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Lin Yutang, a world-famous writer and translator, has long been known as an apolitical cultural ambassador. This study reveals, however, that beginning from the early 1940s, Lin turned from apolitical to passionately political and his political activism found expression in translation. This article employs narrative theory to examine how Lin, as an activist translator, reframed Kuomintang-Communist conflict in China when translating Mao Tse-tung’s New Democracy. I argue that Lin’s translation was part of a public opinion warfare aimed to win American aid. Lin rendered Mao’s text in a way that could drive a wedge between Americans and Communists of China. Strategies employed included intentional mistranslation, selective appropriation, disambiguating and repositioning. This study shows that attempts to understand what motivates a translator to turn away from his or her well-beaten path can be theoretically productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the parliamentary elections of 2023, the ruling New Democracy (ND) party of prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was re-elected triumphantly. ND’s victory marks an unprecedented moment of centre-right dominance in Greece since 1974 and goes against the trend of the so-called ‘crisis of the centre-right’ elsewhere in Europe. This article claims that ND’s strategy under Mitsotakis has been typical of the winning formula of other centre-right parties in Europe in previous decades. Yet, that this formula is now so successful in Greece owes much to the country’s post-crisis context, out of which the Mitsotakis leadership emerged. Given the geopolitical position of Greece and the historical intertwining of the question of its international orientation with major cleavages of domestic politics, the article argues that the success of Mitsotakis draws particularly on a certain form of posturing in foreign and European policy that allows him to reconcile contradictions inside ND’s electoral coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the role of patronage in Indonesian State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) by analyzing board appointments between 2004 and 2019 under two different presidential administrations—those of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Joko Widodo. The study is based on a content analysis of board members and their political affiliations in fifteen of the largest Indonesian SOEs and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a former minister, high-ranking officials in the government, political party members, CEOs, and SOE board members. The study identifies how key patrons influence board appointments and how the sitting president, a pivotal patron in the post-authoritarian context, strategically uses patronage for power consolidation and political stability. Given the financial significance and power of SOEs, placing loyalists on boards serves the interests of ruling political parties and elites. This also enables elites to produce even more patronage, which is beneficial for their personal political machinery. This intricate interplay sustains the presence of patronage in Indonesia's democratic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Democracy (ND), the centre‐right party founded by Constantine Karamanlis in summer 1974 and currently led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, scion of a powerful political family, won the twin electoral contest of May/June 2023 with a landslide. The victory was comprehensive both in terms of the votes received—over 40 per cent of those who cast their vote (abstention was over 45 per cent)—and because of the near collapse of Syriza (17.83 per cent) and the weak recovery of the other centre‐left party, PASOK (11.46 per cent). Moreover, far right and conservative parties, three in total, entered parliament, amassing some 12 per cent of the vote. We argue that two interlinked phenomena account for these developments. The first was the eclipse of conditions that created the Syriza phenomenon in Greece (the 2010–15 debt crisis); the second was the lack of a credible programmatic alternative that spoke to the middle classes on behalf of both centre‐left parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The parliamentary election of May 2023 in Greece is historic because it was the first held with a proportional representation electoral system in decades. Notably, there was an unprecedented 20-point difference between the winner, New Democracy, and the second party, SYRIZA. Thus, the election marks a shift towards a predominant party system, which is accompanied by a decrease in all relevant institutionalisation indices, somewhat reversing a period of stabilisation and a return of two-partyism. Empirical evidence points towards economic voting as the main determinant for New Democracy's second consecutive win, albeit in a media environment of waning pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances research on the normalisation of far-right rhetoric on the “migration issue” by analysing statements from the current Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the ruling political party New Democracy political figures. Having presented the discourse-historical approach (DHA) from critical discourse studies (CDS) as a suitable theory and method of analysis of political discourses, I use an argumentative-based DHA approach and add the argumentative schemes of Aristotelian topoi and fallacies to explore how the leadership of the conservative New Democracy government adopted far-right rhetoric on the refugee issue to justify its tough political agenda on security, law, and order. In particular, I focus on the representation of migration as a threat to national security and public health, the politics of hate, and theories of securitisation via an in-depth analysis of the current and former prime ministers’ discourses, the former government spokesman’s statement on the refugee issue and a popular journalist and New Democracy’s MP television interview, and intend to illustrate how extreme right rhetoric could serve the conservative New Democracy’s political strategies.

