Parties and Party Systems

Sartori…is particularly strong on conceptualisation, is insistent on the need for precision and consistency in the use of terms, and carefully distinguishes parties from factions, movements, and pressure groups…. The pay-off from the framework is seen in the brilliant exposition where the number of parties, moderated by ideology, is related to a wide array of characteristics of political systems… Sartori's book is a major contribution to the studies of comparative politics and political concepts, written with a remarkable feel for the English language. -- Dennis Kavanagh, 'Political Studies'

The late Giovanni Sartori was born in Florence, Italy, in 1924, and was appointed Professor of Political Science at the University of Florence in 1963. He has been a visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale, and in 1976 he succeeded Gabriel Almond as Professor of Political Science at Stanford. In 1979 he was appointed Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, New York. Sartori is the author of numerous books across a range of fields in political theory and comparative politics, including Parties and Party Systems (1976), The Theory of Democracy Revisited (2 volumes, 1990), and Comparative Constitutional Engineering (2nd ed, 1997). His most recent books are Homo Videns (2nd ed, 2000), Pluralismo, Multiculturalismo, Estranei (2nd ed, 2002), and Mala Tempora (2004), which has been a bestseller in Italy.