In June 1979, 110,968,000 citizens of the nine European Community countries voted to select representatives to the European Parliament - the fvst directlyelected supranational parliament in history.

Representatives from nine nations sit together as members of transnational party federations that have, in varying degrees, worked out joint political programmes. As a democratically elected body, the new European Parliament possesses a political legitimacy that the former, appointed, Parliament never had. By itself, this does not automatically give it a more influential role in decision-making at the European level, but it certainly strengthens the Parliament's potential to do so.

IT HAS BEEN ARGUED THAT FACTIONALISM WHILST APPARENT IN THE Labour Party has no counterpart within the Conservative Party. For example, the authors of a study on the opinions of backbench conservative MPs concluded that disagreements are amongst ‘ad hoc groups’ and that as new issues arise ‘the coherence of the former groups dissolves and new alignments appear. . . .’ A more recent survey of conservative backbenchers concurs with this and argues that the ‘criss-crossing pattern of cleavage (amongst conservative MPs) inhibits the development of Tory factions analogous to those in the Labour Party. Allies on one issue either become enemies on the next, or else simply do not feel strongly enough on the next issue to want necessarily to work together.’ A similar sort of conclusion has been reached by Richard Rose who states that the Conservative Party contains differing sets of political attitudes which remain constant whilst the party member will constantly shift from one attitude to another. Thus he concludes that the Conservative Party is a party of tendencies rather than factions; that it lacks a hard core of organized members within the party adhering to a set of principles which they are attempting to impose on the party in general. These conclusions are typical of a general belief about the political process within the Conservative Party.

INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS ARE TAKEN BY EACH INDIVIDUAL FOR HIMSELF (regardless of whether he is inner- or other-directed). Group decisions imply that decisions are taken by a ‘concrete’ group, i.e. a face-to-face interacting number of individuals which may thus be said to share (partake) such decisions. Collective decisions are hardly amenable to a precise definition; but they are generally understood to mean decisions taken by the ‘many’. We then have collectivized decisions. Collective and collectivized decisions may be said to share the property of not being, in any meaningful sense, individual decisions. Even so, collectivized decisions are very different from all the others. Individual, group, and collective decisions all make reference to an actor, to who makes the decision. Collectivized decisions are, instead, decisions that apply to, and are enforced upon, a collectivity regardless of whether they are taken by the one, the few, or the many. The defining criterion no longer is who makes the decision, but its scope: whoever does the deciding decides or all.

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.

The experience of the European Communities confirms not only that, as the late Otto Kirchheimer put it, ‘opposition is to be found under one form or another in every political community’; but also that a political community is to be found wherever opposition exists in one form or another. The purpose of this study is to investigate the manner in which opposition forces develop in the European Communities to block or to enhance integration.

When it comes to analyses of financial power in Latin America, there has been a tendency to assume it is mostly external, relatively homogeneous, and usually constraining of domestic policy autonomy. Increasingly, however, when speaking of financial power in the region, a focus exclusively on foreign capital misses a significant part of the empirical landscape, one inhabited by large domestic institutional investors: public and private pension funds. A focus on these funds reveals that a neat state–finance dichotomy is often unrepresentative of the type of blurred web of interests, influence and ownership that characterizes even those economies that have embraced a significant degree of liberalization. In fact, pension finance is far from uniform across countries. In order to capture this diversity in Latin America, a new typology is suggested that departs from the Anglo-American notion of ‘pension fund capitalism’ and further specifies pension finance as also revealing dynamics best described as ‘pension fund developmentalism and statism’. The typology is not only aimed at capturing more empirical nuance in Latin America; it can also serve as reference for cross-regional analyses of these often neglected, but increasingly powerful financial actors in emerging economies.

Does the demand for more direct democracy by populist parties have any implications for their internal decision-making? To answer this question, a novel large-scale research project analyses the 2017 candidate selection of all Bundestag parties, including the populist Alternative for Germany. Some 1,334 individual nominations of seven parties are compared using quantitative indicators along three dimensions of intra-party democracy (IPD): competition between aspirants for candidacy, inclusion of members and nomination-related communication. It shows that the AfD is living up to its promise of practising grassroots democracy: in all results it ranks at the top by a wide margin. A new populist organizational model seems to have emerged following neither the classic hierarchical and leader-oriented mode of many other European right-wing populist parties nor the delegate assembly mode typical of German parties. Our further development of IPD concepts, newly elaborated measuring methods and surprising empirical evidence improve the understanding of democratic decision-making in populist parties.