The article analyses the transformation of the Russian management elite from the point of view of the famous Russian historian, sociologist and philosopher G. P. Fedotov (1886–1951). The paper discloses the civilizational features and stages of the evolution of the elite. The author reveals social, psychological, mental and other characteristics given by the thinker to the main domestic types of managers such as: a Russian European, a “Moscow man” and a Soviet manager. The study shows his positive assessment of the management culture of the nineteenth century. The article considers the thinker’s views on the processes of transformation and primitiveness of management personnel of the early 20th century. The paper analyses the portrait of the Soviet manager given by G.P. Fedotov. The author shows the utilitarianism and Americanism of his social aspirations, which give rise to socialist bourgeoisness. The study reveals the significance of the analysis conducted by the thinker.

In early July, in the course of the extraordinary parliamentary elections in Greece, the center-right New Democracy Party, led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, won a convincing victory. Elections took place after the leftist radical SYRIZA party of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras suffered a crushing defeat at the May elections to the European Parliament, as well as at the regional and municipal level. The article provides an analysis of the current political situation on the eve of the national elections to the Greek parliament, as well as an assessment of the prospects for the activities of the majority government.

The Shanghai News was the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) first English-language newspaper. The News played an important, but forgotten, role in the development of the PRC's "external propaganda" apparatus, used to fight the ideological Cold War. The News was unusual in that it adopted a commercial business model and juxtaposed vehement anti-imperialist propaganda with advertising for multinational companies from "imperialist-capitalist countries." This article argues that the News was a product of "New Democracy," the central political paradigm of the PRC between 1949 and 1953. New Democracy, a policy of cross-class cooperation in the name of national reconstruction, is often dismissed as cynical tactic deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to diminish resistance during the takeover of China. The author argues for taking the real world impacts of New Democracy on life and work in early 1950s Shanghai seriously and cautions against teleological narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of strategy firstly appears on Lukács' thought on the so-called Blum Theses, written towards the end of 1928 as a formula against bourgeoise domination, further developed between 1945-47, phase of the new democracy as the path for overcoming Capitalism. Lukács also develops a reflection about socialist democratization as a formula to destroy the bureaucracy that had germinated, becoming power and habit in socialist experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the signing of the Prespa Agreement in June 2018, the Macedonian name issue became the most prominent topic on the Greek political agenda, catalysing an exceptional political confrontation and contributing to the realignment of political parties and eventually to government change. Analysing the political discourse and public debate on the issue from January 2018 until the July 2019 national elections, as well as opinion polls and electoral results, the paper explores the conditions leading to the escalation of political polarisation on the left/right axis, at the expense of smaller centrist parties. It is argued that political antagonism was built on the previous political cleavage (although the populist/anti-populism axis was now reversed). By mobilising public emotions around an alleged 'national threat', the polarisation around the Macedonian name issue proved far more successful for the Greek right than for the left. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the basis of Asianist sympathy for 'New China', as the People's Republic was often styled, in the early 1950s by examining the writings of Indian diplomats, journalists and academics. These elite Indians either visited China as part of a 1951 delegation, making them witnesses to the ongoing New Democracy experiment. Since their experiences of China were definitely not comprehensive and hinged on the Chinese state's goodwill, the interesting question to ask is not whether these first-hand accounts of 'New China' were accurate but in what ways the Chinese revolution was made comprehensible in light of the Indian elite's own priorities as nation builders and social activists. This paper reconstructs major tropes of the Chinese revolution that appealed to Indian observers – self-sufficiency, empowerment of workers and peasants, a palpable sense of social vitality – and underscored their enthusiasm for Beijing. Most significantly, communism was subsumed in favourable accounts of 'New China' as a nation and society-building project. The Chinese revolution, the nature of which was still in flux, was absorbed into and understood through India and Asia's long struggle against Euro-American domination. In addition, the Chinese revolution was deployed as an example with which Indian observers assessed contemporary developments in their own country. The celebratory reception of 'New China' in India suggests that the subsequent rapport between the Chinese and Indian states was a result of not only high-level diplomatic manoeuvres but also pan-Asian epistemological bridging between socialist revolution and decolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syriza lost the July 2019 election in Greece to the right‐wing New Democracy Party, though it was not a crushing defeat. This article explains that although Syriza is chiefly responsible for the return of New Democracy to power, its remarkable electoral performance is because its party elites, being in power for over four years, succeeded in appropriating the state machine, establishing caucuses of power, influence and clientelism. Thus, the demise of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), upon which Syriza capitalised in full, led to the establishment of a new two (state) party system dominated by New Democracy