In the past, European election campaigns have been fought primarily at national level, organized and led by national parties. The European political parties had neither the financial nor the organizational means to lead pan-European election campaigns. The June 2009 elections, however, highlighted a different and potentially significant trend: new EU regulations provided for the direct financing of European political parties, allowing them to campaign directly in the elections. It is argued that these developments could lead to the Europeanization of European elections campaigns. This article applies the concept of Europeanization to the election campaigns of the Party of European Socialists and three of its member parties: the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party and the German Social Democrats, creating an ideal-type model of Europeanization. It concludes that in the three cases Europeanization is still in its infancy.

An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to ‘clarity of responsibility’, widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned – as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict.

Through the comparative analysis of the participatory mechanisms established in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, this study explores under which conditions such mechanisms are more likely to deepen or undermine democracy. While the informal participatory mechanisms established in Bolivia have produced, though imperfectly, significant democratic benefits, in Ecuador and Venezuela crucial participatory mechanisms have appeared to favour the concentration of power in the executive, contributing to the strangulation of representative institutions, the erosion of the separation of powers and the development of government-dominated social groups. By shedding light on the undemocratic manipulation of participatory mechanisms, an area still largely unexplored, this study contributes to a better understanding of the risks and opportunities associated with the deepening of democracy.

Why are populist radical right parties (PRRPs) more successful in some countries than in others? This question is analysed here by focusing on Belgium. While Flanders (the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) was home to one of the strongest far-right movements in Europe, Wallonia (the southern, francophone part) has remained ‘immune’ to such tendencies. The article argues that different historical experiences have given rise to a hostile political environment for PRRPs in Wallonia, where mainstream parties and the media have created a successful cordon sanitaire. In Flanders, mainstream parties and the media have gradually become more accommodative towards PRRPs. By emphasizing the sociopolitical context in which parties operate, the findings suggest that the reactions of mainstream parties and the media are crucial to understanding the success of PRRPs. The conclusion reflects on potential lessons to be drawn from the Belgian case for mainstream parties and media practitioners elsewhere.

Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, the EU has been tested and contested as it struggled to come to terms with a series of crises, sometimes labelled a polycrisis. In response to crises, the EU has emerged as a collective power and the concept ‘Collective Power Europe’ (CPE) offers a promising lens with which to analyse the 21st-century European Union and the nature of the polity that is emerging. The aim of this article is to unpack the concept of CPE and to analyse its core features – collective leadership and framing, institutional coordination and the evolving policy toolkit – in response to three crises: Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

AT THE TIME OF INDEPENDENCE FIFTY YEARS AGO MAHATAMA Gandhi suggested that the Indian National Congress, which he successfully led to independence, should be disbanded. As its function was to produce a coalition which could achieve independence from British rule, its historical role was over. This was an entirely logical, yet an entirely unpractical suggestion. Politicians active inside the Congress wished, not unnaturally, to turn their sacrifices into potential investments in an independent state. Independence was accompanied by partition of the country which degenerated into riots and massacre of civilians. There was no other political organization except the Congress to establish effective government. In any case, Congress was too successful a political organization to be dissolved purely by the power of argument. The Congress, therefore, turned from an independence movement into a governing party, a difficult transformation under all circumstances, and flourished. The historical significance of the recent general elections in India, the eleventh after independence, seems to be the actual realization of Gandhi's suggestion. India must now find a political structure which can function without the overwhelming presence of the Congress, a party universally reviled but, ironically, treated as indispensable.

Democracy is far less fragile than we sometimes imagine. Although hard to establish, it is remarkably robust and is corrupted only by dint of persistent effort. Yet, as Rousseau wrote of freedom, once lost, democracy is nearly impossible to regain. Today, the forces of democracy face a new source of corruption all the more sinister because it appears so innocuous, often even identifying itself with the liberty it undermines. Having survived the nation-state and in time subordinated it to its own liberal purposes, can democracy now survive globalization? Only if democracy is globalized.

At present, the encompassing practices of globalization have created an ironic and radical asymmetry: we have managed to globalize markets in goods, labour, currencies and information without globalizing the civic and democratic institutions that have historically comprised the free market's indispensable context. Put simply, we have removed capitalism from the institutional ‘box’ that has (quite literally) domesticated it and given its sometimes harsh practices a human face.

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.

This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘received persona’. By using a range of rhetorical and other techniques, Miliband began to adapt the Labour narrative to the ‘personalized political’. The article sets out the theoretical framework for the analysis and returns to the implications for the theory of leadership performance in its conclusion.

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.

Centripetal approaches to democracy in divided societies seek to promote inter-ethnic accommodation and moderation by making politicians dependent on the electoral support of groups other than their own base. Such cross-ethnic voting stands in contrast to situations where politicians need only the support of their own co-ethnics to win elections. This distinction can be used to evaluate the utility of centripetal electoral systems in promoting voting across ethnic divides. To do so, this article begins by considering some critiques of centripetalism, showing that cross-ethnic voting is more common in both institutional design and actual practice than some critics believe. It then moves on to examine cases of cross-ethnic voting via ethnically designated party lists, cross-regional party formation rules, at-large communal or sectoral seat reservations, and uni-directional vote-pooling, using these cases to construct an index of strong, moderate and weak centripetal electoral systems.

