Oppositional violence and repression are closely related. In fact, repression often produces an escalation of violence rather than controlling it. Bridging social movement studies and research on violence, the article uses a small-N, most-different research design to analyse the working of a specific mechanism at the onset of different types of political violence: escalating policing. In particular, it indicates specific causal mechanisms, related to interactions between social movements and the state, which create the conditions for some splinter groups to move underground. In order to compare left-wing, right-wing, ethno-national and religious violence, the article presents empirical references to the author's own empirical research on Italy and the Basque Country as well as a secondary analysis of the conflicts that preceded the rise of al-Qaeda.

In the Swedish European Parliamentary Election in 2009 the Swedish Pirate Party took two seats in the parliament and 7.1 per cent of the Swedish voters’ support. The party was absolutely new and the usual concept of populist parties does not seem to fit the Pirate movement very well. It is anti-authoritarian and aims to enhance civic liberties for youngsters, to give open access to culture through the internet and to improve personal integrity and human dignity on the World Wide Web. Transnationalism is one foundation for the party but another is a value foundation of universal human rights and individual freedom, disregarding national borders. This article is an investigation of the Pirate Party as a possible new party family, driven by new sociopolitical cleavages in the modern information society.

Inside the European Parliament political groups reveal levels of voting cohesion similar to that we observe in national parliaments. Faced with a conflict of interests between their national party and their European group, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) surprisingly often prioritize the latter principal over the former. In this article, I argue that domestic-level parliamentary scrutiny can have a tremendous impact on MEPs’ loyalties. Using data on the voting behaviour of German and Czech MEPs, I find that, under scrutiny, MEPs from governing parties are significantly more likely to vote against the instructions of their group leadership. The effect of domestic-level scrutiny on MEPs from opposition parties is weaker and depends on the dossier's political salience. These results provide further support for the strategic use of parliamentary scrutiny in European Union politics.

This article assesses why Eurosceptic national parties form groups in the European Parliament and examines in what ways two of these groups – the European Conservatives and Reformists and Europe of Freedom and Democracy – operate in the European Parliament. It draws on interviews with politicians and group officials, roll-call votes and expert judgement data. We look at the group formation process with a focus on the British Conservatives and UK Independence Party and find that the European Conservatives and Reformists group was created with a mixture of policy-seeking and party-management aims. The UK Independence Party's interest in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group is largely on the basis of the group's provision of distinct practical advantages, such as resources for political campaigns. We provide evidence that hard Eurosceptic and regionalist niche parties in the European Parliament struggle to agree with each other in roll-call votes on a range of subjects. Finally, we show that the hard and soft Eurosceptic parties studied here go about policy-seeking in different ways in the European Parliament in line with their differing principles on the integration process.

This article aims to provide an understanding of the dynamics of pension politics in South Korea with a particular focus on the role of bureaucrats. In order to explain the reforms, this research will closely examine how the expertise and legitimacy of civil servants, together with their institutional positioning, have affected their power and role in the policy-making process. This article will argue that bureaucrats, particularly the welfare bureaucracy, attained their major reform goals by associating and competing with other political actors in two major reforms.

What is responsible for the decline of democratically dominant parties and the corresponding growth of competitive party systems? This article argues that, despite a ruling party's dominance, opposition forces can gain by winning important subnational offices and then creating a governance record that they can use to win new supporters. It focuses on South Africa as a paradigmatic dominant party system, tracing the increased competitiveness of elections in Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province between 1999 and 2010. These events show how party strategies may evolve, reflecting how party elites can learn from forming coalitions.