"Political Parties and the Transition to Democracy" provides a systematic comparison of the democratic transitions in both Eastern and Southern Europe. Political Parties often play a crucial role in the process of democratization and the establishment of new parliamentary democracies. They often form as a result of opposition to a previous authoritarian regime and their performance during the transition to democracy can give a good indication as to the nature of, and prospects for, the new democracy.
Four main themes concerning the role of parties are examined - "coping with the past" (party identities and inheritances); the formation and performance of new democratic political elites; parties and alliances/coalitions; and their electoral behavior. These themes are discussed in comparative perspective with the aid of four case studies from both Southern and Eastern Europe. The countries covered include Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.
Democratization is a very complex process because it operates on many levels; By studying political parties this book focuses on an area that links many of the levels. "Political Parties and the Transition of Democracy" makes sense of democratization and the role of parties in that process.

"Political Parties and the Transition to Democracy" provides a systematic comparison of the democratic transitions in both Eastern and Southern Europe. Political Parties often play a crucial role in the process of democratization and the establishment of new parliamentary democracies. They often form as a result of opposition to a previous authoritarian regime and their performance during the transition to democracy can give a good indication as to the nature of, and prospects for, the new democracy.
Four main themes concerning the role of parties are examined - "coping with the past" (party identities and inheritances); the formation and performance of new democratic political elites; parties and alliances/coalitions; and their electoral behavior. These themes are discussed in comparative perspective with the aid of four case studies from both Southern and Eastern Europe. The countries covered include Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria.
Democratization is a very complex process because it operates on many levels; By studying political parties this book focuses on an area that links many of the levels. "Political Parties and the Transition of Democracy" makes sense of democratization and the role of parties in that process.

An in-depth analysis of the changes in the Hungarian Communist Party, the difficulties it experienced during the early stages, its development and internal structure, as well as its relationship with Moscow and the Komintern. It also treats of the well-known personalities of the party, including Bela Kun, Georg Lucacs, Matyas Rakosi, Laszlo Rajk, Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar. The translation also features a specially written preface, which up-dates events to 1989, including the death of Janos Kadar and the effects of "glasnost."

This title was first published in 2002. This book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the UK-EU relationship and on the development of the Labour party since Tony Blair became leader in 1994, providing a detailed examination of the process of policy-making undertaken by Labour in relation to the 1996-97 intergovernmental conference (IGC) of the EU. It tracks policy development from opposition to government, culminating in the conclusion of treaty negotiations at Amsterdam in June 1997. The book moves beyond the existing literature in providing an original account of policy-making based on internal party and government sources. It highlights a 'New Labour' approach to the EU - set in place by the time of the Amsterdam summit and characteristic of the Blair government's European policy thereafter - and suggests that this approach represents both continuity and change with previous UK governments and a break from the European social democratic perspective that had been central to Labour's previous pro-European conversion.

The relationship between the Conservative Party and the trade unions has been at best uneasy and more often than not hostile. This study examines the attitudes and policies of the Conservative Party towards the trade unions from the 19th century onwards, linking these to wider political and economic circumstances and the key personalities involved. Peter Dorey shows that there has always been disagreements within the Conservative Party as to how it should deal with the trade unions. These disagreements have in large part reflected divisions within British Conservatism itself, between the paternalist, "one nation" strand which has traditionally favoured a conciliatory approach to the trade unions, and the "economic liberal/social authoritarian" strand, which has always hankered after the virtual suppression of trade unionism.

`This is an important work of scholarship translated into English with great skill. ' - Ian Neary, Asian Affairs

`Banno's contribution will long remain the standard work in English on the subject.' - George Akita, Monumenta Nipponica

Politics in Indonesia describes the attitudes, aspirations and frustrations of the key players in Indonesian politics as they struggle to shape the future. The book focuses on the role of political Islam; Douglas E. Ramage shows that the state has been remarkably successful in maintaining secular political institutions in a predominantly Muslim society. He analyses the way in which political questions are framed with reference to the national ideology, the Pancasila.

An examination of the evolution of the democratic two-party system in Taiwan. This work explores the growth of Taiwan's competitive party system in the context of social attitudes, issue-based politics and local factions.

Describes and analyses the propaganda and violence of the four Cambodian parties to the 1991 Paris peace agreements. This volume explores Cambodia during the UNTAC period and sets the events within the larger context of Khmer politics, history and culture.