One of the core values in a democracy is the possibility for citizens to bring about alternation in power if they disapprove of the governmental policy. This article examines patterns of alternation and the degree of accountability in three different democratic systems: pluralitarian (characterized by a two-party system), majoritarian (moderately fragmented party system) and consensus (very fragmented party system) democracies. The extent of non-alternation as well as wholesale alternation decreases as we move from pluralitarian to majoritarian and further on to consensus democracy. When alternation is related to election results, majoritarian systems are the most responsive ones, whereas consensus systems generate the lowest degree of accountability.

The November 2002 general elections in Turkey produced an Islamic-leaning government, supported by one of the biggest majorities, bringing the relationship between Islam and democracy under scrutiny. This paper examines the nature of this relationship and the current political situation in Turkey. It argues that Turkey's long-running aspiration for democratization has now a reasonable chance of success. This argument is supported by the findings of a Q study, conducted in Turkey during the 2002 election campaign, indicating strong support for dialogue, particularly within the Turkish Muslim community. Yet, it will also argue that turning this possibility into a success depends on the implementation of the right deliberative framework. Habermas's discourse theory of democracy provides the essentials for this. However, particularly in the context of a divided society, like Turkey, it has to be complemented with a better emphasis on deliberation as a social learning process, as in Dryzek's theory of discursive democracy.

The article analyses the so-called ‘bra wars’ trade dispute that took place between the EU and China in 2005. This dispute raised a number of important questions linked, not only to the textiles and clothing (T&C) trade regime, but to the broader conduct of the EU in relation to the developing world. Over the years, the EU has attempted to construct a discourse towards developing countries that has sought to articulate a distinctively ‘European’ approach to issues like preferential trade, equitable growth, poverty reduction and so on. This article thus centres on the broader analytical question raised by ‘bra wars’: namely, the mounting incongruity between the theory and practice of the development policies of the EU.

How do parties that have long been confined to opposition behave once they take the decision to support government? This article analyses the case of the three Portuguese radical left parties that took such a move in the wake of the post-bailout 2015 election. Leveraging the concept of contract parliamentarism and the analysis of different data sources through different methods, we show that the three parties adopted a similar strategy after agreeing deals with the centre-left socialists. Specifically, while keeping close scrutiny on the executive action, the parties have voted consensually on most of the legislation proposed by the government. In exchange, the majority of policy pledges agreed with the socialists were implemented by the beginning of the legislature. Based on these findings, the article underlines the importance for supporting parties of conducting a thorough negotiation of policy goals and the timing of their implementation before joining the government, and of pursuing an autonomous discursive agenda.

MAY I BEGIN WITH A DASH OF HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE? I DO SO AS A health warning, to myself as much as to anyone else. Just as the great Lord Salisbury once said that too much poring over maps tended to drive nineteenth-century ministers and military chiefs mad, an excessive concentration on prime-ministerial styles can propel scholars and commentators smack bang into the Tommy Cooper school of analysis – here you have collective cabinet government then, just like that, when the premiership changes hands, you switch to overbearing prime-ministerial government. There has been a good deal of this since Tony Blair entered No. 10 exactly 214 days ago.

This Article Discusses The Importance Of Social Learning For Eu public policy-making in general and regional policy in particular. The first section analyses the implications of the learning process for EU regional policy and examines its social and institutional prerequisites. Section two introduces the concepts of social capital and institutional networks as components crucial for the learning process and socialization function. The third section, based on the analysis of the role of social learning, delineates the multi-level system of governance in EU regional policy. The fourth section presents empirical evidence from Greek regions on the role of social learning in the implementation of EU regional policy (Structural Funds) programmes. Finally, the last section draws conclusions on the role of social learning in EU regional policy and lessons from the Greek experience.

Sweden's referendum on whether to join EMU produced an emphatic No. The murder of one of the Yes side's leading representatives thus appeared not to have affected the result. Cleavages exposed in the referendum on EU membership nine years previously were even more apparent this time; yet No-voters were also to found across the political, regional and social spectrums. As well as describing the campaign and explaining the outcome, this article focuses on the campaign strategies adopted by parties and other actors. Lessons from previous campaigns had been learned by the opponents of EMU, but largely forgotten by its supporters.

This article reviews books which test the personalization of politics, looking at different dimensions of the growing importance of leaders over time, namely for political parties, in electoral behaviour and in the media. Only recently have wide-ranging comparative longitudinal studies on leaders been carried out. The personalization thesis is not equally demonstrated across all dimensions. Indeed, we find something of a puzzle: There is no strong trend towards personalization of party organizations, whereas in electoral behaviour the evidence points to the increasing use by voters of leaders as heuristics. This attests to the decline of the importance of parties. The personalization of media may be the mechanism which explains the change in voting behaviour, and the third and final section of the review looks into that arena. We conclude with some suggestions on further research on the personalization of politics.