Hamas, the most influential Islamist party in the occupied Palestinian territories, replaced its strategy of electoral boycott in 1996 with participation in 2006 – a change that is not explained in the literature. Assisted by theories of party change, the article seeks to fill this gap. The article demonstrates that the move from boycott to participation can largely be attributed to a change of dominant coalition. In line with the theoretical assumptions, environmental challenges and shocks altered the power–balance within Hamas, robbing the coalition dominating at the time of the boycott of its power and allowing a new faction to obtain dominance. This new dominant faction saw political participation as a legitimate avenue to pursue Hamas's cause, and its rise to power secured the change of strategy and participation in the 2006 elections.

This article examines how challenger parties enter the political arena and the effect of this entry by looking at the Italian 5 Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle – M5S). We explain the M5S's entry strategy in 2013 using the spatial approach to party competition and employing expert survey data collected for each national election between 2008 and 2018. These data allow us to analyse the changing spatial configuration of Italian politics due to the increasing salience of pro/anti-EU and pro/anti-immigration dimensions. We then apply the theoretical notion of the uncovered set (UCS) to trace how the M5S's entry reshaped the overall space of party competition, causing a realignment of existing parties. This work contributes to the ongoing debate on the electoral success of challenger parties and the emerging cleavages and polarization of party systems in Western European countries.

The collapse of European communism two decades ago appeared to determine, once and for all, the fate of radical socialism in the modern world and to draw a line under the forty years of Cold War that had now ended. In an overview of both the course and end of this global confrontation, and of the legacy of communism itself, this article argues that many of the analytical and social dimensions of the Cold War have still to be adequately addressed, and that, while traditional Marxism has indeed been discredited, the need for critical and, where pertinent, utopian thinking remains as relevant as ever.

Recently, scholars have shown a growing interest in radical left parties (RLPs). In terms of electoral success, the rise of the KPÖ Graz, the Communist Party in Austria’s second biggest city, represents perhaps the most counterintuitive case in Western Europe. Adding to previous studies, the rise of the KPÖ Graz contradicts many of the claims made and patterns found about the conditions for the electoral success of RLPs. While the national KPÖ was voted out of parliament in 1959, the Graz branch has been a member of local government since 1998. Since then, the party has managed to gain 20 per cent of the vote in three out of four elections. In 2017, the KPÖ defended its place as the second largest party in local legislature and stayed ahead of the radical right FPÖ, on the rise at the national level. In stark contrast to the Communists’ current strength, however, they did not gain even 2 per cent of the vote in 1983. This analysis shows how the party has managed to ‘own’ the issue of housing and to exploit local political opportunities in order to be electorally successful. The findings point to the importance of agency and the subnational level for RLPs, and highlight more general questions in the study of this party family.

Legislative responses to social changes signify how representative democracy works. Yet research is still needed to find out whether and how representatives in new democratic countries address the constituents’ interests and demands. We revisit the 18th National Assembly in Korea (2008–12) to examine legislative activities surrounding the issue of economic inequality. To understand how lawmakers in the new democracy like Korea respond to the demands of redistributive policies, we turn to representatives’ co-sponsorship behaviour. We find that Korean lawmakers do respond to constituents’ preferences. More specifically, Korean lawmakers representing conservative districts tend to care less about economic inequality than other representatives while controlling their partisanship. This study fleshes out the link between the represented and the representatives in a new democracy where party discipline at the expense of constituency connection has long dominated legislative politics.

IN ROBERT DAHL'S ACCOUNT OF THE SUBJECT ‘OPPOSITION’ IS SEEN AS a political actor, opposing the government in parliament, having goals and strategies, being cohesive or not, well identifiable or not, aggressive or less aggressive in its action, and so on. As it is a ‘theory of action’, applying it would necessarily require (as Jean Blondel also shows in his essay) determining the ‘goals’ of the opposition. One would then be able to predict what a certain opposition would probably be doing, and explain why one type of opposition must be classified as different from another. I maintain, however, that the concept of ‘the goals of a political actor’ is a very elusive, and at the very least, an oversimplified concept. Indeed, it is impossible to match it with the facts and operationalize it. The analysis of the Italian case during the First Republic shows this clearly.

During the Early 1990s the Term Social Market economy has been used rather loosely; this is not surprising since the theory is derived from a specifically German tradition of political economy with little or no resonance outside the Germanspeaking area. The leading thinkers in the genre are hardly known in English-speaking circles and most of their works remain untranslated.

The fundamental purpose of this article is to present this rich and diverse strand of thought to a non-German audience barely aware of its existence, to point out possibilities for developing the international aspects of such a theory, and to highlight policy issues concerning the post-cold war European and international orders which can be addressed from social market perspectives.