This study explores how a party's organizational mode affects its stability in new democracies. A party organization was stable under these three conditions: when the relationship from lower to upper organizations has institutionalized a strong vertical organization mode; when the central party power is concentrated on the leadership; and when the leadership has been safely shifted after elections. In the case of two ruling parties in South Korea, each mode produced differences in party stability. The dissimilar organization modes of two parties resulted in different organizational stability.

The article offers an interpretive approach to understanding Jim Bulpitt's Territory and Power in the United Kingdom. The first two parts interpret Bulpitt's text by locating it respectively in its historical and contemporaneous contexts. It argues that Territory and Power belongs in a broader movement to rethink the state in a way that accommodates the rise of new behavioural topics. Territory and Power also defends modernist empiricist approaches to institutions and other mid-level topics against the positivism and general theories of behaviouralism. The final part points to an interpretive approach to the state as an alternative to the behaviouralism and institutionalism that lurk behind Bulpitt's ideas. A thoroughly interpretive approach would decentre territory and power, revealing them to be contingent and shifting products of struggles over meanings.

Why do democratic institutions struggle to maintain their vitality and legitimacy in hard times? In this special issue of Government and Opposition, we identify a loss of solidarity as the root cause of Western political dysfunction over the past decade. The argument is developed in four parts. The first part is theoretical insofar as it sketches the causal mechanism that describes what we mean by democratic dysfunction. Here we set out some of the key concepts that are central to our project. The second part is empirical insofar as it offers four negative illustrations of the fundamental problématique, which gives us the opportunity to suggest why this collection of research articles is relevant to the contemporary debate on democracy and its discontents. The third part explores the many possible sources of democratic dysfunction, which we have organized around two thematic clusters. Here we introduce the other articles in our special issue. The fourth and last part suggests implications of living in a democratic world with waning solidarity, allowing us to draw preliminary conclusions and suggest avenues for future research.

Despite an investigation lasting almost a year there is still no clarity as to why the perpetrators of the London bombings of 2005 acted as they did. Many commentators projected their own views into the vacuum left by the terrorists. These ideas, ranging from revenge for British foreign policy to the logical outcome of social exclusion, may shape security and community-related policies adversely. This article suggests that the bombers reflected a wider sense of disgruntlement in contemporary culture, one that is largely home grown and inculcated. Exploring the recent development of this politics of alienation, and a concomitant search for identity and meaning, it is proposed that the biggest danger is to live in a society with no clear sense of direction or purpose.

‘When the market is buying, sell, and when the market is selling, buy.’ This Stock Exchange maxim might be equally productive applied to academic fashions; and that it has been fashionable to extol the ‘single or single-dominant party system’ in Africa is undeniable.

One way of questioning this fashion – and a fruitful one – is to examine the very concept of a ‘single or single-dominant party’. Its very clumsiness discloses the difficulties of conceptualization, when states in which only one party is legal are classed together with others where one party has succeeded in winning an overwhelming preponderance of seats, or where states whose governments have seized every chance to harass opposition elements are lumped together with others where little or no such pressure has been applied. Not only that. The word ‘party’ itself requires further definition. In what sense was the (now defunct) PDD of Dahomey a ‘party’? Or the FLN of Algeria? The party in Mali or in Guinea is quite clearly a very different animal from the party in Malawi. And so is the style of politics.

Coalitions with left-of-centre parties have traditionally been regarded as the only viable option for Green parties that have shed their stance of radical opposition. The German Greens are investigated as a case study putting this assumption into doubt. Historical analysis of their relationship with the Social Democratic Party reveals how they slipped into life-threatening dependency on the latter. A survey of consecutive reinterpretations of the positioning formula ‘Neither right, nor left but ahead’ maps the struggle for an independent Green identity. An appraisal of recent debates about Conservative– Green alliances investigates the basis for Green coalition politics beyond the Social Democratic embrace.

Some polities have strong cultural diversity, some of which is territorially based and politically articulated by significant groups that, in the name of nationalism, and self-determination, advance claims for independence. In this article such polities are defined as ‘politically robustly multinational’. If the goal is peace and democracy in one state in such a polity, this article advances theoretical and empirical arguments to show that ideal typical ‘nation-state’ making policies are less appropriate than policies associated with new ideal type I construct called ‘state-nation’. Countries discussed are Spain, Belgium, and Canada and the ‘matched pair’ of successful Tamil political integration via state nation policies in India, and failed Tamil political integration due to nation-state policies in Sri Lanka.

