Parties without partisans : political change in advanced industrial democracies
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Parties without partisans : political change in advanced industrial democracies
(Comparative politics)
Oxford University Press, 2000
Available at 27 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [286]-310) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
If democracy without political parties is unthinkable, what would happen if the role of political parties if the democratic process is weakened? The ongoing debate about the vitality of political parties is also a debate about the vitality of representative democracy. Leading scholars in the field of party research assess the evidence for partisan decline or adaptation for the OECD nations. It documents the broadscale erosion of the publics partisan identities in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. Partisan de-alignment is diminishing involvement in electoral politics, and for those who participate it leads to more volatility in their voting choices, an openness to new political appeals, and less predictablity in their party preferences. Political parties have adapted to partisan de-alignment by strengthening their internal organizational structures and partially isolating themselves from the ebbs and flows of electoral politics. Centralized, professionalized parties with short time horizons have replaced the ideologically-driven mass parties of the past.
This study also examines the role of parties within government, and finds that parties have retained their traditional roles in structuring legislative action and the function of governmentDSfurther evidence that party organizations are insulating themselves from the changes transforming democratic publics. Parties without Partisans is the most comprehensive cross-national study of parties in advanced industrial democracies in all of their forms -- in electoral politics, as organizations, and in government. Its findings chart both how representative democracy has been transformed in the later half of the 20th Century, as well as what the new style of democratic politics is likely to look like in the 21st Century.
Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER 1 UNTHINKABLE DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL CHANGE IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES
- PART I PARTIES IN THE ELECTORATE
- CHAPTER 2 THE DECLINE OF PARTY IDENTIFICATIONS
- CHAPTER 3 THE CONSEQUENCES OF PARTISAN DEALIGNMENT
- CHAPTER 4 THE DECLINE OF PARTY MOBILIZATION
- PART II PARTIES AS POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
- CHAPTER 5 PARTIES WITHOUT MEMBERS? PARTY ORGANIZATION IN A CHANGING ELECTORAL ENVIRONMENT
- CHAPTER 6 POLITICAL PARTIES AS CAMPAIGN ORGANIZATIONS
- CHAPTER 7 FROM SOCIAL INTEGRATION TO ELECTORAL CONTESTATION: THE CHANGING DISTRIBUTION OF POWER WITHIN POLITICAL PARTIES
- PART III PARTIES IN GOVERNMENT
- CHAPTER 8 PARTIES IN LEGISLATURE: TWO COMPETING EXPLANATIONS
- CHAPTER 9 PARTIES AT THE CORE OF GOVERNMENT
- CHAPTER 10 FROM PLATFORM DECLARATIONS TO POLICY OUTCOMES: CHANGING PARTY PROFILES AND PARTISAN INFLUENCE OVER POLICY
- CHAPTER 11 ON THE PRIMACY OF PARTY IN GOVERNMENT: WHY LEGISLATIVE PARTIES CAN SURVIVE PARTY DECLINE IN THE ELECTORATE
- CONCLUSION
- CHAPTER 12 PARTISAN CHANGE AND THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
by "Nielsen BookData"