This article's main argument complements the literature on transitions to democracy by focusing on the long-term process of political- elite formation and its influence on the ability of political elites to lead a peaceful and stable transition to democracy. By comparing the case of Israel before independence and the case of Palestine before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, this article suggests that gradual political-elite formation from within the domestic population is likely to achieve better democratic results than a political- elite formation in exile, without close ties to the domestic population, that is ‘parachuted’ on the population when the political entity is formed.

Dramatic Change is Hardly a Feature of West German politics. The signals are usually visible well in advance — but gradual change also means that the wider significance of particular developments may be overlooked. A cursory examination of the political scene in the wake of the election held in January 1987 may fail to reveal much that is new since the success of the Christian Democrats in 1983. Thus, despite the sharp fall in the CDU vote, the coalition with the Free Democrats was comfortably confirmed in office. At the same time, the haemorrhage of SPD support — although partially staunched — still continued, with the inability to .make a recovery in the intervening years the haunting question for the party.’ Chiefly at the expense of the SPD, the Greens have now anchored themselves in the party system. Their presence on the federal stage since 1983, and earlier in the Länder, has gingered up political debate and forced issues on to the agenda that otherwise would have been neglected. There are signs of change, but how are they to be interpreted?

Presidents and prime ministers who form gender-parity cabinets receive positive news coverage and public praise. Cabinet reshuffles, with less attention, may offer scope to decrease the numbers of female ministers. Although research on the gendered impact of reshuffles is sparse, some studies suggest that women's presence declines during reshuffles. This article explores the gendered dynamics of reshuffles that follow initial gender-parity cabinets, asking whether the reshuffle context affects the proportions of men and women in reorganized cabinet teams. Employing a comparative case study approach, the article analyses initial gender-parity cabinets and subsequent reshuffled cabinets in France and Spain across three different presidents and prime ministers. We find that gender parity functions as a concrete floor, sustained in cabinet reshuffles, unaffected by political shocks and party system changes, and without consequence for women's appointments to high-prestige ministerships.

Despite theoretical arguments suggesting the strong effects of presidential term limits and re-election on democracy, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence to evaluate them. We test both the effect on democracy of the existence of a consecutive re-election rule and of reforms introducing it for incumbent presidents. Using evidence from Latin American countries between 1945 and 2018, we test their relationship to both vertical and horizontal accountability. A synthetic control method is employed to account for the effect of term-limit reforms, and time-series cross-section models for modelling the association with the re-election rule. Both vertical and horizontal accountability as well as the quality of democracy are eroded by term-limit evasion reforms in most countries and strengthened in none between 1990 and 2018. Allowing presidents to run for re-election – relative to term-limited ones – is consistently associated with weak democratic outcomes.

Societies are generally neither monolithic nor homogeneous; every political system must deal with the problem of pluralism in some way. But political systems tend to be organized hierarchically, with power and authority concentrated at the top. The confrontation of social pluralism and political concentration can well give rise to tensions, since centralized political structures deal with diversified social interests. Tensions are also likely to grow out of pluralism within the political structure itself, as factions form on the bases of personalities, programmes and interests. Factions can exist within a single organizational or institutional framework, or they can be reflected in competing parties, checking and balancing institutions, and separated powers. The single-party regime has often become a familiar way of containing these tensions and factions in developing countries, particularly in Africa, and the existence of many African single-party regimes has led to efforts to discover the common elements behind the common phenomenon. The purpose of this study is not to challenge these explanations, but to look more broadly into the nature of interests, factions and power in developing polities, suggesting a model of political development that puts both unipartism and political pluralism in their places.

THIS ARTICLE COMPARES THE US AND BRITISH EXPERIENCE OF privatization policies. In both countries there is no ‘proof’ that privatization has led to any empirically measurable benefit, or that the new structures are necessarily more consumer-oriented. First the perceived need for change in the public sector is explored, outlining the dynamic provided by the New Right. Next the importance of managerial and professional power to this process of change is explained, before the role of privatization as a ‘cutting edge’ used by liberal/conservative governments (that is governments conventionally labelled as conservative, but which have adopted ideologically liberal policies) is discussed. The paper concludes with an illustrative case study of the privatization of the British Electricity Supply Industry.

WHEN DISCUSSING COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY IT IS NECESSARY TO DIFferentiate between two varying - indeed opposite views. Firstly there are the parties, organizations and institutions in countries within the Soviet sphere of influence (including parties in the West which are identified politically and ideologically with the USSR). Secondly the large number of parties and groups, which claim to be communist, and derive their ideology from Marx, Engels and Lenin, but which are highly critical of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its ideology. Although these fundamentalist groups are numerous and splintered they can be categorized into two mainstreams of thought: Maoist and Trotskyite. The Maoist ideology is not only the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party but also that of smaller, so called Maostic groups in the West.

DURING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, SPANIARDS HAVE BEEN LED TO concentrate their attention on economic affairs. ‘Enrichissez-vous’ has been the cry of the government to all classes. World prosperity, a modicum of business freedom, some well-timed reforms, a great. deal of enterprising spirit have spelt economic success and an end to persistent underdevelopment.

