Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Political party organization – Malawi »

A political party is defined in terms of coalition building: collective effort directed toward capturing public office and governing once that office is attained. Party organization thus defined includes factional organization as well as the administrative apparatus. This definition assumes a linkage between the electoral party and the party inside the government.

The immediate origins of the democratic elections held in Malawi in 1994, which brought to an end over 30 years of political dominance by President Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP), lie in the unprecedented events which shook the entire nation in 1992. Although that turbulent year was characterised by industrial action, serious urban riots, student demonstrations, the emergence of new domestic political groupings, and the Government's agreement to hold a national referendum on the future of the one-party system in the country, in retrospect perhaps what was most remarkable about these developments was that they were sparked off by the Catholic Church, and that their momentum was sustained at crucial stages by other Christian denominations in Malawi.1

Abstract. Based on an examination of constitutional and other party documents, Canadian political parties have been described as stratarchically organized (Carty, 2002). We identify four models of internal party financial flows that correspond to different models of internal party organization. We then trace the financial flows into and within the four major Canadian political parties from 2004 to 2007 with a view to identifying the model of party organization that these flows indicate. Our evidence in some respects supports Carty's assertion that Canadian parties are stratarchically organized, but it also suggests that changes to the regulatory regime governing political finance have contributed to a centralization of power at the level of the national party and at the expense of candidates and local associations. This centralizing tendency is significant, as it may disrupt the bargain that underlies the stratarchical organization of Canadian parties.Résumé. À la lumière d'une revue des constitutions et de divers autres documents des partis politiques canadiens, ces derniers ont été décrits comme étant organisés de manière stratarchique (Carty, 2002). Nous dégageons quatre modèles de flux monétaires internes des partis qui correspondent à différents modèles d'organisation interne des partis politiques. Nous retraçons les entrées de fonds des quatre principaux partis politiques canadiens et leur distribution interne de 2004 à 2007 en vue d'identifier le modèle d'organisation de parti qui correspond à ces flux monétaires. Sous certains rapports, nos résultats appuient l'argument de Carty affirmant que les partis canadiens sont organisés de manière stratarchique, mais ils suggèrent aussi que les changements apportés au régime régulateur gouvernant le financement politique ont contribué à une centralisation du pouvoir au niveau national des partis et ce aux dépens des candidats et des associations locales. Cette tendance centralisatrice est importante, car elle peut rompre le compromis qui sous-tend l'organisation stratarchique des partis politiques canadiens.

Party organization has regained a new momentum in the party literature over the past decade. In this context, we review the most important advances in the literature and critically examine issues such as: the link between party organization literature and organizational theory literature, party organization and intra-party democracy, and between party organization on paper and in reality. We ascertain the need for more conceptual clarifications in the field and raise questions for debate. We further outline the contribution of this special issue to the theme of intra-party democracy in representative democracies.

The political changes that have occurred in the South over the past several decades have affected the political party organizations in the region. A region once marked by a weak and highly factionalized Democratic Party organization and an almost non-existent Republican Party organization now has two significant party organizations operating in each state. Examining the development of party organizations in the region should tell us much about both political party organizations and southern politics. This study, the Southern Grassroots Party Activists 2001 Project, focuses on political party activists active at the county level. Over 7,000 activists in the eleven southern states were surveyed in 2001. This study is linked to the 1991 Southern Grassroots Party Activists Project, which surveyed a similar group of activists, using a similar questionnaire. The following articles both analyze the 2001 data patterns and compare the 2001 results to the 1991 patterns.

Independent party tribunals (i.e. intra-party courts) can be used by both the party leadership (e.g. to discipline members) and rank-and-file members (e.g. to challenge the leadership overstepping its authority). Thus, their study offers broad insights into party conflict regulation we know little about. Integrating the literatures on party organization, intra-party democracy and judicial politics, we propose two theoretical rationales to account for tribunal decision-making (whether a case finds tribunal support): tribunal decision-making can be theorized as shaped by elite-member divisions or, alternatively, by how verdicts affect the tribunal’s own position in the organization and organizational stability generally. We test hypotheses derived from these rationales using a new data set covering 243 tribunal decisions made over the life spans of three German parties. While both rationales are empirically relevant, the ‘organizational stability rationale’ proves particularly insightful.

