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In response to Koole's criticisms of our cartel party argument, we suggest that the relationship between participation in an inter-party cartel (a systemic characteristic) and the characteristics of the individual parties participating in the cartel is strong enough to generate a `cartel party' as a party type. While the boundaries between interest organizations and the state have blurred, this is a generalization of the blurring of boundaries between parties and the state to which we referred, and only means that more of the traditional linkages between society and the state are becoming problematic. Precursors of the cartel party phenomenon can be traced to the 1950s or before, but in recent years it has become increasingly typical rather than aberrational. While there are no fully fledged cartel parties (as there never were fully fledged mass or catch-all parties), the type has developed sufficiently as to justify the specification of an additional `corner' in space, relative to which real-world cases can be anchored.

Many recent discussions of the decline of party are predicated on the assumption that the Duverger/socialist mass-party model is the only model for parties. We contend that this assumption is misconceived, that the mass-party model is only one, temporally limited and contingent model, and that it is necessary to differentiate notions of adaptation and change from notions of decline or failure. Following an analysis of how various models of party can be located in terms of the relationship between civil society and the state, we contend that the recent period has witnessed the emergence of a new model of party, the cartel party, in which colluding parties become agents of the state and employ the resources of the state (the party state) to ensure their own collective survival. Finally, we suggest that the recent challenge to party is in fact a challenge to the cartel that the established parties have created for themselves.

At least since the beginning of the 1980s, much of the writing on the strategies, tactics, and policies of parties has explicitly cautioned against the treatment of party as a "unitary actor"" (e.g., Daalder 1983; Laver and Schofield 1990). Party leaders, it is now argued, may differ from one another and from party followers with regard to the ends which they pursue and the resources which they employ; even within the leadership itself, it is suggested, the conflict between factions may be such as to militate against any theories taking the party as a whole as the relevant unit of analysis. Nonetheless, there is a striking lack of consensus regarding the number and type of different units into which a party may be disaggregated, and the extent to which this disaggregation may be applied to an understanding of processes of organizational change.

MUCH RECENT CROSS-NATIONAL RESEARCH IS HIGHLY DEPENDENT ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STANCE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN A VARIETY OF NATIONS, USUALLY MEASURED IN TERMS OF SOME MORE OR LESS EXPLICIT LEFT-RIGHT IDEOLOGICAL SCALE. THE NEED FOR SUCH CLASSIFICATION IS QUITE APPARENT IN THE PLETHORA OF STUDIES ATTEMPTING TO EVALUATE THE RELATIONSHIP OF POLITICAL PARTIES TO PUBLIC POLICY OUTCOMES. IN VIRTUALLY ALL SUCH RESEARCH. LEFT PARTIES ARE DISTINGUISHED FROM ALL OTHER PARTIES (SEE, FOR EXAMPLE, HEWITT, 1977; TUFTE, 1979), WHILE IN A FEW, THE FOCUS IS TIGHTER, WITH CASTLES (1978; 1982) DISCUSSING THE ROLE OF RIGHT AND CENTRE PARTIES AND CAMERON (1982), IN ADDITION, EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTIES. ONCE THE PROBLEM OF CLASSIFICATION IS MORE COMPLEX THAN DISTINGUISHING THE LEFT FROM THE REST, IT BECOMES NECESSARY TO LOCATE THE POLITICAL POSITIONS OF PARTIES ON SOME SORT OF UNIDIMENSIONAL OR MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALE, WHERE THE DIMENSIONS ARE RELATED TO THE EXPLANATIONS BEING OFFERED FOR PUBLIC POLICY VARIATION. THE LOCATION OF POLITICAL POSITION IS ALSO CRUCIAL IN A RANGE OF MORE DESCRIPTIVE STUDIES OF SHIFTING ELECTORAL ALLEGIANCES. CLEARLY, THE PROBLEM IS MINIMIZED WHEN DESCRIBING SHIFTS BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL PARTIES, BUT WHEN THE INTENTION IS TO ASSESS SHIFTS SHIFTS BETWEEN IDEOLOGICALLY DEFINED BLOCKS OR 'TENDANCES', IT AGAIN BECOMES NECESSARY TO LOCATE PARTIES VIS-A-VIS EACH OTHER IN ORDER TO DETERMINE BLOCK COHERENCE AND BLOCK BOUNDARIES (SEE BARTPY: 1984

Recent decades have seen a wave of institutional changes of the core democratic rules in advanced democracies. These changes include reforms of electoral systems; decentralization of power to subnational governments; the creation or enhancement of direct-democratic institutions; a rise in public subsidies to political parties; and shifts in the balance of power between executive and legislature. Nevertheless, political science has developed a limited understanding of what explains institutional change in democracies that are already consolidated. This is partly due to the lack of comparative data on the subject, with most studies of institutional change focusing on a single country, or on a single type of reform (e.g. electoral system change). Our paper seeks to bridge this gap by presenting the preliminary findings of an international research project that compared seven dimensions of institutional change in 18 consolidated European democracies between 1990 and 2008, producing a unique dataset whose content has been fully verified by national experts. This dataset provides the empirical basis for evaluating the type and extent of institutional change in consolidated European democracies, as well as developing hypotheses about the motivations and calculations behind these reforms.