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Democratic Party (democratic + party)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences85%

Kinds of Democratic Party

  • social democratic party
    		•

    Selected Abstracts

    The EU and the Welfare State are Compatible: Finnish Social Democrats and European Integration

    GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2010
    Tapio Raunio
    This article examines how the Finnish Social Democratic Party has adapted to European integration. The analysis illustrates that the Social Democrats have successfully argued to their electorate that the objectives of integration are compatible with core social democratic values. Considering that Finland was hit by a severe recession in the early 1990s, discourse about economic integration and monetary stability facilitating the economic growth that is essential for job creation and the survival of domestic welfare state policies sounded appealing to SDP voters. Determined party leadership, support from trade unions and the lack of a credible threat from the other leftist parties have also contributed to the relatively smooth adaptation to Europe. However, recent internal debates about the direction of party ideology and poor electoral performances , notably in the European Parliament elections , indicate that not all sections within the party are in favour of the current ideological choices. [source]

    Americans' Nanotechnology Risk Perception:

    JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 3 2008
    Assessing Opinion Change
    Summary Although proposed nanotechnology applications hold great promise, little is known about the potential associated risks. This lack of clarity on the level of risk associated with nanotechnology has forced people to make decisions about consumption with incomplete information. A national random digit dialing telephone survey (N= 1014) was conducted in the United States to assess knowledge of nanotechnology and perception of risk in August 2006. This investigation looks critically at individuals' responses to questions about the balance of risks and benefits of nanotechnology, both at the outset of the survey and after respondents were given a brief introduction to the potential benefits and risks of the technology. Models were created to characterzise respondents who said they did not know how nanotechnology's risks and benefits balanced in the "preinformation" condition but who, in the postinformation condition, had a different opinion. Respondents who were highly educated, members of the Republican Party, or male were more likely to switch from "don't know" in the preinformation condition to "benefits outweigh risks" in the postinformation condition, whereas respondents who were less educated, members of the Democratic Party, or female were more likely to switch from "don't know" in the preinformation condition to "risks outweigh benefits" in the postinformation condition. This is the first study to our knowledge to develop a significant model of nanotechnology risk perception change, specifically with regard to gender differences. The power of information provision to sway opinions is also supported, highlighting the importance of developing educational efforts targeting vulnerable populations. [source]

    Japan's Power Shift and Its DPRK Policy

    PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 2 2010
    Yoshinori Kaseda
    Many serious issues exist between Japan and North Korea (DPRK), such as nuclear, missile, abduction, and colonial issues. Progress on their resolution has been limited. Consequently, the two countries have remained unfriendly neighbors. Their relations recently deteriorated as a result of the DPRK's satellite launch and its second nuclear test in the first half of 2009, and Japan's strong response to them. In the middle of this period of significant tension, in August 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a landslide victory in the lower house elections, ending the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) over the last half a century. This political sea change in Japan has not resulted in major improvements in the Japan,DPRK relations. Yet, the DPJ's stance toward the DPRK's military threat and the Japan,US alliance is different from that of the LDP. So far, the DPJ has opted to avoid following in the LDP's footsteps of strengthening the alliance and expanding Japan's military operations in response to the DPRK's military threat. Instead, it intends to increase Japan's independence from the USA, and reduce US military presence in Japan. Given such intentions, the DPJ seems willing to improve Japan's relations with the DPRK. The question is whether its willingness will be translated into real actions to bring about major improvements. [source]

    Overcoming One-Party Dominance: How Contextual Politics and West Virginia Helped Put George Bush in the White House

    POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 3 2003
    Lawrence Grossback
    In West Virginia it is often said that coal is king. If so, the Democratic Party and organized labor serve as its princess. West Virginia had voted Republican in presidential contests on only three occasions since 1932. If there ever was a one-party state, West Virginia was it. Yet in 2000, Republican George Bush won the state, thus securing five electoral votes,one more than his eventual margin of victory. This article looks at how this victory came about in light of scholarly questions about how national campaigns select issues on which to campaign in targeted states and how a dominant party can be overcome through such efforts. We propose an answer to these questions that is rooted in the contextual theory of electoral politics and test this theory against qualitative data taken from local and national media and quantitative data in the form of county level election returns. [source]

    Divided Government and Democratic Presidents: Truman and Clinton Compared

    PRESIDENTIAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2000
    RICHARD S. CONLEY
    This article compares the experiences of President Truman in the 80th Congress and President Clinton in the 104th Congress. The impact of divided government is measured by examining presidential involvement on significant legislation in the two periods, presidential floor success rates, and congressional support for the president on domestic policy and veto override attempts. The article concludes that innovative legislation in both periods was largely congressionally driven, while voting alignments in Congress ultimately affected each president's ability to control policy outcomes through the use of the veto. Regional fragmentation in the Democratic Party and Republican unity combined to undercut Truman's ability to marshal strong support on his legislative stands or on veto override attempts, contributing to a series of successful anti,New Deal measures. Democratic Party cohesion in the 104th Congress allowed Clinton to ward off veto override attempts and stifle much of the Republican agenda outlined in the Contract with America. [source]

    The Transition to ,New' Social Democracy: The Role of Capitalism, Representation and (Hampered) Contestation

    BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 4 2009
    David J. Bailey
    This article argues that existing accounts of the transformation from ,traditional' to ,new' social democracy has thus far only identified the contextual changes that have prompted this move. In doing so, they have failed to account for the motives of social democratic party actors in undertaking the transition to ,new' social democracy in response to those changes. The article draws upon a critical realist method, and Marxist and anti-representational theories, to conceptualise ,traditional' social democratic party relations as suffering from tensions between constituents' demands for decommodification, the attempt by party elites to contain (and thereby ,represent') those demands and the (in)compatibility of this process of containment with the need to recommodify social relations in the light of periodic crises in contemporary capitalism. It argues that these tensions explain the attempt by party elites to promote the move towards ,new' social democracy, the (eventual) acquiescence of party constituents to those attempts and the subsequent exit from social democratic constituencies which has resulted. The argument is made with reference to the British Labour Party and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). [source]

    Trajectories of Solidarity: Changing Union-party Linkages in The UK and The USA

    BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2002
    Steve Ludlam
    This article analyses the linkage between trade unions and the US Democratic Party and the UK Labour Party in the twentieth century. A typology suited to longitudinal analysis of labour movement union-party linkages is proposed to help characterise and explain his-torical development of these two national movements through earlier types of linkage, into ,New Labour' and ,New Democratic' forms. The paper suggests that, from similar starting points, differences through time in the range of types of linkage in the two movements can be explained by a combination of factors of political economy and electoral strategy, a combination that today points towards weaker relationships. [source]

    Politics of Trade in the USA and in the Obama Administration: Implications for Asian Regionalism

    ASIAN ECONOMIC POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
    Claude BARFIELD
    F12; F13; F5; H7 Over the next four years, the Obama administration will face a series of strategic choices in forging policies to respond to a growing momentum for advances in Asian regional structures. Though faced with domestic political challenges; not least from within his own Democratic party , President Obama and his advisers will need to set a course for the reassertion of US leadership in constructing a trans-Pacific vision, through new US-based free trade agreements, signing on to existing agreements such as the P-4 (Singapore, New Zealand, Brunei, the Philippines), or consolidating existing free trade agreements among Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations. In pursuing this vision, the US should take advantage of the fact that the next three APEC leaders meetings are in Singapore (2009), Japan (2010), and the USA (2011); a sequence ripe for synergistic teamwork. [source]

    Capital and the Lagos Presidency: Business as Usual?

    BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH, Issue 3 2002
    Eduardo Silva
    Business-state relations in Chile's new democracy had been relatively tension-free for the first two governments of the centre-left Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia. However, during the first two years of the third Concertación administration, under the presidency of Ricardo Lagos, the relationship soured dramatically. At first glance, an ideological shift in the ruling coalition's centre of gravity would seem to explain the change in business-state relations. During the first two governments more conservative factions of the centrist Christian Democratic party had controlled the Concertación. Lagos, on the other hand, represented the left pole of the coalition and his socialist credentials brought the long shadow of the past on his presidency. This, however is an insufficient cause, three additional conditions must also be taken into account. The first one considers changes in the institutional and economic context that eroded the private sector's confidence in the Concertación's commitment to maintain the free-market socioeconomic model imposed under military rule. The second and third conditions are a decline in the electoral fortunes of the Concertación in favour of conservative parties and a shift in power relations among employers' associations towards more confrontational factions. [source]

    Party Competition and the Resilience of Corporatism

    GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 2 2009
    Mette Anthonsen
    This article argues that after the Golden Age of capitalism, corporatist methods of policy-making have come to depend on specific modes of party competition. In contrast to previous studies of corporatism, which have argued that corporatism depends on strong social democratic parties, this article suggests that the competition between well-defined left-wing and right-wing ,blocs' has become detrimental to corporatism. In countries with mixed governments or traditions of power-sharing, on the other hand, corporatism thrives. These conclusions are based on a comparison of four traditionally corporatist countries , Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland , from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. [source]

    Obfuscation through Integration: Legitimating ,New' Social Democracy in the European Union,

    JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 1 2005
    DAVID J. BAILEY
    Social democratic parties are increasingly supportive of European integration. Existing explanations view this as either a reassertion of social democracy at the supranational level, an adaptation to contemporary political institutions, or part of a general ideological moderation. This article argues that support for the EU enables social democratic parties to proclaim the possibility of social democracy at the supranational level, despite the absence of a substantive social democratic agenda. Thus, European integration enables social democratic parties to achieve legitimation by obfuscation through integration. This is illustrated in the cases of Sweden, the UK and France. [source]

    Trade Liberalisation and the Australian Labor Party

    AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 4 2002
    Andrew Leigh
    The three most substantial decisions to reduce Australia's trade barriers , in 1973, 1988 and 1991 , were made by Labor Governments. Labor's policy shift preceded the conversion of social democratic parties in other countries to trade liberalisation. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to consider trade policy as being shaped by more than interest groups and political institutions. Drawing on interviews with the main political figures, including Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, this article explores why the intellectual arguments for free trade had such a powerful impact on Labor's leadership, and how those leaders managed to implement major tariff cuts, while largely maintaining party unity. [source]

    Welfare municipalities: economic resources or party politics?

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WELFARE, Issue 1 2001
    Norwegian local government social programs of the 1920s
    This article analyses the introduction of Norwegian local government social security programs for the elderly, disabled persons, widows and single mothers in the 1920s. The role of local government as an agent and initiator of welfare state development has been for the most part neglected within the welfare state literature. Indeed, the first social security programs in Norway were introduced by local governments, affecting nearly half of the population. Even if these programs were not very generous compared with the social security programs of our time, many of them were equal to, or even more generous than, the national pension scheme introduced in 1936. This article examines what distinguished the social security municipalities from those that did not implement such programs, and the variation in generosity profiles. The conclusion is that the main determinant regarding the implementation and generosity of the local social security programs is the political strength of the two Norwegian socialist parties at the time , the Social democratic party and the Labour party , both being too impatient to wait for a national social security plan, and both being willing to mobilise economic resources through taxation and borrowing. [source]