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Cover -- Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- Acknowledgements -- List of Party Acronyms -- Introduction -- Part 1 Framework -- 1 The Path Towards Democracy: the Institutional Context of Party Formation -- 2 Party Formation and Organizational development: Opportunities and Constraints -- Part 2 Membership Orgainzations and Party Structures -- 3 Portugal -- 4 Spain -- 5 Hungary -- 6 The Czech Republic -- Part 3 Cross-National Patterns -- 7 On the Internal Balance of Power the Extra-Parliamentary Party vs the Party in Public Office -- 8 Financing Parties in New Democracies -- 9 Patterns of Party Organisations in New Democracies -- Notes -- References -- Index.

This article analyses the process of party constitutionalization in post-war Europe. It explores the temporal patterns of party constitutionalization and reveals their connection with moments of fundamental institutional restructuring. It discusses the different modes of party constitutionalization, and addresses what these convey about the underlying conceptions of party democracy. It argues that the constitutional codification of political parties has consolidated the empirical reality of modern party government as well as its normative foundations of modern party government, thereby transforming political parties from socio-political organizations into integral units of the democratic state. Finally, it suggests that the constitutionalization of the democratic importance of political parties might reflect an attempt to legitimize their existence in the face of their weakening as agents of democratic representation. Adapted from the source document.

This article analyses the process of party constitutionalization in post-war Europe. It explores the temporal patterns of party constitutionalization and reveals their connection with moments of fundamental institutional restructuring. It discusses the different modes of party constitutionalization, and addresses what these convey about the underlying conceptions of party democracy. It argues that the constitutional codification of political parties has consolidated the empirical reality of modern party government as well as its normative foundations of modern party government, thereby transforming political parties from socio-political organizations into integral units of the democratic state. Finally, it suggests that the constitutionalization of the democratic importance of political parties might reflect an attempt to legitimize their existence in the face of their weakening as agents of democratic representation.

Abstract. In addressing issues of party development in contemporary democracies, many of the recent discussions confuse notions of party formation with those of party adaptation. The contention of this article is that the conceptual confusion of these two distinct processes undermines our understanding of party development, which is of particular importance in the context of the more recently established democracies. Moreover, in order to contribute to theory building on political parties more generally, it is necessary to differentiate between the two. This article offers some theoretical contours for the study of party formation and development, and empirically evaluates the patterns of organizational development in some of the newer democracies in Southern and East‐Central Europe. The analysis shows that the external context of party formation has encouraged these parties to adopt an organizational style largely resembling their contemporary counterparts in the older democracies. However, despite the resemblance between party organizations in the older liberal democracies and the newly established ones, the paths of party development are best understood as processessui generis. The historical uniqueness of parties emerging as strong movements of society, as opposed to agents of the state, is a path that is unlikely to be repeated in contemporary polities which democratize in a different institutional context.

This paper assesses the relationship between the nature of political parties and varieties of democracy. It is argued that the changing role of parties can be attributed to an ideational transformation by which parties have gradually come to be seen as necessary and desirable institutions for democracy, and that this has contributed to a changing conception of parties from voluntary private associations towards the political party as a 'public utility', i.e. the party as an essential public good for democracy. Recent cases of democratization, where parties were attributed a markedly privileged position within the democratic institutional framework, provide the most unequivocal testimony of such a conception of the relationship between parties and democracy. At the same time, however, fundamental disagreements persist about the meaning of democracy and the actual role of political parties within it. Regrettably, however, the literatures on parties and democratic theory have developed to a large degree in mutual isolation. This paper provides a preliminary attempt to move beyond the consensus which exists on the surface that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties by considering varieties of party and different conceptions of democracy.