Political Parties And Coalitions In European Local Government

The authoritative guide to the political parties, local government and coalitions of Europe. Written by leading writers in the field, it gives the reader an excellent understanding of the key areas across the continent.

`Its strength lies in combining theoretical insights with an impressive range of empirical material. The analysis is subtle and multi-layered.... This is a timely and important book' - Political Studies `Local governance have gained massive attention among scholars and practitioners during the past several years. Peter John's book fills a void in the literature by tracing the historical roots of local governance and by placing his findings in a comparative perspective' - Professor Jon Pierre, University of Gothenburg, Sweden `Peter John has produced a fascinating and stimulating book in which he assesses current developments in urban politics and local government in Europe and suggests how these changes are leading to different patterns of sub-national territorial politics in the EU today. What he has to say is of important interest to all students of local government; comparative politics and of territorial politics more generally' - Michael Goldsmith, University of Salford `this book offers a fascinating comparative analysis... themes such as New Public Management, globalisation, regionalism and privatisation will be relevant to numerous courses in government, politics, public administration and public policy' - West European Politics This text provides a comprehensive introduction to local government and urban politics in contemporary Western Europe. It is the first book to map and explain the change in local political systems and to place these in comparative context. The book introduces students to the traditional structures and institutions of local government and shows how these have been transformed in response to increased economic and political competition, new ideas, institutional reform and the Europeanization of public policy. At the book's core is the perceived transition from local government to local governance. The book traces this key development thematically across a wide range of West European states including: Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom.

This book explores how intra-party politics affects government formation and termination in parliamentary systems, where the norm is the formation of coalition governments. The authors look beyond party cohesion and discipline in parliamentary democracies to take a broader view, assuming a diversity of preferences among party members and then exploring the incentives that give rise to coordinated party behaviour at the electoral, legislative and executive levels. The chapters in this book share a common analytical framework, confronting theoretical models of government formation with empirical data, some drawn from cross-national analyses and others from theoretically structured case studies. A distinctive feature of the book is that it explores the impact of intra-party politics at different levels of government: national, local and EU. This offers the opportunity to investigate existing theories of coalition formation in new political settings. Finally, the book offers a range of innovative methods for investigating intra-party politics which, for example, creates a need to estimate the policy positions of individual politicians inside political parties. This book will be of interest to political scientists, especially scholars involved in research on political parties, parliamentary systems, coalition formation and legislative behaviour, multilevel governance, European and EU politics.

The past quarter of a century has seen extensive change throughout Europe. There have been significant changes in local government, and the European Union has come to play an increasing role in relation to municipal government. This book offers a comparative analysis of recent developments in intergovernmental relations in twelve countries across Europe. Using the framework for analysis from Page and Goldsmith’s 1987 Central and Local Government Relations, each chapter examines changes in central-local relations in their respective country over the past 20 years. This book extends the coverage to include, for the first time, both federal systems and Eastern European countries. Offering detailed empirical studies, it assesses how far there have been changes in the functions, access and discretion of local government. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of local government, urban politics, EU studies and public administration.

Addresses a theme of central importance to the theory and practice of parliamentary democracy in western Europe: multiparty coalition government in the under-researched institutional setting of subnational (i.e., regional, provincial, local) representative assemblies. Comparison focuses on France, Belgium, and Germany. Part I discusses the literature, outlines criticisms of formal theory, and surveys attempts to use subnational coalitions as data sources. Part II presents theory and methods, and Part III offers empirical analysis. Part IV applies theoretical points made in previous chapters and presents conclusions. Appendices offer a survey questionnaire used for this study and related statistics. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This study presents comparative analyses of the process of party governance, from formation and duration to performance. It compares both the developments in the Eastern and Western part of Europe and uses different types of methods and data are used for comparative analysis.

Marion Reiser, Everhard Holtmann Local independent lists as political actors are a common phenomenon on the local level in many European countries – in established Western democracies as well as in the ‘new’ democracies in Central and Eastern Europe. In some West European countries, these non-partisan groups have been an established and stable element in the local political system for decades. Ty- cally, they understand themselves as protectors of a harmonious factual political style. In their opinion, good local politics is not compatible with party politics so they consequently perceive themselves as non-parties. During the last two d- ades, presence and success of local lists have steadily increased in these co- tries. Furthermore, during the last years local lists emerged also in countries which had been formerly fully party-politicised on the local level. Explanations offered for these developments are often based on the observation of a general decline of trust in established parties and politicians. Hence, it has been argued that the disenchantment with political parties is a fertile ground for local lists. For the Central and East European countries, this argument can be - ployed only to a certain extent. Local lists established themselves in the early 1990’s as important actors on the local level especially due to a lack of party organisation in the process of democratic consolidation.