Local traditions of voting behaviour and party structure in Lower Saxony (Oldenburg/Ostfriesland)

Der Verfasser untersucht den Zusammenhang von traditionellem Wahlverhalten und Parteienstruktur in den Bezirken Aurich und Oldenburg im nordwestlichen Niedersachsen. Im Mittelpunkt des Interesses steht besonders die Frage, warum in protestantischen und bäuerlichen Gebieten die traditionellen Wähler liberaler Parteien in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik zur NSDAP überwechselten, um dann von 1947 bis Ende der sechziger Jahre wiederum liberal zu wählen. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß das untersuchte Datenmaterial signifikante Unterschiede im Zusammenwirken von Sozialstruktur und Wahlverhalten in städtischen und ländlichen Gebieten ersichtlich macht, wobei insbesondere für größere, weiterentwickelte Regionen das Zusammenwirken von lokalen und regionalen Besonderheiten, regionalen politischen Traditionen und lokalen Kandidaten von Bedeutung ist. (RS)'Ever since German electoral politics attracted enough money and manpower the survey researchers have taken over almost the entire fields. Social scientists applying political ecology or other techniques of historical electoral research, e.g. von Schuckmann, Sahner and Troitzsch, have been a scattered minority. The data available for statistical analysis are election results and census data collected by the various statistical offices. Broken down to administrative units at the local level (urban and rural districts) the data demonstrate significant differences of social structure and political behaviour. Processing of machine readable data allows for larger regions, more sophisticated techniques and reveals contextual factors most commonly disregarded by survey researchers: sub-national cleavages, regional political traditions and local political personnel. Subject of the study presented here is voting behaviour in the northwestern part of Lower Saxony, the former administrative districts of Aurich and Oldenburg, from the 19th century up to the present.' (author's abstract

Local Democracy Revisited

The reform of institutional arrangements at the local level especially the personalisation of executive power and the implementation of new options to participate was expected to reinforce local democracy However there were doubts from the start as to whether this goal could be achieved because institutional reforms were combined with the implementation of New Public Management After more than a decade an evaluation of the adopted measures in major western democracies seems appropriate The comparative analysis draws on empirical studies conducted over three decades Because of available data that is extremely difficult to compose for all western democracies decision making procedures have been neglected in comparative empirical research The evaluation presented here includes a puzzle of findings which underpin future prospects of continuing reforms The result is that a lack of accountability and control prevents democratization Furthermore measures taken to improve direct citizen participation have not achieved their goa

Economic performance or electoral necessity? Evaluating the system of voluntary income to political parties

Whilst the public funding of political parties is the norm in western democracies, its comprehensive introduction has been resisted in Britain. Political and electoral arrangements in Britain require parties to function and campaign on a regular basis, whilst their income follows cycles largely related to general elections. This article shows that the best predictor of party income is the necessity of a well-funded general election campaign rather than party performance. As a result, income can only be controlled by parties to a limited degree, which jeopardises their ability to determine their own financial position and fulfil their functions as political parties

From parliamentary pay to party funding: the acceptability of informal institutions in advanced democracies

While direct state funding of political parties has been a prominent theme in cross-national research over the last decade, we still know little about party strategies to access state resources that are not explicitly earmarked for partisan usage. This paper looks at one widespread but often overlooked informal party practice: the ‘taxing’ of MP salaries, i.e., the regular transfer of fixed salary shares to party coffers. Building on notions of informal institutions developed in work on new democracies, our theoretical approach specifies factors that shape the acceptability of this legally non-enforceable intra-organisational practice. It is tested through a selection model applied to a unique data set covering 124 parties across 19 advanced democracies. Controlling for a range of party- and institutional-level variables, we find that the presence of a taxing rule and the collection of demanding tax shares are more common in leftist parties (high internal acceptability) and in systems in which the penetration of state institutions by political parties is intense (high external acceptability)

Beyond Duverger: Party Ideology, Party-State Relations and Informal Finance Strategies in Advanced Democracies

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleThis is the accepted version of the following article: Beyond Duverger: party ideology, party-state relations and informal finance strategies in advanced democracies, which has been published in final form at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9157737This article examines one widespread but widely overlooked informal party practice to access state resources indirectly: the ‘taxing’ of MP salaries, which obliges candidates who win elected office on a party ticket to regularly donate a fixed share of their private income to party coffers. Linking Duverger’s classical approach on party organization that stresses the importance of party–society relations with the more recent, highly influential cartel party theory that argues that parties are shaped by their relationship with the state, we specify factors that shape the acceptability of this informal practice and thus parties’ capacity to extract rent from their MPs. The analysis of an original dataset covering parties across a wide range of advanced democracies reveals that demanding salary transfers from national MPs to their parties are not only more common in leftist parties as argued by Duverger but also in systems in which the penetration of the state apparatus by political parties is intense as argued by the cartel party approach. Linking the two perspectives further reveals that ideological differences between parties shape their relative capacity to collect higher payments from MPs in systems where parties and the state are less intertwined.British AcademyEconomic and Social Research Counci

The Cartel Party and the Rise of the New Extreme Right

Griffith Business School, School of Government and International RelationsNo Full Tex