Political Parties In New Democracies

Ingrid van Biezen provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of party formation and organizational development in recently established democracies. She focuses on four democracies in Southern and East-Central Europe and addresses political parties from a cross-regional perspective. Featuring a wealth of new information on party organization, this book provides a valuable theoretical and empirical contribution to our understanding of political parties in both old and new democracies.

Beginning with a penetrating analysis of party shortcomings in developing and post-communist countries, Thomas Carothers draws on extensive field research to diagnose chronic deficiencies in party aid, assess its overall impact, and offer practical ideas for doing better.

DIVWhy new political parties are formed, and why some thrive while others fade away /div

Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. The General Editors are Professor Alfio Mastropaolo, University of Turin and Kenneth Newton, University of Southampton and Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin . The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. The sister volume to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, this book offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world's major new democracies. Drawing on a wealth of expertise and data, the book assesses the popular legitimacy, organizational development and functional performance of political parties in Latin America and postcommunist Eastern Europe. It demonstrates the generational differences between parties in the old and new democracies, and reveals contrasts among the latter. Parties are shown to be at their most feeble in those recently transitional democracies characterized by personalistic, candidate-centred forms of politics, but in other new democracies - especially those with parliamentary systems - parties are more stable and institutionalized, enabling them to facilitate a meaningful degree of popular choice and control. Wherever party politics is weakly institutionalized, political inequality tends to be greater, commitment to pluralism less certain, clientelism and corruption more pronounced, and populist demagoguery a greater temptation. Without party, democracy's hold is more tenuous.

What chiefly distinguishes this work is the inclusion of considerable material on American partics in a comparative context to the analysis of British, Scandinavian, European, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand political parties.

This book examines dominant parties in both established democracies and new democracies and explores the relationship between dominant parties and the democratic process. Bridging existing literatures, the authors analyse dominant parties at national and sub-national, district and intra-party levels and take a fresh look at some of the classic cases of one-party dominance. The book also features methodological advances in the study of dominant parties through contributions that develop new ways of conceptualizing and measuring one-party dominance. Combining theoretical and empirical research and bringing together leading experts in the field - including Hermann Giliomee and Kenneth Greene - this book features comparisons and case studies on Japan, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Italy, France and South Africa. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, democracy studies, comparative politics, party politics and international studies specialists.

Voting in Old and New Democracies examines voting behavior and its determinants based on 26 surveys from 18 countries on five continents between 1992 and 2008. It systematically analyzes the impact on voting choice of factors rooted in the currently dominant approaches to the study of electoral behavior, but adds to this analysis factors introduced or reintroduced into this field by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP)—socio-political values, and political communication through media, personal discussion, and organizational intermediaries. It demonstrates empirically that these long-neglected factors have significant political impact in many countries that previous studies have overlooked, while "economic voting" is insignificant in most elections once long-term partisan attitudes are taken into consideration. Its examination of electoral turnout finds that the strongest predictor is participation by other family members, demonstrating the importance of intermediation. Another chapter surveys cross-national variations in patterns of intermediation, and examines the impact of general social processes (such as socioeconomic and technological modernization), country-specific factors, and individual-level attitudinal factors as determinants of those patterns. Complementing its cross-national comparative analysis is a detailed longitudinal case study of one country over 25 years. Finally, it examines the extent of support for democracy as well as significant cross-national differences in how democracy is understood by citizens. Written in a clear and accessible style, Voting in Old and New Democracies significantly advances our understanding of citizen attitudes and behavior in election settings.

This book is the sequel to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford 2002). It offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world's major new democracies, focusing on Latin America and postcommunist Eastern Europe.