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This book explains why the level of party presidentialization varies from one country to another. It considers the effects of constitutional structures as well as the party's original features, and argues that the degree of party presidentialization varies as a function of the party's genetics.
This book examines the effects of preferential voting on intraparty electoral competition and voting behavior. Using data covering 19 countries and over 200 elections, this study sheds light on a somewhat neglected aspect of electoral systems. The author demonstrates that the ability of voters to influence the selection and deselection of MPs under preferential voting systems is not as important as is often assumed. Instead, their ability to shape the election of a given candidate depends heavily on the balance between party power and voter power. In this way, this book advances the understanding of the effect of preferential voting on intra-party dynamics, parliamentary turnover, and voter behavior. Based on a rigorous, data-led methodological approach, the book contributes to both the theory and practice of the study of electoral systems, and should be read by scholars, students and practitioners interested in preferential voting systems.
This book examines the process of presidentialisation of political parties in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkan countries deserve to be analysed in a comparative perspective due to their distinctive features in terms of processes of democratization, forms of government and institutional assets, the presence of social cleavages (religious, linguistic, ethnic), and, of course, the nature of political parties which differs from other European cases, especially in terms of origins, organization and structure. However, Western Balkan political parties do show certain similarities with other West European cases where power is centralised and held by the parties’ leadership. The book ultimately attempts to test whether and to what extent the influence of institutional variables affects the level of presidentialisation of political parties, also considering the parties’ organization features.
The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics provides a comprehensive look at the political life of one of Europe's most exciting and turbulent democracies. Under the hegemonic influence of Christian Democracy in the early post-World War II decades, Italy went through a period of rapid growth and political transformation. In part this resulted in tumult and a crisis of governability; however, it also gave rise to innovation in the form of Eurocommunism and new forms of political accommodation. The great strength of Italy lay in its constitution; its great weakness lay in certain legacies of the past. Organized crime--popularly but not exclusively associated with the mafia--is one example. A self-...
No subject is more central to the study of politics than elections. Electoral systems--the rules about how voters' preferences are translated into election results--profoundly shape important political outcomes, including party systems, candidate selection, and policy choices. This volume provides an in-depth exploration of the origins and effects of electoral systems.
It is difficult for Italians to have much faith in the future. The last Labour Minister said it was a good thing if young people emigrated, to stop them 'getting under our feet'; one recent Prime Minister said that young Italians should not invest their hopes in securing a stable job, for that would be 'boring', anyway. Examining Italy's history since the end of the Cold War, Italy is the Future argues that its dismal situation should not be understood in terms of a stereotyped narrative of Italian chaos or backwardness. In a country that could once boast Europe's strongest Left, Italy today epitomises the crisis of democracy in the West. The scandals of Silvio Berlusconi's rule, the pervasi...
This Handbook provides definitive reference work on political executives and their key role in political systems. It records the current theoretical and methodological debates and sets the agenda for future research in this prominent and extremely wide-ranging field of research.
This book covers recent developments in the understanding, quantification, and exploitation of entanglement in spin chain models from both condensed matter and quantum information perspectives. Spin chain models are at the foundation of condensed matter physics and quantum information technologies and elucidate many fundamental phenomena such as information scrambling, quantum phase transitions, and many-body localization. Moreover, many quantum materials and emerging quantum devices are well described by spin chains. Comprising accessible, self-contained chapters written by leading researchers, this book is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in quantum materials and quantum information. The coverage is comprehensive, from the fundamental entanglement aspects of quantum criticality, non-equilibrium dynamics, classical and quantum simulation of spin chains through to their experimental realizations, and beyond into machine learning applications.
This book explores how power-sharing between the president and the prime minister works in semi-presidential regimes. In contrast to much of the existing comparative work on semi-presidentialism, the book emphasizes the role of institutional coordination at the most concrete level of executive policy-making, and asks how institutional coordination between the president and prime minister influences presidential activism and the balance of power within the executive. The authors develop a tentative framework embedded in institutionalism and based on four strands of research – semi-presidentialism, public administration, political leadership, and foreign policy analysis – which is subsequently applied to the cases of Lithuania, Romania and Finland. Given the political challenges facing many semi-presidential countries, the study ultimately seeks to identify institutional solutions that facilitate power-sharing and successful policy-making.
Party and Democracy questions why political parties today are held in such low estimation in advanced democracies. The first part of the volume reviews theoretical motivations behind the growing disdain for the political party. In surveying the parties' lengthy attempt to gain legitimacy, particular attention is devoted to the cultural and political conditions which led to their emergence on the ground' and then to their political and theoretical acceptance as the sole master in the chain of delegation. The second part traces the evolution of the party's organization and public confidence against the backdrop of the transition from industrial to post-industrial societies. The book suggests t...