Academic literature on the topic 'Elections, 1901'

Abstract There have been significant social and political changes in Australian society since federation in 1901. The issues that are considered politically salient have also changed significantly. The purpose of this article is to examine changes in the style and content of election campaign speeches over the period 1901-2016. The corpus consists of 88 election campaign speeches delivered by the Prime Minister and Opposition leader for the 45 elections from 1901 to 2016. I use natural language processing to extract from the speeches a number of linguistic variables which serve as independent variables and use the year of delivery as the dependent variable. I then use machine learning to develop a regression model which explains 77 per cent of the variance in the dependent variable. Examination of the salient independent variables shows that there have been significant linguistic changes in the style and content of election speeches over the study period. In particular speeches have become less linguistically complex, less introspective, more focused on work and the home, and contain more visual and social references. I discuss these changes in the context of changes in Australian society over the study period.

In 1901, the parliament of the new Commonwealth of Australia passed a series of laws designed, in the words of the Prime Minister Edmund Barton, “to make a legislative declaration of our racial identity”. An Act to expel the large Pacific Islander community in North Queensland was followed by a law restricting further immigration to applicants who could pass a literacy test in a European language. In 1902, under the Commonwealth Franchise Act, “all natives of Asia and Africa” as well as Aboriginal people were explicitly denied the right to vote in federal elections. The “White Australia policy”, enshrined in these laws, was almost universally supported by Australian politicians, with only two members of parliament speaking against the restriction of immigration on racial grounds.

The article is devoted to the little-studied issue of the development and adjustment of the reform provisions of the zemstvo representation of P.A. Stolypin in 1906—1907. The main programmatic requirements of liberal circles to change the procedure for elections to zemstvo assemblies, developed by zemstvo assemblies, zemstvo congresses, as well as local committees of the Special Meeting on the needs of the agricultural industry. For the first time, on the materials of the Russian State Historical Archive, the evolution of the provisions of the draft and their criticism in the Council of Ministers, as well as at the Congress of the United Nobility in 1907, is shown. It is emphasized that the development of the reform was a consequence of the Manifesto adopted in 1903 and 1904 and the decree on the need to transform local government and self-government. The author states that initially P. A. Stolypin sought to increase the share of representatives from cities and commercial and industrialists in zemstvo assemblies, however, at the insistence of the Council of Ministers, he was forced to retain the majority for landowners. The criticism of the united nobility in relation to the reform in connection with the expansion of the circle of voters and the organization of elections at the beginning of the non-class is highlighted in the article. It is concluded that the transformation of elections into zemstvo assemblies, planned by P. A. Stolypin was aimed at involving broad strata of the population in the representative institutions of local self-government at the expense of an unclassified beginning and the organization of elections based on a tax qualification.

This paper explains election fraud historically in the case of Sweden, drawing on original data from second-instance election petitions filed in 1719–1908. These petitions reveal systematic procedural violations committed by local election officials toward the end of the Age of Liberty in the eighteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, fraud had been largely purged from Swedish elections, and most petitions instead concerned unclear regulations pertaining to suffrage and eligibility criteria. I argue that this development cannot be explained by changes in electoral rules, the degree of competitiveness, or shifts in economic development or inequality. Instead, the ebb and flow of electoral fraud in Sweden could best be understood as stemming from the professionalization of the bureaucracy in combination with the extent to which elections were partisan. This novel mechanism for generating election fraud is corroborated qualitatively in a within-case longitudinal analysis and from quantitative data on city elections in 1771. I argue that similar processes may explain the rise and fall of election fraud historically in other established Western democracies, such as Britain and the United States.

The article is devoted to the activities of the deputies who represented the Vladimir Governorate in the First and Second State Dumas of the Russian Empire. The existing research base on this issue is analyzed. Special features of the local elections in the territory of the governorate are revealed. The data on the influence of the local authorities’ policy on the course of elections in the peasant curia are presented. The regional peculiarities of the tactics of individual parties (the bloc of the monarchist party and the Union of October 17) in the elections to the Second Duma are indicated. The attempts of the local authorities to disqualify the most popular opposition candidates from the elections to the Second Duma (K. Chernosvitov) are presented. The collective portrait of the Vladimir Governorate deputies is given, and the main information about their social status, age, party affiliation, and education is cited. Based on this information, the article shows the similarities and differences of the Vladimir Governorate deputies of the first and second convocations from the all-Russian indicators. The statistics on the membership of the deputies from the Vladimir Governorate in the Duma commissions are indicated, and their participation in the legislative activities of the State Duma is considered. The author highlights the key issues which were of interest to the deputies of Vladimir Governorate, such as social policy, political and civil rights, elections to the State Duma, and judicial reform. The speeches of the deputies on these issues are analyzed, and the most active parliamentarians are identified (I. Aleksinskii, K. Chernosvitov, N. Zhidelev, and M. Komissarov).

