Academic literature on the topic 'Political participation. Political parties'

Political Parties, William Cross, The Canadian Democratic Audit series; Vancouver, UBC Press, 2004, pp. 218.Political Parties is part of the Canadian Democratic Audit series. The expressed aim of the series is to “examine the way Canadian democracy functions” using three benchmarks, “public participation, inclusiveness and responsiveness,” with the principle output being not so much a report card but the desire to “encourage ongoing discussion of how best to fashion Canada's democratic institutions and practices well into the new century” (http://www.mta.ca/faculty/arts-letters/canadian_studies/cda/pdf/demaudit_overview_15aug.pdf). Cross's short, readable volume achieves these objectives.

The objective of this paper is to show the mediation between citizens and political power by political parties in Czech rural areas. The position of political parties in rural municipalities is demonstrated in two perspectives. The top-down perspective is based on the distribution of several tens of thousands mandates in local municipal councils between political parties. The opposite perspective provides the bottom-up point of view – from the level of the individual municipalities, their party systems and party organisational structures. The analysis of the municipal election results reveals clearly that the role of political parties in local politics depends namely on the size of the given municipality. In this sense, the Czech Republic represents a very interesting example as it is characterised by a dense and heavily fragmented population settlement with a large number of small rural municipalities. In rural municipalities, we encounter incomplete party spectra and the absence of political parties in the smallest municipalities. Besides, the lists of candidates in rural municipalities reveal the weakness of the local party organisations that cannot avoid cooperating with the independent candidates. The small distance between the citizen and the elected body in a rural community significantly determines the forms of the local politics; the ideological and party mediation is superfluous, in fact, it is often seen as something harmful which divides the rural community.

Jordanian womens participation in public policy dates back to 1950s. However, political activism came to a halt in the period between 1956 and 1992. In 1992, the new Political Parties Law granted women the right to participate in political parties. Since then, women became an active member of political parties, but their participation remained largely symbolic and not influential. Women did not seek to join parties. As a result, women are still largely unrepresented in the state. In addition, and the number of women involved in these parties remains low. There are a number of challenges that prevent womens participation in political life in Jordan, such as social restrictions resulting from the traditional structure of Jordanian society. This article discusses the political participation of women in Jordan and addresses the most prominent challenges facing the political work of women in Jordan.

In representative democracies, political parties organize the public will, giving expression to political differences in society (see Katz and Mair 1995; Klingemann, Hofferbert, and Budge 1994; Sartori 1967). Parties can also deepen democracy by broadening the connections between representatives and constituents, helping to hold political institutions accountable and increasing the participation of previously marginalized groups (see Costain 2005; Kitschelt 1993; Shugart 1994; Kittilson and Tate 2005; Young 2000).

Political parties are crucial for the development of democracy in Bangladesh. They represent interests of different social groups and, by means of participation in elections, affect the development of political and socio-economic power strategies. Thus, political parties provide guarantee of equal rights of all the country’s citizens and contribute to their involvement in the democratic process. The democratic institutions in Bangladesh are represented by 40 officially registered parties, among which the largest and most popular are the Awami League, the Nationalist Party, the Jatiya Party and the Jamaat-i-Islami. The article studies political parties’ participation in the life of the country since the establishment of Bangladesh and compares the four main political parties in terms of their ideology, organizational structure, leadership and popular support during elections. Throughout the country’s political history, the winning party has always enjoyed the monopoly of power, which has contributed to the aggravation of conflict between opposition parties and authorities. This situation significantly hinders the country’s socio-economic development. Strikes, often accompanied by extremist violence, are taking place in different parts of the country. The author uses the historical method to analyze the nature of the opposition of various political forces in Bangladesh.

The paper outlines historical and contemporary relationships between political parties and social movements, with a focus on the Australian Greens. It posits some of the limitations and possibilities of this relationship, drawing on Australia-based experience. It argues the relationship is a necessary one, both to social movements seeking to pursue their agendas through the political system, and to political parties needing to be open to broad public participation and to maintain strong links to on-the-ground issues. It concludes that the Australian Greens have sought to strike a balance between party and movement, recognising the limits of both.

