Presents a brilliant, persuasive case that American political parties, so often dismissed as immature or ineffective compared with their European counterparts, are in fact old and durable political organizations, serving well the needs of a pluralistic society. What chiefly distinguishes this work is the inclusion of considerable material on American parties in a comparative context to the analysis of British, Scandinavian, European, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand political parties.

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

Comparison, political partys, democracy, Western Europe, USA - political theories, historical development, political ideology, membership, institutional framework, dispute settlement, political behaviour in elections, political system. Bibliography, diagram, graph, map,statistical tables.

The idea that the opposition has a right to organize and to appeal for votes against the government in elections and in parliament is one of the most important milestones in the development of democratic institutions. Mr. Dahl and nine collaborators analyze the role of the opposition in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. In introductory and concluding chapters, Dahl compares the patterns of opposition in these countries and makes predictions for the future. He carries forward on the basis of this evidence the theory of a pluralistic society he has explored in earlier books such as Who Governs? Mr. Dahl is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His collaborators are Samuel Barnes, Hans Daalder, Frederick Engelmann, Alfred Grosser, Otto Kirchheimer, Val R. Lorwin, Allen Potter, Stein Rokkan, and Nils Stjernquist. "This stately volume is distinguished by several unusual features. First, it straightforwardly focuses on a crucial issue of Comparative Politics without being vitiated by the familiar behaviorist semantics and jargon. Secondly, contrary to the ubiquitous trend in this country, flooded by discussion—more journalistic than scientific—on the emergent states, it centers on constitutional democracy in Western Europe, a region which for a decade and more had been badly neglected by the rampant computerizers. Thirdly, for the ten countries under discussion Professor Dahl was fortunate to enlist the services of genuine experts, the majority of whom are specialists in their field. . . . On the whole the volume is one of the major contributions to Comparative Politics that have appeared in this country for some time. The study of the issue as such as well as of the individual reviews is highly rewarding."—Karl Loewenstein, The Annals.

Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world—rich and poor, Western and non-Western—there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. In membership, organization, and popular involvement and commitment, political parties are not what they used to be. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions? In contrast to authors of most previous works on political parties, which tend to focus exclusively on long-established Western democracies, the contributors to this volume cover many regions of the world. Theoretically, they consider the essential functions that political parties perform in democracy and the different types of parties. Historically, they trace the emergence of parties in Western democracies and the transformation of party cleavage in recent decades. Empirically, they analyze the changing character of parties and party systems in postcommunist Europe, Latin America, and five individual countries that have witnessed significant change: Italy, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Turkey. As the authors show, political parties are now only one of many vehicles for the representation of interests, but they remain essential for recruiting leaders, structuring electoral choice, and organizing government. To the extent that parties are weak and discredited, the health of democracy will be seriously impaired. Contributors: Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther • Hans Daalder • Philippe Schmitter • Seymour Martin Lipset • Giovanni Sartori • Bradley Richardson • Herbert Kitschelt • Michael Coppedge • Ergun Ozbudun • Yun-han Chu • Leonardo Morlino • Ashutosh Varshney and E. Sridharan • Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair.

This book takes a close look inside political parties, bringing together the findings of an international team of leading scholars. Building on a unique set of cross-national data on party organizations, the contributors set out to explain how parties organize, how they have changed and how they have adapted to the changing political and organizational circumstances in which they find themselves. The contributors are recognized authorities on the party systems of their countries, and have all been involved in gathering data on party membership, party finance and the internal structure of power. They add to the analysis of these original data an expert knowledge of the wider political patterns in their countries, and thus p

New political parties have regularly appeared in developed democracies around the world. In some countries issues focusing on the environment, immigration, economic decline, and regional concerns have been brought to the forefront by new political parties. In other countries these issues have been addressed by established parties, and new issue-driven parties have failed to form. Most current research is unable to explain why under certain circumstances new issues or neglected old ones lead to the formation of new parties. Based on a novel theoretical framework, this study demonstrates the crucial interplay between established parties and possible newcomers to explain the emergence of new political parties. Deriving stable hypotheses from a simple theoretical model, the book proceeds to a study of party formation in twenty-two developed democracies. New or neglected issues still appear as a driving force in explaining the emergence of new parties, but their effect is partially mediated by institutional factors, such as access to the ballot, public support for parties, and the electoral system. The hypotheses in part support existing theoretical work, but in part present new insights. The theoretical model also pinpoints problems of research design that are hardly addressed in the comparative literature on new political parties. These insights from the theoretical model lead to empirical tests that improve on those employed in the literature and allow for a much-enhanced understanding of the formation and the success of new parties. Simon Hug is Lecturer in Political Science, University of Geneva.

Well-reputed political scientists residing and teaching in ten countries, five in Asia and five in Europe, comparatively examine the place of political parties in democracy, and provide an empirically rigorous, up-to-date, comprehensive synthesis of the organization of political parties and their links with citizens in a democracy.