Parliamentary democracy in Serbia in the period between the May Coup of 1903 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914 was, as compellingly shown by the regular and very detailed reports of the diplomatic representatives of two exemplary democracies, Great Britain and France, functional and fully accommodated to the requirements of democratic governance. Some shortcomings, which were reflected in the influence of extra-constitutional (?irresponsible?) factors, such as the group of conspirators from 1903 or their younger wing from 1911 (the organisation Unification or Death), occasionally made Serbian democracy fragile but it nonetheless remained functional at all levels of government. A comparison with crises such as those taking place in, for example, France clearly shows that Serbia, although perceived as ?a rural democracy? and ?the poor man?s paradise?, was a constitutional and democratic state, and that it was precisely its political freedoms and liberation aspirations that made it a focal point for the rallying of South-Slavic peoples on the eve of the Great War. Had there been no firm constitutional boundaries of the parliamentary monarchy and the democratic system, Serbia would have hardly been able to cope with a series of political and economic challenges which followed one another after 1903: the Tariff War 1906-11; the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1908/9; the Balkan Wars 1912-13; the crisis in the summer of 1914 caused by the so-called Order of Precedence Decree, i.e. by the underlying conflict between civilian and military authorities. The Periclean age of Serbia, aired with full political freedoms and sustained cultural and scientific progress is one of the most important periods in the history of modern Serbian democracy.

The article deals with the activities of the Union of Unions during the Russian revolutionary unrest in 1905-1907. The author focuses on the fact that the organisation consisted of united various socio-political unions and was aimed at the fighting for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and for universal suffrage. The main attention in the article is paid to the decisions of the delegate congresses of the Union, which took place during 1905-1906. The association was headed by Pavel Milyukov, who had always regarded the Union as a prototype of the future party of constitutional democrats. The author gives a generalised description of the Union’s initiatives to boycott the elections to the first State Duma, to participate in the all-Russia political strike and the December armed uprising in the fall of 1905. The article traces the difficult relationship of zemstvos and the Union of Unions, which failed to determine its position in relation to them. As a result, the author makes a conclusion that during the recession of the revolution, the Union of Unions ceased to carry out active work and gradually disintegrated, it had failed to find its place among revolutionary organisations.

The article describes the character of Mykola Hankevich in the context of the early parliamentary elections of 1908 in Galicia. The author sets out his task, by shifting the usual historiographical accents, to consider the general election culture in the provincial capital in the early twentieth century, the theory and practice of the international socialist movement in a multinational urban environment. The well-established point of view of K. Jobst and other researchers, who believe that the conflict over Hankevich's face in the 1907 elections, when the executive leadership of the PPSD did not support his candidacy, is the beginning of the path that ultimately led the Polish and Ukrainian Social Democrats parties in the bosom of "their" national camps, and the ephemeral international socialist movement in Galicia disintegrated. The author believes that such a narrative simplifies the processes that took place in the environment of the Galician socialist parties. Cooperation between Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish socialists did not stop until the outbreak of the First World War. In the USDP, M. Hankevich himself did not cease to cooperate closely with Polish and Jewish socialists. During the snap election of 1908, the PPSD leader agreed with the candidacy of Mykola Hankevich, who, however, lost this election by winning 734 votes against 1011. However, in the anti-Ukrainian hysteria that had not yet subsided after the assassination of Andrzej Potocki, more than 40% of the vote, loyal to the Ukrainian and socialist candidates in the bourgeois Lviv district, looked like a tremendous success for Hankevich. Having identified the main reasons for this success, namely: his impeccable personal reputation, eloquence, popularity among the Lviv workers and intellectuals, genuine internationalism and willingness to represent different ethnic groups and different social strata, the author, referring to the memories of the Polish socialist Yevhen Morachevsky, calls another circumstance that explains the results of the vote quite differently. It is about 450 votes that Morachevsky bought in favour of Gankevich. The author notes that Morachevsky considers his dubious act as a peculiar feat - to pollute his hands to achieve a noble political goal, in which, in his opinion, he manifests the instinct and ability of a politician, thereby opposing himself to "dreamers" and idealists who did not compromise own principles.