Chilean Pentecostals have been described as passive and politically conformist in their relations with the military government. Instead, there is historical evidence that they have been an active and interactive minority. Pentecostal denominations have participated in political projects associated with leftist political parties. Pentecostal leaders have associated themselves with various political parties as a form of political struggle for recognition, and active Pentecostal organizations resisted and protested during the military government. Se han calificado a los pentecostales chilenos de pasivos y conformistas políticamente en sus relaciones con el gobierno militar. En cambio, hay evidencia histórica que han sido una minoría activa e interactiva. Las denominaciones pentecostales han participado en proyectos políticos asociados con partidos políticos de izquierda. Los dirigentes pentecostales se han plegado a varios partidos políticos como forma de lucha política por el reconocimiento, y organizaciones pentecostales activas han resistido y protestado durante el gobierno militar.

Existing research on the voting behavior of the urban poor in the Third World has frequently suggested that demand aggregation by political parties (especially in a multiparty system) is not clear-cut, and that the urban poor do not tend to demonstrate marked party or ideological preferences. By replicating, deepening, and extending an early study done in Lima, Peru, new research reveals patterns of candidate and party support hitherto unidentified. District-level aggregate voting data and multiple-indicator census data reveal some clear patterns of support from low-income groups for opposition and leftist candidates.

The creation and rapid growth of the Spanish political party Podemos has created high expectations among citizens who want to participate in politics beyond voting. With a strategy that combines analogue and digital media, the party has emerged as the third biggest party in the last general elections, June 2016. Podemos has been conceived as a hybrid between a political party and a social movement, striving for wining the elections while relaying on grassroots activism through decentralised groups called “circles”, which operate locally and interact with the party via digital media. Although the potential of digital media for participation has been many times stressed, how the circles use these media depends highly on ongoing power relations and struggles within the party. Through semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this research analyses the perceptions of seven participants in two Podemos circles from the perspective of media practices, and looks into the potential of digital tools for political participation and the way ongoing power relations affect this participation. The results show that media practices within the circles are limited by the position of power of the leaders, who make use of analogue media to convey unidirectional messages that can hardly be countered via digital media. Furthermore, the research analyses the existence of relevant tensions in Podemos as a party that promotes citizen participation within a hierarchical, top-down organisation.

Mexico's cultural norms have been the subject of repeated inquiries because democratic and authoritarian patterns appear concomitantly. However, few have focused on the potential demographic and contextual sources of these divergent results. This study attempts to clarify the sources of Mexico's political culture, and then determine the extent to which these factors affect political participation. Statistical analysis of a LAPOP dataset from 2006 makes limited progress to this end. The sources of Mexican political culture remain somewhat a mystery, although some intriguing results were found. Most notably, demographic traits appear to have little influence on political culture variables and political participation rates in Mexico. In fact, political culture norms and political participation appears consistent across Mexico's infamous social and economic lines.

Most recent literature that analyzes parties from an organizational perspective focuses often on the concepts of intra-party democracy and party organizational democratization (Scarrow, 1999a; Scarrow and Kittilson, 2003; LeDuc, Niemi and Norris, 2002; Bosco and Morlino, 2007). Le Duc (2001) and Rahat and Hazan (2007) underline that the most used instrument for implementing this ‘democratization’ process is the enhancement of the inclusiveness of the methods for candidate and party leadership selection. The actors endowed with candidate and leader selection powers are the central actors in the functioning of the party according to many authors (Gallagher and Marsh 1988, Marsh 1993; Massari, 2004; Hazan and Rahat, 2010). At the moment, the most inclusive method identified by the literature for selecting candidates for elections or the party leader is represented by party open or closed primaries, i.e. internal direct elections by party members and, in the case of open primaries, supporters and voters (Cross and Blais, 2011; Kenig, 2009b).

