Parties between thresholds: state subsidies and party behaviour in post-communist democracies

Much has been written about what makes political parties form, persist, change and die. One factor often brought into this discussion is the availability of resources in general and of state financing of political parties in particular. However, an empirical link at the aggregate level is difficult to establish because of various issues of conceptualization, operationalization and measurement. Working at the party level and taking into consideration that state funding provides important resources that make running in elections and achieving a party’s electoral target more likely; this article provides empirical support to the claim that parties who (anticipate to be or) are being funded by the state have a higher chance of forming and surviving in an independent format in the party system. Based on a comparison of 14 post-communist party systems, the main conclusion of the article is that the survival rate for such parties exceeds the survival rate for the non-publicly funded ones in almost all cases. A second, novel and more particular, finding is that parties who find themselves outside parliament, but above the payout threshold, display higher survival rates than parties who are below it

(Extreme) political polarization and party patronage

The contemporary literature on political parties has identified their gradual but consistent shift away from civil society and towards the state. As parties are becoming ever increasingly dependent on state resources and exclusively interested in governing, as Mair (Ruling the void: The hollowing of western democracy [Verso Books, 2013]) suggested, and patronage is a fundamental to that relationship, the degree and modes of party patronage becomes pivotal to understanding their performance, and the ways they organize and govern. In this paper we argue that party patronage is likely to be structured by the nature of political competition and explore the effects of political polarization, which is a feature of political competition relatively independent from the precise format of a party system, on patronage practices. We advance a theoretical argument which systematically links different types of political polarization with different patterns of party patronage, arguing that extreme polarization incentivizes political parties to develop heavily partisan strategies of party patronage which, in turn, further fuel political polarization. Thus, we also contribute to burgeoning literature on political polarization and its negative effects on the functioning of both political parties and overall political systems

Party patronage in contemporary democracies: results from an expert survey in twenty-two countries from five regions

This Research Note presents a new dataset of party patronage in 22 countries from five regions. The data was collected using the same methodology to compare patterns of patronage within countries, across countries and across world regions that are usually studied separately. The Note addresses three research questions that are at the centre of debates on party patronage, which is understood as the power of political parties to make appointments to the public and semi-public sector: the scope of patronage, the underlying motivations and the criteria on the basis of which appointees are selected. The exploration of the dataset shows that party patronage is, to a different degree, widespread across all regions. The data further shows differences between policy areas, types of institutions such as government ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and higher, middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. It is demonstrated that the political control of policy making and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments. However, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve the purpose of both political control and rewarding supporters in exchange for votes and services. Finally, the data shows that parties prefer to select appointees who are characterised by political and personal loyalty as well as professional competence

Party patronage in contemporary democracies: results from an expert survey in 22 countries from five regions

This Research Note presents a new dataset of party patronage in 22 countries from five regions. The data was collected based on the same methodology to compare patterns of patronage within countries, across countries and across world regions that are usually studied separately. The Note addresses three research questions that are at the center of debates on party patronage, which is understood as the power of political parties to make appointments to the public and semi-public sector: the scope of patronage, the underlying motivations, and the criteria on the basis of which appointees are selected. The exploration of the dataset shows that party patronage is, to a different degree, widespread across all regions. The data further shows differences between policy areas, types of institutions such as government ministries, agencies and state-owned enterprises, and higher, middle and lower ranks of the bureaucracy. It is demonstrated that the political control of policy-making and implementation is the most common motivation for making political appointments. However, in countries with a large scope of patronage, appointments serve the purpose of both political control and rewarding supporters in exchange for votes and services. Finally, the data shows that parties prefer to select appointees who are characterized by political and personal loyalty as well as professional competence