The study is devoted to the elections to the first Russian parliament among the representatives of the so-called “native” and “foreign” population of the Russian Empire. It is shown that in the conditions of the revolutionary events of 1905-1906 at the highest bureaucratic level for Russian absolutism, the fundamental issue was the issue of delegating part of the legislative initiative to elected representatives of society. It is noted that under pressure from local administrations - the Turkestan Governor-General and Caucasian Viceroyalty - it was decided to entrust voting right in a truncated form to the peoples of the Caucasus (Caucasian Viceroyalty), Turkestan Territory (Semipalatinsk Oblast), the Steppe Territory and the nomadic foreigners of Russian provinces and regions. It is indicated that a comparative analysis of official documentation on elective production and periodicals on the outskirts allows us to consider in detail the very process of the first elections, its differences and similarities in parts of the empire. The author concludes that the election rules proposed by the center made it possible for people who are not connected with the local administration to be represented by their people in the first State Duma. The analysis of the biographies of the candidates showed that the ethnic factor played a greater role than their political views.

In a time of laissez-faire government, monopolistic businesses and political debauchery, William Andrews Clark played a significant role in the developing West, achieving financial success rivaling Jay Gould, George Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan. Clark built railroads, ranches, factories, utilities, and developed timber and water resources, and was internationally known as a capitalist, philanthropist and art collector. Nonetheless, Clark is unjustly remembered for his bitter twelve-year political battle with copper baron Marcus Daly that culminated in a scandalous senatorial election in January 1899. The subsequent investigation was a judicial travesty based on personal hatred and illicit tactics. Clark's political career had national implications and lasting consequences. His enemies shaped his legacy, and for one hundred years historians have unquestioningly accepted it.

The purpose of this research is to identify major factors that can be used to explain and predict the process of growth in union membership as represented by union victories in certification elections. The emphasis of this research is on organization and social-structural level factors. The logistic regression procedure reveals that organization level variables are most significant in explaining union victories in certification elections. Among the organization level variables, Unit Size, as defined by the NLRB, is the most significant variable in each year of the study and across all industrial classifications.

Previous studies of the first direct elections to the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) in 1991 were largely focused on the effect of the Tiananmen Incident on voters' choice, neglecting the domestic dimension of social conflict evolving within Hong Kong from the 1970s. Adopting the social cleavage approach, the present thesis argues that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, were important by 1991. It, therefore, explores the international, social and political contexts within which the 1991 LegCo direct elections took place in order to explain the political alignments and electoral cleavages during the period 1982-1991. First, the study examines the Sino-British attitudes towards political reforms in Hong Kong and the development of the centre-periphery cleavage in the 1980s as the two countries negotiated the transfer of sovereignty. Second, the expansion of the Hong Kong Government's activities and its privatisation programmes are analyzed in order to describe the increasingly intimate relations between government and society and to show that, as a result, conflicts evolved over issues of collective consumption. Third, the emerging competition at the time of the 1991 elections is discussed with reference to political mobilisation and alignments during the previous decade. Fourth, the electoral market of 1991 is examined to explain voters' choice. Finally, the election results are analyzed to demonstrate that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, played a significant role. The data used in this study were collected from: official documents, such as the Hong Kong Government Gazette, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Basic Law, the Hong Kong Census and By-census reports, the annual reports of various government departments; opinion polls and one exit poll of the 1991 LegCo direct elections; personal interviews with leading political leaders; campaign materials and election debates on television; and newspaper cuttings.

