which allows them to legitimize themselves as objective institutions--I show how FUSADES legitimizes itself as an objective and impartial institution despite their promotion of neoliberal policies. In this thesis, I ultimately argue that FUSADES is a neoliberal institution that has multidimensional influence over Salvadoran policies that shape the country’s political and economic system. Questions I address throughout the thesis are: how is FUSADES legitimized as an “impartial” institution? What are the political implications of their professed impartiality? What allows them to influence governance? How is their influence limited? What explicit and implicit role(s) does FUSADES play in the Salvadoran economy and its political system?Item Are American political parties obsolete?(2020-08-17) Lanaux, Elizabeth Clare; Greenberg, SherriThis report examines the history of American political parties and if they have become an obsolete force in current day politics. The report uses historical context to explain today’s partisan divides as well as how a loss of power by the parties has affected the government and the country. Finally, questions are put forth to aid American citizens and future political leaders in fixing a broken systemItem Beyond the spectrum : understanding Czech Euroscepticism outside left-right classification(2017-05) O'Dowd, Kathryn Quinn; Wellhausen, Rachel L.Commonly known as Euroscepticism, critical views of the European Union have grown significantly in the thirteen years since the Czech Republic joined the EU. Especially in light of the United Kingdom’s recent vote to leave the EU, it is imperative that we understand Euroscepticism across member-states. The Czech Republic is an important place to contextualize Euroscepticism due to its history as a post-communist state. Euroscepticism occurs both on the left and right ends of the political spectrum in the Czech Republic, as such there needs to be a more holistic picture of the factors that influence adoption of a Eurosceptic platform. This study looks at factors beyond a party’s position on the left-right spectrum—such as party age, level of education, and urban/rural divide—in an effort to better understand which parties in the Czech Republic are the most likely to develop Eurosceptic platforms. While rural and less educated citizens are more likely to be Eurosceptic, party elites tend to overrule popular opinions in the development of party platforms. Age of the party, however, has a strong correlation with a party’s likelihood of being Eurosceptic. Newer parties are more likely than older ones of adopting Eurosceptic platforms, thus presents strong evidence for the growing permanence of Euroscepticism within the Czech party system.Item Campaign clientelism in Peru : an informational theory(2013-05) Munoz Chirinos, Paula; Madrid, Raúl L.; Weyland, Kurt Gerhard; Madrid, Raúl L.; Weyland, Kurt GerhardWhile clientelism has been intensively studied in comparative politics from very different theoretical perspectives and angles, scholars typically emphasize the importance of organized networks and long-term relations for sustaining electoral clientelism. However, electoral clientelism continues to be widespread in many countries despite the absence of organized parties or electoral machines. In order to account for this puzzle, I propose an informational approach that stresses the indirect effects that investments in electoral clientelism have on vote intentions. By distributing minor consumer goods, politicians buy the participation of poor voters at rallies and different sorts of campaign events. I argue that this particular subtype of electoral clientelism -- "campaign clientelism" -- helps politicians improvise political organizations, influence indifferent clients, and signal their electoral viability to strategic actors. Thus, by influencing competition and the dynamics of the race, campaign clientelism shapes vote choices and electoral outcomes. Campaign clientelism affects vote choices through two causal mechanisms. First, this subtype of electoral clientelism can help establish candidates' electoral viability, especially where alternative signals provided by well-organized parties are weak. By turning out large numbers of people at rallies, candidates establish and demonstrate their electoral prospects to the media, donors, rent-seeking activists, and voters. In this way, politicians induce more and more voters to support them strategically. Second, campaign clientelism can convince unattached rally participants of the candidates' electoral desirability. While providing different sorts of information at campaign events, politicians help campaign clients make choices. Other things being equal, viable and desirable candidates have better chances of actually achieving office. Qualitative, quantitative, and experimental evidence from Peru, a democracy without parties, supports the informational theory's expectations.Item Campaigning with empty pockets : why the liberal party wins regional elections In Colombia(2010-08) Gamboa Gutierrez, Laura; Greene, Kenneth F., 1969-; Hunter, WendyIn the past decade, party systems have collapsed in Venezuela and Peru. Scholars have suggested that Colombia may be following a similar