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Party Ideology (party + ideology)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	66%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	33%

Selected Abstracts

Voters, Parties, and the Endogenous Size of Government

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2002
Jans-Peter Olters
Elections, often to a considerable degree, influence the fiscal policies of governments installed on the basis of their results. Yet, economists have tended to view politicians' behaviour either as being determined exogenously or as the result of a social planner's maximisation of a well-defined social-welfare function (subject to some appropriate technology and resource constraints). The latter approach, given (i) its inherent abstraction from important politico-economic interactions, (ii) the theoretical difficulty in deriving a non-contradictory "collective utility function" (as demonstrated by Arrow), and (iii) the inability to estimate a stable relationship that could explain political preferences with economic variables,is viewed as being an unsatisfactory tool for the joint description of a country's economy and polity. On the basis of explicit micro-economic foundations and a democratically coordinated decision-making mechanism over the "optimal" provision of public goods and the corresponding taxes required to finance them, this paper will introduce a simple economic model of politics that subjects individuals to a,two-tiered,political decision-making process over party membership and electoral participation, thereby endogenising the evolution of the competing parties' ideologies, households' electoral behaviour, and the key factors explaining the design of fiscal policies. Having the majority party's median delegate determine on the "optimal" degree of income redistribution suggests that a country's wealth distribution is a crucial explanatory variable explaining its politico-economic development path. [source]

Traditions of Australian governance

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2003
John Wanna
Australia's traditions of governance tend to be pragmatic and to blend different ideologies. Its traditions are less dependent on political party ideologies, and more on competing conceptions of the significant problems and the way that they should be addressed. In this article we identify five principal traditions, namely: settler,state developmentalism; civilizing capitalism; the development of a social,liberal constitutional tradition; traditions of federalism; and the exclusiveness/ inclusiveness of the state and society. These traditions have been robust and have developed over time. We show how political actors operating from within this plurality of traditions have understood the public sector and how their understandings have led to changes in the way the public sector is structured. [source]

Choice versus sensitivity: Party reactions to public concerns

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2004
Michael D. McDonald
Under certain circumstances, however, party convergence on these may preclude electoral choice, thus creating conflict between two democratic ,goods'. We examine possible tradeoffs between choice and responsiveness, and see which actually occur in 16 postwar democracies. Party policy positions turn out to be more strongly related to party ideology than popular concerns, thus privileging differentiation and choice over sensitivity and responsiveness. Implications for democratic theory and practice are considered. [source]

Government partisanship in Western democracies, 1945,1998

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2002
Heemin Kim
In this article, we put forward a continuous measure of government partisanship, which allows meaningful comparisons across countries and across time, for 17 Western democracies for the period of 1945 through 1998. Our measure is predicated upon a manifesto-based measure of party ideology recently developed by Kim and Fording (1998), along with yearly cabinet post data. After discussing the validity of our measure, we replicate one of the most cited works in comparative political economy over the last ten years , Alvarez, Garrett and Lange's (1991) analysis of economic performance , by utilizing our own measure of government partisanship. We conclude that comparativists need to exercise greater caution in interpreting and evaluating the past findings of a large number of multivariate studies in comparative politics. [source]

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]

Pragmatic Federalism: Australian Federalism from Hawke to Howard

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2007
Robyn Hollander
The article explores the nature of Australian federalism by examining four major themes in the period from Hawke to Howard. The investigation of these themes , Australian conceptions of federalism; the role of party in shaping federalism; the way problems and politics have influenced policy-making and thereby federalism; and the nature of federal judicial review , suggests that Australian federalism can most accurately be characterised as pragmatic. It appears as a federalism shaped by pressing problems, specific policy agendas and the prevailing political dynamic, rather than by overarching conceptions of federalism derived from political theory or articulated in party ideology. This pragmatic federalism explains important aspects of Australian federalism, especially the trend towards centralisation of authority. [source]