Do Nigerian political parties take left/right ideological positions? Perspectives in comparative politics see party competition in Africa's ‘third wave’ democracies as devoid of disagreement on class or economic grounds – and thus as ‘absent’ of left/right ideology. Yet, a dearth of disagreement among governing parties can also suggest ideological agreement or ‘convergence’. This article maps the development of the left/right cleavage in Nigeria's party system, examining the evolution of economic pledges in the manifestos of parties that took power across Nigeria's four attempts at electoral democracy. It finds that relative to the deeper levels of economic disagreement voiced in earlier periods, the governing parties of Nigeria's Fourth Republic are now largely unanimous in the enunciation of their economic visions. Evidence of such convergence troubles a strict insistence on either the polarisation or ‘absence’ of economic ideology among governing parties in Africa's largest electoral democracy.

This article investigates determinants of candidate turnover in 10 European established democracies with list-PR electoral systems. We identify party and election variables that affect the supply and demand of new candidates on the parties’ lists. In addition, we apply a weighted candidate turnover measure to investigate the dynamic of renewal on high-ranked list positions. We built an original dataset that contains 3344 electoral lists of represented political parties. Hypotheses are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of political party list renewal rates. At the party level, leadership change and larger party size in terms of members are found to coincide with higher general turnover. At the system level, general turnover is higher in elections with closed lists and high electoral volatility. At higher positions on the list, candidate turnover appears not to be affected by the party- and system-level variables identified in the broader literature.

This article proposes a measure of the social structuration of political parties. The measure has some distinctive virtues. It assesses the social bases of partisanship from the standpoint of the political party, and it provides a simple and transparent method for assessing the relative weight of social-structural and behavioral factors for party composition. We illustrate the power of this measure through a comparison of political parties in 30 European countries since 1975.

For three European states in particular, the Covid-19 pandemic has served to catalyze pre-existing territorial disputes. While the United Kingdom, Spain, and Belgium have all had very different responses to the pandemic, in all three cases the actions of central and regional government have put existing structures of regional autonomy under strain. In Spain, the pandemic response has become intertwined with the Catalan independence debate (especially in disputes between pro-independence parties), and elsewhere in the country it has cemented co-operative relationships between moderate nationalists and the statewide left. In Belgium, the pandemic has accentuated territorial disputes and further complicated government formation. And in the UK diverging responses to the pandemic have helped boost nationalist movements in the devolved nations; particularly the cause of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and their ambitions to create an independent Scottish state. While the year has been highly significant for secessionist movements in all three states, only in the UK does a decisive shift towards state-breakup seem to have occurred. The article argues that whether or not a secessionist movement benefits from the pandemic is highly contingent on contextual factors, including the performance of state-level governments in responding to the pandemic and the relative autonomy of regional governments during the response.

This article investigates the dimension and evolution of the financing of political parties. It focuses on 28 parties in the five major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain), analysing the parties’ budgets from 2002 to 2016. The article's assessment shows that the availability of funds increased until the beginning of the Great Recession (2008), and then decreased, mainly due to a decline in public support for parties. Diminished state generosity has led parties to look for different sources of financing: the article shows the proportion of self-funding resources in terms of membership fees and private donations that has sustained the parties’ finances. Finally the article presents a model that helps to explain the shrinking of parties’ income by including parties’ ideological alignment, electoral outcome, presence in government and share of public financing, and countries’ public spending and GDP level, to investigate the plausible causes of the reduction of parties’ income.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on labor incorporation in developing areas based on existing historiography and archival material from Turkey. Specifically, we argue that the political incorporation of labor during the early period of state building is strongly influenced by elite preferences over who constitutes the nation. In doing so, we address a neglected dimension by putting the emphasis on ethnoreligious politics: the founders of modern Turkey pushed for a homogenizing program that prioritized Muslim-Turks over other minority groups, eventually paving the way to the state-led incorporation of labor. This is different from the experience of most Latin American countries that the existing literature draws on. Our findings make an important contribution to theoretical debates by highlighting the subtle link between nation-building and the pathways of labor incorporation in developing contexts.

