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How Parties Organize
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How Parties Organize
Change and Adaptation in Party Organizations in Western Democracies

Edited by:

January 1995 | 384 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
The empirical analysis of party organizations and party organizational change has long remained one of the least developed fields of study in comparative politics. Despite much discussion about the supposed `crisis of party' and the `decline of party' in Western Democracies, we still know remarkably little about what goes on inside political parties. How Parties Organize takes a close look inside political parties, bringing together the findings of an international team of leading scholars. Building on a unique set of cross-national data on party organizations, the contributors explain how parties organize, how they have changed, and how they have adapted to the changing political and organizational circumstances in which they find themselves. Offering the most systematic and comprehensive analysis of how parties organize in contemporary Europe and the United States, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students of comparative politics and party politics.

Peter Mair
Party Organizations
From Civil Society to the State

 
Richard S Katz and Robin Kolodny
Party Organization as an Empty Vessel
Parties in American Politics

 
Wolfgang C M[um]uller
The Development of Austrian Party Organizations in the Post-war Period
Kris Deschouwer
The Decline of Consociationalism and the Reluctant Modernization of Belgian Mass Parties
Paul D Webb
Party Organizational Change in Britain
The Iron Law of Centralization?

 
Lars Bille
Denmark
The Decline of the Membership Party?

 
Jan Sundberg
Finland
Nationalized Parties, Professionalized Organizations

 
Thomas Poguntke
Parties in a Legalistic Culture
The Case of Germany

 
David M Farrell
Ireland
Centralization, Professionalization and Competitive Pressures

 
Luciano Bardi and Leonardo Morlino
Italy
Tracing the Roots of the Great Transformation

 
Ruud A Koole
The Vulnerability of the Modern Cadre Party in the Netherlands
Lars Sv[a with a circle on the top]asand
Change and Adaptation in Norwegian Party Organizations
Jon Pierre and Anders Widfeldt
Party Organizations in Sweden
Colossuses with Feet of Clay or Flexible Pillars of Government?

 
Luciano Bardi
Transnational Party Federations, European Parliamentary Party Groups and the Building of Europarties

`[This book] is a collection of 14 essays by 16 of today's leading scholars on political parties in western democracies. Sandwiched between a general introduction and a final chapter on European transnational parties are 12 country-specific analyses... Though one could infer from the book's title that the emphasis is on recent change to the exclusion of early party and party system development, the fact is that there is much to learn here about the context - including the historical context - of party development in each country more generally. Indeed, for some of the countries, these may be the best succinct descriptions of the party systems and their development that are currently available in English.... Those seeking a careful, thorough analysis of the changes in parties of one of the systems covered here will be well satisfied by this book' - Party Politics

`A ground-breaking research study, composed of twelve country studies plus an introductory chapter and an overview on the development of transnational party federations in Western Europe. What is provided in the individual chapters, each written by a leading authority, is not another set of "offical data" on party organizations in the country examined but a thorough insight into the highly complex relationship between different sections of a party, parties and citizens as well as parties and the state.... the volume maintains a remarkably high degree of coheremc which is, not least, the merit of Peter Mair's excellent introduction' - Political Studies

`Most people in the know will already be aware of this book, the latest publication to emerge from the mammoth Katz/Mair research programme on political parties. In a very real sense, therefore, any review is as much a commentary on the research programme as a whole as on any one of its publications. There can be no doubt that the Katz/Mair project is a very important undertaking, at the heart of European political science. The reasons for this have in part to do with the intellectual quality of the output, and in part to do with the professional logistics of organizing such an undertaking.... Following the opening chapter is a series of country-specific analyses that put some empirical flesh on these theoretical bones. The authors of each are members of the research project, acknowledged experts in their field, and provide very sound analyses. The fact that the authors have been working to a common brief for some time now means that the chapters fit together much better than those in most edited volumes.... The net result is a very useful collection of chapters that anyone writing on party politics will value. The very scale of the Katz/Mair project adds to its importance... this ambitious programme, by virtue of the fact that it has co-ordinated so many people's activities over such a long time, is likely to be the only show in town for some time to come. Others may write about party organization, of course, but taking on, or replicating, the Katz/Mair research team would be a very daunting prospect indeed. In effect, this group is putting together primary data on party organizations that will be the raw material for work in this field for quite a few years to come. This is yet another reason why How Parties Organize simply cannot be ignored' - Irish Political Studies

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