Party System Change Approaches and Interpretations [Hardcover]

This is the first full-length book to examine how we interpret evidence of change and stability in modern parties and party systems. Focusing primarily on processes of political adaptation and control, it also concerns how parties and party systems generate their own momentum and freeze themselves into place. Amid the widespread contemporary discussions of the challenge to modern democracy and the crisis of traditional forms of political representation, if offers a welcome emphasis on how party systems survive, and on how change, when it does occur, may be analyzed and understood.

Part I Introduction
1. On the Freezing of Party Systems
Part II Persistence and Change
2. Continuities, Changes, and the Vulnerability of Party
3. The Problem of Party System Change
4. Myths of Electoral Change and the Survival of the `Old' Parties
Part III Party Organizations and Party Systems
5. Party Organization, Party Democracy, and the Emergence of the Cartel Party
6. Popular Legitimacy and Public Privileges: Party Organizations in Civil Society and the State
Part IV Party Systems and Structures of Competition
7. Electoral Markets and Stable States
8. What is Different about Post-Communist Systems?
9. Party Systems and Structures of Competition

...a fresh interpretation... --Choice