Class and Conservative Parties

Class and Conservative Parties PDF Author: Edward L. Gibson
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801867217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What promotes or hinders the development of conservative parties in Latin America? What does this augur for the stable representation of the propertied and socially privileged in political parties? In Class and Conservative Parties, Edward L. Gibson examines these questions in light of Latin America's long legacies of authoritarianism and democratic instability. Gibson explores these questions theoretically, historically and comparatively. He develops an approach to the comparative study of conservative parties that sheds new theoretical light on the social dynamics of party politics. Historically, he traces the determinants of conservative party development in Argentina, providing a rich analysis of how interactions between conservatism's elite "core constituencies," party leaders, and the state shaped the rise and fall of conservative parties in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gibson also presents a comparative examination of conservative party politics in Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s and offers a thoughtful look ahead to conservatism's future in the region.

Class and Conservative Parties

Class and Conservative Parties PDF Author: Edward L. Gibson
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801867217
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What promotes or hinders the development of conservative parties in Latin America? What does this augur for the stable representation of the propertied and socially privileged in political parties? In Class and Conservative Parties, Edward L. Gibson examines these questions in light of Latin America's long legacies of authoritarianism and democratic instability. Gibson explores these questions theoretically, historically and comparatively. He develops an approach to the comparative study of conservative parties that sheds new theoretical light on the social dynamics of party politics. Historically, he traces the determinants of conservative party development in Argentina, providing a rich analysis of how interactions between conservatism's elite "core constituencies," party leaders, and the state shaped the rise and fall of conservative parties in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gibson also presents a comparative examination of conservative party politics in Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s and offers a thoughtful look ahead to conservatism's future in the region.

Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America

Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America PDF Author: Kevin J. Middlebrook
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801863851
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
Under what conditions do political institutions develop that are capable of promoting economic and social elites' accommodation to democracy? The importance of this question for research on regime change and democracy in Latin America lies in two established political facts: alliances between upper-class groups and the armed forces have historically been a major cause of military intervention in the region, and countries with electorally viable national conservative parties have experienced significantly longer periods of democratic governance since the 1920s and 1930s than have countries with weak conservative parties. The contributors to this book examine the relationship between the Right and democracy in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and Venezuela during the 1980s and 1990s. The authors focus particularly on the challenges that democratization may pose to upper-class groups; the political role of conservative parties and their electoral performance during these two crucial decades; and the relationships among conservative party strength or weakness, different modes of elite interest representation, and economic and social elites' support for political democracy. The volume includes a statistical appendix with data on conservative parties' electoral performance in national elections during the 1980s and 1990s in these seven countries. Contributors: Atilio A. Borón, Universidad de Buenos Aires • Catherine M. Conaghan, Queen's University • Michael Coppedge, University of Notre Dame • John C. Dugas, Kalamazoo College • Manuel Antonio Garretón, Universidad de Chile • Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame • Rachel Meneguello, Universidade de Campinas • Kevin J. Middlebrook, University of California, San Diego • Timothy J. Power, Florida International University • Elisabeth J. Wood, New York University.

Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy

Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy PDF Author: Daniel Ziblatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521172998
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
How do democracies form and what makes them die? Daniel Ziblatt revisits this timely and classic question in a wide-ranging historical narrative that traces the evolution of modern political democracy in Europe from its modest beginnings in 1830s Britain to Adolf Hitler's 1933 seizure of power in Weimar Germany. Based on rich historical and quantitative evidence, the book offers a major reinterpretation of European history and the question of how stable political democracy is achieved. The barriers to inclusive political rule, Ziblatt finds, were not inevitably overcome by unstoppable tides of socioeconomic change, a simple triumph of a growing middle class, or even by working class collective action. Instead, political democracy's fate surprisingly hinged on how conservative political parties - the historical defenders of power, wealth, and privilege - recast themselves and coped with the rise of their own radical right. With striking modern parallels, the book has vital implications for today's new and old democracies under siege.

Contentious Republicans

Contentious Republicans PDF Author: James E. Sanders
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822385740
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Contentious Republicans explores the mid-nineteenth-century rise of mass electoral democracy in the southwestern region of Colombia, a country many assume has never had a meaningful democracy of any sort. James E. Sanders describes a surprisingly rich republicanism characterized by legal rights and popular participation, and he explains how this vibrant political culture was created largely by competing subaltern groups seeking to claim their rights as citizens and their place in the political sphere. Moving beyond the many studies of nineteenth-century nation building that focus on one segment of society, Contentious Republicans examines the political activism of three distinct social and racial groups: Afro-Colombians, Indians, and white peasant migrants. Beginning in the late 1840s, subaltern groups entered the political arena to forge alliances, both temporary and enduring, with the elite Liberal and Conservative Parties. In the process, each group formed its own political discourses and reframed republicanism to suit its distinct needs. These popular liberals and popular conservatives bargained for the parties’ support and deployed a broad repertoire of political actions, including voting, demonstrations, petitions, strikes, boycotts, and armed struggle. By the 1880s, though, many wealthy Colombians of both parties blamed popular political engagement for social disorder and economic failure, and they successfully restricted lower-class participation in politics. Sanders suggests that these reactionary developments contributed to the violence and unrest afflicting modern Colombia. Yet in illuminating the country’s legacy of participatory politics in the nineteenth century, he shows that the current situation is neither inevitable nor eternal.

