acase@tulane.edu / 1 / Roy Jason Taylor

This thesis' topic is The Irish party system and its changes in the last 25 years with a focus on the role of Sinn Féin. While Sinn Féin was the largest party in the first Irish parliament at the beginning of the 20th century, the rest of the century the party remained minor. Its strong ties to the Irish Republican Army kept the party from gaining official recognition both from the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, since the party contests in both parts of the island of Ireland. The connection to IRA together with the policy of abstentionism, which the party practiced until 1986 in the Republic and until 1998 to the Northern Ireland Assembly, put the party on the edge of the interest of both scholars and voters. However, after the peace process in Northern Ireland, the situation changed rapidly, at least in the case of voters. Today, only twenty years after the process ended, Sinn Féin is the second largest (and the largest nationalist) party in the Northern Ireland assembly and the third biggest in the Dáil (the lower house of the Irish parliament), succeeding the Labour party at this position. And while the voters support for the party grows, most of the scholars still consider to be only a political wing of the IRA or a minor party. The descriptive part of this thesis narrates the...

The thesis analyzes the changes of the party system in Venezuela after 1945. It focuses especially on the important years 1993 and 1999, when the party system changed significantly and tries to find answers on questions: why these changes happened.

Political party is a outcome of modern democracy states. Political party is also the way of the operation of the modern democracy states. Philippines is the first state of the southeast Asia states to carry out democratic politics, but along with the political strongman that Ferdinard Macos declared the martial law, the democracy in Philippines turned back the wheel of history. Although Mrs. Corazon Aquino won the president election with the people's power in 1986, she renewed Philippines to make new constitution, and made it go back the democratic regime. However, the democratic regime of Philippines had been destroyed by Ferdinard Macos. In the past decades, stability of two-party system in Philippines had been disappeared. That has the name of ¡udemocracy shadow¡vof Philippines, frailty democracy is obviously. After Taiwan declared the martial law ended, the development of parties in Taiwan mushroomed, the transition of party-system from one dominant party system to multi-party system, the development in the future will bend toward the stable two-party system. Under the foundation of near time point that Philippines and Taiwan' democratic development, what are the diversity of parties of two states after the democratic development, we will compare with the similarities and dissimilarities on the Philippines and Taiwan's Parties, including party-system, party structure and the impact on party of electoral system, discussing and analyzing the reasons. By the institutionalism approach , we observe the influence on the parties and political environment. Eventually, we will make compares, induction and analysis on the character and tendency in the future on parties of two states.

This essay is studying the Parliament parties´ use of negative campaigning in party leader debates in the connected Swedish general election in 2014. The research questions in this essay are: How does the use of negative campaigning appear in the Swedish party leader debates 2014? In what way does the use of negative campaigning differ due to: - The time lasting until the election day? - Whether the party is a government party or an opposition party? - The party’s latest result (positive or negative) in the polls? - The party’s position in the ideological left-right scale? The method used to perform the study is a quantitative content analysis. The objects that are analyzed are four party leader debates connected to the general election 2014. The variables used in the research are Negative and Not negative (in the latest variable both positive and neutral messages are included). The debates analyzed are videos of the entire debates. The total speech time and the use of negative campaigning for each party is calculated in seconds and translated to percent (how many percent each party use to negative campaigning in total for each debate). The results show that negative campaigning is more used during the election process than before it has started. There is no clear pattern between the use of negative campaigning and closeness of the election day. The political parties that are in opposition tend to use more negative campaigning than the parties that are in the government. The polls and the ideological left- right scale shows no significant pattern related to the use of negative campaigning.

This diploma thesis is primarily focused on the issue of voters' behaviour in the city of Ceske Budejovice. The main goal of the thesis is the synchronic and diachronic comparative analysis of the election preferences of political parties standing in an election in the municipality. Three types of the elections are compared: the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, the elections to the regional councils in the Czech Republic and the municipal elections. The next primary goal is to analyse whether the breaking points in the parliamentary party system from the years 2010 and 2013 were reflected in the preferences of the electors in the city of Ceske Budejovice, and whether the local party system followed them as well. The secondary objective lies in the comparison of aggregated preferences at the state and regional level with the behaviour of residents of Ceske Budejovice. This comparison is done for the particular political parties in all analysed types of elections. The diploma thesis consists of two main parts, which are the theoretical part and the analytical part. The theoretical part is focused on the general principles of the electoral process as well as three mentioned types of elections. Furthermore, there is a description of the parliamentary, regional and local party system development in the Czech Republic. The last chapter of the theoretical part deals with the theory of the voting behaviour at large and the factors that might influence it as well. The analytical part of the thesis is split into chapters according to the sorts of the research elections. Each chapter contains the analysis of the results and polls as well as the relative deviation from the national and regional preferences. In the last chapter of the analytical part, the links between the voters' behaviour and the social-economic factors, which might influence it, are contemplated.

The consequences and aftermaths of the 2008 Great Recession have played an important role in stirring people fear and agony to 'some' other people. The phenomenon is defined as the root of affective polarization. Research has claimed that affective polarization derives from partisan identity and the theory of social identity, and those affects are developed and reached beyond the classic concept of ideological polarization. During the post-economic crisis, a number of successful new radical right parties has surged across the continent. In addition, Western European politics has severely been polarized and increasingly characterized by growing hostility and incivility across partisan lines. Simultaneously, the trend of deinstitutionalization of party system goes upward across Europe. This article seeks to investigate a puzzle of whether and how increasing levels of party system deinstitutionalization are associated with increasing polarization. Assessing the association between party system deinstitutionalization and the two dimensions of polarization between 1997 and 2017 (82 elections in 15 countries), the empirical result shows such an unexpected result and strongly implies the underestimated effects of political structures on party system deinstitutionalization and polarization while...

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This thesis focused on the question of the acceptability possibly unacceptability of Czech political party KSČM and the German political party Die Linke in terms of their participation in the national government. The paper describes attitudes of important and key stakeholders for this issue. That means attitudes inside of the researched parties, attitudes within social democratic parties in the Czech Republic and in Germany and the attitudes of other relevant parties in both above mentioned states. Subsequently, the results of this analysis are compared. Researched period begins in 2002 in the case of KSČM when the elections to the Chamber of Deputies were held in the Czech Republic and in the case of Die Linke since 2005 when there were elections to the Bundestag in Germany. The development is analyzed until 2014. The last peak of the analyze are the elections to the lower chambers of the Czech and German parliament which were both held in the fall of 2013. During the researched period it seemed several times that the conditions are relatively positive for the participation of KSČM or Die Linke in the national government, either directly or indirectly. But it never happened. There are more reasons for that. However the most important is that there has never been a sufficient number of actors on...

This thesis called "ANO 2011: a business-firm party?" deals with the analysis of a Czech political movement ANO 2011 in order to determine wheter and/or to what extent political movement ANO 2011 corresponds with business-firm party model, as described by Jonathan Hopkin and Caterina Paolucci in 1999. It is based on the context of a change of party organization and on logic of developmental typology of political parties. The aim is to determine whether the political movement ANO 2011 corresponds to the characteristics of the business-firm party model. The hypothesis here is that in the beginning of the movement it matched the model, while since than there is moving away to the direction of the form of traditional political parties. In another part there is a contribution described to the revision of business-firm party model that offers a modified perspective on the subject. With this perspective the characteristics of the business-firm party model are rather understood as a marketing strategy or a party subtype than as a separate and generally applicable type of political parties.