Paul Adelman seeks to explain the Liberal Party's dramatic transformation in political fortune. This clear, objective up-to-date account of the history of the Liberal Party covers the key period, 1910-1931. Focusing on liberal decline and drawing upon the different views forwarded by historians to account for this phenomenon, it discusses liberal decline before World War 1, the impact of the war on the liberals and the divisions that grew in the party after December 1916 between followers of Asquith and Lloyd George. A number of general factors are also covered, the impact of social and economic change, the effects of the Reform Act of 1918 and the rise of the Labour party. An ideal text for A-level and undergraduate students of history and politics.

This title was first published in 2000: A guide to the changing place of political parties within the Italian political system, seeking to shed light on how the parties operate and their role in the country's politics. Starting from a recognition of the traditional centrality of parties in Italian political life, the book's main focus is on the consequences and causes of the transformation in the party system which began to unfold from 1989 onwards. Arguing that the latter has its roots in the specific choices made by the traditional parties as they attempted to adapt to change in their electoral environment, the book then proceeds to examine what effects the changing party system is having on such traditional, "party-driven" features of Italian politics such as "sottogoverno" and "lotizzazione" and on the functioning of such institutions as parliament and the executive. The book concludes by attempting to assess whether parties are still central to political and civil society or whether their role has diminished in importance.

Although the literature on party politics has significantly advanced both methodologically and theoretically in recent years, the study of political parties in Turkey has been noticeably disconnected and lacking from such conversations. This book evaluates well-established theories and trends in exiting party politics literature and relates them to the case of Turkey. It explores fundamental questions such as: Who controls party organizations and how does the locus of control change over time? What kinds of power struggles are observed inside a party and between whom? What do the present and past records of party membership imply for party organizations? What role do grassroots activists play in local and national politics? How do the ideological orientations of party members differ from party leaders and other voters? What types of social cleavages shape political parties and how do they change over time? What constitutes the relationship between the state and parties today? Who finances political parties and what does this imply about the quality of democracy? How and why do party systems change? The various chapters show that party politics in the Turkish context is significantly different to Western and new democracies. By highlighting the significant contribution the Turkish case can make to existing conceptual frameworks and theories, this book will be a valuable resource for anyone studying political parties, party systems and comparative politics, as well as Turkish politics.

In Central and Eastern Europe, radical right actors significantly impact public debates and mainstream policy agenda. But despite this high discursive influence, the electoral fortune of radical right parties in the region is much less stable. It has been suggested that this may be due to the fact that mainstream competitors increasingly co-opt issues which are fundamental for the radical right. However, the extent to which such tactics play a role in radical right electoral success and failure is still a subject for debate. This book is the first to provide a systematic theoretical framework and in-depth empirical research on the interaction between discursive influence, party competition and the electoral fortune of radical right parties in Central and Eastern Europe. It argues that in order to fully explain the impact of mainstream party strategies in this regard, it is vital to widen the analysis beyond competition over issues themselves, and towards their various legitimizing narratives and frame ownership. Up-to-date debates over policies of collective identity (minority, morality and nationalizing politics) in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia serve as best cases to observe these under-researched phenomena. The analytical model is evaluated comparatively using original, primary data combined with election studies and expert surveys. Advancing an innovative, fine-grained approach on the mechanisms and effects of party competition between radical right and mainstream parties, this book will be of interest to students and scholars researching the far right and European party politics, as well as political contestation and framing.

The parliamentary elections of 2015-16 in Greece, Spain and Portugal had extraordinary consequences, bringing repeat elections, unprecedented processes of government formation and uncharted government outcomes. Greece formed a coalition of radical left and radical right and Portugal its first government supported by the communist party while Spain took ten months to get a government. These developments are especially astonishing in three states which in previous decades were a byword for democratic stability. After the transitions following the fall of their dictatorships in the 1970s, Greece, Spain and Portugal established bipolar electoral competition and predictable patterns of government formation. But more recently, all three countries have been in the frontline of the economic crisis and austerity implementation, triggering electoral realignments and turning the radical left into a major player. This volume offers essential understanding of the political destabilisation of Southern Europe. It includes detailed analyses of all five 'crisis elections' and of Greece's bailout referendum. It also provides studies of the five 'new contender' parties (SYRIZA, Podemos, Ciudadanos, the Bloco Esquerda and the Portuguese Communist Party) which played a key role in government formation for the first time. The chapters originally published as a special issue in South European Society and Politics.

This book addresses the nature of factionalism in parties that are created or rebuilt after a period of dictatorship. It maintains that, while party leaders often view factions in negative terms as divisive, factional behaviour can also be constructive. The volume brings together detailed case studies from post-authoritarian Spain, Greece and Portugal, from Turkey (where factionalism has hampered democratization) and from the post-communist states in Eastern Europe.