The Sinking Middle Class

The Sinking Middle Class PDF Author: David Roediger
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1642597279
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
The Sinking Middle Class challenges the “save the middle class” rhetoric that dominates our political imagination. The slogan misleads us regarding class, nation, and race. Talk of middle class salvation reinforces myths holding that the US is a providentially middle class nation. Implicitly white, the middle class becomes viewed as unheard amidst supposed concerns for racial justice and for the poor. Roediger shows how little the US has been a middle class nation. The term seldom appeared in US writing before 1900. Many white Americans were self-employed, but this social experience separated them from the contemporary middle class of today, overwhelmingly employed and surveilled. Today’s highly unequal US hardly qualifies as sustaining the middle class. The idea of the US as a middle class place required nurturing. Those doing that ideological work—from the business press, to pollsters, to intellectuals celebrating the results of free enterprise—gained little traction until the Depression and Cold War expanded the middle class brand. Much later, the book’s sections on liberal strategist Stanley Greenberg detail, “saving the middle class” entered presidential politics. Both parties soon defined the middle class to include over 90% of the population, precluding intelligent attention to the poor and the very rich. Resurrecting radical historical critiques of the middle class, Roediger argues that middle class identities have so long been shaped by debt, anxiety about falling, and having to sell one’s personality at work that misery defines a middle class existence as much as fulfillment.

Conservative Party-building in Latin America

Conservative Party-building in Latin America PDF Author: James Loxton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197537529
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Where do strong conservative parties come from? While there is a growing scholarly awareness about the importance of such parties for democratic stability, much less is known about their origins. In this groundbreaking book, James Loxton takes up this question by examining new conservative parties formed in Latin America between 1978 and 2010. The most successful cases, he finds, shared a surprising characteristic: they had deep roots in former dictatorships. Through a comparative analysis of failed and successful cases in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala, Loxton argues that this was not a coincidence. The successes inherited a range of resources from outgoing authoritarian regimes that, paradoxically, gave them an advantage in democratic competition. He also highlights the role of intense counterrevolutionary struggle as a source of party cohesion. In addition to making an empirical contribution to the study of the Latin American right and a theoretical contribution to the study of party-building, Loxton advances our understanding of the worldwide phenomenon of authoritarian successor parties--parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy. A major work, Conservative Party-Building in Latin America will reshape our understanding of politics in contemporary Latin America and the realities of democratic transitions everywhere.

Dynamics of American Political Parties

Dynamics of American Political Parties PDF Author: Mark D. Brewer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521882303
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In Dynamics of American Political Parties, Mark D. Brewer and Jeffrey M. Stonecash examine the process of gradual change that inexorably shapes and reshapes American politics. Parties and the politicians that comprise them seek control of government in order to implement their visions of proper public policy. To gain control parties need to win elections, and winning elections requires assembling an electoral coalition that is larger than that crafted by the opposition. Parties are always looking for opportunities to build such winning coalitions, and opportunities are always there, but they are rarely, if ever, without risk. Uncertainty rules and intra-party conflict rages as different factions and groups within the parties debate the proper course(s) of action and battle it out for control of the party. Parties can never be sure how their strategic maneuvers will play out, and, even when it appears that a certain strategy has been successful, party leaders are unclear about how long apparent success will last. Change unfolds slowly, in fits and starts.

The New Politics of Class

The New Politics of Class PDF Author: Geoffrey Evans
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198755759
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book explores the new politics of class in 21st century Britain. It shows how the changing shape of the class structure since 1945 has led political parties to change, which has both reduced class voting and increased class non-voting. This argument is developed in three stages. The first is to show that there has been enormous social continuity in class divisions. The authors demonstrate this using extensive evidence on class and educational inequality, perceptions of inequality, identity and awareness, and political attitudes over more than fifty years. The second stage is to show that there has been enormous political change in response to changing class sizes. Party policies, politicians' rhetoric, and the social composition of political elites have radically altered. Parties offer similar policies, appeal less to specific classes, and are populated by people from more similar backgrounds. Simultaneously the mass media have stopped talking about the politics of class. The third stage is to show that these political changes have had three major consequences. First, as Labour and the Conservatives became more similar, class differences in party preferences disappeared. Second, new parties, most notably UKIP, have taken working class voters from the mainstream parties. Third, and most importantly, the lack of choice offered by the mainstream parties has led to a huge increase in class-based abstention from voting. Working class people have become much less likely to vote. In that sense, Britain appears to have followed the US down a path of working class political exclusion, ultimately undermining the representativeness of our democracy. They conclude with a discussion of the Brexit referendum and the role that working class alienation played in its historic outcome.

Turning Right in the Sixties

Turning Right in the Sixties PDF Author: Mary C. Brennan
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807822302
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
In Turning Right in the Sixties, Mary Brennan describes how conservative Americans from a variety of backgrounds, feeling disfranchised and ignored, joined forces to make their voices heard and by 1968 had gained enough power within the party to play the decisive role in determining who would be chosen as the presidential nominee. Building on Barry Goldwater's shortlived bid for the presidential nomination in 1960, Republican conservatives forged new coalitions, aided by an increasingly vocal conservative press, and began to organize at the grassroots level. Their goal was to nominate a conservative in the next election, and eventually they gained enough support to guarantee Goldwater the nomination in 1964. Liberal Republicans, as Brennan demonstrates, failed to stop this swing to the right. Brennan argues that Goldwater's loss to Lyndon Johnson in the general election has obscured the more significant fact that conservatives had wrestled control of the Republican Party from the moderates who had dominated it for years. The lessons conservatives learned in that campaign aided them in 1968 when they were able to force Richard Nixon to cast himself as a conservative candidate, says Brennan, and also laid the groundwork for Ronald Reagan's presidential victory in 1980.

First to the Party

First to the Party PDF Author: Christopher Baylor
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812249631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
What determines the interests, ideologies, and alliances that make up political parties? In its entire history, the United States has had only a handful of party transformations. First to the Party concludes that groups like unions and churches, not voters or politicians, are the most consistent influences on party transformation.