Böcker i Comparative Politics-serien

The authors propose a volume which will explore the reasons for, and consequences of, the increasing personalization of electoral systems.

This book offers a broad overview of an important and ongoing transformation in relations between political parties and their closest supporters. It focuses on established parliamentary democracies, showing how the changing nature of party membership is affecting how political parties define themselves and the choices presented to voters.

Institutional Design and Party Government in Post-Communist Europe examines the institutional foundations of coalition government in the 10 post-communist democracies of Eastern and Central Europe, arguing that differences in the arrangement of political institutions systematically explain variations in patterns of multi-party government

Based on interviews with members of over 70 parliamentary assemblies Representing the People explores how members of parliament perceive their role as representatives, and shows that the way in which they represent depends very much on the party to which they belong.

The Limits of Electoral Reform examines a variety of reforms, including campaign finance, direct democracy, legislative term limits, and changes to the electoral system itself. This study finds electoral reforms have limited, and in many cases, no effects. The findings here suggest there are hard limits to effects of electoral reform.

The Challenges of Intra-Party Democracy provides a comprehensive examination of the costs and benefits of intra-party democracy and the issues parties must contend with in setting their own organizational norms.

Why are some new parties entering national parliaments able to defend a niche at the national level, while others conspicuously fail to do so. This ground-breaking volume studies 140 new parties in seventeen advanced democracies over a forty year period, to provide the answers.

The Strain of Representation examines the quality of democratic representation in Europe, focusing on the way that political parties channel the preferences of different groups of citizens into government policies.

Based on extensive data sets from national election studies in nine major democracies, this book brings together leading experts to assess the impact of political leaders on voting patterns. This is the first major book-length treatment of the importance of leaders' personality on the outcome of democratic elections.

Party Patronage and Party Government in European Democracies brings together insights from the worlds of party politics and public administration in order to analyze the role of political parties in public appointments across contemporary Europe.

This book argues that governments' choices in favour or against strong intergovernmental institutions are not primarily driven by considerations of efficiency but by internal political dynamics within their own boundaries. It applies the argument to Canada, Switzerland, the United States, and finally to the European Union.

Why do national governments implement devolution given the high risk that it will encourage peripheral parties to demand ever more devolved powers? The aim of Challenging the State is to answer this question through a comparative analysis of devolution in four European countries: Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Why do businesses contribute to political parties? Is money a universal language? Do business contributions to political parties convey different messages in different countries? This book answers these questions based on intensive case studies of Australia, Canada, and Germany.

The Gendered Effects of Electoral Institutions argues that in most countries women continue to lag behind men in an array of political orientations and activities. Understanding this, and why some countries have been more successful than others in decreasing gender gaps, is imperative for producing stronger and more representative democracies.

Campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters' perceptions of party leaders have an important impact in elections.Platform or Personality? examines voters' evaluations of party leaders in elections around the world and finds that leaders have an unmistakeable and consistent impact on voters' decisions at the ballot box

This analysis of coalition politics in Western Europe is based on the most comprehensive data set ever employed in coalition studies exploring both coalitional and single-party countries and governments.

Three unprecedented large-scale democratic experiments have taken place in which groups of randomly selected ordinary citizens were asked to independently design the next electoral system. The lessons drawn from the research are relevant for those interested in political participation, public opinion, deliberation, public policy, and democracy

Why do some countries appear to be far more centralized than others? This book examines the relationships between national and local government in Britain, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Spain.

Politics at the Centre studies the ways in which political parties select and remove their leaders in five parliamentary democracies: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. It addresses the subject through cross national comparison of 25 parties in these countries from 1965 to the present day.

Robert Elgie examines the relationship between semi-presidentialism and democratic performance. There are over 50 countries with a semi-presidential constitution. This book shows that the president-parliamentary sub-type is more likely to be associated with a poorer democratic performance than its premier-presidential counterpart.

Designing Democracy in a Dangerous World addresses a question at the heart of contemporary global politics: how does one craft democracy in fragile and divided states? By bringing new evidence and arguments to bear on the topic of promoting democracy this book contributes to both foreign policy and academic debates.

The Politics of Party Funding analyses an increasingly popular institutional choice-the introduction of state funding to political parties-and represents a first step towards a theory which explains differences and similarities in party funding regimes.

This book investigates changing relations between parties and their members in four major British and German political parties. By calling attention to the varied benefits members can provide for parties even in a mass-media age, this account helps to explain why some party leaders have been willing to back recent expansions of intra-party democracy.

This pioneering book presents a new approach to understanding political parties, sheds light on their inner workings and offers the first comprehensive analysis of the way parties choose their candidates for public office. Candidate selection is, after all, the function that separates parties from other organizations.

Based on extensive data sets from national election studies in nine major democracies, this book brings together leading experts to assess the impact of political leaders on voting patterns. This is the first major book-length treatment of the importance of leaders' personality on the outcome of democratic elections.

Linking Citizens and Parties highlights the pathways through which citizens' political preferences are expressed by their political parties.

This book is the sequel to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Oxford 2002). It offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world's major new democracies, focusing on Latin America and postcommunist Eastern Europe.

In this new work, two leading political scientists reassess the shifting fortunes of the Whitehall model of governance -- and find it wanting. As we prepare to enter the twenty--first century, it has become clear that the model now has much less currency abroad as well as in the UK.

How does representative democracy work in the modern age? Examining 21 post-war democracies, this strikingly innovative approach by two world-class scholars demonstrates how the voter in the middle - the median elector - empowers the centre party in parliament to translate political preferences into public policy.

East Asia is one of the most dynamic areas of political change in the world today-what role do citizens play in these processes of change? Drawing upon a unique set of coordinated public opinion surveys conducted by the World Values Survey, this book provides a dramatically new image of the political cultures of East Asia.