fate. I argue it is not. Despite loosing national elections the Liberal Party still wins subnationally. Regional clientelistic networks, based on goods that do not depend upon the central state, help provide votes to those candidates who have been in politics the longest. The latter are likely to be liberal politicians, with privileged positions within the party. They get nominated, thus, they have no reason to defect. Because they distribute goods that are independent from the national state, they also have little incentive to promote national candidates. Consequently, the LP wins within the regions but is unable to attain control of national offices. As long as it keeps doing so this party is unlikely to disappear.Item Divided government, ideological polarization, and factional coalitions : a study of the House, 1947-2000(2010-12) Svensen, Eric Paul; Tulis, Jeffrey; Theriault, Sean M.To understand the dynamics of legislative gridlock, as well as account for the mixed and often conflicting findings in the divided government literature, this paper posits that the previous unidimensional approach of using divided government as an explanatory variable of interest fails to accurately reflect the changing realities of American politics since WWII. Two new and interlocking conceptual approaches are introduced that expand the dimensionality of legislative gridlock: ideological polarization explained through the temporal shift of political parties from a party system of moderation and universalistic policy outputs, to one where particularistic goals became much more common. As studies of divided government center on temporally-bound concepts, they ignore most of the inter- and intra-party variation evident throughout the latter 20th century.Item From competition to monopoly : establishing party dominance in post-communist Russia(2014-12) White, Allison Christine; Moser, Robert G., 1966-; Lin, Tse-Min; Madrid, Raul; Elkins, Zachary; Trubowitz, Peter; Moraski, BryonWhat explains dominant party emergence and strength and opposition party weakness in Russia? Important structural underpinnings of party dominance, namely a weak party system, were present in Russia even in the 1990s, but it was not until the 2000s that a genuine dominant party emerged, despite Yeltsin‘s attempts to fashion a successful party of power of his own prior to United Russia. I focus on a weak party system as a factor contributing to dominant party emergence, using extensive empirical analyses drawn from original fine-grained data from the case of Russia. I contend that a combination of contingent factors, namely leadership by an individual with political clout, favorable economic developments that allow for patronage politics, and a security situation that allows for centralization of power, as well as decisive structural factors, specifically electoral-geographic conditions ripe for machine politics in the countryside and areas with dense populations of ethnic minorities, have buttressed the dominant party and frozen out the opposition in Russia. My dissertation leverages new dataset that combines fine-grained, county- and region-level data, including county-level election results from five Russian parliamentary elections—1995, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011—and county-level census data on sociodemographic indicators, as well as data on regional contextual characteristics, such as gross regional product and resource dependence, to examine patterns of electoral support for various parties.Item From parliamentarianism to terrorism and back again(2011-05) Martin, Nancy Susanne; Moser, Robert G., 1966-; Pedahzur, Ami; Barany, Zoltan; McDonald, Patrick; Weinberg, LeonardWhat are the conditions under which terrorist groups turn to party politics? Under what conditions do political parties turn to terrorism? What types of political groups are more likely to turn to or from terrorism? Answers to these questions provide new insights into explanations for the formation of linkages between political parties and terrorist groups. While political parties and terrorist groups are often differentiated by the tactics they employ, empirical evidence shows that these political groups sometimes shift tactics, making use of violent and nonviolent tactics either concurrently or consecutively. Shifts between violent and nonviolent tactics occur when a political party supports, creates, or becomes a terrorist group and when a terrorist group supports, creates, or becomes a political party. Cases in which terrorist groups turn to party politics have been addressed in the literature, most often in the form of case studies. Less attention has been paid to the more numerous cases of political parties forming linkages with terrorist groups. Both types of tactical shifts are under-studied and under-theorized. This dissertation fills a gap in the largely separate literatures on political parties and terrorism through an analysis of international-, state-, and group-level factors associated with the formation of party-terror linkages and a discussion of the implications of these factors for the construction of a more general theory of political group adaptation.Item Ideology and interests : a hierarchical Bayesian approach to spatial