State Party State Anti Party State

This book provides the most comprehensive analysis of one of the most important issues in China today: the tensions between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese state legislative, judicial, administrative, and military institutions. Taking the 'neo-institutionalist' approach, the author suggests that the Communist Party in post-1949 China faces an institutional dilemma: the Party cannot live with the state, and it cannot live without the state. Zheng demonstrates that it is not only conceptually constructive, but analytically imperative to distinguish the state from the Communist Party. Secondly, he integrates detailed study with broader generalizations about Chinese politics, thus making efforts to overcome the tendency toward specialized scholarship at the expense of comparative and systemic understanding of China. He also opens a new dimension of Chinese politics - the uncertain and conflictual relationship between the Communist Party and the Chinese state.

This book adopts an innovative conceptualization and analytical framework to the study of anti-system parties, and represents the first monograph ever published on the topic. It features empirical research using original data and combining large-N QCA analyses with a wide range of in-depth case studies from 18 Western European countries. The book adopts a party-centric approach to the study of anti-system formations by focusing on the major turning points faced by such actors after their initial success: long-term electoral sustainability, the different modalities of integration at the systemic level and the electoral impact of transition to government. The author examines in particular the interplay between crucial elements of the internal supply-side of anti-system parties such as their organizational and ideological features, and the political opportunity structure. Anti-System Parties is a major contribution to the literature on populism, anti-establishment parties and comparative political parties.

The Canadian party system is a deviant case among the Anglo-American democracies. Unruly and inscrutable, it is a system that defies logic and classification – until now. In this political science tour de force, Richard Johnston makes sense of the Canadian party system. With a keen eye for history and deft use of recently developed analytic tools, he articulates a series of propositions that underpin the system. For its combination of historical breadth and data-intensive rigour, The Canadian Party System is a rare achievement. Its findings shed light on the main puzzles of the Canadian case, while contesting the received wisdom of the comparative study of parties, elections, and electoral systems elsewhere.

Party and Democracy questions why political parties today are held in such low estimation in advanced democracies. The first part of the volume reviews theoretical motivations behind the growing disdain for the political party. In surveying the parties' lengthy attempt to gain legitimacy, particular attention is devoted to the cultural and political conditions which led to their emergence on the ground' and then to their political and theoretical acceptance as the sole master in the chain of delegation. The second part traces the evolution of the party's organization and public confidence against the backdrop of the transition from industrial to post-industrial societies. The book suggests that, in the post-war period, parties shifted from a golden age of organizational development and positive reception by public opinion towards a more difficult relationship with society as it moved into post industrialism. Parties were unable to master societal change and thus moved towards the state to recover resources they were no longer able to extract from their constituencies. Parties have become richer and more powerful thanks to their interpenetration into the state, but they have paid' for their pervasive presence in society and the state with a declining legitimacy. Even if some changes have been introduced recently in party organizations to counteract their decline, they seem to have become ineffective; even worse, they have dampened democratic standing inside and outside parties, favouring plebiscitary tendencies. The party today is caught in a dramatic contradiction. It has become a sort of Leviathan with clay feet: very powerful thanks to the resources it gets from the state and to its control of the societal and state spheres, but very weak in terms of legitimacy and confidence in the eyes of the mass public. However, it is argued that there is still no alternative to the party. Democracy is still inextricably linked to the party system.

Explores the nature and structure of power in the Soviet party-state. Examines what type of regime it actually is, its intellectual and political origins, the various changes it has undergone, and the changes in world conditions that have affected the party states vitality.

In this broad-ranging volume Sartori outlines a comprehensive and authoritative approach to the classification of party systems. He also offers an extensive review of the concept and rationale of the political party, and develops a sharp critique of various spatial models of party competition.