and Syriza. The extreme left and the extreme right ceased to play a major role in this new political scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's recent slide into authoritarianism will have implications for its close neighbours in the West. Especially Greece cannot avoid negative spill-over effects. A coalition government comprising Syriza and Independent Greeks does not have an unconstrained set of policy choices in responding to this. Maintaining effective working relations is a paramount interest but achieving this is easier in principle than in practice especially considering the issues of asylum seekers and Turkish revisionism on the Lausanne Treaty. Unlike the two parties that dominated the Greek political scene after 1974, PASOK and New Democracy, the current government has little experience navigating choppy diplomatic seas with Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the construction of social class division in Greek political discourse. More specifically, the focus is on 'ταξική πάλη' (class struggle) as a discourse that has started being carved in Greek media since the current leftist government party, Syriza, won the election in 2015 for the first time in the country's political history. Contrary to Syriza, which always frames its arguments on the basis of a divisive class fight discourse between the elitists and laypeople, New Democracy, the liberal and main oppositional party, tries to play down this discourse by advocating a more unifying and social class inclusive discourse. The analysis suggests that social class struggle is a theme framed within a wider shifting (anti)populist discourse constantly being negotiated linguistically in ironic ways among political elites. Both the government and opposition parties engage in tactical maneuvering of competing political discourses that, in different ways, articulate attachments to the 'people'. The theoretical contribution of this study is the discursive theorization of social class struggle as a digitally constructed and politically relevant discourse in the context of Greek populism and its discontents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the perceptions of media freedom and responsibility by journalists and politicians in South Korea during the Presidency of Roh Moo-huyn (2003–2008). It draws on in-depth interviews with 10 journalists and 10 politicians with different political affiliations and interests. Findings suggest that both groups had positive appraisals of the country’s media democratisation. For them, the media could function as a watchdog on political power without having to fear direct political reprisals for doing so. However, the political press remained partially shackled to specific legacies and economic conditions. The most pressing example is the way the paternal power of conservative media owners challenged the editorial independence of journalists. While the Internet media offered some hope to rebalance the power relationship between the conservative and progressive forces, the sensational and hyper-adversarial media motivated by market and political competition emerged as more worrying concerns for the consolidation of democratic political communication in post-transition South Korea. Setbacks in press freedom since 2008 have undermined some of the positive evaluations of the political communication in South Korea, suggesting that the democratic transition in this country resembles ‘a circle rather a straight line’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on legitimation, multimodality and political discourse by researchers, such as Van Leeuwen, Van Dijk and Mackay, have suggested different but supplementary methods of legitimation analysis by providing a number of analytical frameworks. Multimodal legitimation research, however, seems to be in need of a better conflation of the theoretical backgrounds of disciplines, such as narratology. This article focuses on the multimodal discourse of three political advertisements of the political party New Democracy, filmed for the needs of the Greek legislative election of January 2015. What is investigated is the multimodal means by which New Democracy’s president, and Prime Minister at the time, Antonis Samaras attempted to legitimise his candidacy. In this article, I use the six-layer framework proposed by Mackay for multimodal legitimation analyses and I argue that multimodal legitimation research can benefit and get enhanced from the use of narratology and its analytical categories, such as perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, the semi-presidentialism has been adopted in most new democracies. It is also the constitutional order in most democracies, which can be divided into three categories: established, post-Leninist, and postcolonial democracies. Semi-presidentialism is a political system with dual executive branches. Moreover, because of these dual executive branches, the constitutional order of semi-presidentialism might be similar to a presidential system if the president is the de facto head of government. It might also be similar to a parliamentary system if the prime minister is the de facto head of government with the support of the parliamentary majority. Taiwan has been considered as a semi-presidential country since 1997. According to Taiwan’s constitutional amendments, its president is directly elected, and the premier (prime minister) and cabinet are responsible to the legislature. Dual executive system in Taiwan has been effective and flexible. I attempt to examine the institutional resilience of Taiwan’s constitutional function, which means that, in properly responding to social movements, its government has continued to function well. In addition, the president has been able to continue serving in office in spite of political crises. A vague constitutional design and a presidentialized party system are two reasons for this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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On July 5, 2015, Greek voters were asked whether to approve or reject the terms of an austerity program offered by the European Union (EU) to resolve an ongoing financial crisis. With a turnout rate of 62.5% overall, 61.3% of Greeks voted 'no.' While a majority of voters in every district opposed the bailout's terms, the margin against the proposed austerity measures ranged from 51.2% in Lakonias to 73.8% in Chanion. This paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the 'no' vote across Greece's 56 electoral districts. Our analysis is grounded in public choice theories of why large numbers of people turn out to vote in mass elections. In addition to controlling for standard 'instrumental' vote motives, we ask whether political party labels, which serve as summary measures of partisan positioning, and party platforms, which express partisan preferences on ballot questions, are salient in determining electoral outcomes. Holding constant the unemployment rate and average voter age (at the regional level) and the fraction of young people casting ballots for the first time on July 5, 2015 (at the district level), we find that the percentage of 'no' votes was reduced significantly by voter support for Greece's leading pro-austerity party (New Democracy) in the previous nationwide election held in January 2015. In contrast, voter support in January for the anti-austerity party (Syriza), led by sitting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, had no measurable impact on July's referendum results. This finding offers support for both instrumental and expressive theories of voting and bolsters the claim that political parties can shape electoral outcomes on questions decided by an institution of direct democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deals with important issues related to the new political macroeconomics and its appliance to the economic movements in Serbia, which is a country of “new democracy” as well as with transition economy. In political macroeconomics, it is a known fact that the economic policy instruments can be used for political purposes - simulated improvement of economic indicators to win the elections. These options assume specific features in transition economies, such as the Serbian economy. The political instability in Serbia, reflected in frequent elections, as well as in the diversity in political and economic goals of the key political parties leading to increasing political uncertainty in both the pre-election and post-election periods, weakened the economic system. Simultaneously, using the economic policy for political purposes to support the “pro-democratic” and “pro-European” parties proved to be paradoxically justified.

This paper seeks to examine the implications of policy intervention around elections on income inequality and fiscal redistribution. We first develop a simplified theoretical framework that allows us to examine election-cycle fiscal redistribution programs in the presence of a revolutionary threat from some groups of agents, i.e., when democracy is not 'the only game in town'. According to our theoretical analysis, when democracy is not 'the only game in town', incumbents implement redistributive policies not only as a means of improving their reelection prospects, but also in order to signal that 'democracy works', thereby preventing a reversion to an autocratic status quo ante at a time of the current regime's extreme vulnerability. Subsequently, focusing on 65 developed and developing countries over the 1975-2010 period, we report robust empirical evidence of pre-electoral budgetary manipulation in new democracies. Consistent with our theory, this finding is driven by political instability that induces incumbents to redistribute income-through tax and spending policies-in a relatively broader coalition of voters with the aim of consolidating the vulnerable newly established democratic regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While reviewing the history of the New Democratic Cultural Theory during the Resistance War, one should not confine his vision to Yan'an. In fact, the proposal of the concept of "New Democracy" is closely associated with the disparity between the Three People's Principles proposed by the Kuomintang (KMT) and "Communism" by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)under "the United Front". In order to obtain the cultural leadership of "the United Front", CCP then needed to break away from the traditional structure of Communist theory to explore a new theoretical pattern, this ideological reform eventually leading to the change of the relationship of the two principles from a parallel relationship on space to a precedence relationship in time, disregarding their controversies so as to gain the theoretical initiative. In other words, the proposal of the New Democratic Culture not only aimed at the limitations of the previous cultural policies of CCP when facing the Nationalist issues of the KMT, but also noted the biases and defects in their theoretical discourse, which hence laid the foundation for the maturation of CCPs' literary thought in the Yan'an period. The relationship between the New Democracy Cultural Theory and the KMT and CCP interaction enlightened the academic circles that to know the issues of Yan'an Literature. It should also take into account the existence and effects of "extraterritorial context". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2014, municipal and regional elections were held in Greece, concurrently with European elections. This was the first electoral test after the 2012 twin earthquake elections, which marked the beginning of a radical restructuring of the Greek political system. The fragmentation and inconsistency of voting behaviour across different polls in 2014 indicate that Greek politics remains in a transitional phase whose final outcome is still contested. Other characteristics of the elections, including the high proportion of independent candidates, the radical renewal of political personnel and the emergence of Berlusconism in two major municipalities, underline the continuing lack of legitimacy of the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the policy analysis that underpinned the Brazilian Sanitary Reform (SR), responsible for the defining the Unified Health System and for the proposal to make universal health care a right under the Federal Constitution of 1988 (FC1988). The paper highlights the role of political argumentation by the epistemic community of experts in the health field as central to the redistributive health sector reform. Although Brazil's health system is defined by the FC1988 as comprising universal access, hegemonic public funding and direct provision of care by the government, today it is fragmented and under huge influence of the private sector. In a comparative perspective, participation by