Because their historical conditions the party system of West Germany was constructed through the strict institutional framework, so that the regulation of representation system from the state was justified. But since the fragmentation of left wing of party system in 60s some new parties fixed the position in the system that the representation system was functioning not enough through. On the other hand, while the elections in West Germany were established as regime choice between left and right wing, after unification the left and right extremist forces influence on the established parties issuing the new theme like the regional interest of former East German area or anti-Euro. In result the meaning of regime choice through the elections became unclear because the fragmentation of left wing forces and the difficulty to make the majority in the right wing forces. In contemporary Germany there are two sorts of competition, one by the two major parties to make the majority as head by increasing latent coalition partners, another by the small parties that aims to survive in the party system and to enter in the coalition.

Under the fifth Republic of France with an unusual, hybrid system of government, the President, directly elected, is supposed to wield huge power when, as is currently the case, parties loyal to him command a majority in the National Assembly, the lower house.
  Not having succeeded in bringing about the economic growth, François Hollande has seen his popularity plummet soon after his election in May 2012 and has now become France’s most unpopular president in history. His party, Parti Socialiste, has been defeated in all mid-term elections so far, with the strong showing for the far-right Front National. The high abstention rate, another key to the current electoral landscape in France, represents the apathy of the French toward the traditional political parties and the political system. The electorate tends to cast a vote of rage and a vote of anguish, but also a vote of denial. The majority representation system of France under the fifth Republic has been crumbling.

As the Italian First Republic was called the ‘Republic of Parties’, the parties had very strong powers and the role of the President of the Republic was thought to be ceremonial. Although the Second Republic has led a bipolar electoral competition and the alternation in national government, parties are not the central actor in the political system. The instability of the party system and the sharp confrontation between the government and the oppositions have gave the President of the Republic more important political role. The presidents have had great influences on the political scenes. In this article I argue the changing role of the Presidents of the Second Republic focusing especially on their use of the formal and informal powers. The article concludes that in the unstable political situation the most important role of the President of the Second Republic is to represent the national unity as the article 87 of the Constitution of Italian Republic provides.

In Sweden, political parties have played a key role in representation and integration in its parliamentary democracy. The parties represent the social groups along professions and political thoughts and they generally act rationally in order to make consensus. However, the situation has gradually changed since the 1990s. The tendency of earlier majority building, which was triggered by the budgetary process reform, ended up in the confrontation between pre-electoral coalitions on the left and right. That results in voters choosing from between only two alternatives, although their interests are more diverse than ever before. On the other hand, a right-wing populist party which criticises the established parties’ immigration policy has gained power to the point of influencing national politics. There is no possibility that Sweden faces a crisis of political integration in near future, since the basic political institutions have enough support. However the country has reached an important phase in which the abilities of the parties to coordinate and provide representation is now questioned.

The European Debt Crisis has apparently brought about profound setbacks of representative democracy in Southern Europe. Specific aspects of the political crises in each country are defined by domestic political structures and external pressures. High level of external adaptation common to the Iberian countries has led to demise of policy alternatives to neoliberal adjustment and therefore deficits of representativeness. In Portugal, however, this trend is counterbalanced by the braking mechanism embedded in the constitutional order, although with serious de-politicization in progress, whereas, in Spain, intensive accumulation of power to the central government is observed in spite of contestations from below and some consensual features of politics seem to be lost. In Greece, the structural adjustment enforced from outside have eroded partycracy and ended up with the accelerated drive to party system polarization. In this context, the excessive majorianism which characterizes Greek politics doesn’t contribute to anything but the fracture of horizontal integration within the governmental organization which accompanies some political chaos in the country.

Advanced democracies have witnessed new types of political issues being represented and integrated in their party systems in the past decades. Yet, their patterns still remain unknown as to the conditions in which new political issues are first represented and eventually integrated in each party system. To fill this gap, this article illustrates such patterns through different phases of socio-economic transformation, party system responses to newly emerging issues, and electoral systems’ openness. By applying a ‘double-hurdle’ model, the article tries to elucidate the mechanisms in which new political issues are represented in the first hurdle and then integrated in party systems in the second hurdle. The analyses of new challenger parties across 15 West European democracies revealed that New Politics issues are represented through New Politics Parties (NPPs) when existing party systems are not responsive to the new issues but NPPs further grow and New Politics issues are integrated in party systems when existing party systems are more responsive to these newly emerging issues. Likewise, different conditions mattered differently for the representation and growth hurdles for both NPPs and Extreme Right Parties (ERPs).