In this study, we explore two specific dimensions of party politics: membership and internal activisms, on the one hand, and on the other hand the internal democratization processes and in particular those dealing with broadening the inclusiveness of leadership selection procedures. Therefore, this study integrates in particular the debate on the nature and consequences of party organizational democratization. The debate finds its origins both in the influential work of Michels on the “iron law of oligarchy” thesis but has been more recently boosted by the theories of May (1973), Mair (1994) and also the studies on intra-party democracy in the British Labour (Shaw, 1994; Russell, 2005).

However, we are interested in the point of view of members themselves on the consequences of internal democratization. We are interested on how members perceive these organizational changes, in whether they are frustrated form the actual consequences on their role and powers and whether they perceive them as a potential threat that could undermine their organizational position within the party. In order to respond to the debate on the consequences of intra-party democracy at individual level, we rely mainly on three questions. The main research questions of this study are thus the following: to what extent party organizational changes in the sense of greater democratization affect the membership role at individual level? How are these organizational changes perceived by members? To what extent members’ perceptions of their own role affect their behaviors and in particular their internal activism?

The aim of this study, thus, is to empirically assess the impact on members’ activism of party internal democratization and in particular of the perception of membership role. We are interested in whether party members’ attitudes are changing as a result of parties’ organizational changes, particularly if these changes are giving members more say over outcomes. This is a study of how (and whether) perceived roles affect behaviour. The independent variable is constituted by the members’ perception of their own role within party organizational structures and in particular with regard to the leadership selection methods, whilst the dependent variable is represented by the level of activism of party members, in terms of participation to party activities in general. In fact, the impact of party rules at individual level will be addressed, as well as how the perception of organizational rules affects individual attitudes and behaviors. In particular, the focus is on leadership selection methods that integrate party members at some point in the overall process (Lisi, 2009), such as direct elections (Hazan and Rahat, 2006). The case selection is thus implemented on the basis of the research question: the comparison is developed across parties (and not across time) using different instruments for enhancing intra-party democracy.

Therefore, we analyze the role perception, attitudes and behaviors of grass-roots members of three contemporary Western European parties: the Belgian French-speaking socialist party (Parti Socialiste, PS), the British Labour and the Italian Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD). Among the selected parties, one (PD) holds primaries open to all voters for selecting their leader and one (Belgian PS), on the contrary, has chosen the closed primary (OMOV) system. The British Labour Party uses an electoral college for electing its leader since 1981. The Electoral College method refers to a system in which specific groups are allocated a specific share of the leadership vote. In the case of the UK Labour, the votes are equally divided among its constituency members, the parliamentary caucus and the trade union members.

Concerning the first research question of our study, our empirical results underline that in the three selected cases organizational changes affect indeed the membership role at individual level and that grass-root members perceive very clearly this impact on their status and organizational rights, obligations and privileges. When grass-roots members evaluate their role within the party, in particular with regard to the procedure for selecting the leader and the involvement of non-members and passive members within party organization, their perceptions take into account their organizational power as defined, among other factors, also by their share of votes in leadership selection. Thus, we expect that PD members perceive their role as more blurred than Labour members and particularly than PS members. In the case of parties, such as the PS, adopting direct elections of the party leader only by the affiliates, the majority of the members are expected to perceive clearly the distinction of the position, privileges and functions between members and non-members and the extensive role reserved for the affiliates.

Our data show that the perception of own role vary among members, but also that many members perceive their own role as being rather blurred. They display in fact nuanced but generally negative attitudes towards the integration of voters and supporters within the selection of party leader. On the basis of our survey data, the observed variation in the perception of membership role within and between the three parties seems to correspond to what we expected. A higher proportion of PD surveyed members declare to perceive their role as blurred, while smaller proportions of PS and particularly labour respondents share this evaluation. In general, our data confirm that party members do not evaluate positively the fact that these formal privileges are extended not only to all individual members, not only to activists but even to passive ones, but also to party voters and supporters. Mair’s “activists’ disempowerment” thesis (Mair, 1994) seems to be supported by our data, at least in terms of individual perceptions.

