The main goal of this master thesis is to analyse the election campaign of the Czech Pirate Party in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic in 2017. Even though the Pirate Party have participated in several elections since 2009, the election in 2017 brought the greatest electoral success. Nowadays, the external experts from various fields participate in the pre-election campaigns of the parties. Such cooperation usually lasts only during the pre-election campaign and it ends after the elections. These experts create campaign strategies and plans, train party leaders in communication, provide brand analyses, etc. The primary objective of this thesis is to analyse how the campaign of the Czech Pirate Party was conducted in 2017, whether they collaborated with external experts and what elements they had in their campaign.

How do parties organize, and do parties' organizational differences matter? Different organization patterns are empirically associated with varying electoral performance, voters' participation, policy-making, and party systems' shape and stability.Despite the empirical relevance of party organization, theoretical scholarship has overwhelmingly focused on other functions of parties — namely the electoral one, simplifying the political world for voters, and the policy-making one in the legislative arena. The papers in this dissertation advance a new theoretical agenda on the organization of political parties, generating insights that I test with novel data. The main contribution of the dissertation is to treat party organization as an endogenous rather than exogenous variable. This approach allows to generate novel insights on how the electoral environment influences the way parties organize, and outcomes such as parties' electoral performance and the process of party system stabilization. The first paper conceives the internal organization of a party as being driven by factional competition. What brings opposing factions to engage in sabotage rather than enhance the party image, and what strategies can parties adopt to contain it? The paper introduces a model of elections in which intra-party factions can devote resources to campaign for the party or to undermine each other and obtain more power. The party redistributes electoral spoils among factions to motivate their investment in campaigning activities. The model shows that sabotage increases when the stakes of the election are low — e.g., in consensus democracies that grant power to the losing party — because the incentives to focus on the fight for internal power increase. It also suggests that the optimal party strategy for winning the election in the face of intra-party competition is to reward factions with high powered incentives when campaigning effort can be easily monitored, but treat factions equally otherwise. Finally, the model shows that, when a party weakens electorally, factions’ incentives move from campaigning for the party to sabotaging each other to obtain electoral spoils. A testable implication of this result is the emergence of political scandals triggered internally as a product of factional sabotage. The second paper tests this empirical implication using original data on judicial investigations of Italian MPs involved in various misbehaviors. Judicial investigations of politicians are a fundamental component of politics, often leading to scandals. Yet, empirical evidence of the strategic determinants of judicial investigations is intrinsically hard to gather, a problem that has significantly limited the study of this important phenomenon. The paper studies the politics behind judicial investigations leveraging new data on prosecutors' informants in 1125 episodes of misbehavior of Italian MPs involved in different crimes (1983-2019). Results provide evidence in favor of a political use of denunciations for corruption crimes: when a party weakens, the likelihood that political enemies denounce past misbehavior of members of the weakened party increases, suggesting that the political use of denunciation is elastic to changes in the electoral performance. The timing of past misbehavior is crucial: members of weakened parties are more likely to be accused of misbehavior that happened a long time before the accusation, which further supports the conjecture that accusations are politically motivated. The third paper moves to the topic of party organization in the presence of multi-party competition. It conceives of the choice over party organization as parties' decision to form different types of alliances. Despite being pervasive, little is known about the conditions facilitating different forms of pre-electoral alliances. The paper presents a model of electoral competition in which parties can form alliances before elections, and decide how binding these should be. Parties face a dynamic trade-off between insuring themselves against large shifts in public opinion and allowing flexibility to respond to future changes in voters' preferences. The model shows that more binding alliances such as mergers emerge in equilibrium when electoral volatility is high; otherwise, parties form more flexible pre-electoral coalitions. It also suggests that some power concentration is needed for alliances to emerge in equilibrium, whereas parties run alone under consensual democracies that share power among all parties.

The thesis follows the political development of the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah from its radical beginnings in the 80th, through the first political success in the early years of the 90th, to the contemporary situation. Hezbollah is an example of phenomenal transformation to the politically powerful entity with its own political party and significant power, which was often stronger than a real power of Lebanese government. The aim of the paper is to highlight the dynamic process of transformation of terrorist movement into a political party. The process is operationalized at two levels than. The analysis follows the external nature of the Lebanese political system allowing the transformation of Hezbollah; the interior follows the development of participation of Hezbollah. The process of transformation is depicted not only during key parliamentary elections in 1992, but also in the context of subsequent political developments, which resulted in a dominant position of Hezbollah in the Lebanese government. The text also embedded Hezbollah to the overall context of the Shia fundamentalist movements and the author tries to provide the potential outlines for its further development. The author also believes that the conclusions of the work can enrich the overall outlook on Lebanese Hezbollah and to provide...