In 1943, Georgia’s constitution was amended to lower the voting age to eighteen, making it the first—and for twelve years, the only—state in the Union to establish a voting-age requirement below twenty-one. Despite being widely considered at the time by several national and state political actors, Georgia’s reform represents an important and unappreciated historical puzzle. First, few would regard mid-twentieth-century Georgia as being even modestly progressive, especially regarding voting rights. Second, there is no evidence that an organized group lobbied for the reform. Further, there is no reason why lowering the voting age was inherently unique to Georgia qua Georgia. Instead, this study offers a detailed historical analysis highlighting the dedication of its young governor, and argues that Ellis Arnall’s political entrepreneurialism coupled with growing intraparty factionalism in Georgian politics and strategic timing facilitated this rare instance of electoral progressivism in the Deep South.

This article revisits the foundations of prior research on the effects of plebiscitarian selection mechanisms on candidates' electoral strength. While previous studies do not nest political parties' decision making, the authors argue that party primary effects entail the interdependence of party procedures for candidate selection. The article assesses the validity of the two approaches. Using original data from seven parties and 296 regional elections in Canada, Germany and Spain, and from sixty-two pre-election polls in Germany and Spain, it shows that, other things equal, primary-selected candidates are not stronger than those selected by other procedures. However, there is evidence of a penalty for parties that do not select candidates by primary when their main rival does, in particular when the primary election is not divisive and is held closer to the general election.

The former rebel party Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP) in Sierra Leone has struggled with a discredited wartime reputation and electoral defeats throughout the post-war period. In spite of this, the party has remained loyal to its wartime revolutionary ideas, symbols and political rhetoric. Why is this the case? In this article, I argue that the answer lies in the premises of party politics in war-torn states and new democracies on the African continent. In a political landscape where brokerage is power, retaining wartime identities can sometimes serve as a valuable source of (potential) patronage. With few other options for access to resources and opportunities, the core of the party membership has clung to its past as a means to both rally electoral support among the marginalized ex-combatant community and to get access to the long-awaited funds that were promised to them in the peace negotiations.

Why is it that ruling parties with origins as rebel movements fighting against perceived injustices and exclusion often abandon the ideas and visions of state transformation that they had articulated when they were fighting? Using the case of the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie–Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD) in Burundi, this article shows that rather than experiencing an abrupt ideological change when the CNDD-FDD became a ruling party, there had always been ideological divergence within the movement. Over time, progressive ideas of inclusive state transformation were repeatedly sidelined in favour of a focus on resistance, and then state capture. Paradoxically, then, once it became a ruling party the CNDD-FDD reverted to governance practices that were akin to those that had led it to take up arms in the first place. This is not because of an absence of commitment to progressive ideas among some CNDD-FDD members, but because the internal dynamics of the CNDD-FDD meant that those factions relying on power politics eventually gained the upper hand over those that articulated a more progressive, inclusive vision, due in part to their ability to back their ideas with force.

L'enjeu politique de la fixation du salaire minimum a été relativement peu étudié en science politique. Dans cet article, nous examinons le rôle des partis politiques de gauche sur la fixation du salaire minimum. Comme prédit par la théorie des ressources du pouvoir, les partis de gauche devraient encourager l'augmentation du salaire minimum. Nous postulons toutefois que cet effet diffère selon le niveau de corporatisme. Plus particulièrement, nous pensons que l'effet des partis politiques de gauche devrait être plus faible sous des niveaux de corporatisme élevés puisque les partenaires sociaux sont davantage consultés et que les gouvernements ont tendance à leur déléguer la régulation des salaires. Nos résultats confirment ces hypothèses. Ils indiquent que le salaire minimum tend à augmenter lorsque les gouvernements sont davantage à gauche idéologiquement et que cette relation est plus forte lorsque le degré de corporatisme est faible.

This article investigates the emergence of new partisan identities in Thailand. Using data from Thailand's last several elections I trace the emergence of partisanship over the last 15 years, particularly in the north and northeast. The change in the nature of partisanship has helped turn long-simmering tensions into an increasingly intractable political conflict. This mass partisan alignment has upset the equilibrium of Thai politics, transforming what was once an inefficient but modest-stakes game of political horse-trading into a zero sum game with extremely high stakes.

The court in this case decided that state subsidy to political parties that discriminate against women is prohibited by international treaties, notably the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

This raises a number of issues. Where the discrimination is for religious reasons, does sex equality need to be balanced against religious freedom? Both are usually seen as fundamental rights. What about discrimination against men, in favour of women; is that also against the law? Finally, is the obligation not to discriminate only binding on the state, or also on the party itself? Could such a party be banned from politics? Some of these issues were touched on by the court, although not convincingly, and some of them, such as religious freedom, were scandalously ignored.