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.
30% off all books in the Comparative Politics Series for ECPR Member affiliates – please contact editorial@ecpr.eu for more details on how to claim the discount.
Susan Scarrow is Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. Her scholarship and teaching has focused on representation and electoral institutions, including political party development, direct democracy, and political finance. Her prior publications include Parties and their Members (Oxford University Press), Perspectives on Political Parties (Palgrave), and Democracy Transformed? (Oxford University Press, edited with Russell J. Dalton and Bruce Cain).
Paul D Webb is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. He has published widely on party and electoral politics, including the OUP books Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (with David Farrell and Ian Holliday) and The Presidentialization of Politics (with Thomas Poguntke), and is co-editor of the journal Party Politics. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in the UK.
Thomas Poguntke is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF). He has previously held chairs at the universities of Keele, Birmingham, and Bochum. In 1998 he was Senior Research fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim. His research interests include the comparative analysis of political parties, parties in the European union, and the presidentialisation of modern democracies.
Nicholas Aylott is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Södertörn University.
Luciano Bardi is President of the Observatory on Political Parties and Representation at the University of Pisa and part-time Professor at the Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre of the European University Institute
He was member of the Executive Committee (2006-2009) of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR) and then Chair (2009-2012). His main research interests include political parties at the national and European level, party systems, elections, democracy and representation in the European Union.
Niklas Bolin is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Mid Sweden University.
Enrico Calossi is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Pisa.
Marina Costa Lobo is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon in Portugal.
David Farrell holds the Chair of Politics at University College Dublin. A specialist in parties, electoral systems and representation, Professor Farrell’s most recent book was the award-winning Political Parties and Democratic Linkage, published by Oxford University Press in 2011. He was the research director of the Irish Constitutional Convention.
Anika Gauja is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at Sydney University, teaching in Comparative and Australian politics. Her research interests focus on the comparative analysis of political institutions in modern representative democracies. Her publications include The Politics of Party Policy (2013, Palgrave Macmillan), Political Parties and Elections (2010, Ashgate), and Party Members and Activists (co-edited with Emilie van Haute, 2015, Routledge).
Elin Haugsgjerd Allern is postdoctoral fellow in political science at the University of Oslo, Norway. Previously she was senior research fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Oslo. Her research interests include party organisations, the relationship between parties and interest groups, and political parties and multi-level government. Allern's doctoral thesis was shortlisted for the ECPR's Jean Blondel PhD Prize 2008. Her work has appeared in several journals and edited volumes, including Acta Politica, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics, and Political Parties and Democracy: Europe .
Dr Annika Hennl is a Researcher in Political Science, Department of Political Science at the Goethe University Frankfurt and she has participated in the research project “Federalism and Decentralisation as Dimensions of State Activity” at the University of Cologne. Next to comparative federalism, her research interests include political representation, electoral systems, and political parties. She has recently published in Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Politische Vierteljahresschrift and Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft.
Dan Keith is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of York.
Petr Kopecký has published extensively in the fields of comparative politics, party politics and democratization. His books include Parliaments in the Czech and Slovak Republics (Ashgate 2001), Uncivil Society? Contentious Politics in Eastern Europe (co-edited, Routledge 2003), Political Parties and the State in Post-Communist Europe (edited, Routledge 2007). He is a co-editor of the journal East European Politics. He is Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at Leiden University, Netherlands.
Karina Kosiara-Pedersen is Associate Professor in Political Science at University of Copenhagen.
Conor Little is a Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick
Eugenio Pizzimenti is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pisa.
Scott Pruysers is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary. His current research interests include party organization in multi-level states, intra-party democracy, and political psychology. His research has been published in a variety of national and international journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Representation, Regional and Federal Studies, and Politics & Gender.
Gideon Rahat is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works on political parties, candidate selection and electoral reform. He is author of The Politics of Regime Structure Reform in Democracies: Israel in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective (State University of New York Press, 2008), and Democracy within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and their Political Consequences (with Reuven Y. Hazan) (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Isabella Razzuolia is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.
Simon Tobias Franzmann is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Heinrich Heine University.
Ingrid van Biezen is Professor of Comparative Politics at Leiden University. She has previously taught at the University of Birmingham (UK) and Johns Hopkins University, and has held Visiting Fellowships at Yale University, the University of California, Irvine, and European University Institute. She is a co-editor of Acta Politica, a former co-editor of the Political Data Yearbook and the author of Political Parties in New Democracies. Her current research focuses on political parties, party regulation, and democratic theory. She has published in, among others, the British Journal of Political Science, the European Journal of Political Research, the European Political Science Review, Government and Opposition, Party Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and West European Politics.
Emilie van Haute is an associate professor at ULB and deputy director of CEVIPOL. Her main research interests include party membership, intraparty dynamics, participation, elections and voting behaviour.
Tània Verge is Full Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF).
Benjamin von dem Berge is Head of Research Support Office at Zeppelin University.