THERE ARE 518 MEMBERS OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT(MEPs). Each of the twelve member states of the EuropeanCommunity (EC) has a specific number of MEPs, based onpopulation. As one of the larger member states, the UnitedKingdom, along with France, Germany, and Italy, has 81repre sent at ives.

European Parliament (EP) elections are held every five yearsfor a fixed term. The Parliament is organized into blocs ofrepresentatives, which, in the traditional manner of multi-partyparliaments, span the ideological spectrum from left to right.There are continual adjustments in these coalitions, but generallythe 5 18 MEPs are divided into approximately ten groupings. The EP holds its plenary sessions in Strasbourg, and itsSecretariat is in Luxembourg. However, most of its substantivedeliberations are done by committees, which hold their sessions inBrussels. This, together with the ease of commuting andinherently greater appeal of Brussels, has made the Belgiancapital the usual reference point for the European Parliament,although the EP continues to have something akin to ageographical split personality.

THERE ARE SOME DATES AND EVENTS WHICH REMAIN engraved in the collective memory of a people. In Algeria these are: 1 November 1954, which sparked the eight-year long War of Liberation; 5 July 1962, which witnessed the end of French rule over the country after 130 years of colonial settlement; and 12 June 1990, which signalled the withering away of the monopoly of power exercised by the ruling party - the National Liberation Front (FLN) - following the holding of the first ever free and competitive local elections in the history of independent Algeria. No doubt, on 12 June 1990 the Constitution of 23 February 1989, which fundamentally transformed the political and social system of Algeria, achieved its most spectacular application. These elections aimed at the renewal of seats in the Councils of both APC: Assemblées Populaires Communales (constituencies), and APW: Assemblées Populaires de Wilayat (provinces). For the first time, Algerians were offered the freedom to choose their representatives from among lists of candidates sponsored by several newly-legalized parties alongside the FLN, and for the first time, the FLN tasted defeat.

POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN ITALIAN CITY STATES WAS NOT FOR MEN who valued themselves more than they valued politics. The stakes were too high. Exile or loss of life and property were too often the penalties. The difficult legal circumstances which attended organized political opposition went back to the early commune, to the fervour of the civil struggles that began late in the 12th century. These were to affect the character of the opposition down to the 16th century. If the contenders in political strife sometimes expressed a readiness to compromise, they revealed, just as often, an inability to do so. And in critical times the desire for the physical elimination of political opponents easily emerged.

Major rivalries of the 11th and 12th centuries inadvertently favoured the rise of local government. The communes – rendered bolder in many cases by their quickening economies – profited from the conflicts between papacy and empire, between the emperor and the German princes, and between the episcopal and comital powers in Italy. As imperial authority waned, local groups all over north and central Italy pressed forward to take over the administration of their own affairs.

ONE OF THE MOST NOTICED FEATURES OF OUR TIME IS that global problems are increasing at a faster rate than the evolution of the political capacities to manage them. This is not a new observation, or even a new condition. It has long been part of a pessimistic assessment of the prospects for modern industrial technological civilization that can be traced back to its origins, but has been particularly strong throughout the twentieth century. H. G. Wells's famous comment that ‘human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe’ is even more apposite to the contemporary mood than it was when first written. The spectre of communism no longer haunts Europe, but other spectres now haunt the global civilization which developed out of Europe. Some of the key trends of this global civilization threaten at best an era of mounting disorder and chaos in the world system, at worst the survival of the human species itself. The problems are increasing far faster than the ability to find solutions for them.

‘POWER’ AND ‘CONFLICT’ ARE BOTH TERMS WE DO NOT SEEM TO BE able to do without, however much we may be worried by what methodological purists say. We tend to feel that if we could understand the distribution of power and the lines and amounts of conflict we would have the key to the explanation of political events in the world as a whole, a particular society, or some group - some association or organization - within a society.

This feeling is in my view quite justified, but only in this sense: that if we had an analysis of the state of a society (etc.) that was sufficient to enable us to talk confidently about the distribution of power and the lines and amounts of conflict, we would already be in a position to be able to explain political events. In other words, as a means to being able to describe the situation in terms of power and conflict, we would have to build up information and ways of analysing that information, so good, that we would indeed be able to explain political events. But the logical relationship among the elements would be, not that because we could talk about power and conflict we could explain political events but rather that because we could explain political events, we could talk about power and conflict.

Many countries have constitutional rules, granted to prime ministers, presidents or cabinets, that govern early parliamentary dissolution. Although there are sharply divergent theoretical expectations about the consequences of such powers for both democratic representation and accountability, there have been no empirical examinations of these arguments. Using data from the European Social Survey (2002–16) in 26 European countries, we test whether such provisions for early election calling affect citizens' satisfaction with democracy, and if so, which rules and how. While it appears that no form of constitutional rules for early election is directly related to citizen satisfaction with democracy, when early elections are called by prime ministers or presidents, democratic satisfaction drops significantly, and this effect is more pronounced the later in the term the early election is called. These findings have important implications for academic and policy debates about the desirability of constitutional change designed to limit early election calling for opportunistic purposes.

