Promoting Party Politics In Emerging Democracies

This book offers a critical and comparative examination of international support to political parties and party systems in emerging and prospective new democracies in several world regions. It combines the insights of a strong international grouping of leading academics and pioneering doctoral studies, and draws on extensive new field work inquiries. The wide-ranging coverage pools evidence from countries in Europe and Eurasia, Africa, East Asia and Central America. The book shows how far international support still has to go if it is to achieve its aims of helping party politics make a constructive contribution to furthering democracy. It advances our understanding both of the role the political parties are playing in the different polities and the sometimes negative impact of democracy promotion actors from outside. By contributing original theoretical perspectives and empirical findings, the book points the way forward to agendas for future research and new courses of action. It will be of interest to academics and the policy-making and practitioner communities alike. This book was published as a special issue of Democratizations.

This volume brings together expert contributors to explore the intersection of two major contemporary themes: globalization, and the contribution that both domestic party politics and international party support make to democratization. Globalising Democracy clearly shows what globalization means for domestic and international efforts to build effective political parties and competitive party systems in new and emerging democracies. Contrasting perspectives are presented through fresh case studies of European post-communist countries, Africa and Turkey. The reader is clearly shown how international party assistance is a manifestation and vehicle of globalization, and explores how it may be assessed in terms of: global economic integration the growth of global communications the development and implications for party politics of multi-level governance. This is the first book to analyze the impact of globalization on democracy and will be of great interest to all students of international relations, governance and politics.

There is increasing awareness of growing similarities in political marketing practices around the world. Global political marketing is a comprehensive analysis of why, how and with what affect parties use political marketing in a range of political systems - presidential, parliamentary, two and multi-party, and established and emerging democracies. Written by a team of 25 international expert authors, the volume explores the impact of systemic features such as the party and electoral system, analysing how parties use marketing through 14 detailed country studies. The book explores the notion that political marketing is used by parties to both sell and design political products, is by no means confined to the opposition, and that many opinions besides those of the voters are considered in product design, including ideological anchors, expert opinion and party members’ input. The authors also explore how other factors impact on political marketing effectiveness, such as the ability of governments to communicate delivery, stay in touch, the role of the media and party unity and culture. Finally the work discusses the democratic implications of market-oriented parties, highlighting the need for debate about the relationship between citizens and governments and the prospects for democracy in the 21st century. Including a practitioner perspective as well as rigorous academic analysis, this collection provides the first global comprehensive overview of how political parties market themselves, it will be of great interest to all scholars of political marketing, parties and elections and comparative politics.

In democracies, contemporary politics is party politics, and parties serve to organize the political process even as they ensure democratic representation of minority and majority policy preferences. How do they do this? In great part, as this ambitious survey shows, parties translate policy preferences into policy priorities by articulating and enacting clearly defined party platforms. There is, this international author team demonstrates, a strong connection between what parties say they will do in an election campaign and what they actually do when elected. In sum, we are shown that political parties deserve more credit than they often receive.This book addresses questions central to the operation of modern democracies and can be used to inform institutional development in emerging democracies. It is at once an ambitious summary of original research and a model text for students of comparative politics. First the theory and method are introduced. Then, ten key countries are covered in parallel detail, with the discussions proceeding from general consideration of institutional and political context and program and party trends to more specific examinations of the congruence between party programs and policy outcomes. The data for all countries and parties span the post-World War II period up to the late 1980s. The analyses employ agenda, mandate, and ideology models and expenditure analyses across key policy arenas.Because of its commitment to comparative rather than merely descriptive analysis, Parties, Policies, and Democracy offers convincing answers to basic questions about the functioning of democratic political systems. Rigorous comparative analysis of forty years’ experience across ten countries demonstrates that political parties in contemporary democracies work better than critics have claimed. This is important news for emerging democracies just now establishing institutions and policies that bear watching over the next forty-year period.

This book offers a critical and comparative examination of international support to political parties and party systems in emerging and prospective new democracies in several world regions. It combines the insights of a strong international grouping of leading academics and pioneering doctoral studies, and draws on extensive new field work inquiries. The wide-ranging coverage pools evidence from countries in Europe and Eurasia, Africa, East Asia and Central America. The book shows how far international support still has to go if it is to achieve its aims of helping party politics make a constructive contribution to furthering democracy. It advances our understanding both of the role the political parties are playing in the different polities and the sometimes negative impact of democracy promotion actors from outside. By contributing original theoretical perspectives and empirical findings, the book points the way forward to agendas for future research and new courses of action. It will be of interest to academics and the policy-making and practitioner communities alike. This book was published as a special issue of Democratizations.

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.

Canadian Parties in Transition examines the transformation of party politics in Canada and the possible shape the party system might take in the near future. With chapters written by an outstanding team of political scientists, the book presents a multi-faceted image of party dynamics, electoral behaviour, political marketing, and representative democracy. The fourth edition has been thoroughly updated and includes fifteen new chapters and several new contributors. The new material covers topics such as the return to power of the Liberal Party, voting politics in Quebec, women in Canadian political parties, political campaigning, digital party politics, and municipal party politics.

Political party organizations play large roles in democracies, yet their organizations differ widely, and their statutes change much more frequently than constitutions or electoral laws. How do these differences, and these frequent changes, affect the operation of democracy? This book seeks to answer these questions by presenting a comprehensive overview of the state of party organization in nineteen contemporary democracies. Using a unique new data collection, the book's chapters test propositions about the reasons for variation and similarities across party organizations. They find more evidence of within-country similarity than of cross-national patterns based on party ideology. After exploring parties' organizational differences, the remaining chapters investigate the impact of these differences. The volume considers a wide range of theories about how party organization may affect political life, including the impact of party rules on the selection of female candidates, the links between party decision processes and the stability of party programmes, the connection between party finance sources and public trust in political parties, and whether the strength of parties' extra-parliamentary organization affects the behaviour of their elected legislators. Collectively these chapters help to advance comparative studies of elections and representation by inserting party institutions and party agency more firmly into the centre of such studies. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Universite libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.