Moreover, our data show that the degree of satisfaction with intra-party democracy significantly vary among parties and is generally not nearly as high as could be expected on the basis of party politics literature. If in the British Labour survey the responses of grass-roots members seem to form a more positive picture, with a great majority of member declaring that the party leader is not too powerful, the level of dissatisfaction with party functioning is rather higher in the other two parties. Nevertheless, PS members are fairly more convinced than PS members that the party internal decision-making is democratic. This is what we expected to find on the basis of our first hypothesis. In fact, our first hypothesis postulated that the perception of the role of party membership by affiliates in terms of (lack of) distinction between members and non-members affects inversely their level of satisfaction with the internal functioning of the party and their degree of perceived political efficacy. The stronger the perception of the blurred role of membership, the lower will be the level of political efficacy and specific support for the party. According to our data, among PD members the perception of the blurred, undefined role of members is rather high and so is the degree of dissatisfaction with intra-party functioning. On the contrary, within the other two parties and especially within the Labour, the role perception by grass-roots members is rather positive and well-defined and the level of specific support for the party is also higher.

The expectations formulated on the basis of our first hypothesis appear to be supported by the empirical data also with regard to the variations in the sense of external political efficacy of members. Our data seem consistent with the hypothesis, developed by several scholars (Katz and Mair, 1995; Carty, 2004; Bolleyer, 2009), that expanding the leadership selectorate and granting formal powers to party members and supporters may hide, on the other hand, the perception by enrolled members to be actually loosing power. On the basis of our data, it is possible to assert that grass-roots members seem to be aware of the possibility of a trade-off between extreme inclusiveness of decision-making procedures and actual centralization of organizational power in the hands of party elites.

With regard to the third research question of this study, our results confirm that indeed members’ perceptions of their own role, in relation to internal democratization, affect their behaviors and in particular their internal participation. The three parties appear to have different features in terms of internal activism, at aggregate but in particular at individual level. Secondly, not only the overall level of intra-party activism of grass-roots members vary between and within the three selected parties, but appears to be influenced by members’ attitudes towards the party. In fact, our second hypothesis postulated that the levels of specific support for the party and political efficacy of party members impact directly on their level of activism. The lower the level of political efficacy and specific support for the party, the lower will be the degree of activism of all members (as well as the quality of the activities they perform) and vice-versa. In a party holding open and direct elections to choose its leader, party membership is thought to be divided between a highly active avant-garde and a larger mass of inactive affiliates, feeling inefficacy, frustrated with intra-party democracy and perceiving their own role as blurred and undefined. Consequently, dissatisfied or low efficacy members are argued to participate less.

Our data only partially support the expectations. In fact, the impact of the sense of external efficacy is clear and strong in all the three cases, while on the contrary the relationship between specific support and intra-party activism is less clear-cut than expected. The results are therefore nuanced with regard to the expectations formulated in the second hypothesis of this study. The explanatory power of external efficacy and specific support in terms of internal mobilization is only partially supported by our data. Therefore, the evaluation of the consequences of the implementation of party organizational changes such as the adoption of open primaries depends on what party elites are interested in: if the goal is to assure membership loyalty, adopting open primaries is not a good way to strengthen membership involvment in the party.

We believe that real intra-party democracy is normatively impossible with regard to the position of members. Organizational power cannot be too dispersed among different units without jeopardizing not only effective functioning of the party, as the old debated on the trade-off between democracy and efficacy asserted (Duverger, 1951; Panebianco, 1988), but also the incentives for internal participation of the party base. Party members are well aware that internal power cannot be too dispersed. From the point of view of members, a party should have a clear chain of command and should be composed by elites, activists and members. Each one of them should also be endowed with clearly defined tasks and responsibilities. In conclusion, we believe that intra-party democracy is a symbolic element of party organization but not as actually implementable.

