Suchergebnisse

Duverger's famous dictum that "the center does not exist in politics" is the starting point of an inquiry into the possible meanings of the concept of a center, and of center parties, in European party systems. This article consists of six sections; the first five sections deal with the center as a pivot in voting, the center in traditional left-right distributions, the notion of a center in multidimensional party spaces, the center in terms of mechanics, applying rather different metaphors of scales-in-balance and of centripetal versus centrifugal forces, and the center analyzed in terms of social cleavages. Following this search for conceptual meaning, in which the writings of Duverger and Sartori receive particular attention, the record of European party systems is examined to see whether the presence or absence of center parties in party systems can contribute to a realistic classification of European party systems.

Post-Communist Party Systems examines democratic party competition in four post-communist polities in the mid-1990s: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Legacies of pre-communist rule turn out to play as much a role in accounting for differences as the institutional differences incorporated in the new democratic rules of the game. The book demonstrates various developments within the four countries with regard to different voter appeal of parties, patterns of voter representation, and dispositions to join other parties in legislative or executive alliances. The authors also present interesting avenues of comparison for broader sets of countries

Distinguished dimensions of political cleavages that may characterize the shape of party systems; advances 3 propositions to characterize one likely path of cleavage formation in postcommunist regimes. Argues that the economic institutions and resources that the deceased communist systems bequeathed to the democratic successor regimes will influence emerging political preferences, interests, and party strategies. (RSM)

In Continental Europe a New Debate Has Emerged Over the interpretation of the major changes that have taken place in political parties during the 1990s. A 'fourth wave' of democratic party-building originating in Eastern Europe has highlighted a number of new developments. Parties have emerged which are built around leaders, which have few members, are subsidized by the state and which direct their activities towards the media and the electorate rather than towards partyidentifiers. Recent contributions to this debate have sought to transform a picture of the decline of political parties by offering a new image of the party. The future of the party is to be found in what have been variously dubbed 'professional framework parties', 'media parties' or 'cartel parties'.

if a party system is really a system, i.e. a set of objects with relationships between the objects and between their attributes, and not simply an unordered set of political parties, then it is a vital problem in party research to identify the systems properties of this kind of system. We argue that the semantically relevant properties of the party systems in European democracies may be derived from the observational outcome of the operation of a party system, i.e. the national elections since the introduction of democratic procedure. Thus we arrive at five systems dimensions: functional orientation, fractionalization, radical orientation, polarization and volatility. The problems of party system change and stability are analysed by estimating the occurrence of trends and fluctuations over time in these party system dimensions for the set of European democratic party systems. The finding is that the widely accepted thesis of stability in European party systems is not corroborated.