party preferences(2013-08) Mohanty, Peter Cushner; Jessee, Stephen A., 1980-This paper presents a spatial utility model of support for multiple political parties. The model includes a "valence" term, which I reparameterize to include both party competence and the voters' key sociodemographic concerns. The paper shows how this spatial utility model can be interpreted as a hierarchical model using data from the 2009 European Elections Study. I estimate this model via Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) using a block Gibbs sampler and show that the model can capture broad European-wide trends while allowing for significant amounts of heterogeneity. This approach, however, which assumes a normal dependent variable, is only able to partially reproduce the data generating process. I show that the data generating process can be reproduced more accurately with an ordered probit model. Finally, I discuss trade-offs between parsimony and descriptive richness and other practical challenges that may be encountered when v building models of party support and make recommendations for capturing the best of both approaches.Item Information Wars : party elites, think tanks and polarization in Congress(2020-05-15) Fagan, Edward James; Jones, Bryan D.; Epp, Derek; Theriault, Sean; Wlezien, Christopher; Wolbrecht, ChristinaFor much of modern history, U.S. political parties adopted a consensus non-partisan knowledge regime, consisting of experts at universities, non-partisan think tanks and government agencies, to inform policymaking decisions. However, after the consensus supported by the knowledge regime enabled the expansion of the scope of federal government domestic policy during the 1950s-1970s period, ideological conservatives rejected the non-partisan regime and created their own alternative knowledge regime centered around a small number of party-aligned think tanks. Democrats followed a few decades later to create their own alternative knowledge regime. These think tanks fill a privileged role advising political parties that is reserved for formal party organizations in most democracies. I argue that they use a variety of strategies, including issue redefinition, activating latent preferences and elite persuasion, to move their party’s positions away from the center and toward the left or right. They published biased policy analysis that often makes claims which conflict with claims made by non-partisan policy analysis. As they become larger and more influential across time or between issues, party-aligned think tanks increase polarization in Congress.Item Keeping your friends close : how the House Freedom Caucus organized for survival(2017-11-01) McGee, Zachary Alden; Theriault, Sean M., 1972-; Jones, Bryan DPolarization of the two parties in the U.S. House is clear, but the intraparty homogeneity required for different theories of party government has faded. Party leaders have responded to this new factional insurgence with punishment. In this paper I ask how insurgent factions survive powerful parties and their leaders. By examining the member-to-member contribution networks of House Republicans from 2013-2016, I find an active and defensive House Freedom Caucus (HFC), whose members support one another more than they support other House Republicans. And, I show how HFC members create an independent fundraising network to insulate themselves from partisan retribution.Item The MAS presidential victory in Bolivia : a call for political renewal and the changing role of the media(2007-05) Bush, Sarah Katherine, 1978-; Madrid, Raul L.The economic and political models in Bolivia have failed to respond to the continuing economic need of impoverished Bolivians and to provide Bolivians with meaningful representative democracy. Evo Morales’ ability to garner nearly 54 percent of the popular vote in the 2005 presidential elections demonstrated a clear mandate and a demand for political and economic renewal. Morales won due to a combined loss of faith in the political parties’ ability to create economic opportunities within the neoliberal model imposed in 1985 and disillusion with endemic corruption and clientelism. The ethnic question also weighed heavily in Morales’ victory. This thesis will examine the combination combination of factors that led to the surprising outcome to the elections, as well as the changing role of the press in Bolivia. Calls for improved ethical standards and press freedoms have occurred alongside the political openings that led to Morales’ victory. The country still struggles to ensure a free press in the face of increasing incidences of attacks and intimidation against reporters, yet with the recent political renewal there are signs of progress towards higher journalistic standards.Item Minority representation and majority grievances : explaining radical right-wing support(2023-04-13) Pitre Young, Ariel Symone; Liu, Amy H.What motivates electoral support for radical right-wing parties (RRP)? Existing literature argues that people vote for RRPs when majority groups are aggrieved by minority groups. In this report, I contend this is problematic in two respects. First, not all minority groups are conceptually equal. Since all groups are situated in some social hierarchy, it