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One of the fundamental values of the constitutional order in the Republic of Macedonia is the principle of equality which guarantees the equal rights regardless of the gender. The recognition and the promotion of the gender equal opportunities are a necessary precondition for democratic development. In the past 24 years of the independence, the political parties in the Republic of Macedonia passed through various stages and changes, which include the attitudes of the parties towards women issues. This paper will research the capacity of the main political parties in the Macedonian bloc, SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE, to develop, adopt and implement gender sensitive policies. The research will be based on the analysis of the election programs regarding the Parliamentary elections in 1990, 2002 and2011. The analysis will cover the development of the gender sensitivity in the election programs of SDSM and VMRO-DPMNE for the period of two decades.

The recent emergence of two splinter parties from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) points to a deepening crisis within the party and growing discontent toward party leader and president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Although the leaders of the two new parties, Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoğlu, are both former high-ranking AKP politicians, they differ significantly in their style of politics and ideological leanings. Babacan is trying to position himself at the center of Turkey's ideological spectrum and emphasize issues of good governance and the rule of law. Davutoğlu is aiming for the more conservative voters, focusing on the moral shortcomings of the current regime. Davutoğlu's strategy has better chances in the short term, whereas Babacan is poised for a long game. The importance of both parties relies on their potential to attract votes from the AKP base. In a country that is deeply divided into two almost equal-sized camps that support Erdoğan and oppose him, even a small fraction of votes shifting from the AKP to the opposition can be a game changer. (Autorenreferat)

First published online: 4 June 2019 Existing research on party behaviour has largely focused on the drivers of issue salience in direct party communication. However, less is known about party‒issue linkages in election campaigns covered by the mass media, from which most voters get their information about party positions. Against this background, this article explores how two important drivers of issue salience in direct party communication – issue ownership and systemic salience – play out in the media. Based on considerations about the news value of specific party‒issue associations, one would expect both relationships to be particularly important in the media. Despite substantial similarities in party‒issue linkages across platforms, a comparison of manifestos and newspaper content reveals evidence for this claim. In particular, smaller parties are hardly covered in the news on issues they do not own, while large parties are especially covered on salient topics. These findings contribute to our understanding of issue competition in mediated environments. ERC POLCON project funded.

Despite extensive research on party system stability, the concept is often reduced to the survival of existing parties. This article argues for introducing programmatic stability as a separate dimension and shows how the combination of party replacement and programmatic instability shapes patterns of party competition. Based on their interaction, the article distinguishes four ideal types: stable systems, systems with empty party labels, systems with ephemeral parties, and general instability. The empirical analysis relies on media data and proposes a new measure of programmatic stability to study its interaction with party replacement in fifteen European countries during the period of the economic crisis. As the article shows, the two dimensions shape the transformation of party systems in northwestern, southern, and eastern Europe. Relying on multidimensional scaling, the article analyzes in detail the cases of the United Kingdom, Romania, Ireland, and Latvia to showcase party competition under different conditions of systemic instability.

For the first time, the establishment of Sfatul Tarii as first Parliament of Basarabia, was put into discussion in year 1906, in three known locations in Chisinau: “London” Hotel, “Suisse” Hotel and Shmakov’s House. It was Shmakov’s House that served as the major state of the national movement that bloomed in Basarabia under the guidance of Constantin Stere. There were discussed the electoral programs for the Russian Duma elections where a new party intended to take part. The formation of the Basarabia National Party was a first achievement in this respect. The author analyzes a series of sources, including an antiquary discovered in Bucharest – The Program towards the Moldovan peasants from Basarabia, arguing and concluding that the formation of Sfatul Tarii in 1918 was conceived and prepared back in year 1906.

