The Origins of Dominant Parties


Book Description

This book asks why dominant political parties emerge in some authoritarian regimes, but not in others, focusing on Russia's experience under Putin.




Uncommon Democracies


Book Description

In this collection of original essays, thirteen country specialists working within a common comparative frame of reference analyze major examples of long-term, single-party rule in industrialized democracies. They focus on four cases: Japan under the Liberal Democratic party since 1955; Italy under the Christian Democrats for thirty-five or more years starting in 1945; Sweden under the Social Democratic party from 1932 until 1976 (and again from 1982 until present); and Israel under the Labor party from pre-statehood until 1977.




Why Dominant Parties Lose


Book Description

Why have dominant parties persisted in power for decades in countries spread across the globe? Why did most eventually lose? Why Dominant Parties Lose develops a theory of single-party dominance, its durability, and its breakdown into fully competitive democracy. Greene shows that dominant parties turn public resources into patronage goods to bias electoral competition in their favor and virtually win elections before election day without resorting to electoral fraud or bone-crushing repression. Opposition parties fail because their resource disadvantages force them to form as niche parties with appeals that are out of step with the average voter. When the political economy of dominance erodes, the partisan playing field becomes fairer and opposition parties can expand into catchall competitors that threaten the dominant party at the polls. Greene uses this argument to show why Mexico transformed from a dominant party authoritarian regime under PRI rule to a fully competitive democracy.




Factional Politics


Book Description

Drawing on theories of neo-institutionalism to show how institutions shape dissident behaviour, Boucek develops new ways of measuring factionalism and explains its effects on office tenure. In each of the four cases - from Britain, Canada, Italy and Japan - intra-party dynamics are analyzed through times series and rational choice tools.




The Canadian Party System


Book Description

The Canadian party system is a deviant case among the Anglo-American democracies. It has too many parties, it is susceptible to staggering swings from election to election, and its provincial and federal branches often seem unrelated. Unruly and inscrutable, it is a system that defies logic and classification – until now. In this political science tour de force, Richard Johnston makes sense of the Canadian party system. With a keen eye for history and deft use of recently developed analytic tools, he articulates a series of propositions underpinning the system. Chief among them was domination by the centrist Liberals, stemming from their grip on Quebec, which blocked both the Conservatives and the NDP. He also takes a close look at other peculiarities of the Canadian party system, including the stunning discontinuity between federal and provincial arenas. For its combination of historical breadth and data-intensive rigour, The Canadian Party System is a rare achievement. Its findings shed light on the main puzzles of the Canadian case, while contesting the received wisdom of the comparative study of parties, elections, and electoral systems elsewhere.




Red Against Blue


Book Description

An overview of the early political history of Colombia through an examination of the Liberal party from 1863 to 1899, its role in the Colombian poltical system, and its evolution during that time.




Political Parties in South Africa


Book Description

Political parties and the party system that underpins South Africa’s democracy have the potential to build a cohesive and prosperous nation. But in the past few years the ANC’s dominance has strained the system and tested it and its institutions’ fortitude. There are deeper issues of accountability that often spurn the Constitution and there is also a clear need to foster meaningful public participation and transparency. This volume offers a different and detailed assessment of the health of South Africa’s political system. This study intends to unravel the condition of the party system in South Africa and culminates in the question: Do South African parties promote or hinder democracy in the country? The areas of the party system that are known to require continued work are the weakness of democratic structures within parties, the perceived lack of responsibility of elected parliamentarians towards voters, non-transparent private partner financing structures and a lack of attractiveness of party-political commitment, especially for women. Experts in the respective fields address all of these areas in this book.




Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?


Book Description

A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement




The Emerging Democratic Majority


Book Description

ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR AND A WINNER OF THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY'S ANNUAL POLITICAL BOOK AWARD Political experts John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira convincingly use hard data -- demographic, geographic, economic, and political -- to forecast the dawn of a new progressive era. In the 1960s, Kevin Phillips, battling conventional wisdom, correctly foretold the dawn of a new conservative era. His book, The Emerging Republican Majority, became an indispensable guide for all those attempting to understand political change through the 1970s and 1980s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, with the country in Republican hands, The Emerging Democratic Majority is the indispensable guide to this era. In five well-researched chapters and a new afterword covering the 2002 elections, Judis and Teixeira show how the most dynamic and fastest-growing areas of the country are cultivating a new wave of Democratic voters who embrace what the authors call "progressive centrism" and take umbrage at Republican demands to privatize social security, ban abortion, and cut back environmental regulations. As the GOP continues to be dominated by neoconservatives, the religious right, and corporate influence, this is an essential volume for all those discontented with their narrow agenda -- and a clarion call for a new political order.




Friend Or Foe?


Book Description

A United Nations University Press with University of Cape Town (UCT) Press publication Within southern Africa, there is an observable increase in dominant party systems, in which one political party dominates over a prolonged period of time, within a democratic system with regular elections. This party system has replaced the one-party system that dominated Africa's political landscape after the first wave of liberations in the 1950s and 1960s. This book seeks to understand this trend and its implications for southern Africa's democracies by comparing such systems in southern Africa with others in the developing world (such as India, South Korea, and Taiwan). In particular, the case of Zimbabwe stands out as a concerning example of the direction a dominant party can take: regression into authoritarianism. India, South Korea, and Taiwan present alternative routes for the dominant party system. The salient question posed by this book is: Which route are Botswana, Namibia and South Africa taking? It answers by drawing conclusions to determine whether these countries are moving toward liberal democracy, authoritarianism, or a road in between.