In sum, intra-party democracy does not mean the same for different party units. For party elites, it represents a process for either legitimizing the party, changing party image, mobilizing electoral support, managing internal faction or even indirectly increasing their own organizational room for manoeuvre. For party members, intra-party democracy represents an incentive for mobilizing and a political identification tool until a certain point. After that, it becomes a threat to their rights and their status. For grass-roots affiliates, intra-party democracy is not a value per se, but it depends on its real intensity and actual implementation. In conclusion, at theoretical level, we can conclude that party organization theories should increasingly take into account membership’s point of view. On the contrary, at practical level, we can conclude that parties should adapt their strategies with regard to intra-party democracy according to their goal. If party elites are interested in tightening their grip on internal decision-making while increasing their room for manoeuvre and legitimizing party image at the same time, increasing intra-party democracy could be the best organizational strategy. On the contrary, if the leadership’s aim is to mobilize members and guarantee a stable and loyal membership, then it should be noted that increasing intra-party democracy is not always the best choice. To this regard, it might be useful for party elites to find other and more effective ways to loyalize member.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Scholarly interest for the impact of technologies on democracy has raised in parallel to the decline of political participation. Technology has often been seen as either one of the causes of the crisis of representative democracy or as a powerful remedy to heal the negative externalities generated by party oligopolies.

The study of the impact of new media in party politics or presidential elections dates back the forties (with the outgrowth of radio) and has evolved in cyclical waves until today, covering the emergence of television, the development of global telecommunications, the birth of internet and finally what’s popularly called the Web 2.0.

The notion of eDemocracy emerges from this dynamic, but is in a league of its own.

There is no agreement on many of the terms that one needs to use to dissect its meaning. Scholars diverge on virtually every foundational concept: from the very definition of democracy and interactivity, to the core functions of political parties, to the definition of propaganda as opposed to political communication or to political marketing. As a consequence of this, there is little agreement on both what could be done in theory with eDemocracy and what is actually done in practice.

A permanent tension exist between idealtypes and real types in this domain.

The aim of this research is to prove this thesis with the largest and most global research unit of political parties web sites at the time of writing.

The choice of an information architecture approach has allowed to cover some uncharted territory while providing a first set of data on the structures of the political web (in 2004-2005) for public scrutiny.

The core of this research contribution consists in a basic taxonomy and a set of data (on the intentions and on the information architecture) resulting from a 10 years observational research on the early actors of the political web (stricto sensu i.e. 2073 political parties web sites), reviewed with a new degree of detail (through an ad hoc software procedure aiming at dissecting the structure of political web sites) and grouped into 3 main families (protosites, mesosites and neosites) of party web sites. These clusters of homogeneous web sites share a common way to deal with space, with files, with usability, with multimedia.

Classic views on eDemocracy insisted on the improvement deriving from more political information online: in theory, the more information we have, the more we can compare it and use it for our political orientation/participation. In practice, to describe the problem in cybernetic terms, this empirical research shows that load appears to be an issue for most party sites: there is too often either too little content (one out of five party sites around the world is a "protosite") or too much (11% of the observed universe materializes in real “content caverns”). A little more than 4% of the sites (a high end mesosite or neosite) had between 10000 and 48,000 links !

Cyber optimists have seen in the proliferation of party web sites a sign of improved party competition. For political minorities or for incumbent parties, in the political web, like in eCommerce, what really makes the difference is the conversion rate i.e. the number of visitors that turn into involved voters. Now, with the type of technical, socio-economical constraints reducing the widespread access to the net, with motivational factors (trust and degree of social connectedness) that may alter the individual’s response to the online information offer, with the imperfect implementation (in terms of usability) of the information architecture requirements for optimal political persuasion and communication online, the actual conversation rate of political parties web sites is likely to remain modest.

One of the most characteristic uses of the political web discovered in this research is to provide cloud like archival services for the party community. Parties - in the first ten years of the political web - were trying to check mainstream media and use their sites as a low cost, contemporary version of the party newspapers of the 70s.

