Synopses & Reviews
This book provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the roles that political parties perform in twenty OECD nations. It finds that parties continue to exercise their traditional roles in organizing elections and structuring the government process, but that they are losing the allegiance of a public that is increasingly non-partisan and sceptical about political parties as institutions. These findings lead to a discussion about the changing nature of representative democracy as these nations enter the 21st Century.
Review
"...a cohesive study of party change in the late 20th century in most of the advanced democracies...indispensable for graduate students, researchers, and faculty."--hoice
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Unthinkable Democracy: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies
Part I Parties in the Electorate
Chapter 2 The Decline of Party Identifications
Chapter 3 The Consequences of Partisan Dealignment
Chapter 4 The Decline of Party Mobilization
Part II Parties as Political Organizations
Chapter 5 Parties without Members? Party Organization in a Changing Electoral Environment
Chapter 6 Political Parties as Campaign Organizations
Chapter 7 From Social Integration to Electoral Contestation: The Changing Distribution of Power within Political Parties
Part III Parties in Government
Chapter 8 Parties in Legislature: Two Competing Explanations
Chapter 9 Parties at the Core of Government
Chapter 10 From Platform Declarations to Policy Outcomes: Changing Party Profiles and Partisan Influence over Policy
Chapter 11 On the Primacy of Party in Government: Why Legislative Parties Can Survive Party Decline in the Electorate
Conclusion
Chapter 12 Partisan Change and the Democratic Process