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 in this book. It documents the broadscale erosion of the public's partisan identities in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. Partisan dealignment 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 dealignment 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 government-further 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.
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This is a very good book. Serious students of political parties, and indeed anyone interested in the challenges facing modern electoral democracies, will want to read it ... The editors deserve much credit for producing that rarest of academic products - a genuinely integrated collection in which the whole is more than its (very substantial) parts. -- 'Party Politics'
This collection of studies is a welcome addition to party literature. The editors have brought together a range of experts who provide sophisticated yet accessible accounts of different spheres of party roles - their electoral connections, parties as political organizations, and their part in Government. Parties without Partisans sets a marker against which future studies are likely to be judged. -- Anthony Smith, London School of Economics and Politics
This volume represents a milestone in the debate about the role of political parties in advanced industrial democracies at the beginning of the twenty-first century. -- 'West European Politics'
Russell J Dalton is Research Professor at the Center for the Study of Democracy at UC Irvine. His research focuses on the role of citizens in the democratic process, involving the topics of political culture, electoral politics, and political representation. Dalton’s most recent books include The Good Citizen (2020), Political Realignment—Economics, Culture and Electoral Change (2018), The Participation Gap (2017), and The Civic Culture Transformed (2015). He has received a Fulbright Professorship at the University of Mannheim, a Barbra Streisand Center Fellowship, German Marshall Research Fellowship, and a POSCO Fellowship at the East/West Center.
Martin Wattenberg is a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine. He is an expert on American elections and party politics and is co-author of, 'Government in America: People, Policy, and Politics'.
Shaun Bowler received his Ph.D from Washington University, St. Louis and joined the UCR faculty in 1989. Professor Bowler's research interests include comparative electoral systems and voting behaviour. His work examines the relationship between institutional arrangements and voter choice in a variety of settings ranging from the Republic of Ireland to California's initiative process. Professor Bowler is the author of Demanding Choices: Opinion Voting and Direct Democracy with Todd Donovan, University of Michigan Press (1998). He is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.
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.
Mark M Gray is a Research Associate Professor at Georgetown University and the Director of CARA Catholic Polls at Georgetown's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).
Miki Caul Kittilson is Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on challenges to democratic inclusion across a variety of countries. She has previously published articles and books on women, gender and politics, political parties, courts, and political participation. She is the co-author of Seeing Women, Strengthening Democracy: How Women in Politics Foster Connected Citizens (with Magda Hinojosa) Her research has also appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, Comparative Political Studies, Politics, Groups and Identities, Perspectives on Politics, Party Politics, Political Behavior, and Politics and Gender.
Ian McAllister is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University.
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).
Kaare W Strøm is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego.
Michael F Thies is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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.
