Why Ariel Sharon lost the Likud party poll
Introduction Contrary to expectations raised by both opinion polls and conventional wisdom, Ariel Sharon failed to secure popular endorsement for his unilateral disengagement from Gaza plan on 2 May 2004. Sharon's scheme was rejected by 59.5 per cent of Likud Party members, with 39.7 per cent supporting it. Just over half of the registered party members participated in the ballot. This report explains why Sharon opted to consult his party members and seeks to explain the resounding rejection of his plan.
The Rise of Government-Initiated Referendums in Consolidated Democracies
The referendum has been an important decision-making device since the mid-twentieth century in very few countries. Since the beginning of the 1960s, however, there has been a striking increase in the use of referendums to settle an ever growing range of questions. This is particularly true in the consolidated democracies, though similar trends can be found in other political contexts. Two questions are raised by the increase in the frequency of referendums in the consolidated democracies. First, what can explain it? Is it circumstantial factors, such as the emergence of new cleavages, to which parties will soon respond and, by so doing, end the apparent ‘crisis of representation’ that is seemingly provoking popular consultations? Or is it part of a more structural trend, an ineluctable process whereby democracies are becoming, by means of referendums as well as other devices (such as opinion polls and televoting), more and more direct and less and less mediated? Second, is this growing use of referendums necessarily a positive development, given that ‘more referendums’ does not necessarily mean ‘more democracy’? Such a phenomenon could, in fact, merely mask the use of the referendum by governments not for genuine consultative purposes, such as giving the public a greater say in shaping legislation, but instead for instrumental and strategic purposes, such as the consolidation of governments’ own power.
Sliding Towards EC Membership: Norway in Scandinavian Perspective
THIS ARTICLE ADDRESSES THE PROBLEM OF NORWEGIAN membership in the EC. Why is it so difficult for Norway to follow in the tracks of Sweden and Finland, and for that matter the rest of Western Europe? The changes on the European continent since the collapse of the East-West divide have also altered the political agenda in the Scandinavian countries. The ambitions of the EC-internal market as well as the Single European Act speeded up a discussion of how Finland, Norway and Sweden should position themselves in order not to lose out economically and become marginalized politically. In Norway, the traumatic EC debate in 1972 had split the country, and the parties, into two camps, resulting in the rejection of EC membership by 53 per cent of the electorate. Since then, the issue has been absent from political debate. In Finland and Sweden the official rationale for not discussing the issue disappeared simultaneously with the regimes in Eastern Europe, suddenly pushing the topic onto the political agenda, causing an abrupt change in Swedish EC policy.