Exploring elections features from a geographical perspective is the focus of this study. Its primary objective is to develop a scientific approach based on geoinformation technology (GIT) that promotes deeper understanding how geographical settings affect the spatial and temporal variations of voting behaviour and election outcomes. For this purpose, the five parliamentary elections (1991-2005) following the political turnaround in 1990 in the South East European reform country Albania have been selected as a case study. Elections, like other social phenomena that do not develop uniformly over a territory, inherit a spatial dimension. Despite of fact that elections have been researched by various scientific disciplines ranging from political science to geography, studies that incorporate their spatial dimension are still limited in number and approaches. Consequently, the methodologies needed to generate an integrated knowledge on many facets that constitute election features are lacking. This study addresses characteristics and interactions of the essential elements involved in an election process. Thus, the baseline of the approach presented here is the exploration of relations between three entities: electorate (political and sociodemographic features), election process (electoral system and code) and place (environment where voters reside). To express this interaction the concept of electoral pattern is introduced. Electoral patterns are defined by the study as the final view of election results, chiefly in tabular and/or map form, generated by the complex interaction of social, economic, juridical, and spatial features of the electorate, which has occurred at a specific time and in a particular geographical location. GIT methods of geoanalysis and geovisualization are used to investigate the characteristics of electoral patterns in their spatial and temporal distribution. Aggregate-level data modelled in map form were used to analyse and visualize the spatial distribution of election patterns components and relations. The spatial dimension of the study is addressed in the following three main relations: One, the relation between place and electorate and its expression through the social, demographic and economic features of the electorate resulting in the profile of the electorate’s context; second, the electorate-election interaction which forms the baseline to explore the perspective of local contextual effects in voting behaviour and election results; third, the relation between geographical location and election outcomes reflecting the implication of determining constituency boundaries on election results. To address the above relations, three types of variables: geo, independent and dependent, have been elaborated and two models have been created. The Data Model, developed in a GIS environment, facilitates structuring of election data in order to perform spatial analysis. The peculiarity of electoral patterns – a multidimensional array that contains information on three variables, stored in data layers of dissimilar spatial units of reference and scales of value measurement – prohibit spatial analysis based on the original source data. To perform a joint spatial analysis it is therefore mandatory to restructure the spatial units of reference while preserving their semantic content. In this operation, all relevant electoral as well as socio-demographic data referenced to different administrative spatial entities are re-referenced to uniform grid cells as virtual spatial units of reference. Depending on the scale of data acquisition and map presentation, a cell width of 0.5 km has been determined. The resulting fine grid forms the basis of subsequent data analyses and correlations. Conversion of the original vector data layers into target raster layers allows for unification of spatial units, at the same time retaining the existing level of detail of the data (variables, uniform distribution over space). This in turn facilitates the integration of the variables studied and the performance of GIS-based spatial analysis. In addition, conversion to raster format makes it possible to assign new values to the original data, which are based on a common scale eliminating existing differences in scale of measurement. Raster format operations of the type described are well-established data analysis techniques in GIT, yet they have rarely been employed to process and analyse electoral data. The Geovisualization Model, developed in a cartographic environment, complements the Data Model. As an analog graphic model it facilitates efficient communication and exploration of geographical information through cartographic visualization. Based on this model, 52 choropleth maps have been generated. They represent the outcome of the GIS-based electoral data analysis. The analog map form allows for in-depth visual analysis and interpretation of the distribution and correlation of the electoral data studied. For researchers, decision makers and a wider public the maps provide easy-to-access information on and promote easy-to-understand insight into the spatial dimension, regional variation and resulting structures of the electoral patterns defined.
