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Please note date is approx. Article refers to the collapse of the socialist states of Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War.

Studies of party- and party-system stability have often explored the connection between the party-level property of Party Institutionalization (PI) and parties' electoral performance and organizational longevity, yet scholars still have not agreed on a standard measure for this concept. This article argues that the length of party statutes could provide part of such a measure, specifically for the extent to which parties have become routinized (a key dimension of PI) through the formalization of their rules and practices. We validate the plausibility of this measure using data on 303 parties from 49 countries, demonstrating that party statute length varies systematically and in ways predicted by our knowledge of how party organizations reflect their institutional environments and the complexity of internal coalitions. We also show that statute length varies in expected ways with attributes often associated with higher or lower levels of party institutionalization. We conclude that statute length offers a conceptually congruent and objective indicator of formalization, one that could be used either alone or combined with measures of parties' informal practices to advance our understanding of the relationship between PI and democratic development.

In this article, I make a first attempt at identifying how coalitions are represented in a state party's platform. Using the Christian Right as a test case for Republican coalition membership, I further examine the notion that platforms reflect elite opinion coalitions by linking coalition group influence to both elite opinion and the structure of the party organization. Using state Republican Party platforms from 2000, I identify the extent of Christian Right influence on each platform based on the proportion of platform paragraphs that focus on Christian Right issue positions and explain the variation in that proportion across states. My findings suggest that, indeed, the Christian Right's power as a coalition player is evident in state Republican Party platforms, and, at least for the Christian Right, it seems that both mass opinions and elite opinions are at work in determining the tone of the Republican Party platform.

The "issue profiles" that emerge when the 2 major pol'al parties of the US are defined according to differing criteria are discussed. Data derive mainly from the U of Connecticut's Soc Sci Data Center. It is found that over a wide array of issues, from 1948 to the present, the Democratic Party, as defined by behavioral criteria (voting support), has been more "liberal" than its self-identified counterpart, while behavioral Republicans are persistently more "conservative" than self-identified GOP partisans. Any study of the "parties in the electorate" should take into account definitional biases. Most analysis has been confined to parties defined by the self-identification of the electorate. When behavioral constructions are used instead of partisan self-perception, there are consistently greater inter-party variations. The choice of which definition is to be used in determining the composition of the citizenry parties must be related to the analysis being performed & the election or elections examined. 4 Tables. Modified HA.

This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).

The 2005 German parliamentary elections produced two parties claiming victory, the inability to form a government, and Germany's second post-war grand coalition government. This article explores the peculiarities in the contemporary dynamic of the German party system. It considers the strategy and motivation of parties and the effect of party competition. A key focus is to revisit and evaluate the predictive power of Otto Kirchheimer's 'end of ideology' proposition in the German case. On the one hand, mainstream parties seem to be converging at the ideological centre across Western Europe. At the same time, some party polarisation within the party system is evident as more marginal parties such as those of the far left and far right have gained votes at the expense of the mainstream parties in recent elections. A third possibility is that both of these circumstances have produced a political void with voters becoming increasingly apathetic and non-ideological. This paper argues that in the aggregate, trends do not reflect the predictions of Kirchheimer. (German Politics / FUB)

The entry and success of new parties has become a regular event in modern democracies. From the emergence of green to protest parties, new movements have entered the electoral arena. This article addresses one of the less studied aspects of new parties: the dynamic process of party exit and entry into politics. The article argues that changes to the party system, produced by the collapse of a political party, can lead to the successful entrance of new parties in the next election. The premise is that one party's loss is a future one's gain. The empirical results provide strong evidence that the size of the policy space created by a party collapse has a substantial impact on the level of new party's success.

Theories that explain variations in party systems typically emphasize the role of political institutions and social cleavages. Using a panel dataset of election returns from 15 Indian states from 1967 to 2004. this article establishes considerable variation in the effective number of parties across states and over time, despite the same political institutions and relatively stable social cleavages. We argue that a hitherto ignored dimension, the level of party organization, has a significant impact on the nature of the party system. The level of party organization incentivizes politicians differently in terms of their decision to stay, join another party or float a new party, when their ambitions are thwarted within a party. To test this theory, a unique indicator of party organization is developed on the basis of extensive qualitative research. We find that in Indian states where parties are more organized, both the effective number of parties and electoral volatility are lower.