Studies have suggested that people voting for Brexit were motivated by anti-globalization, anti-multiculturalism and anti-elite sentiments. However, little is known about how these factors are related and whether citizens in other member states share similar reasons for wanting to exit the EU. Methodologically, this question is addressed by utilizing path models on data from the European Social Survey, with respondents in 17 countries. Empirically, this article reveals considerable cross-country variation, which implies that motivations for voting Leave should be assessed on a country-by-country basis. Yet, two main pathways are identified. First, lower education is related to more negative attitudes towards multiculturalism, which increases the probability of voting Leave. Second, lower income decreases the level of trust in the political establishment, which again increases the probability of voting Leave. Theoretically, this implies that the anti-globalization model is subsumed by the anti-multiculturalism and anti-elite models, giving rise to two new mechanisms.

Recent work has noted an increase in the number of parties at the national level in both proportional and majoritarian electoral systems. While the conventional wisdom maintains that the incentives provided by the electoral system will prevent the number of parties at the district level from exceeding two in majoritarian systems, the evidence presented here demonstrates otherwise. I argue that this has occurred because the number of cleavages articulated by parties has increased as several third parties have begun articulating cleavages that are not well represented by the two larger parties.

BOTH GERMAN STATES HAVE IN THE PAST BEEN ECONOMIC systems in search of political legitimation. The legitimation of the West German state was gradually established by the acceptance of democratic principles by the huge majority of the population and by a welfare system which was deliberately devised to protect it against contamination from the socialist camp. East Germany lost its legitimation at the moment when it abandoned its economic system. Consequently the battle-cry turned from ‘we are the people’ to ‘we are one people’.

Radical right parties are commonly associated with nativism and opposition to ethnic diversity, but there have been few systematic attempts to investigate this connection further. Noting that radical right parties in Europe do not express hostility towards all minorities or all immigrants, I investigate possible explanations for the difference in targeted hostility. I introduce the concept of targeted nativism, distinguishing between ethnic minorities that are excluded using the nativist cleavage, and those that are implicitly included in ‘the nation’. I propose three explanations for the targeted nativism, identifying minority outgroups based on: (1) ethnocultural differences, (2) minority political empowerment, or (3) ethnocultural minority accommodation. I examine these explanations using the examples of radical right parties in Sweden and Bulgaria, and further test these hypotheses with a new dataset that identifies targeted minorities. My findings indicate that more distinctive minorities are significantly more likely to be targeted by the radical right.

WHEN ITS ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT WERE DRAWN UP IN 1944, the International Monetary Fund was seen as having two main functions: to oversee the operation of a system of fixed, but adjustable, exchange rates; and to promote the removal of payments restrictions on international trade. Over the years since then, despite the demise of the fixed exchange rate system and a steady decline in payments restrictions, the scope of the Fund's influence has grown. Why should this be?

In broad terms, the answer is to be found in the increasing integration of the world economy. As trade and investment flows have grown, so too have the concerns of the international community for good economic management in individual national economies. ‘Spill-over’ effects have grown in size and importance, and with them the need for a framework to regulate their consequences.

The European Parliament is The First Directly Elected international parliament in history. June 1994 marks the beginning of its fourth term of five years. The Treaty on European Union, which came into force on 1 November 1993, strengthens the powers of the Parliament in a number of significant ways. Now is a good time, therefore, to reflect on the development of the European Parliament, and to speculate on its potential.

CONSTITUTIONS, CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM AND CONSTITUTIONAL conflict are once again commanding attention. The celebrations of the bicentennial of the American constitution, the implementation of constitutional reform in Canada, the Labour government's programme for constitutional change in the United Kingdom, the seemingly intractable conflict in Northern Ireland, and transfers of sovereignty to the European Union from its constituent states, testify to this. Equally, if not more challenging, have been the upheavals in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and its reconstituted states, the ‘third’ wave of democratization across the developing world, the experiment in participatory constitutionalism in South Africa and the return of Hong Kong to China. Of the 179 countries that elect their governments out of a total of 192 countries in the world, 176 have codified constitutions. Constitutions, however, that are not fully mature or operative and are not based on the principles or drafted with the advice of those nations that have developed and entrenched their constitutions tend to be disregarded, or even dismissed. Moreover, writing a constitution is one exercise, implementing, and interpreting it is a far more complex and delicate undertaking. So how are social scientists to evaluate the process?