Political leaders are often perceived as unresponsive to the daily concerns of citizens, especially when European integration is concerned. Academic research, however, provides at most mixed evidence for the existence of such a gap. This article tries to shed light on this discrepancy by introducing an alternative measure to study leaders' responsiveness - narrative congruence - and explores the assumption that responsiveness increases leaders' credibility in the eyes of their voters. As narrative congruence is a more intricate measure that captures leaders' and followers' policy preferences and argumentation, it may better capture the gap between their positions and therefore provide a more adequate explanation for citizens' support for their leaders than traditional congruence measures like issue saliency and ideological distance. To provide a first test of this, the technique of cognitive mapping is introduced and used to explore the congruence in beliefs on European integration of four Dutch political leaders and their followers. Although the study finds a significant gap between some leaders and their followers’ narratives on Europe, it finds no evidence that this narrative congruence is related to the credibility of these leaders in the eyes of their followers. (author's abstract)

This study analyzes whether media coverage covers messages from parties’ electoral programs (manifestos). Electoral programs contain detailed information on a party’s future policy-making. However, few voters read electoral programs. Still, prior research often assumed that the content of manifestos is known to voters because media disseminate the content of manifestos to voters. This dissertation evaluates this “mediation assumption” empirically, and analyzes whether and how the mass media cover parties’ electoral programs during the electoral campaign. If media coverage did not reflect parties’ electoral programs, citizens would have no chance to base their vote choice on evaluations of those programs. This study introduces the concept of the manifesto-media link in order to describe how media coverage can reflect programmatic offers. The manifesto-media link is formulated as three conditions that can be empirically evaluated and tested in a similar way to the conditions of the responsible party model. These are: First, media must cover similar issues to those that parties cover in their electoral programs. Second, media coverage must link issues with parties that emphasize these issues more than their competitors, in order to inform about the parties’ issue priorities. Third, media must frame parties as left or right in a way that represents how parties emphasize left or right positions in their own manifestos. Methodologically, the study combines secondary content analytical data on media coverage during the electoral campaign with data based on electoral programs. The findings suggest that the manifesto-media link is stable and robust. There is little to no systematic bias in favor of a certain type of party, however there are differences between quality and tabloid media. These findings contribute to our understanding of political representation and the functioning of political competition., Diese Arbeit geht der Frage nach, inwiefern die Medien während des Wahlkampfs über die Wahlprogramme der Parteien berichten. Die Wahlprogramme der Parteien enthalten Informationen darüber, was Parteien nach der Wahl vorhaben. Allerdings lesen wenige Wählerinnen und Wähler Wahlprogramme. Die vergangene Forschung über und mit Wahlprogrammdaten hat bisher angenommen, dass der Inhalt von Wahlprogrammen von den Medien verbreitet wird. Diese Doktorarbeit untersucht diese Annahme empirisch und analysiert, ob und wie Massenmedien während des Wahlkampfs über die Inhalte der Wahlprogramme berichten. Wenn Massenmedien nicht die Inhalte der Wahlprogramme verbreiten würden, hätten Bürgerinnen und Bürger kaum Chancen sich über das programmatische Angebot der Parteien zu informieren. In dieser Arbeit wird das Konzept des Manifesto-Medien-Links entwickelt. Das Konzept bringt Theorien des Parteienwettbewerbs und Theorien der Medienselektion zusammen. Der Manifesto-Medien-Link formuliert drei Bedingungen, welche empirisch getestet werden können. Diese sind: Erstens, Medienberichterstattung und Wahlprogramme müssen zumindest zu einem gewissen Grad dieselben Themen diskutieren. Zweitens, Journalisten müssen Sachfragen mit jenen Parteien verknüpfen, welche diese Themen in ihren Wahlprogrammen stärker betonen als ihre Konkurrenten, um Wählerinnen und Wähler über die Prioritäten der Parteien zu informieren. Drittens, Medien müssen die ideologische Orientierung einer Partei sowie Veränderungen dieser korrekt wiedergeben. Methodisch werden in der Arbeit Wahlprogramm- und Mediendaten kombiniert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass der Manifesto-Medien-Link relativ stabil ist. Außerdem wird gezeigt, dass es nur geringe systematische Verzerrungen zugunsten bestimmter Parteien gibt. Jedoch zeigen sich Unterschiede zwischen Qualitäts- und Boulevardmedien. Die Ergebnisse haben Implikationen für unser Verständnis von politischer Repräsentation und den politischen Wettbewerb.

