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Party organization has regained a new momentum in the party literature over the past decade. In this context, we review the most important advances in the literature and critically examine issues such as: the link between party organization literature and organizational theory literature, party organization and intra-party democracy, and between party organization on paper and in reality. We ascertain the need for more conceptual clarifications in the field and raise questions for debate. We further outline the contribution of this special issue to the theme of intra-party democracy in representative democracies.

The authors present a theory that seeks to explain why parties change their political strategies, organizational characteristics and issue positions. Whereas most of the existing literature on party change deals with party systems, the focus here is on individual parties. Whereas much of the literature views parties as responding more or less gradually to socioeconomic change, change is here regarded as a discontinuous outcome of specific party decisions linked to party goals. This approach is placed in the literature by reviewing extant theories of party change. Our theory itself is initially advanced in a discursive section which suggests that change does not `just happen', but instead results from leadership change, a change of dominant faction within the party, and/or an external stimulus for change. The article then presents a more formal exposition of this theory, consisting of definitions, assumptions, and a series of testable propositions. It concludes with illustrative examples of this theoretical framework.

A computerized system for automatically notifying social scientists of new journal articles that appear to fit their personal interests is now in operation at Northwestern University. Kenneth Janda is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern, and Gary Rader, is a former undergraduate major in the Political Science Department.

Based on analysis of political party systems in 212 countries, the authors provide a range of invaluable insights into how to build good governance.

Maurice Duverger's Political Parties, written more than three decades ago, remains the most prominent source of hypotheses on parties and party systems. Although many years have passed since its publication, no one has formalized Duverger's main hypotheses on political parties and subjected them to empirical test. This article identifies Duverger's key concepts on party structure, links the concepts in 19 formal bivariate propositions, operationalizes the concepts using data from a worldwide sample of 147 parties in 53 countries, and tests all 19 propositions. Twelve are supported by the cross-national empirical test. Interrelationships among these 12 bivariate propositions are shown in a causal diagram, and suggestions are made for moving beyond Duverger's bivariate thinking to more powerful multivariate theorizing about the causes and consequences of party structure.