Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

When the past is contested by political actors, it can play a notable role both in present and in future politics. This is especially true when it comes to the memory of dominant parties, which are part and parcel of political and national history. Focusing on dominant parties in parliamentary democracies, this article examines the memory dynamics of a dominant party after its demise and highlights the importance of memory modes in understanding these dynamics. Using theories of collective memory, it identifies four possible modes of memory in a post-dominance era, suggesting discursive and power-related indications for each mode. The article then utilizes this framework to examine the memory of Mapai, the once-dominant party in Israel. On the basis of this analysis, the authors propose hypotheses concerning the comparative cases of Sweden, Italy, and Japan.

Keywords

dominant party memory dynamic parliamentary discourse post-dominance

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

(1981) Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

Arian

(1977) The passing of dominance. Jerusalem Quarterly 5(Fall): 20–32.

Bogaards

(2004) Counting parties and identifying dominant party systems in Africa. European Journal of Political Research 43(2): 173–197.

Caulier

Dumont

(2010) Measuring one-party dominance with voting power indices. In: Matthijs

Boucek

(eds) Dominant Political Parties and Democracy. New York: Routledge, pp. 45–59.

Dahl

(1966) Political Oppositions in Western Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Doorenspleet

(2003) Political parties, party systems and democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Mohamed

(ed) African Political Parties: Evolution, Institutionalization and Governance. London: Pluto Press, pp. 169–187.

Dunleavy

(2010) Rethinking dominant party systems. In: Matthijs

Boucek

(eds) Dominant Political Parties and Democracy. New York: Routledge, pp. 23–44.

Duverger

(1954) Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State. London: Methuen.

Forestiere

Allen

(2011) The formation of cognitive locks in single party dominant regimes. International Political Science Review 32(4): 380–395.

10.

Greene

(2010) The political economy of authoritarian single-party dominance. Comparative Political Studies 43(7): 807–834.

11.

Grzymala-Busse

(2002) Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12.

Halbwachs

(1992) On Collective Memory. Coser

(Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Les Cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952). (Orig. pub. 1925.)

13.

Hazan

(forthcoming) Parties and the party system of Israel. In: Hazan

Alan

Menachem

Gideon

(eds) Oxford Handbook of Israeli Politics and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14.

Krauss

Pekkanen

(2011) The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

15.

Loxton

(2018) Introduction. In: James

Scott

(eds) Life After Dictatorship: Authoritarian Successor Parties Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–50.

16.

Lupu

(2016) Party Brands in Crisis: Partisanship, Brand Dilution, and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17.

Maier

(2002) Hot memory…cold memory. On the political half life of Fascist and Communist memory. Transit 48. Available at: http://www.iwm.at/transit/transit-online/hot-memory-cold-memory-on-the-political-half-life-of-fascist-and-communist-memory/ (accessed 10 September 2016).

18.

Olick

(2007) The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility. New York: Routledge.

19.

Pempel

(1990) Uncommon democracies: the one-party dominant regimes. In: Pempel

(ed) Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 1–32.

20.

Riedl

(2014) Authoritarian Origins of Democratic Party Systems in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

21.

Riffe

Lacy

Fico

(2005) Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research, 2nd ed. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

22.

Scheiner

(2006) Democracy Without Competition: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

23.

Shenhav

(2008) Showing and telling in parliamentary discourse: the case of repeated interjections to Rabin’s speeches in the Israeli parliament. Discourse and Society 19(2): 223–255.

24.

Smith

(2009) Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach. London: Routledge.

25.

Turai

(2009) Past unmastered: hot and cold memory in Hungary. Third Text 23(1): 97–106.

26.

Vinitzky-Seroussi

(2002) Commemorating a difficult past: Yitzhak Rabin’s memorials. American Sociological Review 67(1): 30–51.

27.

Wagner-Pacifici

Schwartz

(1991) The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: commemorating a difficult past. American Journal of Sociology 97(2): 376–420.

28.

Weedon

Jordan

(2012) Collective memory: theory and politics. Social Semiotics 22(2): 143–153.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.04 MB