follows that some minorities are more acceptable than others. Second, the grievance mechanism does not theoretically differentiate between descriptive or substantive representation. To address these shortcomings, I empirically test my argument in Central-Eastern Europe – home to large rising RRPs. Specifically, I empirically test my argument using both observational data in Central-Eastern Europe and experimental data in Romania to leverage between the different grievance types and minority groups. Findings suggest radical right electoral outcomes are determined by the type of representation in institutions. Additionally, I find that evaluations of minority groups vary depending on social distance to the majority group, resource extraction, and visibility.Item Political parties as brands: developing and testing a conceptual framework for understanding party equity(2007-12) Scremin, Gracieli, 1977-; Stout, Patricia A.Brands are synthesizers of meaning that affect the manner in which consumers respond to marketing efforts such as advertising. In the context of politics, political parties exert a similar role. In this dissertation, I examined the role of parties-as-brands and offered a model based on the concept of party equity -- i.e., the added value generated by an entity's (e.g., a political candidate or organization) association to a particular party. Hypotheses were offered addressing party equity outcomes in the context of party personality congruent and incongruent political campaign messages. The moderating role of participants' party loyalty and political knowledge was also examined. Results indicated that party personality congruence did not affect responses to candidates whose personality matched traits commonly associated with the Democratic Party but that Republican candidates had an advantage over Democratic and Independent candidates when their personality matched traits commonly associated with the Republican Party. In the language of party equity this meant that Democratic personality traits yielded no added value or equity for Democratic candidates but that Republican personality traits generated equity for Republican candidates.Item Pork, parties, and priorities : partisan politics and overseas military deployments(2018-08-23) Stravers, Andrew Joel; McDonald, Patrick J., 1973-; Barany, Zoltan; Findley, Michael; Martinez Machain, CarlaSince the end of WWII, the United States has maintained a sizable military presence around the world. As one of the main mechanisms that the US uses to exercise its military power abroad, it is a defining characteristic of the international order. This issue has gotten much less attention in the field of International Relations than is warranted by its importance, and the attention that it has gotten has been largely focused on strategic issues and the demand for US military forces. To this, I add the domestic politics within the United States that determine the supply of American military forces that are available for use abroad. Because of the economic importance of US forces to congressional districts, for Members of Congress to agree to send forces overseas, they must be compensated in a way that fits their distributional preferences. Agreement on the means of compensation is easier to find when a Member’s copartisans control both branches of the US government, and when politicians on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue agree on the strategic priority that demands the deployment of US military personnel overseas. Using time-series cross-sectional models, I show that, in addition to strategic considerations, the President’s party strength in Congress and the proportion of moderates in the Senate, are key determinants of US deployment outcomes. Higher proportions of the President’s copartisans and moderates in Congress are correlated with more forces being sent overseas. In addition, I examine case evidence from Kosovo, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe that demonstrates the causal mechanisms. In the end, this is an important contribution, because it adds an important determinant of deployment patterns to the literature on the nature of the US military presence around the world. It provides a statistical model for predicting troop levels around the world, and it solves existing puzzles in deployment patterns that arose through a sole focus on strategic considerations.Item Relatos y miradas de prácticas electorales en el norte argentino. El caso de Ingeniero Juárez, Provincia de Formosa(2006-06) Sautu, Ruth; Vega, Lorena; Boniolo, Paula; Borghini, Mariángeles; Casalis, Alejandro; Dalle, Pablo; Ferrero, Juan Pablo; Guerrero, Silvina Lorena; Lizitza, Nahuel; Mantilla, María Jimena; Macaudier, Verónica; Molinaro, VanesaItem The causes and consequences of valence attacks in European multi-party systems(2020-12-03) Weitzel, Daniel; Somer-Topcu, Zeynep; Wlezien, Christopher; Albertson, Bethany; Tavits, MargitWhat are the causes and consequences of valence attacks in multi-party elections? The strategic electoral behavior of political parties in multi-party systems has so far predominantly been studied in the spatial framework, which assumes that political parties compete for votes, seats, and office with