This paper investigates political parties’ attitudes towards the past. It explores the ideological inspirations and patterns of behavior of the parties founded in Poland after 1989, which were more or less consciously ‘borrowed’ from the political groups operating in the interwar and Communist periods respectively. The parties have been found to draw both upon democratic and authoritarian traditions. In addition to examining the ideological declarations and public utterances made by politicians, and proposals for systemic solutions, the paper also looks at political practice in the broad sense. The aim of this work is to determine how political traditions could help to shape the political identities of contemporary parties and to identify the historical references favored by political groups in post-1989 Poland. It portrays the political parties’ stances on tradition and shows how they are used in political rivalry. Tekst ma na celu przeanalizowanie natury stosunku polskich partii do przeszłości. Pokazanie inspiracji ideologicznych, ale również wzorców zachowań, które można dostrzec w polskich partiach działających po 1989 roku, a które bardziej lub mniej świadomie zostały „zapożyczone” od ugrupowań funkcjonujących w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym i w okresie PRL-u. Są to nawiązania zarówno do tradycji demokratycznej, jak i autorytarnej. Przedmiotem analizy zostały nie tylko formalne deklaracje ideowe partii, wypowiedzi polityków, propozycje rozwiązań ustrojowych, ale również szeroko rozumiana praktyka polityczna. Tekst ma pomóc znaleźć odpowiedzi na pytanie, w jakim stopniu tradycja polityczna może być pomocna w kształtowaniu tożsamości politycznej współczesnych partii, do jakich elementów historii nawiązują najczęściej polskie ugrupowania po 1989 roku oraz scharakteryzować podejście partii do tradycji i sposobu jej wykorzystywania w rywalizacji politycznej.

Russian emigration developed a complex of ideological and political concepts on changing system in Soviet Russia. The focus of the article is on the political program of the National Union of the New Generation. The union was formed in 1930 in Yugoslavia and had offices in many countries. It proclaimed the overthrow of the Bolshevik government. On the base of the involvement of archive documents of the People Labor Union of Russian Solidarists (Frankfurt am Main), the author concludes that this organization does not define the future of political structure of Russia, adopted the position called "nepredreshenchestvo". The analysis shows that the program of this organization was perceived ambiguously.

Ancient treasuries promoted wealth and prosperity of the donation community. Preserved relief scenes portrayed mythological stories used for expressing certain characteristic reflection of reality (chaos, wilderness, heroism, etc.) By analyzing historical sources is possible to assign events related to the poleis in historical context. This paper shall serve as introduction of hypothetical nature of political program and contribution to the knowledge of political promotion of polis in relief decoration. Figural decoration became a form of political program, or even metaphorical ideology. The main carrier of ideological reference were figure decorated pediments and friezes . Those visualized political agenda of polis even for illiterate observers . In particular mythological stories, those that might have some ideological scheme, were preferred. They can be applied to current events of polis, but only if adequate historical sources or archaeological evidence . Mythological battles were frequent motifs. The story of Gigantomachy allowed various kind of exploitation in political ideology. The main idea was the battle between world full of chaos and world representing stability and certainty. Analogies are identifiable in the whole archaic period. The main inspiration were military confrontations with other Greek or non-Greek cities. From preserved decorative elements is possible to roughly characterize also political significance of mythological heroes. Visual display is closely related to foreign policy and inner political conflict of poleis. It is important that preserved reliefs with motives that do not deal with panhellenic scenes are less numerous.