Gegenstand der vorliegenden Studie ist die Erforschung der aus politischen Wahlen resultierenden Raumstrukturen mit Methoden und Techniken der Geoinformationsverarbeitung. Auf der Basis eines gemeinsamen räumlichen Bezuges wird es durch die Verknüpfung der Wahlergebnisse mit ausgewählten wirtschaftlichen, demographischen und sozialen Parametern möglich, die räumliche Verteilung, Kernräume (Hochburgen) und räumlich-strukturelle Verknüpfungen der Wahlergebnisse politischer Parteien zu untersuchen. Die Resultate tragen zu einem besseren Verständnis der Ergebnisse politischer Wahlen und deren räumliche Dimensionen auf nationaler bis lokaler Ebene bei. Die Studie wird am Beispiel der fünf Parlamentswahlen (1991-2005) des südosteuropäischen Reformstaates Albanien durchgeführt, die seit der politischen Wende 1990 stattgefunden haben. Ausgangspunkt der Untersuchung ist die Tatsache, dass Wahlen, wie zahllose andere gesellschaftliche Phänomene auch, eine räumliche Dimension besitzen. Diese kommt in der territorialen Organisation politischer Wahlen in Wahlkreisen explizit zum Ausdruck. In der parlamentarischen Vertretung der politischen Parteien spiegelt sich dies allerdings nur indirekt wider. Zwar waren die parteipolitischen Aspekte politischer Wahlen als auch die parlamentarische Repräsentation sowie die soziodemographischen Strukturen der Wahlbevölkerung Gegenstand einer Vielzahl von Studien aus Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften. Dies auch gilt für die Geographie. Die erwähnte räumliche Dimension politischer Wahlen wurde bislang aber seltener in das Zentrum von Untersuchungen gestellt. Es mangelt insofern auch an spezifischen Methodologien, die eine integrierte Untersuchung aller relevanten Wahlparameter ermöglichen und eine umfassende Bewertung alle Aspekte des Wahlwahlverhaltens einer Wahlbevölkerung bei politischen Wahlen unterstützen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht strukturelle wie räumliche Merkmale und Zusammenhänge der wesentlichen Faktoren, die bei politischen Wahlen relevant sind. Ausgangspunkt ist die Untersuchung so genannter Wahlmuster, die durch das Zusammenwirken folgender Faktoren entstehen: Wahlprozess (Wahlsystem, Wahlcode), politische und soziodemographische Kenndaten der Wahlbevölkerung, räumliche Ausbreitung und regionale Struktur der Wahlbezirke sowie die räumliche Verteilung und Strukturierung der Wahlbevölkerung. Als Wahlmuster wird die endgültige Repräsentation von Wahlergebnissen, i.d.R. in Tabellen- und Kartenform, betrachtet. Wahlmuster entstehen durch komplexe Interaktion der sozialen, wirtschaftlichen, juristischen und räumlichen Merkmale der Wahlbevölkerung zu einer bestimmten Zeit (Wahltag) in einem bestimmten Raum (Wahlgebiet). Für die Untersuchung der räumlichen und zeitlichen Dimension der Wahlmuster werden Methoden und Techniken der Geoinformationsverarbeitung eingesetzt. Die räumliche Dimension wird dabei in drei Merkmalsgruppen untersucht: Erstens, die Beziehungen zwischen Raum (Standort) und Wahlbevölkerung, wie sie sich in den demographischen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Kennwerten der Wahlbevölkerung manifestieren. Zweitens, die Interaktion zwischen Walbevölkerung und Wahl, die die Grundlage bildet, um regionale Kontexteffekte bei Wahlverhalten und Wahlergebnissen zu untersuchen. Drittens, die Verknüpfung von Wahlergebnissen und deren räumlichen Bezügen, wie sie sich in der stetigen Veränderung der Wahlkreisgrenzen niederschlägt. Um die genannten Merkmalsgruppen zu untersuchen, werden drei Variablengruppen gebildet: räumliche, unabhängige, abhängige Variablen. Ihre raumzeitlichen Interaktionen werden mittels zweier raumbezogener Modelle untersucht. Das graphikfreie Datenmodell wird in einem Geoinformationssystem erstellt und erlaubt die Strukturierung der Wahldaten. Dies bildet eine Voraussetzung für die nachfolgende räumliche Analyse. Das besondere Kennzeichen der Wahlmuster – eine mehrdimensionale Matrix der Variableninformation, die in unterschiedlichen, nicht aggregierbaren administrativen Raumbezugseinheiten vorliegt – behindert die räumliche Analyse der Originaldaten. Um dennoch räumliche Analysen durchzuführen, ist es erforderlich, den Raumbezug zu verändern bei gleichzeitiger Beibehaltung der thematischen Merkmale. Hierbei werden alle Wahldaten sowie die relevanten soziodemographischen Daten auf eine gemeinsame Raumbezugseinheit bezogen. Statt unterschiedlich administrativ abgegrenzter Raumeinheiten werden regelmäßige Rasterzellen gleicher Maschenweite als Raumbezugseinheiten definiert und den bisherigen, separaten Raummustern der Variablen überlagert. Auf diese Weise wird die räumliche Gleichverteilung aller Variablen in eine gemeinsame räumliche Bezugsbasis überführt, ohne dass die semantischen Merkmale verändert werden. Entsprechend dem Erfassungs- und Präsentationsmaßstab wurde eine Maschenweite von 0,5 km gewählt. Der hieraus resultierende feingranulare Raumgitter bildet die gemeinsame Basis für die nunmehr möglich integrierte räumliche Analyse aller Merkmalsgruppen. Die hier beschriebene rasterbasierte Raumanalyse stellt eine eingeführte Methode der GIS-basierten Geoinformationsverarbeitung dar. Sie wurde bislang jedoch selten zur Verarbeitung und Analyse von Wahldaten eingesetzt. Das mit dem Datenmodell korrespondierende graphikbezogene Visualisierungsmodell wird in einer Kartenkonstruktionsumgebung erstellt und erlaubt die fachgerechte kartographische Veranschaulichung ausgewählter Analyseergebnisse des Datenmodells. Daten- und Kartenmodell sind durch einen Datenfilter verknüpft, der die erforderliche Datenkonversion ermöglicht. Auf Basis des Visualisierungsmodells wurden zweiundfünfzig Kartenmodelle des Kartogramm- bzw. Kartodiagrammtyps erzeugt. Sie ermöglichen die vertiefte visuelle Exploration, Analyse und Interpretation der räumlichen Verteilung und Korrelation der untersuchten Wahldaten. Komplementär zum graphikfreien Datenmodell eröffnet das Visualisierungsmodell Fachwissenschaftlern, politischen Entscheidungsträgern und - in begrenztem Umfang – einer interessierten Öffentlichkeit einen intuitiven Erkenntniszugang zur den räumlichen Dimensionen, der regionalen Variation der Wahlergebnisse und den resultierenden raumgebundenen Wahlmustern.