ideological, issue, and policy appeals. In this framework, parties appeal to voters with programmatic messages in election manifestos, speeches, and other campaign advertisements. Voters (more or less accurately) evaluate these programmatic messages with regard to the proximity to their own programmatic preferences and cast a vote based on this evaluation. However, spatial competition through ideology, issues, or policy is not the only way political parties can compete in elections. In fact, there is a long-standing literature, predominantly in the United States, that highlights a second dimension of party competition and voter evaluations: valence. Electoral competition based on valence is focused on voter evaluations of inherent traits and qualities of candidates and parties. Valence is more generally seen as consisting of attributes or characteristics that are universally desirable. In this dissertation, I focus on honesty, integrity, competence, unity, and charisma. I argue that the use of valence, especially valence attacks, as an electoral strategy is very risky for political parties in Europe. The party systems of Europe emerged out of the societal cleavages of the Industrial Revolution. Parties have historically build and up to now still present themselves as organizations rooted in ideology. This emphasis on ideology, issues, and policy – a focus on content – makes it more difficult to deviate from electoral strategies that are focused on content. Spatial competition certainly is not the only way parties can and do compete against each other. However, non-spatial competition can more easily be called out by competitors. It is more likely to be branded as out of the ordinary, unfair, or dirty. This means that this type of electoral competition is more likely to be associated with unintended consequences. In this dissertation, I develop the argument that political parties can reduce the risk of valence attacks and minimize their potential for unintended consequences. Valence attacks that are more likely to be perceived by competitors, journalists, and voters as legitimate electoral conduct are less likely to backfire. In the multi-party systems of Europe, this legitimacy for attacks can be borrowed from the predominant way of competing for votes, seats, and office: the spatial competition. More specifically, I argue that there are two types of valence attacks: valence attacks that are connected to issue statements and valence attacks that are not. It is the first type of valence attack that is more likely to be perceived as legitimate, the second type is more likely to be registered as something out of the ordinary or even inappropriate. Political parties should hence be more likely to use valence attacks that are connected to ideology, issues, or policy. They should also be more likely to be rewarded when they use these attacks. Parties should be less likely to use valence attacks that are not connected to spatial competition and if they do use them face repercussions from voters. In order to test my hypotheses, I use data on party campaign discussions from the Comparative Campaign Dynamics Project (CCDP). This data set includes a detailed collection of valence attacks between 60 parties in 21 elections in 10 European countries between 2005 and 2015. I supplement this party-level data with individual-level survey data from National Election Studies and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project. This cross-national data is supplemented with panel data from the 2014-2017 British National Election Study, where five waves of the internet panel were matched with data from the CCP. I also rely on reports from campaigns in Europe and the U.S. that illustrate that my theoretical argument is reflected in real-world decision making of party leaders and campaign managers. The results of my statistical analyses support the legitimacy argument. Political parties that connect their valence attack statements with issues are less likely to be punished for these attacks and more likely to be rewarded. Political parties are also much more likely to use issue-related than nonissue-related valence attack statements. These findings have important implications for our understanding of electoral competition in multi-party systems. I identify the conditions under which valence attacks work in these systems and how they work as parties intend them to. I also demonstrate that spatial competition and valence are closely connected in elections. These two modes of electoral competition have been treated as separate strategies in extant literature. However, the findings of this dissertation show that they build on each other.Item The impact of public participation in constitution making(2018-10-09) Hudson, Alexander Edward; Elkins, Zachary, 1970-; Brinks, Daniel; Jacobsohn, Gary; Levinson, Sanford; Wlezien, ChristopherPublic participation has long been an important element of constitution-making processes. It increasingly takes place early in the process, ostensibly offering citizens an opportunity to contribute directly to the text of their new national charter. Despite growth in the use and political prominence of participatory mechanisms, we know little about their effects. This dissertation