Political parties often monopolize the flow of politicians into elected office making it important to understand when, and under what conditions, parties are more or less likely to promote gender equality in representation. This article argues that party choices to nominate women in elections are conditional on the centralization of candidate selection within the party. Gender quotas and characteristics of the electoral environment have differential effects on candidate lists across party types. Leveraging data at the party level, I test when it is electorally feasible and organizationally possible for parties to nominate women for office. I find that candidate selection procedures condition the effects of party strategy and characteristics of the electoral environment on the percentage of women on electoral lists. The results provide insight into how strategic party choices, attenuated by electoral considerations and organization, impact the diversity of representation in political institutions.

This research study seeks to investigate how institutional arrangements impact on intra-party democracy in Malawi. Intra-party democracy is essential as it promotes party unity through reduced fragmentation and factionalism, encourages a culture of democratic debate and deliberation of critical issues within the party and therefore collective ownership of decisions. Further, it creates legitimate internal conflict management systems and finally, reduces opportunistic and arbitrary use of delegated authority. These are fundamental tenets of any functioning democratic entity. These elements of intra-party democracy are attainable if they are formerly stipulated and governed by the party&rsquo
s constitutional rules. Where such rules either do not exist or are not effectively enforced, major operational problems arise. These may include: non-inclusive candidate selection procedures, centralised coalition negotiation processes, unprocedural conflict management mechanisms and unconstitutional or illegitimate party conventions. Consequently, the resulting outcomes include party instability and factionalism stimulated by resignations and expulsions, declining electoral support and weak coalitions. These factors undermine the party&rsquo
s contribution to democracy. The next section gives the context and historical evolution of parties in Malawi.

The organizations of national and provincial parties in Canada are understood to be separated from one another. However, it is not known whether this separation extends to the constituency-level organizations of those parties. In order to provide a better understanding of how national and provincial parties are linked at the local level (if at all), this thesis describes and accounts for the local organizations of the national Liberal Party and the provincial Liberal parties in sixteen national constituencies selected from the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick. Information from interviews with local party activists and participant observation in the ridings is used to develop a continuum of constituency-level party organizations. Descriptions of the activist bases, constituency associations, and local campaigns in each riding allow for each local organization to be placed along this continuum between integrated local organizations, which share important linkages between the national and provincial levels, and differentiated local organizations, where no such linkages exist. The placement of local organizations along this continuum is accounted for by (1) similarities or differences between the national and provincial party systems in the three provinces studied; (2) the actions of incumbent members of the national Parliament and provincial legislatures; and (3) characteristics of the constituencies. The patterns identified lead to a classification of four types of local organizations – One Political World, Interconnected Political Worlds, Distinctive Political Worlds, and Two Political Worlds – that illuminate the different forms of linkages between national and provincial parties that exist at the constituency level. This examination of the local organizations of the Liberal Party calls into question the academic consensus on the separation of national and provincial parties in Canada. Instead, the Liberal Party is characterized as an unevenly integrated party, where the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties are separated from provincial counterparts, but where the national and provincial parties on the ground are oftentimes integrated.

Political Science
Ph.D.
This dissertation studies political party organization in the United States, Germany and Poland during national election campaigns and regular party operations. According to conventional wisdom, changes in party organization, such as professionalized campaigns and communications technology, have detrimental effects on political parties. Katz and Mair argue (1995) that political parties have become agents of the state and fail to provide linkage between the state and the electorate due to these changes in party organization. As cartel parties, political parties are then financially dependent on the state and do not need the support of the electorate. Katz and Mair further suggest that developing a closer relationship with the state has weakened political parties, especially the party on the ground. This dissertation tests whether Katz and Mair's cartel theory applies to political parties in the United States, Germany and Poland examining the parties' organizations during and in between election campaigns and finds that the political parties do not confirm the cartel theory. American and German political parties do not primarily rely on government financing and possess too strong of an electoral linkage to their voters to be considered cartel parties. Political parties in Poland better fit with the cartel theory due to strong financial ties with the state and insufficient linkage with their electorate, both inside and outside of election campaigns. This dissertation argues that the cartel thesis should not be considered a theory since it cannot explain observations regarding political parties and their organizations in the United States, Germany and Poland. Instead, the cartel thesis should be considered a heuristic tool to characterize political parties, continuing the tradition of prior descriptive party models such as those of the mass and the catch-all parties.
Temple University--Theses