private health insurance is much higher than in other emerging countries. This paper argues that, as FC1988 proposed no veto against the market's operating in the health sector, private health care and health insurance companies with greater voice have succeeded in imposing preferences in decision-making arenas. The paper concludes that the analysis of the institutional limits of redistributive public policies in Brazil presents a challenge to the SR's epistemic community today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to identify the polarising rhetoric adopted by Greek mainstream political parties during the era of ‘Grecovery’. The article focuses on the war of words between New Democracy, the leading party of the coalition government, and Syriza, the main opposition party on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the murder of a 15-year-old schoolboy, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, by a police officer and the subsequent riots of December 2008 and the authorities’ closure of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (ERT). It draws on the political statements of two political parties – New Democracy and Syriza – and emphasises direct reference to the Greek civil war (1946–1949) and parallelisms of the current political climate with the colonels’ dictatorship (1967–1974). In focusing on those obscure pages of Greek modern history, this article analyses the discursive construction of collective memories of two different political poles and examines how the Greek left and right wings legitimise and redefine their political identities through the prism of their divided past. Using the discursive strategies of the discourse historical approach (DHA), the article illustrates how the DHA can reveal silencing strategies that lead to the discursive construction of the distinction between ‘Us’ – ‘democratic patriots’ and ‘Them’ – ‘enemies of the Greek nation’. Finally, recontextualisation in political rhetoric is highlighted as one of the ways of (re)constructing the tension and dichotomy between leftists and rightists. A systematic and explicit discourse analytic methodology of political rhetoric, that is based on history and (re)shapes collective memories, leads to an interdisciplinary approach that brings together and connects political rhetoric, argumentation and critical discourse analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we aim to investigate what role fiscal cycles played in the development of the Hungarian state budget balances since the change of regime in 1989 until the parliamentary elections held in 2010. The literature has found that political budget cycles (PBC) are more typical in less developed countries with a shorter period of experience with democratic institutions, like the post-socialist transition economies. Nevertheless, empirical studies point out that this phenomenon has been disappearing over time. By testing the six parliamentary elections in Hungary until 2010, we show that discretional governmental actions of pork barrel spending were apparent more or less in almost each election period, peaking in the last decade. The most typical form of the fiscal cycles in Hungary proved to be social transfers to households including old-age benefits, family support or price subsidies, but also public sector wages were subject to PBC. As a result, state budget balances were significantly shaped by the cyclical movements of fiscal laxity and restrictions, resulting in strong fluctuations in fiscal balances and an overall high budget deficits in the two decades under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview and analysis of the Greek elections of June 2012. Placing the elections within the broader framework of the Greek socio-political and economic context, it discusses the electoral campaign and results, juxtaposing them to the 6 May electoral round. The election results confirmed many of the trends of the previous round, including electoral volatility, the fragmentation of the party system and the rise of anti-establishment forces. The main difference was the entrenchment of the pro- versus anti- bailout division and the prominence of the question of Greece's continued eurozone membership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the recent 40 years, around 90 countries have tried -- with more or less success -- to move away from their autocratic past and to follow the path to democracy. In 2011, quite unexpectedly, such a chance arose for West African countries, including Egypt and Tunisia. The author presents the democratic constitutional drafting which is most desirable for those countries, Muslim and Arabic at the same time. For this purpose he also examines the structural factors, including the Sunni Islam, the level of respect for the rule of law, economic situation and the state of political elites. Nevertheless, the author focuses his attention on the model of democratic transition in both countries, including the starting point and the course of transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Around the 1911 Revolution, socialist thought was introduced into China from the West and Japan. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries regarded socialism as a suitable model upon which to construct the new republic. The Russian Revolution inspired the Chinese revolutionaries and urged them to adopt socialism to reform China, though different parties understood socialism in different ways and, accordingly, chose different plans to realize socialism in China. Sun Yat-sen's The International Development of China and Mao Zedong's On New Democracy and On Coalition Government were the representative fruits of the successful exploration of Chinese socialism fitting the Chinese reality. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was deeply influenced by the Soviet Union and Stalin's theory of the transitional period, so it gave up the theory of New Democracy and adopted radical policies in order to transform Chinese society directly into a socialist society. This policy, regardless of the Chinese reality, proved wrong in practice. After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist leaders returned to the original meaning of socialism defined by Marx and Engels and decided to develop the economy as their first priority so as to guarantee people's free and comprehensive development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rather than repudiate Mao's legacy, the post-revolutionary regime in China has sought to recruit him in support of "reform and opening." Beginning with Deng Xiaoping after 1978, official historiography has drawn a distinction between Mao the Cultural Revolutionary and Mao the architect of "Chinese Marxism" - a Marxism that integrates theory with the circumstances of Chinese society. The essence of the latter is encapsulated in "Mao Zedong Thought," which is viewed as an expression not just of Mao the individual but of the collective leadership of the Party. In most recent representations, "Chinese Marxism" is viewed as having developed in two phases: New Democracy, which brought the Communist Party to power in 1949, and "socialism with Chinese characteristics," inaugurated under Deng Xiaoping and developed under his successors, and which represents a further development of Mao Zedong Thought. The Hu Jintao leadership has made an aggressive effort to portray "Chinese Marxism" as the most advanced development of Marxism that might also serve as a model for others. These interpretive operations have salvaged Mao for the national revolution and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. But it also presents a predicament in keeping alive memories of Mao's policies, which the Party is not always able to control in political memory, as has been illustrated most recently in the Chongqing experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An apparent case of Greek exceptionalism, the 2010 local government election, held six months after the European Union (EU)/International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout in the context of an explicit prime-ministerial pledge to call general elections if the outcome was deemed unsatisfactory, did not lead to the downfall of the incumbent government. Instead the socialists remained first party. Investigating this puzzle, the article examines how party strategies were shaped by the dynamics of a two-round contest fought at the sub-national level and shows that the split around the EU/IMF Memorandum of Understanding did not emerge as a new political cleavage. Assessing the results, it concludes that the main electoral verdict did not concern the future of the bailout but the legitimacy of the political system, which was in a state of deepening crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the present state of political communications in Taiwan through a close analysis of the perceived relationship between journalists and politicians. This relationship is examined within the context of media commercialization. Based on the assumption that in cultures of democratic political communication the interaction between media and political actors involves both conflict and cooperation, we consider how journalists and politicians negotiate the balance of power between them. The empirical evidence gathered from semistructured interviews for this article suggests that the interaction between media and political elites in Taiwan is defined by high levels of conflict, hostility, mutual suspicion, and mistrust—attributes of a relationship that can have profound implications for the legitimacy and efficacy of institutions, actors, and political communications in a newly created democratic system. The article explains the evidence through the perspective of the “knowledge deficit model” that operates within the context of media commercialization. This indicates that the perceptions (of the public, journalists, and politicians) of the formal aspects of democracy may have been transformed, but the nuances that define the application of democratic norms (the practice of responsible journalism) remain ambiguous. More importantly, huge market pressures and the widely accepted media logic, coupled with the democratic knowledge deficit, are creating a vicious cycle in the practice of political communication in Taiwan. This perhaps provides some tentative explanation for the brisk deterioration of expectations about democracy and the media's role in it, as well as the quality of democratic political communication in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the creation of a professional civil service in post-transition Romania. It illustrates how a post-communist country can rebuild its civil service and start instituting new standards for upward professional advancement. It offers evidence that there has been some progress in the professionalisation of the Romanian civil service. It also investigates the underlying historical backdrop and the outcome of institutional changes implemented during the first two decades of transition from communist party rule. According to the article, administrative reforms in Romania are incomplete up to the period preceding accession to the European Union (EU) since communist-era organisational legacies remain potent obstacles.

Why did the Greek New Democracy remain in opposition for 11 consecutive years, and what did it take to regain power in 2004 with a landslide? This contribution focuses on three particular issues related to party change—i.e. party leadership, organizational structure, and electoral strategy—and explains how this party turned each and every one of them from liabilities to assets. In the course of this process, New Democracy seems to have reinvented itself and is being transformed into a moderate centre-right party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what the performance of Indonesia's political parties seven years on from Soeharto's resignation can tell us about politics in the country. Using the party system institutionalization framework first developed by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully in Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (1995), the article finds that Indonesia's parties and party system show a mixed score card, strengths and weaknesses mixing to deprive the parties of legitimacy. On balance, the 2004 elections and 2005 regional elections represent a step towards further deinstitutionalization due to the primacy of personalities in the direct elections of the president and the regional heads. Democracy may indeed now be the only game in town, but its operation is likely to be rocky. There is a silver lining, however; accountability has been somewhat improved due to the electorate's realization of its power to reward and punish parties and political leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]