Although this dissertation is not investigating the specific impact of party sites, the structural analysis carried out in the empirical validation suggests that the architecture of party sites in the years 1995-2005 was developing in such a way to be less and less capable of injecting meaningful inputs in the circuitry of modern democratic institutions. Engaged in a frontal competition with traditional news media (and deprived of the same assets), the early political web stricto sensu (and the set of interactive applications it contains) seems to be too a weak vector to channel adequate stimuli to alter and modify electoral processes or institutional dynamics.

The majority of the respondents of a political webmasters survey (107 individuals responded to the survey) carried out in the course of this research project indicates that the party site is not the party's leaders favourite platform to launch messages (64% of the answers disagree or strongly disagree to the statement). The majority of the respondents in the same empirical fieldwork agrees to the following statements: “the web is not the most important tool for the party communication strategy (58%)”, “key messages are published simultaneously on all media available (77%)”, “the party has created this site to allow people to contact candidates directly (63%)”, “the biggest part of the interaction with the public happens live, in meetings - the web is used essentially to post the party documents and to give news to the electorate (73%)”.

The most interesting results of this question are related to the transactive / mediating role of party communication online. It is beyond any doubt that in the view of these respondents their site has not been created “to invite the opposition to discuss with us (81%)”. If there is a politically relevant process that goes on in these sites it’s really among like-minded.

The mission statement [our party site is meant] “to gather the wants and needs of the electorate” splits respondents in two (54% of the respondents agrees and 47% and disagrees), but 73% of all respondents also agrees that most of the interactions with the electorate are non mediated, thus limiting the relevance of the political web stricto sensu to a mere information delivery platform.

The central thesis emerging from this first major reality check of the political web is that the structure of most party sites is simply not made to generate the ambitious levels of deliberative democracy. Not only a large number of party sites are microscopic, but they lack the basic means for human to human interactivity, a criticism that .In 34,7% of the cases scrutinized in the survey the sites lacked even of the mailto command (used to allow end users to write mails to the webmaster). In 51.9% of the cases there is no form at all, to facilitate structured communications between the party and the audience. The majority of the early actors of the political web were not structured to engage in deliberative activities. Only a fraction of the universe (between 1 and 2%) showed multiple forms and input methods corresponding to advanced neosites (along the model of the US Green Party Action Centre) or the so called over exposure sites (such as the Argentinian Humanista party). The bottom line is that interactivity levels found – worldwide - on the largest array of political parties sites were (in the period between 1995 and 2005) simply discouraging, if one tends to believe in the rhetoric of eDemocracy.

A corollary of my central thesis is that the reality of the political web generated by parties between 1995 and 2005, shows a significant presence of techniques and communication forms typical of political marketing and propaganda. ‘Commands’, calls for ortopraxy, confrontational communication and a growing number of ‘digital tricks’ structure the toolbox of the best party web architects. A form of weak propaganda (the only sort of ‘naked hand’ propaganda that most political parties can afford to pay) has invaded and captured cyberspace. And the user community is becoming increasingly aware of this.

This research does not cover the user dimension. However marginal data obtained in one of the three empirical sections (the Web Master survey) seem to indicate that the political web (of the early years) maintained the capacity to swing some marginal seats.

This research covers forms of interactivity based on BBS, online fora and blogs but does not cover the historical period of the development of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The scientific conclusions are therefore intrinsically limited in value to the decade they refer to, but it is argued in the conclusions that recent surveys (Internet and Campaign 2010 Survey by Pew) do not seem to indicate that the so called Web 2.0 is drastically changing the levels of online political participation.