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

Political parties are the basic building blocks of representative democracy. They reduce information costs for voters, enhance executive accountability, and contribute to democratic governability by facilitating legislative organization and aggregating the interests of powerful societal groups. Yet we continue to know relatively little about the conditions under which strong parties form. The dominant theories of party-building are mostly based on historical studies of the United States and Western European countries, almost all of which developed stable party systems. Drawing on this literature, a segment of the early scholarship on party-building in third-wave democracies optimistically took "party development" for granted, assuming that parties would follow from democracy, cleavages, or certain electoral rules. Yet party-building outcomes in third-wave democracies fell short of scholars' initial, optimistic expectations. In many third-wave polities, social cleavages, attempts at electoral engineering, and decades of democratic competition did not produce durable parties. On the other hand, in numerous third-wave democracies, new political parties did take root. What accounts for the variation in party-building outcomes observed across the developing world? More generally, under what conditions does party-building succeed?
Government

Thesis (MPA (School of Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005.
Soon after independence in 1964 the Malawi government made an attempt to decentralise some of its activities through the creation of district development committees. However, in practice local-level institutions were not fully operational as the one-party system of government (led by the Malawi Congress Party) tended to manipulate the autonomy and operations of these institutions. Accordingly, there was no manifestation of local participation and representation. The period of one-party rule in Malawi came to an end in 1994 with the introduction of multi-party democracy. The new government revitalised the idea of decentralised governance by passing the Local Government Act of 1998, which saw the establishment of local assemblies. Thus officially Malawi has a very supportive system in relation to citizen participation and representation through decentralised local institutions. However, in practice, there is no clear evidence that this is actually being realised. Consequently, this study was undertaken to examine the role of party politics on local participation and representation. The study was conducted in three district local assemblies of Malawi ...

This dissertation uses the idea of a moral polity as an organizing concept to help understand how the Irish Republican Army and Black Panther Party understood their own actions and the imprisonment of large numbers of their members. In referring to the “moral polity” this study describes socio-political structures and relations created by people who are animated by a series of collectively held ideas about how authorities and populations should interact. The collectively held ideas that provide the foundation for a moral polity emphasize reciprocities between authorities and a population living under those authorities, fairness and justice between these two parties, and trust between the authorities and that population. Moral Polities promote human dignity and the welfare of the community, and the beliefs that undergird them are formed in opposition to established socio-political structures. The first chapters reveal the moral polities created by the BPP and IRA, looking first at precursors of these moral polities and then focusing on the opposition their creators faced from the governments and security forces of the United States, Northern Ireland, and Britain. As the Panthers and IRA espoused a radical reordering of society based on their collectively held beliefs, they threatened power structures who resorted to counterintelligence and internment without trial in their attempts to quell the threats they saw coming from the BPP an IRA, which in turn resulted in in large numbers of prisoners. The last chapters examine the decline of the Black Panther Party and the rise of the Irish republican prisoner. The BPP was unable to overcome the divisions within their party which the FBI exploited in the years before 1973. This left them unable to uphold the moral polity they had created around chapters across the nation. Although some members of the Party struggled to keep the Party and its envisioned society afloat, the BPP did not last beyond 1982. Conversely, when British authorities revoked special category status in Northern Irish prisons, and therefore, destroyed the IRA’s reordering of prison society, the IRA embarked on five years of sustained protest which resulted in a recreation of their moral polity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003.
Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 244 p.: ill. (some col.). Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-244).

This study aims to explore how the gendered allocation of tasks within political parties influences the career path for male and female politicians through a case study of the Swedish Center party. A gendered allocation of tasks has earlier been observed in the context of academia and business, where women tend to perform more tasks with low promotability and men more tasks with high promotability. According to the existing research, this contributes to the enduring work place inequality. A survey was conducted among leading politicians in the Center party to determine which tasks have high and low promotability. A parallel survey was then administered among members of the party’s youth organization to determine which tasks male and female members perform. The results show that men are significantly more interested than women in pursuing a political career and perform a significantly larger amount of tasks. The study provides no evidence that female members of the Center party youth organization in general perform more tasks with low promotability than their male colleagues, and more research is required to determine if and why that is so.

