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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.

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 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.

'Party identification' has been variously described: as an anchor; as constituting 'psychological membership' of, or 'psychological identification' with the party; and so on. The compilers of a recent collection of political attitude measures, published under the auspices of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (where most of the election analyses since 1952 have pivoted about the concept), even describe party identification as 'probably the most important attitude variable in the field of political behavior'.² But the term itself and its connotations are misleading. Even where they do not suggest a borrowing from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysisγ they tend to define away a set of questions that need to be answered: a preference for one party compared to what?; an intense preference, in what sense and compared to whom?4In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that 'if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free', and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.

This article reads the restructuring of European party systems in the 2010s as a transition from cartel to techno-populist parties, with a specific focus on left-populist challengers. Adopting a historical-institutionalist perspective, it demonstrates how a long-term cartelization and particular mode of crisis management after 2008 drove the gradual replacement of the party cartel with a cohabitation of populism and technocratic politics: techno-populism. Although this techno-populist template has been deployed for parties such as Five Star Movement and some right-wing populist outfits, it has usually been left aside for left-wing variants. This article investigates two techno-populist subtypes from the left: Corbynism in the United Kingdom and Podemos in Spain. The former took place within a cartel party ('intra-party'), while the latter occurred from outside the party cartel ('extra-party'). Although such party cartelization cuts across cases, the rise of Corbynism and Podemos took place under different institutional conditions: different electoral systems, different European Union membership and different dynamics of party competition on the left. The article concludes with the observation that rather than an anomaly, the presence of techno-populist tropes in and outside of parties and across institutional settings indicates the pervasiveness of these logics in contemporary European party politics.

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. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]

A modern British election campaign is multidimensional, with significant variations in party strategies over time and location. In the general elections of 1992 and 1997, the Labour Party developed innovative forms of campaigning, some of which the Conservative Party attempted to replicate in the 2001 general election. The article outlines the main features of Labour's campaign leading up to the 2001 general election. In order to evaluate the impact of Labour's campaign on turnout and party choice, data on the Conservative and Liberal Democrat campaigns are also examined using the 2001 British Election Study panel survey. The impact of party campaigning is revealed to have a significant effect on both turnout and party choice. Liberal Democrat and Labour campaigning proves to be especially influential. These findings reinforce earlier research on the importance of party campaigning in influencing voting behaviour.