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International organizations of political parties

During the 19th and 20th century, many national political parties organized themselves into international organizations along similar policy lines. Notable examples are the Communist International (also called the Third International), and the Fourth International, as organizations of working class parties, or the Liberal International (yellow), Christian Democratic International and the International Democrat Union (blue). Worldwide green parties have recently established the Global Greens. The Socialist International, the Liberal International, and the International Democrat Union are all based in London.

 

Source: Wikipedia (May 26, 2009), adjusted, reference to other quotes was suppressed.

 

Electoral systems: Summary

 

Electoral systems may be categorized in several ways. The most useful is probably a three-way division into plurality, majoritarian, and proportional systems. For national elections, plurality systems are found only in Great Britain and some former British colonies (including the United States and India) (see first-past-the-post). Majoritarian systems are found in France and Australia for legislative elections, and in about half of the countries with directly elected chief executives (see second ballot). There are many different proportional systems in the democratic world; they differ widely and there is no agreed criterion whereby one may be judged better than another.

 

Each family of systems has a number of distinctive features and effects. In the plurality system, the candidate who polls more votes than any other candidate is elected. It is distinguished from the majority system, in which, to win, a candidate must receive more votes than all other candidates combined. Supporters of the proportional system claim that it creates a more accurate reflection of public opinion; its opponents argue that by allowing more parties in a legislature, it may result in weaker, less stable governments. Two methods for apportioning seats are the single-transferable-vote method, under which voters rank candidates by preference, and the list system, under which voters select a party's list of candidates rather than individuals. Some countries (e.g., Germany and Russia) use a combination of plurality and proportional methods for allocating seats in the lower house of the national legislature.

 

Plurality systems tend to concentrate the vote on the two leading parties (see Duverger's law) except where there are concentrated regional parties. Majoritarian systems are appropriate for presidential elections, since there is only one president who ought to have majority support at least against the last rival left in the field; therefore systems such as alternative vote are justifiable, though imperfect. However, using a majoritarian system to elect a legislature can lead to severe distortions. The number of parties elected under a proportional system is a function partly of the size of districts it employs (the more seats there are in each district, the more parties will tend to be represented), and partly of the underlying cleavages in the society. Source: various sources.



 

A poster for the European Parliament election 2004 in Italy, showing party lists

 

 

Policy

According to William Jenkins in Policy Analysis: A Political and Organizational Perspective (1978), a policy is ‘a set of interrelated decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them within a specified situation. The term usually refers to the actions of government and the intentions that determine those actions". Two other good definitions: [Public policy is] "whatever governments choose to do or not do". (Th. Dye). "Public policy consists of political decisions for implementing programs to achieve societal goals". (Ch. L. Cochran and E. F. Malone). Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies. Policies frequently have side effects or unintended consequences.

 

Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 606


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