"The period of approving the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq for the year 2005 was surrounded by a state of political turmoil that usually accompanies any transitional phase that carries many political variables through the transition from a phase of dictatorial rule to a new phase bearing the features of democracy. In its approval, the lack of clarity in the political vision and the weakness of the constitutional legal culture of its authors, as well as the way in which it was approved by a popular referendum, which is voted on by yes or no, and does not allow an opportunity to discuss its articles and articles and diagnose its shortcomings. One of the shortcomings in our constitution is that it does not refer to regulating the resignation of the Prime Minister. This position has a political nature, and an administrative nature, and its occupant has the right to decide not to continue with this position and be satisfied with working in this field for any reason, and this must be in accordance with the context Organized legal, which is known as resignation., and this is what we dealt with in this research. For the purpose of researching this topic, we asked a research question that is... How can we address the legislative shortcomings that surrounded the Constitution of the Republic of Iraq for the year 2005 and related to regulating the resignation of the Prime Minister? From this research question, we derived several secondary research questions... 1- What is the limitation of legislative shortcomings? 2- What are the reasons for the legislative deficiencies in the Iraqi constitution? 3- Does the Prime Minister have the right to resign during his tenure? 4- To whom is the resignation submitted? 5- Who is the party that decides whether or not to accept the resignation? 6- What are the procedures that follow the acceptance of the resignation? By discussing these questions, we will try to reach the possibility of developing a legislative text that deals with a complete organization of the resignation of the Prime Minister, especially since the idea of ​​amending the constitution and to this day is still valid and possible, because many political, social and economic conditions in the country have changed from the time of entry into force of this constitution, which makes the idea of ​​the amendment obligatory and necessary"

One of the leading Western Ukrainian diaspora journals – London «Liberation Way», founded in January 1949, has become the subject of the study for the first time in journalism. Archival documents and materials of the Ukrainian Publishing Union in London and the British National Library (British Library) were also observed. The peculiarities of the magazine’s formation and the specifics of the editorial policy, founders and publishers are clarified. A group of OUN members who survived Hitler’s concentration camps and ended up in Great Britain after the end of World War II initiated the foundation of the magazine. Until April 1951, including issue 42, the Board of Foreign Parts of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists were the publishers of the magazine. From 1951 to the beginning of 2000 it was a socio-political monthly of the Ukrainian Publishing Union. From the mid-60’s of the twentieth century – a socio-political and scientific-literary monthly. In analyzing the programmatic principles of the magazine, the most acute issues of the Ukrainian national liberation movement, which have long separated the forces of Ukrainian emigration and from which the founders and publishers of the magazine from the beginning had clearly defined positions, namely: ideology of Ukrainian nationalism, the idea of ​​unity of Ukraine and Ukrainians, internal inter-party struggle among Ukrainian emigrants have been singled out. The review and systematization of the thematic palette of the magazine’s publications makes it possible to distinguish the following main semantic accents: the formation of the nationalist movement in exile; historical Ukrainian themes; the situation in sub-Soviet Ukraine; the problem of the unity of Ukrainians in the Western diaspora; mission and tasks of Ukrainian emigration in the context of its responsibilities to the Motherland. It also particularizes the peculiarities of the formation of the author’s assets of the magazine and its place in the history of Ukrainian national journalism.

Major multilateral arms control and disarmament treaties dealing with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) often have mandated an international organization to monitor and verify State party compliance and to handle cases of non-compliance. There are marked differences in the mandates and technical capabilities of these bodies. Nonetheless, they often face the same operational and existential challenges. This report looks at the role of multilateral verification bodies, especially their secretariats, in dealing with compliance and enforcement, the extent to which they achieve “agency” and “influence” in doing so, and whether and how such capacities might be enhanced. In WMD organizations it is the governing bodies that make decisions about noncompliance and enforcement. The role of their secretariats is to manage the monitoring and verification systems, analyse the resulting data – and data from other permitted sources – and alert their governing bodies to suspicions of non-compliance. Secretariats are expected to be impartial, technically oriented and professional. It is when a serious allegation of non-compliance arises that their role becomes most sensitive politically and most vital. The credibility of Secretariats in these instances will depend on the agency and influence that they have accumulated. There are numerous ways in which an international secretariat can position itself for maximum agency and influence, essentially by making itself indispensable to member States and the broader international community. It can achieve this by engaging with multiple stakeholders, aiming for excellence in its human and technical resources, providing timely and sustainable implementation assistance, ensuring an appropriate organizational culture and, perhaps most of all, understanding that knowledge is power. The challenge for supporters of international verification organizations is to enhance those elements that give them agency and influence and minimize those that lead to inefficiencies, dysfunction and, most damaging of all, political interference in verification and compliance judgements.