Doctorat en Information et communication
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This thesis is an investigation into participation and non-participation by young people in British political parties. Falling turnout in British elections has lead to concern about the level of popular participation in the political system, especially amongst the young. Those between 18 and 25 are less likely to involve themselves in political activity than any other age group. This thesis argues that political parties and their grassroots members are still vital to British democracy and that the failure of both parties to recruit young members is leading to increasingly aged and inactive parties. Even measuring the extent of youth membership of the main parties is problematic due to a lack of accurate membership figures. The figures available show that whilst neither the Labour nor the Conservative Party has enjoyed unqualified success in recruiting young members, Labour has enjoyed comparative success in increasing its youth membership in the period 1970-2001 both absolutely and as proportion of the total membership. I have argued that whilst there is research on participation and non-participation there is little specific on the particular area of young people and political parties. I have suggested and evaluated competing explanations of this problem and I have been able to develop and test a youth-specific model of participation and non-participation. This model builds on the general incentive model developed by Seyd and Whiteley but provides a more comprehensive, and youth specific, model of both participation and non-participation. This new model builds considerably on our understanding of why young people choose to join, or not join, a political party. However, a static sample only takes me so far. A study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations also shows that they have contributed to their relative success or failure through popular perceptions of their image and through the relationship with their parent parties. My improved model of participation and non-participation is complemented by a consideration that the mobilisation model contributes to understanding trends in membership. Those youth organisations that are able to recruit actively with support from the parent party are more likely to succeed than those who are not. I have provided a detailed and critical study of the Labour and Conservative youth organisations, the first such study since 1970. From this study I have helped explain the comparative success of the Labour Party and the comparative failure of the Conservative Party in recruiting young members. Both party’s youth organisations suffered from poor perceptions of extremism, infighting and unfashionability at certain times in the period under study which helped deter potential members. These problems were often compounded by a poor relationship between the youth organisation and the parent party. However, whilst, eventually, the Labour Party was able to solve these problems to a certain extent, the Conservative Party has yet to find a solution to its recruitment problems amongst young people.

The model of political empowerment in building women's awareness of their political rights has been carried out in various places, but the application of the model of women's political empowerment in the conflict areas has not yet been maximized. This is due to the tradition of political education among women in the conflict has not been implemented. Cultural faktor that do not involve women's participation in the political aspect continue to this day, at least in Aceh. This study is an academic response to a number of phenomena that limit the involvement of women in filling seats in the legislature, both in the Regency and Province. This qualitative based on 5 informants to find information about women's political participation through observation, interviews and participants. Based on the field study, it was found that 20 women who fail to be members of the legislature because do not understanding the political procedures in accordance with the regulations in the conflict area. No special academic participation has been found in empowering women's politics. Not yet found the participation of ulama in empowering women's politics in conflict areas, especially Aceh. According to the author's analysis, this is an important skill to increase women's political awareness in conflict areas. The results of this study can be used by all parties who are interested in increasing women's political participation in conflict areas.

The Internet offers new opportunities for the empirical research, especially if we consider that nowadays most citizens are made up of web surfers: on the one hand, we are seeing the transfer of some traditional methodologies on Internet, on the other hand we are witnessing the development of new innovative data collection and analysis tools. The study was conducted through a classical survey tool (the questionnaire), using it as part of a web survey. Secondly, we chose Facebook as an instrument which is particularly suitable for the investigated topic (political participation and voting intentions), because the election campaign for the 2018 Italian general election took place, for all parties and candidate leaders, mainly on this Social Network. Two surveys were carried out, the first one in September 2017 and the second one in February 2018, reaching about 850 and 1,400 cases, with similar percentages over the whole block of variables and with stable connections among them. The aim is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of a Web survey on the topic of political participation, showing particular attention to strategic choices and decisions that impact positively on the data quality, according to a mixed-method approach.Keywords: web survey; political participation; voting intentions; Social Network; mixed method approach.