This thesis explored the role of the six wealthy Russian businessmen, the oligarchs, in 1996 reelection of President Boris Yeltsin. This research was qualitative and descriptive. The goal was to collect the information from various sources and summarize it, demonstrating how the interference of the oligarchs reflected on the process of the election, as well as on the careers of their own.The research concluded that the oligarchs' role was, first of all, in the organization and financing a highly effective election campaign team; consolidating the business elite and big capital around Yeltsin, using the media that they controlled as a tool of pro-Yeltsin propaganda; and influencing some key decision taken by Yeltsin. The result was Yeltsin's victory, and the increase of the oligarchs' wealth and political power.This ability of the oligarchs to manipulate politics completely cemented the interrelation between business and politics in Russia, which contributed to Russia's reputation as a country of corruption and lawlessness.
Department of Political Science

Political parties started to be established in Turkey in the second half of the 19th century with the formation of societies aiming at the reform of the Ottoman Empire. They reaped the fruits of their labour in 1908 when the Young Turk Revolution replaced the Sultan with the Committee of Union and Progress, which disbanded itself on the defeat of the Empire in 1918. Following the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, new parties started to be formed, but experiments with a multi-party system were soon abandoned in favour of a one-party system. From 1930 until the end of the Second World War, the People’s Republican Party (PRP) was the only political party. It was not until after the Second World War that Turkey reverted to a multiparty system. The most significant new parties were the Democrat Party (DP), formed on 7 January 1946, and the Nation Party (NP) formed on 20 July 1948, after a spilt in the DP. However, as a result of the coup of 27 May 1960, the military Government, the Committee of National Union (CNU), declared its intentions of seizing power, restoring rights and privileges infringed by the Democrats, and drawing up a new Constitution, to be brought into being by a free election. In January 1961, the CNU relaxed its initial ban on all political activities, and within a month eleven new parties were formed, in addition to the already established parties. The most important of the new parties were the Justice Party (JP) and New Turkey Party (NTP), which competed with each other for the DP’s electoral support. In the general election of October 1961, the PRP’s failure to win an absolute majority resulted in four coalition Governments, until the elections in October 1965. The General Election of October 1965 returned the JP to power with a clear, overall majority. The poor performance of almost all the minor parties led to the virtual establishment of a two-party system. Neither the JP nor the PRP were, however, completely united. With the General Election of October 1969, the JP was returned to office, although with a reduced share of the vote. The position of the minor parties declined still further. Demirel resigned on 12 March 1971 after receiving a memorandum from the Armed Forces Commanders threatening to take direct control of the country. Thus, an “above-party” Government was formed to restore law and order and carry out reforms in keeping with the policies and ideals of Atatürk. In March 1973, the “above-party” Melen Government resigned, partly because Parliament rejected the military candidate, General Gürler, whom it had supported in the Presidential Elections of March-April 1973. This rejection represented the determination of Parliament not to accept the dictates of the Armed Forces. On 15 April, a new “above party” government was formed by Naim Talu. The fundamental dilemma of Turkish politics was that democracy impeded reform. The democratic process tended to return conservative parties (such as the Democrat and Justice Parties) to power, with the support of the traditional Islamic sectors of Turkish society, which in turn resulted in the frustration of the demands for reform of a powerful minority, including the intellectuals, the Armed Forces and the newly purged PRP. In the last half of the 20th century, this conflict resulted in two periods of military intervention, two direct and one indirect, to secure reform and to quell the disorder resulting from the lack of it. This paper examines the historical development of the Turkish party system, and the factors which have contributed to breakdowns in multiparty democracy.