This diploma thesis "Application of the theory of the process of forming coalitions of regional councils in the Czech Republic after the elections in 2008 and 2012" discusses the process of establishing regional coalitions in the region of the South Moravian and the Central Bohemia. The aim is to answer the question of what form of the regional coalitions formed during the regional elections. Furthermore, I was describe how did the process of establishing regional coalitions and what were the key factors, that decide the outcome of negotiations. For these reasons, this thesis analyzed the official declaration of election programs, performances by regional politicians in political or public debate. The intention of this thesis is through the use of a theoretical framework and analysis of documents, describe in detail the development process, which was formed coalition and identify possible strategies of individual actors. The paper used discourse analysis. Keywords coalition, county, election, negotiation, council, political party

The Euroscepticism is a very popular issue now. Its popularity has risen because of inability of European states to solve the crisis since the start of the Eurozone crisis. This thesis is based on analysis of party program documents and other statements. It attempts to capture the increase in Euroscepticism among German political parties. The public opinion is taking into account as well. Germany has become one of the main actors in the search for ways out of the crisis. This role associated with some financial burden has led to series of discussion and to the growth of skepticism among the political parties. The European Stability Mechanism was the one of the most discussed topics. The crisis provoked uncertainty and skepticism among the German public as well. This scepticism was largely influenced by the actual situation in the Eurozone. In direct response to the crisis a new political movement was created. It was called the Alternative for Germany. The Alternative for Germany rejected remaining in the Eurozone. It reached some success in provincial elections in 2014. There were more reasons for its success which not just correspondent with its eurosceptic agenda. The thesis identifies these reasons as well. Despite this situation, Germany remains a pro-European state.

Political parties serve as a link between the state and society. Being so, they have a fundamental role in the consolidation of democratic values. It then becomes important to understand their internal functions and character. The purpose of this thesis is to measure the levels of intra-party democracy within three opposition political parties in Southern Africa. Also, this thesis seeks to show whether authoritarian political culture has an affect on a democratic party's behavior. This thesis will strive to show that as party levels of intra-party democracy decrease, fracturing in the party increases. A qualitative case study was conducted on UNITA in Angola, the ANC in South Africa, and the MDC in Zimbabwe. A content analysis was performed on the parties' respective constitutions and official party documents, as well as other scholarly writings. This was paired with an historical analysis of the case states and parties. The parties were assessed along a determined framework for intra-party democracy: political environment, legal framework of the state and party, the inclusiveness of the party, and party economics. Inclusiveness of the party gauges membership participation, leadership competition, gender parity, and oversight. The ANC exhibited the highest levels of intra-party democracy, and has shown the most stability. The MDC was found to have the lowest levels, and has split multiple times in recent years. All the parties demonstrated a need to open leadership participation and create better oversight mechanisms. Political parties proved to be a critical element in a state's potential democratic development, and though there exists deficiencies, the political parties of this study seem committed in many of their functions to this goal.

The aim of this study is to describe and explain the political party participation among university students. The background to the study lies in the growing problem with the political party participation in Sweden where the members in political parties has been going down for many years and seemingly continue to do so. Thats why the purpose of this study is to examine the political party participation among university students using a questionnaire survey and will be explained by using the theory ”Civic Voluntarism Modell”.  To explain the participation through CVM there is three main factors in this theory: resources, motivation and social network, who will be the factors used for the questionnaire survey and for the analysis. The material that’s been analyzed is there for the answers of the respondents in the questionnaire survey done at Mälardalens University in Västerås at three different programs: Statsvetarprogrammet, Beteendevetenskapliga Programmet and Lärarprogrammet. The result of the survey show there is a very low political party participation among university students as well, low numbers of both members in political parties and even lower numbers of active members in political parties. The result also shows that there is a connection between Civic Voluntarism Modell and the political party participation in the study, mainly regarding resources but motivation and social network as well. The study ends with a discussion of how well the connection between CVM and political party participation appears within the survey and reflects about possible flaws and struggles in the questionnaire survey.