The repression of political activities imposed a political and social consensus conducive to economic growth. However, the time is fast approaching when the enforced political moratorium will come to an end. Groups of varyin ideologies will contend for power. A backlog of problem will have to be attended to. In this article, while avoiding prophecy, I wish to evaluate the foreseeable effect of some of these variables on the Spanish economy after Franco disappears.

By definition, political opposition by mass parties calling freely for votes against an established government, in parliaments and in regular, open elections, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It could originate only when governments became effectively accountable to an ever-expanding electorate and is therefore intimately tied to the complex processes of democratization, which even in the more established Western democracies are barely a century old.

On the eve of independence, practically all the new states were committed to full democratic politics, for which careful constitutional arrangements were thought to offer definite guarantees. Yet in most of them competitive politics have not lasted long and have given way to autocratic government in one form or another.

DOES THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS NECESSARILY ENTAIL CERtain rights, and if so, what are they? Do democratic assumptions exclude the possibility of rights that are superior to the democratic theory and practice?

These are the two sets of questions that I propose to explore in this essay.

The economic effects of the financial crisis in the eurozone have been much studied, but the impact of political and institutional changes made amidst crisis conditions have been less studied. This article examines the changes in the EU since 2008 through the lens of T.H. Marshall’s concept of citizenship, gauging the effects of different changes in the EU polity on the citizenship rights of individuals. The key changes are in fiscal governance, which includes a new treaty as well as substantial legislation changing the balance of powers within and competencies of the EU institutions, the European Central Bank’s role and the Troika arrangements for countries in crisis. We find that while the EU’s contribution to civil citizenship in Europe is relatively intact, the development of its fiscal governance is bringing serious negative consequences for political and social citizenship in all member states. The EU is adopting policies that entrust more power to less democratically accountable institutions with the objective of fiscal rigour rather than social citizenship.

As in nearly all European Union (EU) policy areas, scholars have turned to analysing the role of national parliaments, in addition to that of the European Parliament (EP), in trade politics. Yet, there is limited understanding of how the parliamentarians at the two levels interact. This article fills the gap by conceptualizing these interactions as a continuum ranging between cooperation, coexistence and competition. We use this continuum to explore multilevel party interactions in EU trade talks and show how cooperation compels politicization – national parliamentarians mainly interact with their European colleagues in salient matters. However, we argue that the impact of politicization on multilevel relations between parliamentarians in the EP and national parliaments is conditioned by party-level factors. Hence, we account for how and why politicization triggers multilevel party cooperation across parliaments in the EU through ideological orientation, government position and policy preferences and show how this takes place in the case of trade.

This review article provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and populism. We analyse the demand and supply sides of the populist phenomenon during the pandemic. On the demand side, we focus on the interplay between populist attitudes and COVID-19 restrictions by assessing the role of conspiracy theories, social media and alternative news media. On the supply side, we identify similarities and differences in the responses of populist actors globally. Hence, we focus on the main ideational varieties of the contemporary populist phenomenon (right-wing, left-wing and valence populism) while also distinguishing between populists in government and opposition. The analysis reveals that complexity is the defining feature of both the demand and supply sides of populism in times of pandemic.

This article examines Jim Bulpitt's seminal work on UK territorial politics within the American context. We approach territorial politics by examining the ebbs and flows of American urban policy during the period 1964 to 2008. In doing so, our analysis explores changes in presidential approaches towards urban policy, and thus center–periphery relations, based on the outcomes of electoral politics. We find that conditions specific to the USA cause American territorial politics to be continually fluid, often erratic and highly differentiated by party affiliation.

A MOOD OF DISILLUSIONMENT APPEARS TO BE SWEEPING THE FIELD of comparative politics and political development. This comes after almost two decades of rather impressive accomplishment, both from a qualitative and quantitative point of view. From small beginnings in the first years after the second world war, there is now a quite impressive literature in this field. Each area of the world has something like a ‘five-foot shelf’ of monographic studies of political processes, patterns and developmental tendencies. Some of these shelves are smaller than others. The Latin American shelf, for example, has lagged in growth but is in process of rapid improvement. The Middle Eastern shelf leaves much to be desired, but even here there are signs of stirring and of potential productivity. In addition to these ‘area shelves’ which show increasing signs of cumulativeness, of drawing on each other for perspective and for hypotheses, there is a ‘super shelf’ of comparative and theoretical studies which draws upon the area shelves and which contributes frameworks, approaches and hypotheses for monographic studies.

‘PEACE PROCESS’ IS A NEW AND FASHIONABLE CONCEPT. THERE are of course great local differences between the Middle Eastern, the South African and the Irish-British peace processes. But there are some remarkable characteristic similarities between them which form a pattern and especially when, as at present, they are seen in their phases of transition. What I present here are a few remarks on the differences and similarities in the phase of transition of the ongoing peace processes in South Africa and in Northern Ireland — differences which geopolitically, demographically, culturally and economically might seem at first sight in some respects rather difficult to compare.