Since the turn of the century, much comparative politics scholarship has examined whether and how income inequality affects the prospects of democratization and, to a lesser extent, whether democracy reduces inequality. What is lacking, however, is a close examination of the extent of income inequality in authoritarian regimes. This article examines the variation in inequality across authoritarian regimes and argues that electoral competition – in conjunction with party ideology and the extent of party institutionalization – helps explain the pattern of inequality under authoritarian rule. I find that electoral authoritarian (EA) regimes – regimes in which multiple parties legally compete in elections – have lower levels of inequality compared to non-EA regimes. I further find that inequality is lower in EA regimes with left-leaning ruling parties and more institutionalized party systems. This analysis highlights the value of exploring the dynamics and contingent effects of electoral competition in authoritarian regimes.

‘WITHOUT TRUST WE WILL NOT SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS,’ WARNED Johannes Rau, the former German Federal president in his last ‘Berlin speech’ in May 2004. As one reason for an alarming loss of trust in Germany, creating a serious obstacle to necessary changes, he identified an irresponsible, egoistic and greedy behaviour among parts of German elites. Actually, Johannes Rau did not blame only political elites but also elite members in other sectors such as business, trade unions or mass media. His statement implies that parts of German elites are causing a decline in trust in Germany by losing touch with the people. Likewise, various observers in the public discourse argue that the immoral, cynical and increasingly incompetent behaviour of several elite members especially fosters a crisis of trust in Germany by creating a diffuse climate of distrust, pessimism, uncertainty and Zukunftsangst.

Although populist figures are often thought to thrive during crises that allow them to ‘perform’ decisive leadership, the US experience under Donald Trump during the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that the opposite may sometimes occur. Despite its scientific and medical prowess, the US suffered more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in the world during the first year of the pandemic, and this abysmal performance was largely attributable to a failure of government. Fixated on the pandemic's economic effects and its potential political fallout, the Trump administration's framing of the crisis tried to minimize the public health emergency, externalize blame through a focus on the Chinese scapegoat and accuse the media and Democrats of hyping the pandemic to undermine Trump's presidency. In responding to the pandemic, Trump and his allies cast doubt on scientific and medical expertise that called for more aggressive testing, mask wearing and social-distancing measures. Trump delegated responsibility for crisis management to subnational governments and the private sector, and he politicized their efforts to regulate social behaviour in the public interest, intensifying partisan polarization.

Niche parties often originate in social movements, yet the latter’s role in shaping these parties has received scant attention. I argue that movement roots can help niche parties achieve both vote- and policy-seeking goals by keeping core issues salient, bolstering issue ownership and securing allies in civil society. Employing interviews with movement, as well as Green and Pirate party leaders in Sweden and Germany, I identify three mechanisms (electoral pressure, grassroots linkage, elite orientation) that lead to programmatic alignment. This article extends an emerging research agenda that highlights how social movements shape party politics and offers evidence that niche party–movement interactions open new avenues for political representation counterbalancing mainstream parties’ increasing detachment from civil society.

Since the separate independence of Senegal in June 1960, after the breakup of the Mali Federation, organized political opposition in Senegal has not been able to maintain the position which it enjoyed before independence. The failure of the opposition can be explained only in part by reference to the repressive measures adopted by the government over this period; it should also be seen as a result of the internal weaknesses of the opposition itself. The purpose of this article is to outline the various conditions which have enabled the governing party, the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS) of M. Leopold Sédar Senghor, to remain in power until the present time, despite its own lack of strict internal discipline or general sense of purpose.

The 2002 Elections In France Were A Gripping Drama Unfolding in four acts. Each act has to be understood as part of a whole, as each election was ultimately dependent upon the results of the first round of the presidential election on 21 April. However untypical in the context of Fifth Republican history, the first round of the presidential election strongly inf luenced the peculiar course of the subsequent contests. The outcome of the first election on the 21 April – at which the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen won through to the second ballot against Jacques Chirac, narrowly distancing the outgoing premier Lionel Jospin – created an electric shock which reverberated around the streets of Paris and other French cities and sparked a civic mobilization without parallel since May '68. The end-result of this exceptional republican mobilization was to secure the easy (initially rather unexpected) re-election of Chirac as president at the second round two weeks later. The election of 5 May was unlike a typical second-round election. Rather than a bipolar contest pitting left and right over a choice of future governmental orientations, it was a plebiscite in favour of democracy (hence Chirac) against the far-right (Le Pen). Chirac was re-elected overwhelmingly as president, supported by at least as many leftwing as right-wing voters. This enforced plebiscite against the extreme right allowed a resurgent Jacques Chirac to claim a renewed presidential authority. At the parliamentary election of 9 and 16 June, the Fifth Republic reverted to a more traditional mode of operation, as a new ‘presidential party’, informally launched just weeks before the elections, obtained a large overall majority of seats to ‘support the President’ in time-honoured Fifth Republican tradition.