The ideology of the Croatian Peasant Party was based on the idea of peace and cooperation between nations from the very beginning (1904). Its main ideologist Stjepan Radić refused decisively any violence in politics and thought about various concepts of Slavic confederations (in 1918 it included Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria). The changes after the World War I and the establishment of the League of Nations gave incentives to some broader thinking about relation nation-state-international community. Probably the most radical one was the concept of Rudolf Herceg, who developed his own idea of the world community of nations, or Pangea (1932), in which he combined (inspired by S. Radić) state and national principles of international recognition and equality.

"Five leading German political parties and their coalitions are evaluated with regard to party manifestos and results of the 2005 parliamentary elections. For this purpose, the party manifestos are converted into Yes/No answers to 95 topical questions (Relax the protection against dismissals? Close nuclear power plants? etc.). On each question, every party represents its adherents as well as those of the parties with the same position. Therefore, a party usually represents a larger group than its direct adherents. The popularity of a party is understood to be the percentage of the electorate represented, averaged on all the 95 questions. The universality of a party is the frequency of representing a majority of electors. The questions are considered either unweighted, or weighted by an expert, or weighted by the number of GOOGLE-results for given keywords (the more important the question, the more documents in the Internet). The weighting however plays a negligible role because the party answers are backed up by the party \ideology" which determines a high intra-question correlations. The SPD (Social-Democratic Party) did not receive the highest percentage of votes, remains nevertheless the most popular and the most universal German party. A comparison of the election results with the position of German Trade Union Federation (DGB) reveals its high representativeness as well. Finally, all coalitions with two and three parties are also evaluated. The coalition CDU/SPD (which is currently in power) is the most popular, and the coalition SPD/Green/Left-Party (which failed due to personal con°icts) is the most universal. Keywords: Parliamentary election, fractions, coalitions, theory of voting, mathematical theory of democracy, indices of popularity and universality, German Trade Union Federation (DGB)." (author's abstract)

"Nach der Parteiendifferenztheorie in der Wohlfahrtsstaatsforschung macht es einen Unterschied hinsichtlich der spezifischen Gestalt von Sozialpolitik, ob liberale (konservative), christdemokratische oder sozialdemokratische Parteien an der Macht sind. Entsprechend wäre nach einem politischen Machtwechsel ebenso ein Politikwechsel zu erwarten. Diese Theorie dient dem Arbeitspapier als Ausgangspunkt für die Analyse der rot-grünen Sozialpolitik der vergangenen vier Jahre. In einem ersten Schritt werden die sozialpolitischen Prioritäten sowie Politiken während der langen Herrschaft der christlich-liberalen Koalition vor dem Hintergrund der normativen und institutionellen Fundamente des deutschen Wohlfahrtsstaates in der Nachkriegszeit kurz skizziert, bevor in einem zweiten Schritt auf die sozialpolitische Programmatik der Sozialdemokratie sowie der Grünen eingegangen wird. Der Hauptteil der Analyse widmet sich den zentralen sozialpolitischen Gesetzesänderungen in den vergangenen vier Jahren. Ein Vergleich der Politiken der Regierung Kohl mit den sozialpolitischen Zielen sowie den bereits verabschiedeten Gesetzesmaßnahmen von Rot-Grün führt schließlich zu dem Ergebnis der Politikkontinuität. Jedoch darf Politikkontinuität nicht missverstanden werden mit Politikstillstand. Vielmehr verfolgt die rot-grüne Koalition die von der Vorgängerregierung eingeschlagene Reformrichtung weiter. Insoweit kann die Parteiendifferenztheorie nicht hinreichend die jüngsten sozialpolitischen Entwicklungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland erklären." (Autorenreferat) "The 'parties matter theory' in welfare state research argues that it makes a differences whether liberal (conservative), christian-democratic or social-democratic parties are in power, since they pursue different social policies. Hence, we would expect specific policy changes after a change in government. This theory constitutes the starting point for an analysis of the Red-Green social policies during the past four years. First, the paper briefly scrutinizes the social policy priorities and policies during the long rule of the Christian Democratic-Liberal coalition against the backdrop of the normative and institutional foundations of the German welfare state in the golden post-World War II era. In a second step, the social policy priorities and aims of the Social Democrats and Greens are scrutinized in greater detail. The analysis in the main section of the paper focuses on the main social policy changes legislated during the past four years in the various domains of the welfare state. A comparison of the policies of the previous government with the programmatic aims as well as the legislated policies of the Red-Green government leads to the conclusion of policy continuation. However, policy continuation should not be mistaken with policy stalemate. Moreover, the Red-Green government continues to pursue reforms in the policy direction already followed by the previous government. Accordingly, the 'parties matter theory' cannot sufficiently explain the more recent social policy development in the Federal Republic of Germany." (author's abstract)