Globalization, an aging society, transition from an industrialized society to post-industrial society has brought new challenges to the traditional welfare state. “New social risks” such as long-term unemployment, low-skilled precarious work, having a family member in need of care, and being a lone parent are areas in which the traditional welfare state fails to meet adequately. Youths are considered to be one of the most vulnerable groups toward such “new social risks”.
  This article examines youth employment policies in Japan and the UK since the late 1990s. Although both countries focus on “activating” the youth, Japan concentrates on “self-help”, whereas the UK puts emphasis on “autonomy”. I argue that such differences are brought by the partisan profile of the government in power. By examining the policy programs of each country and then through a cross-national comparison, I illustrate how policy orientation of the party-of-theday affects policy programs.

The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 was broadcasted as “the Internet caused revolution.” The relationship between social media and participation in anti-regime demonstrations is in dispute and like in a black box. This paper explores the relationship to utilize a theoretical and an empirical approach. More concretely, by using survey data sets we examine a hypothesis derived from a diffusion model of information as well as social movement theory. The result shows two facts, firstly vanguards of the demonstration were more active in social media than followers in the revolution. Secondly, active bloggers have a tendency to take part in the demonstration against the Mubarak regime. These findings criticize a limited effect of social media in the literature and indicate that social media diminishes the collective action problem in the anti-government protests. They also point out that the concept of political opportunity structure is useful for understanding the revolution.

Focusing on the part of the “digression” in Plato’s Apology of Socrates, this article analyzes Socrates’ explanation of his philosophical activity before the public. Although scholars have had different interpretations as to whether Socrates’ sincere intention was to be acquitted or to proclaim philosophical truth at the risk of capital punishment, they almost all share the view that Socrates was sentenced to death because of a discrepancy between philosophy and politics: ordinary people simply could not understand him. Against the general view, this article argues that Socrates attempted to make himself a hero by using the traditional value system of the city. By identifying himself with the Greek traditional hero, Achilles, Socrates improved the image of philosophy in people’s minds, making it acceptable to them where it hadn’t been before. This argument should be the basis of the reinterpretation of the Apology as a whole, and would contribute to the study of the origin of Western political thought, especially the idea of the philosopher kings.

Political theory is often defined as a normative discipline that distances itself from real politics. But does political theory need to be normative vis-à-vis real politics? What is the proper relationship between theory and reality, and what is real politics? This article addresses these questions by exploring the works of contemporary political realists, Raymond Geuss and Bernard Williams. Both Geuss and Williams are critical of how mainstream normative political theory is underwritten by moralism. Instead, they call for a mode of political theorizing that attunes itself to the reality of politics. I argue that while their criticism of mainstream political theory is on point, their adherence to normative theorizing risks to betray their promising criticisms. In order to rescue the possibility for realist political theory, I then in turn attend to the alternative possibilities offered by Geuss’s and Williams’s concepts of genealogy and reminder of politics.

The purpose of this article is to examine aspects of “political time” with a focus on theories of “securitization” and conceptions of the “responsibility to protect (R2P).” Since its inception in 2001, the R2P concept has been considerably modified through diplomatic process in the UN. This modification produced totally different conceptions of R2P in terms of securitization and political time: the original conception formulated by an international commission called ICISS in 2001 and the other based on a report of the UN Secretary-General in 2009. Comparing them from theoretical perspectives of securitization, this article clarifies aspects of political time, or patterns of triadic relation among time-power-politics underlying the R2P conceptions. Consequently, this comparison shows that the relation has been converted from “control of power by structuralizing political time” in 2001 to “stretch of power by de-structuralizing political time” after 2009. In conclusion, this article extracts brief insights into current politics from the conversion of R2P, securitization and political time.

Recent research on discursive dilemma and judgment aggregation fail to capture the diversity of perspectives and heuristics among participants. This paper proposes a modified version of “premise-based procedure (PBP)” and a “division of deliberative labor” in order to fill this blank.
  A premise-based procedure is recognized as a favorable aggregation procedure for deliberative democracy. Yet, PBP alone is insufficient to achieve the inclusion of the diversity of perspectives and heuristics among citizens.
  With the same logical conditions for “distributed PBP” (List and Pettit 2011), I propose a different aggregation procedure – the “perspective-wise PBP”–which allows the division of deliberation based on the diversity of perspectives among citizens. I also propose weighted additive heuristic as a collective aggregation mechanism for “perspective-wise PBT”. I argue that this amendment helps PBP achieve the robustness to cognitive diversity among citizens.
  A comparison among CBP, PBP, and “perspective-wise PBT” is presented. Logical conditions for “perspective-wise PBP” and its implications are discussed.