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Nikolenyi reviews POLITICAL PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS edited by Ajay K. Mehra by D. D. Khanna and Gert Kueck.

This is an analysis of the changing pressures and demands placed on party systems in 11 countries in Western Europe since 1945. This book includes studies of the party system in Britain, France, Italy and Germany, as well as studies of Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. Five major themes are examined in each chapter. First, the broad development of the party system is accompanied by a discussion of how different party system typologies have been applied to each country. Secondly, a detailed discussion of the historical background to party system development

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

In this paper I propose to examine the tendency towards single-party systems in West Africa, particularly in relation to the social structure and the historical circumstances in which the parties emerged. I shall therefore point up the distinction between "mass" and "patron" parties, and then consider the new single-party governments, most of them based on mass parties, in relation to the prospects of of democracy in West Africa. My argument is that mass parties are created by African leaders out of the very liberating and egalitarian forces we in this country generally associate with democracy. Some of the mass parties encourage the growth of forces and institutions which may ultimately make possible the machinery of democratic systems familiar to us: as, for instance, competition for every citizen's vote by more than one organized team of candidates. At this stage of West African party history, it seems to me, the number of parties is far too simple a criterion upon which to decide whether or not a system is democratic.General statements about parties in the new West African states can be made only tentatively. Significant rights to vote and organize parties came to West Africa only after the Second World War. Since then formal institutional change has taken place at a rapid pace. The constitutional framework in which the parties grew changed continuously. The franchise expanded until it became universal, the powers of African elected representatives grew by stages from consultative to legislative and eventually to executive, and the locus of political power shifted from London or Paris to Africa.

How do changes in society that increase the heterogeneity of the citizenry shape democratic party systems? This book seeks to answer this question. It focuses on the key mechanism by which social heterogeneity shapes the number of political parties: new social groups successfully forming new, sectarian parties. Why are some groups successful at this while others fail? Drawing on cross-national statistical analyses and case studies of Sephardi and Russian immigration to Israel and African American enfranchisement in the United States, this book demonstrates that social heterogeneity does matter. However, it makes the case that to understand when and how social heterogeneity matters, factors besides the electoral system – most importantly, the regime type, the strategies played by existing parties, and the size and politicization of new social groups – must be taken into account. It also demonstrates that sectarian parties play an important role in securing descriptive representation for new groups

Although Chile is a relatively small country, writings about the Chilean
party systems have long been better and more voluminous than is the case
with most party systems in Latin America. Several orthodoxies have
emerged in this literature: that Chilean parties are strong, that the party
systems have been divided into three roughly equal parts, and that they
have been relatively stable. The purpose of this article is to challenge these
three orthodoxies. These orthodoxies are not completely wrong, but they
need to be qualified.The dominant view that Chilean parties are strong has been overstated.
They have been strong in some respects and for some periods, but not in
others. Parties have traditionally dominated mechanisms of representation
in Chile's democratic periods, overshadowing unions, social movements,
and other forms of representation. Party penetration in the electorate,
however, has not been powerful. Parties have appeared and disappeared
with frequency, and most parties have been relatively weak organisationally.
More so than is the case in Uruguay, Venezuela from 1958 until
the 1990s, Costa Rica or most of Western Europe, Chile's democratic
periods have allowed space for anti-party populists to develop successful
political careers, including capturing the presidency.

Party Systems in East Central Europe maps the key historical periods and turning points in the development of the party system in this East Central Europe. This book also provides political analysis of the central issues related to party politics, including the ties of political parties to broader social processes, the operation of parties within governments, and the policies that the parties represent and enforce

The diversity of issue interests and party options in multiparty systems makes individual electoral decisions increasingly complex. Voters are challenged to find a political party that represents their own political views in this more complex political space. This research offers a new methodological approach to studying voting choice in a multidimensional party space. We integrate the issue preferences of European voters and the issue preferences of party elites in a two-dimensional model of electoral choice. A common space of political competition for citizens and party elites is defined by the economic and cultural cleavages using data from the 2009 European Elections Studies (EES). Our innovation is to employ multilevel structural equation modeling to address the unique statistical challenges of a multi-dimensional party space, mass-elite comparisons, and cross-national analysis. This new approach generates results that are distinctly different from previous studies—even those using the same dataset. By factoring in the measurement of issue dimensions, economic issues have a stronger impact than recognized using previous methodologies, with more modest cultural influences on voting. Moreover, there are significant cross-over effects of the two cleavages in voters' choices. The results reveal the complexity of realignment between voters and political parties in Western Europe.

"Party Systems: Types, Dimensions, and Explanations" published on by Oxford University Press.

As the introduction to this special issue highlights, the Great Recession, along with the more recent phenomenon such as the refugees' crisis and the Brexit referendum, has contributed to the success and strengthening of populist Eurosceptic parties across European party systems. The loss of legitimacy of governments and European institutions has opened a window of opportunity for parties expressing anti-establishment positions and populist orientations and criticizing the political-economic arrangements prevailing in Europe. Our study focuses on the rise of a specific left-wing populist Euroscepticism linked with the impact of the Great Recession and austerity measures in Portugal and Spain and the party system transformations. Thus, economic issues, bailouts, and, above all, anti-austerity measures were the main driving forces behind the transformations of Iberian party systems. The increase in populist reactions in both countries after the economic crisis and the implementation of austerity had to do with the transformation of the radical left emphasizing distributive issues in Eurosceptic populist directions. Finally, the analysis shows the distinctiveness of the populist Euroscepticism of the new challenger, Podemos, which illustrates the opportunities afforded with the economic crisis for the rise of new challenger parties exhibiting the contemporary link between populism and Euroscepticism in the radical left.