"It can be advantageous for an office motivated party A to spend effort to make it public that a group of voters will lose from party A's policy proposal. Such effort is called inverse campaigning. The inverse campaigning equilibria are described for the case where the two parties can simultaneously reveal information publicly to uninformed voters. Inverse campaigning dissipates the parties' rents and causes some inefficiency in expectation. Inverse campaigning also influences policy design. Successful policy proposals hurt small groups of voters who lose much and do not benefit small groups of voters who win much." (author's abstract), "Die Arbeit untersucht die Anreize von politischen Parteien (oder Kandidaten), Wähler oder Wählergruppen und die Öffentlichkeit gezielt über die Wirkung der konkurrierenden Wahlprogramme zu informieren. In der Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass es für eine Partei A vorteilhaft sein kann, öffentlich darüber zu informieren, dass eine bestimmte Wählergruppe Nachteile erleidet, wenn das Programm der Partei A umgesetzt wird. Solche Informationsaktivitäten werden 'inverse campaigning' genannt. Die Arbeit bestimmt die Gleichgewichte, in denen die konkurrierenden Parteien beide inverse campaigning betreiben, und bestimmt die Wohlfahrtsverluste, die durch diese Aktivitäten verursacht werden. Ferner werden die Konsequenzen aus diesen Aktivitäten für den Zuschnitt erfolgreicher Wahlprogramme beschrieben." (Autorenreferat)

"In den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten ist die Zahl der Standardisierungsorganisationen im Bereich der Informations- und Telekommunikationstechnik rasch gewachsen. Neben neuen offiziellen Organisationen auf der regionalen Ebene sind viele private Konsortien und Foren entstanden, die sich mit den bestehenden nationalen und internationalen Organisationen ergänzen oder auch mit ihnen konkurrieren. Die Landschaft der Standardisierungsorganisationen und die Beziehungen zwischen ihnen werden untersucht und zudem die institutionellen Faktoren aufgezeigt, die dazu beitragen, dass Kompetenzkonflikte relativ selten auftreten und nicht sehr intensiv sind. Die institutionellen Merkmale kanalisieren nicht nur das Verhalten der Standardisierungsorganisationen untereinander, sie beeinflussen auch Geschwindigkeit, Exklusivität, Kosten und Marktakzeptanz der Standardisierung und leiten damit die Entscheidung der Unternehmen, an welche Organisation sie sich mit einem Standardisierungsproblem wenden." (Autorenreferat), "Standardization organizations in the area of information and telecommunications technology have mushroomed in the last two decades. In addition to new official organizations at the regional level, many private consortiums and forums have been set up that complement and compete with the incumbent national and international organizations. The organizational landscape and the relations between the standardization organizations are examined, and institutional reasons that could explain why the frequency and intensity of jurisdictional conflicts has remained low are considered. Institutional features do not only frame a standardization organization's behavior toward other organizations, they also account for speed, exclusiveness, costs and market acceptance of standardization and thus influence firms' decisions as to which organization to turn to with a standards issue." (author's abstract)