argues that the impact of public participation on the text of constitutions is small in almost all cases, but that there are systematic ways in which this impact varies. Specifically, the variation in the effects of public participation is for the most part determined by the strength of political parties in the constitution-making process. In constitution-making bodies where there are strong parties, there is very little room for effective public participation. In such systems, there will be almost no impact from public participation, even where significant amounts of time and money are devoted to facilitating it. Conversely, in constitution-making bodies where political parties are not present, or where parties are weak, there will be a greater impact from public participation, as drafters are unprotected from pressure groups and also more reliant on the information they provide. I further argue that the informational challenges of assessing the impact of public participation prevent the majority of participants from determining whether or not the participation program was effective. Thus, public participation programs can serve to increase public support for a constitution even when drafters do not make any changes to the content of the constitution in response to public input. This theory is tested through studies of three cases of highly participatory constitution making. Keeping the level and means of participation relatively constant, the three cases have been chosen to include a case with strong parties (South Africa), a case with weak parties (Brazil), and a case where the constitution was drafted without parties (Iceland). As predicted, the South African case shows negligible impacts from public participation, Brazil has some scattered impacts, and Iceland shows high levels of impact. The findings here demonstrate that the expected relationships between citizens, political parties, and interest groups exist even in constitution-making processes. Moreover, it shows that there are trade-offs between stability, textual quality, and more effective public input.Item The systematic impact of intraparty factions in the U.S. House of Representatives(2021-08-05) McGee, Zachary Alden; Theriault, Sean M., 1972-; Craig, Alison W; Jones, Bryan D; Rohde, David WIn the modern U.S. Congress, plagued by partisan polarization, scholars stand to learn much from turning inward and examining the dynamics and priorities within the two parties. This dissertation identifies eight intraparty factions, measures their policy agendas, and examines their member-to-member contribution behaviors from 2001 to 2018. The original agenda data contain more than 15,000 policy documents, press releases, and endorsed bills, which I collected from the factions’ websites, social media accounts, and other documented activities in Congress. The contribution data are collected from Leadership Political Action Committee (LPAC) disbursements from the Federal Election Commission's official website. These quantitative data are paired with a set of interviews with current and former members of Congress and staffers both in member offices and faction offices. The data and analyses reveal the asymmetric nature of the legislative parties with Republican intraparty factions battling over a small set of ideologically charged issues and Democratic intraparty factions engaging in diverse agendas consistent with their “big tent” coalition. I argue—and find evidence—that intraparty factions provide a vital avenue for rank-and-file members to extract policy concessions from party leaders in a highly centralized power structure and to support ideological allies in their pursuits for reelection.Item Why factions matter : a theory of party dominance at the subnational level(2013-05) Ibarra-Rueda, Hector; Madrid, Raúl L.; Greene, Kenneth F., 1969-; Madrid, Raúl L.; Greene, Kenneth F., 1969-What explains the resilience of formerly nationally dominant parties at the subnational level? This dissertation demonstrates that factionalism is key. When intra-party factions are united, subnational dominant parties retain power even under adverse electoral conditions. By contrast, divisions and conflicts among internal groups lead these parties to lose even in favorable electoral contexts. I test these claims using a variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence from Mexico, focusing on the electoral performance of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) in contemporary gubernatorial elections. Democratization potentially undermines unity in dominant parties because it provides politicians with viable exit options (i.e., joining the opposition) and because authoritarian central party committees no longer control subnational politics. Yet, I argue that factions can cooperate under democracy when they were more autonomous from the center during the authoritarian period. The negotiation skills acquired in the past help them "get along" in the absence of an external enforcer. By contrast, previously subordinated factions never acquired such skills and quickly became antagonistic to each other under democracy. As I show, collaboration had positive electoral consequences in subnational elections whereas antagonism had pernicious ones.