社團參與在當代社會早已成為非常重要的議題，不論是西方還是台灣學界都有許多相關的研究。不同於西方社團參與的形式，台灣距離政治民主化只有短短的數十年，社團參與在過去威權統治以及現在民主開放的影響下，產生了複雜的運作機制。一方面，政治上的開放使得社團參與遭遇的限制大幅減少，各式各樣社團呈現蓬勃發展的趨勢，目的性的結社成為了最重要的社團參與形式；另一方面傳統文化下的擬式血源性社團並沒有因為威權體制崩解而失去活力，在地方選舉中依舊保有關鍵的地位。 為了探究台灣解嚴後社團參與的獨特意義，以及民主化之後是否又面臨什麼樣的改變？本文以參與社團所形成的網絡結構作為分析方法，從社團和政黨的網絡鑲嵌性以及社團網絡的社會資本效果，嘗試找出社團網絡的結構及變遷。 透過研究本文呈現了幾個重要發現：首先，研究結果指出台灣社團參與沒有欣欣向榮的發展，在參與者的比例有下降的趨勢，而且教育程度並無顯著提高，反駁了先前的研究；其次，在1992、1997以及2002年三次調查中，政黨和社團的鑲嵌性變化不大，大致上國民黨是強烈鑲嵌在社團網絡之中，反之民進黨則一直處於邊陲的地位，政黨輪替並沒有造成太大的改變；第三，草根性社團仍是台灣很重要的社會力基礎，其成員參與其他社團的比例相當高，不過受限於成員特殊性的影響，使得連結性有不少的侷限；最後，社團網絡確實會有社會資本的效果，不論是從連結能力還是不同結構位置的社團都被證實，但是在台灣這樣的社會資本卻是帶有選擇性的，整體上參與社團的人確實會比較傾向投給泛藍的陣營。 / Civic engagement in modern societies has been an important academic issue, both in Western countries and Taiwan. Unlike that in the Western societies, the civic engagement in Taiwan has a more complex operating mechanism in that authoritarian ruling in the past and democratization of Taiwan in the recent decades have a joint effect on the associations. On the one hand, because democratization greatly reduced the constraints on civic engagement, all kinds of associations have become prosperous and goal-oriented associations become the most important form of civic engagement. On the other hand, under the influence of traditional culture, primary associations still keep their power even with the collapse of authoritarian regime; they still play a key role in the local elections. This thesis analyzes the network structure formed by associations to understand the special meaning of civic engagement in Taiwan after the abolition of martial laws and the changes the network may encounter after the democratization. It looks at three investigations of Social Change Survey in 1992, 1997, and 2002 to find the structure and change from the network embeddedness of associations and political parties and from the effects of social capital obtained by association network. This thesis presents the following important findings: First, the associations in Taiwan are not as prosperous as mentioned in previous research. The data show that the proportion of participants among Taiwanese civilians decreases and the educational degree of the members does not significantly increase. Second, in the three surveys, the embeddedness of political parties and associations does not show obvious change. Generally speaking, KMT still strongly embed in association network, while DPP remains isolated from the network. The shift of political power does not cause strong effects. Third, the grassroots associations still are important basis of social forces, having a high ratio of members joining other associations. However, because of specialties of their members, the capacity of the grassroots associations is limited. Finally, association network has its effects on accumulating social capital, which can be shown by the capacity of association network and by the structural locations of different associations. However, such social capital in Taiwan is selective. Generally speaking, people who join the associations tend to support the pan-blue parties.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the state executive committees of the two major political parties in Texas and to present facts regarding the membership of the committees (the policy-makers) and the professional staff of the state party organization (the administrators of party policy).

A la veille de l’élection présidentielle de 2007, la candidate du Parti socialiste, Ségolène Royal, revendique la transformation des modalités classiques d'une campagne électorale au profit de méthodes participatives. Sans rompre avec certaines techniques habituelles du marketing et de la communication politique, cette démarche se fonde sur des expériences délibératives menées au niveau local ou à l’étranger et sur les capacités interactives d’Internet mises au service de nouvelles pratiques démocratiques. Elle participe à la mutation en cours dans les partis politiques, confrontés à des enjeux de démocratie interne et à une interrogation persistante sur leur représentativité. Dans cette thèse, nous mettons en évidence les tensions, les interactions et les formes d’hybridation entre les logiques partisanes et les innovations participatives. Nous montrons comment la construction de dispositifs participatifs agit comme révélateur des rapports de force entre les principaux acteurs du jeu partisan. / In the months preceding the presidential elections of 2007, the Socialist party’s candidate, Ségolène Royal, laid claim to a transformation in traditional electoral campaign tactics in favor of participative methods. These included deliberative experiences both at the local level and abroad, as well as a use of the interactive possibilities of the internet to further new democratic practices, without of course abandoning the more routine techniques used in political marketing and communication. This dissertation explores the tension, interactions, and forms of hybridization that emerged between partisan politics and participative innovations. It highlights the ways the development of participative strategies acts to reveal the power relations between the main actors of the partisan political game.