The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (148 page)

 
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The process by which organizations produce a principal executive officer. In most countries political interest focuses on the means of selection adopted by parties for the identifiable party leader who is likely to become head of government either immediately or after an election.
Five common types of party leadership selection process may be discerned:

(1) 
By a single individual
. This occurs when individuals create parties as vehicles for their own political views, for example, the Reverend Ian Paisley and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, or when the outgoing leader may help to avoid a divisive succession battle by being allowed to name the successor, as has occurred in the Japanese Liberal Democrat Party.
(2) 
By a small élite party group, either by formal vote or apparent consensus
. This procedure is common in parties which originated prior to mass democratic politics, are located in relatively centralized political systems and espouse élitist values, and was practised by the British Conservative Party before 1965.
(3) 
By the party members of a legislature
. This method is common to many parties in parliamentary systems, the view being taken that as a leader is primarily a leader of a parliamentary party he or she needs to enjoy its support. In Britain this method was used by the Labour Party until 1981, the Liberal Party until 1976, and the Conservative Party since 1965.
(4) 
By party conference
. Party members of the legislature are joined by party members outside the legislature, either as representatives or delegates of specific parts of the wider party. The selection process may occur as part of the regular party annual conference, as with the British Labour Party in the 1980s, or at a special conference, for example, the American party presidential nomination conventions. A variant, especially in the United States and for nominations to local offices in the Labour Party, is selection by a caucus of party activists. Selection by party conference is appropriate for parties which are located in non-parliamentary systems, such as that in the United States, or where parties are composed of specific parts other than the parliamentary party that demand a role in the selection process: for example the trade unions and constituency parties in the British Labour Party.
(5) 
By ballot of the whole party membership
. This is considered to be appropriate where parties are based totally on individual membership, where the parliamentary party has become diminished in importance relative to the extraparliamentary party and/or the party has been created since such direct methods of selection have gained credence. In Britain, the Liberals after 1976, followed by the Social Democrats and the Liberal Democrats have all favoured selection by ballot, preferring a postal ballot to the high visibility of a polling day. The 1994 leadership election of the Labour Party approximated to this method, except that trade unions were permitted to decide which of their members were Labour Party members.

Selection processes in the United States since the 1970s offer the best grounds for a possible sixth legitimate method of leadership selection. State primaries, the results of which may determine voting in presidential nomination conventions, are generally held on the basis of balloting only party members. In some cases, however, ‘open’ or ‘wide open primaries’ are held in which anyone, regardless of party affiliation, may vote. The principle of selection by popular vote is not followed systematically in any leadership selection process, but does offer the potential for further variation.
Procedures in many parties may allow for a contest only when a leader dies or voluntarily retires. Even where parties allow for a contest annually, parties may put substantial obstacles in their place in practice. For example, the British Conservative Party requires 10 per cent of its MPs to back the holding of a contest, and the British Labour Party requires the backing of at least 20 per cent of its MPs for a candidate opposing the incumbent before a contest is held. Similarly, candidate eligibility may be severely limited. Finally, the power to nominate candidates may also be limited to MPs. This may mean that élite control over the leadership selection process is maintained within parties such as the British Labour Party, irrespective of moves to widen the selectorate. It can be defended clearly on the grounds that for parties to be successful they need to avoid regular leadership contests which can reveal to the public their divisions, and need to have leaders experienced in parliamentary party politics and who enjoy the support of party members in the legislature. On the other hand party reformers may legitimately claim that democratization of the selectorate is pointless if the choice it is offered is less democratically derived.
JBr 

 
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The League of Nations was established at the end of the First World War by the victor powers meeting at the Paris Peace Conference. Its strongest advocate was US President Woodrow Wilson . But ironically his own country's Senate refused to ratify membership and hence the world's strongest state withdrew into a form of ‘isolation’. Of the other great powers only Great Britain and France were to be members throughout the League's existence. Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, and Italy joined late or resigned, or did both.
At Wilson's insistence the League was given the task of preventing international armed aggression through a system of so-called
collective security
. False hopes were thus raised in many quarters that all aggressors henceforth would be deterred or effectively punished by the leading states in the League's establishment. During the 1930s this illusion was dramatically dispelled. Analysts have differed ever since as to whether such a system of collective security would in all circumstances have proved unworkable or whether the failure was due in the particular case to so few great powers being loyal members.
At all events, when in 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, Great Britain and France, the only League members at the time with significant regional ‘clout’, proved unwilling and would perhaps in any case have been unable to impose effective sanctions on the aggressor. Next, in 1935, Italy invaded Abyssinia in whose fate no other great power had any direct interest. This, it was widely recognized, was the decisive test case for the League. For Great Britain and France clearly did on this occasion have the capacity to defeat Italy if matters came to an all-out war. But in neither London nor Paris was there sufficient support for the imposition of anything more vigorous than partial economic sanctions (which themselves were lifted in 1936). The British cabinet was satisfied that they could not risk the loss of even part of their fleet in a war with Italy at a time when their possessions in the Far East were thought to be menaced by Japan and when the US administration was seen to be hamstrung by congressional neutrality legislation. Similarly, the French held that war with Italy for the sake of Abyssinia would be quixotic at a time when all French forces were thought to be needed for a possible early showdown with Nazi Germany. Abyssinia was accordingly incorporated into the Italian empire in 1936. As a body for resisting international aggression the League had thus effectively perished. It continued to exist in a moribund condition until the end of the Second World War when it was formally replaced by the United Nations.
DC 

 
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In political terms, now indicative of the radical or progressive socialist spectrum, but originally literally a spatial term. In the French estates general of 1789, commoners sat on the left of the king, because the nobles were in the position of honour on his right. This is the connection with the root sense of ‘left’ as pertaining to ‘the hand that is normally the weaker of the two’ (
OED
sense 1a), a pejorative association also found in French
gauche
, Latin
sinister
, and their derivatives. In the assemblies of the
French Revolution
this evolved into a custom that the radical and egalitarian members sat towards the left-hand side of the assembly, viewed from the presiding officer's chair (and higher up, so that some of them were labelled the ‘Mountain’).
What it is to be ‘left(-wing)’ varies so much over space or time that a definition is very difficult, but the following issue orientations would normally be involved: egalitarianism, support for the (organized) working class, support for nationalization of industry, hostility to marks of hierarchy, opposition to nationalistic foreign or defence policy. ‘Left’ is used to distinguish positions within parties as well as among them. A left-wing socialist is one who takes extreme positions on (some of) the items on this list. Left-wing communism (described by
Lenin
in a pamphlet of 1920 as ‘an infantile disorder’) may be cynically defined as all forms of communism not supported by the prevailing leadership of the Communist Party. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, distinct tendencies were labelled as left- and right-wing deviations from communism. Left-wing deviation meant encouraging revolution among the people without caring sufficiently about the leading role of the Party; right-wing deviation meant too much support for
NEP
and the market.