This study deals with the electoral systems applied in Iraq after 2003 for the Iraqi Parliament elections. The issue's importance lies in the fact that elections are the legitimate means adopted by modern political systems based on the separation of powers. Therefore, after changing the political system in Iraq in 2003 from a one-party system to a democratic parliamentary system, the permanent constitution of 2005 granted the right to political participation for citizens. Including the right to participate in elections through nomination or candidacy for the Iraqi Council of Representatives, this study examines the electoral systems applied after 2003 and the reasons for the instability of the Iraqi parliament elections on a specific law. The study dealt with the types of electoral systems by focusing on the concept and emergence of elections and the most critical electoral systems adopted by political systems. Furthermore, the electoral systems applied after 2003 in the Iraqi parliament elections by focusing on the electoral laws or their amendments that preceded each electoral cycle since 2003 until now. The study concluded that the electoral system in Iraq was not legally stable; several amendments have been made to the laws regulating the elections for the House of Representatives. So the two elections did not repeat under one law because of political parties' criticism leveled at it. Moreover, the attempt by the large parliamentary blocs, through their control of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, to legislate laws that limit the victory of the blocs and small parties.

In the new economic and epidemiological climate, the tourism industry is becoming a political and economic priority for Russia’s development. Domestic tourism resources shall be used to the maximum extent whereas patterns and models of international tourism shall be comprehended anew and reformatted. Given the increasing introduction of technology into the fabric of human life and the associated political decisions in the fields of professional employment in tourism and socio-cultural services, the article poses the problem of dialogue between man and machine, and predicts a new dimension of human nature. The phenomenological methodology and analytical approach embraced in the article allows us to argue that engineering content, the technical, the machine, ceases to be a useful service tool to serve human desires and needs. The ‘technical’ becomes a means and a way of shaping ‘new images of the world, values and realities’. New types of social connections and relations arise, in which technical items interact with humans ‘as equals’, and thereby often substitute living interlocutors and partners. Hence the social relationship concept expands. The tourism, hospitality and entertainment industry is concentrating on the changing role of the technical in human life. Through tourism and consumer services, a new type of individuality is being formed, for which the technical becomes an ‘additional living organ’ of natural human nature.

The opportunities for near-term implementation of low and zero-emission fossil fuel power generation using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is emerging in niche markets. This is primarily motivated by regulations following a growing awareness regarding the potential impact of climate-change, and partly the opportunities for use of carbon-dioxide (CO2) with enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However there remain significant technology, engineering, investment and political barriers that need to be overcome before CCS can be accepted as commercially mature for the power generation industry and the finance community. The risk with early projects is high, while collaboration and trust between government, industry and investors will also be needed to commercialize the technology. With an emerging sense of urgency regarding a global consensus for tackling climate-change, one also observes that technology pathways are integrated with political agendas and it becomes important to roadmap a commercial strategy for the respective technologies taking account of government requirements for compromise and burden sharing. To some extent this can also impact on comparative choices for the most cost-effective technologies that are supported through to future commercial deployment. The situation is complicated by the fact that technology choice—be it pre-combustion, post-combustion or oxy-combustion—remains an open question, where parties are probably influenced by their historical expertise, available hardware and near-term perception of future carbon challenge. The fact that energy, materials and engineering costs have been escalating rapidly while there is also a fundamental paradigm change occurring, somewhat undermines the use of historical data and past experience to predict business opportunities for the future. Within this context the paper considers on-going carbon market evolution in three regions, namely Texas, North Europe and Canada, seen from a technology and project developer perspective. The paper applies updated project engineering costs for capture from natural gas (NG) and coal using post- and oxy-combustion technology. Under all circumstances projects still exhibit poor economic return on invested capital and depend on government participation; they therefore remain unattractive to the investment community. But perhaps more important is the current perception of technology and market risk which also appears to undermine motivation to make significant commitments when evaluating projects within the old paradigm. However such a situation is not politically sustainable and a new paradigm must emerge. This will occur through regulation and significant changes in pricing in the energy and commodity market—including valuation of captured and avoided CO2. And this will also impact on the relative merits of various technology options. For the time being these discussion and results are only indicative of how a new paradigm and evolving technology may become “game-changing”, but the paper does attempt to provide some foresight into future opportunities.