This book, with contributions from leading scholars in the field, presents a critical overview of much of the recent literature on political parties. It systematically assesses the capacity of existing concepts, typologies, and methodological approaches to deal with contemporary parties. It critically analyses the 'decline of parties' literature both from a conceptual perspective and - with regard to antiparty attitudes among citizens - on the basis of empirical analyses of survey data. It systematically re-examines the underpinnings of rational-choice analyses of electoral competition, as well as the misapplication of standard party models as the 'catch-all party.'
Several chapters reexamine existing models of parties and party typologies, particularly with regard to the capacity of commonly used concepts to capture the wide variation among parties that exist in old and new democracies today, and with regard to their ability to deal adequately with the new challenges that parties are facing in rapidly changing political, social and technological environments. In particular, two detailed case studies demonstrate how party models are significant not only as frameworks for scholarly research, but also insofar as they can affect party performance. Other chapters also examine in detail how corruption and party patronage have contributed to party decline, as well as the public attitudes towards parties in several countries. In the aggregate, the various contributions to this volume reject the notion that a 'decline of party' has progressed to such an extent as to threaten the survival of parties as the crucial intermediary actors in modern democracies.
The contributing authors argue, however, that parties are facing a new set of sometimes demanding challenges. Not only have parties differed significantly in their ability to successfully meet these challenges, but the core concepts, typologies, and methodological approaches that have guided research in this area over the past 40 years have met with only mixed success in adequately capturing these recent developments and serving as fruitful frameworks for analysis. This book is intended to remedy some of these shortcomings.
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The individual papers are well worth reading in their own right and most contain innovative research and interesting approaches to the study of political parties. -- 'Political Studies Review'
Richard Gunther is Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He has research interests in Southern Europe, transitions to and consolidation of democracy, electoral behavior, political parties, and comparative political institutions and public policy.
José Ramón Montero is a professor of Political Science at the Autonomous University of Madrid and at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales, Juan March Institute, Madrid.
Juan J Linz is Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University.
Stefano Bartolini was born in 1952 and graduated in political science from the University of Florence. From 2006 to 2013 he was Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute.
Previous to his directorship he was assistant professor at the University of Bologna (1976) and at the European University Institute (1979), associate professor at the University of Florence (1985), full professor at the University of Trieste (1990), the University of Geneva (1991), the European University Institute (1994) and the University of Bologna (2004).
He is a member of the editorial board of the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, and a member of the scientific board of West European Politics, Swiss Review of Political Science, Acta Politica, Electoral Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Comparative Political Studies.
He has been awarded the best book prize of the European Politics section at APSA (2002), the Gregory Luebbert APSA Prize in Comparative Politics (2001), and the UNESCO Stein Rokkan Prize for the Social Sciences (1990).
Professor Bartolini's present academic interests are the relationships between the process of European integration and the key features of the European nation-state experience.
His research interests have focused on Western Europe political development, comparative methodology, political institutions and European integration.
Jean Blondel was a French political scientist specialising in comparative politics. He was Emeritus Professor at the European University Institute in Florence, and visiting professor at the University of Siena.
Hans Daalder is Professor Emeritus at the University of Leiden. He is one of the founders of the European Consortium of Political Research, of which he was President from 1976 to 1979. Recently he edited Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession (1997; new paperback edition 1999).
Jonathan Hopkin is Lecturer in Government at the LSE.
Richard S Katz is Professor of Political Science at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was co-editor of the European Journal of Political Research (2006-2012). His books include A Theory of Parties and Electoral Systems (Johns Hopkins 1980, 2006), Democracy and Elections (Oxford 1997), Handbook of Party Politics, ed. with William Crotty (Sage 2006), The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy, ed. with William P. Cross, (Oxford 2013). He was vice-chair and treasurer on the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research.
The late Peter Mair was Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute. His publications include Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy (Verso, 2013), Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies (co-edited with Petr Kopecký and Marcia Spirova, OUP, 2012), Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations, and Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability (edited, Cambridge, 1990).
Hans-Jürgen Puhle is a Professor of Political Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main.
Serenella Sferza is co-director of the MIT-Italy Program, which promotes two-way exchanges and collaborations between the MIT community and its Italian counterparts. Sferza teaches on working in the global economy. In addition to comparative political economy issues, her interests include the formation and representation of political cleavages, cross-cultural communication, and education. She has published primarily on French politics.
Mariano Torcal is a Professor of Political Science at Pompeu Fabra University and the Director of the Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology.
Steven B. Wolinetz is Professor Emeritus at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. Wolinetz writes about parties and party systems, smaller democracies (especially the Netherlands and Belgium, and the European Union). His publications include Parties and Party Systems in Liberal Democracies (1988), ‘Beyond the Catch-all Party: Approaches to the Study of Parties and Party Organization in Contemporary Democracies,’ in Linz, Montero, and Gunther, The Future of Political Parties, ‘The Transformation of Western European Party Systems Revisited’ and other articles on parties and party systems. He is currently working on a book, Parties and Party Systems in the New Millennium.