Factional Politics and Democratization addresses the nature of factionalism in parties that are created or rebuilt after a period of dictatorship. It maintains that, while party leaders often view factions in negative terms as divisive, factional behaviour can be constructive and can contribute to the building of political parties as viable electoral organizations. Factionalism as a process involves fusion as well as fission. The volume brings together detailed case studies from post-authoritarian Spain, Greece and Portugal, from Turkey (where factionalism has hampered democratization) and from the post-communist states of Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Several chapters provide comparative analysis which goes beyond a particular party or national experience. Together with introductory and concluding chapters, this combination of case studies and comparative analysis provides pointers to what is generalizable and what is specific to particular cases. Equally, the book offers a framework within which further studies of party factionalism in the context of democratization may be undertaken.

The history of the Conservative Party during the first half of the twentieth century was marked by crisis and controversy, from Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform campaign through the Lloyd George coalition and the National Government between the wars to the defeat of 1945 and the post war recovery. This study provides a lucid account of this turbulent and formative period in the history of the most durable and adaptive force in modern British politics.

The end of the cold war and the fall of the Soviet empire have had major consequences for Italian politics. Leonard Weinberg explores some of those consequences, focusing on the transformation of the Italian Communist party from a Leninist to a democratic party. He also discusses the relationship between the end of communism and the unfolding of the entire Italian system.

"The Transformation of Italian Communism "has two objectives. First, it calls the reader's attention to the role of international developments, an important but largely overlooked area involved in the study of European party politics. Traditional texts in this area emphasize domestic factors, but Weinberg focuses on the influence of international developments on domestic party politics in Italy. The implications for other nations are transparent.

The second objective of this work is to examine how Italy's Communist party, the largest such party of its kind in the Western world, reacted to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Weinberg analyzes the meaning of these events for long-tune party members in Italy'as well as for Italian political and cultural life. "The Transformation of Italian Communism "offers an original, intimate, and unique assessment of how the end of the cold war has affected Italian political culture. It will be a valuable addition to those interested in the convulsions taking place in modem Italy, as well as to political scientists and theorists of political culture.

Consociational power sharing is often perceived to be the method of conflict management that is most likely to succeed in deeply divided societies. The case of Northern Ireland in particular is heralded by many as a consociational success story. Since the signing of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement in 1998, significant conflict transformation has taken place in the form of a considerable reduction in levels of violence and the establishment of power sharing between unionists and nationalists. This book looks at what consociational power sharing achieves after its implementation - specifically, whether it can work to overcome existing identities in divided societies, or whether it simply freezes divisions. It argues that if consociational power sharing is facilitating a move towards a genuinely shared society, this would be demonstrated in the focus of the election campaigns of Northern Ireland's political parties, which would be almost exclusively based around socio-economic issues affecting the whole population, rather than narrow single identity concerns. However, the book claims that, on the whole, this has not been realised. Although election campaigns are today less strident than they were in the pre-1998 era, it remains the case that they usually foreground single identity symbolism, as it is this that resonates with voters. Whilst consociational power sharing has been very successful in reducing levels of violent conflict and facilitating elite level cooperation between unionists and nationalists, it has been much less successful in reducing divisions within wider society to facilitate a genuinely shared Northern Irish identity. By establishing an important middle ground between consociational proponents and critics, this research will be of significant interest to students and scholars of ethnic politics, political sociology, conflict management, and divided societies more generally.

In Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics Nick Ellison argues that the concept of equality is the cornerstone of the British socialist tradition. He examines the alternative understandings of equality which have divided the labour party since 1930 and traces the origins of the current shift away from concern for social and economic equality to an increasing emphasis on liberty and individual entitlement.
Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics is also concerned with contemporary attitudes within the Labour party, discussing the importance of the concept to debates about citizenship and market socialism.

To the outside world Deng Xiaoping represents a contradiction - he is both China's most successful moderniser, and the "Butcher of Beijing", China's supreme leader who must take responsibility for the events surrounding Tiananmen Square in June 1989. However, Deng the politition has no such contradiction: only the Chinese Communist Party can bring modernization to China. For Deng any threat to the Communist Party is a threat to the project of China's modernization. This book attempts to understand Deng's own particular role and the sources of his political power. Deng Xiaoping was involved with the communist movement before there was even a Communitst Party of China and his entire career has been shaped by both the party and the network of relationships and people within it. The author also explores the way in which Deng has survived being purged three times via his contacts with key politicians, Zhou Enlai in Paris in the early 1920s and Mao Zedong from 1933 to the early 1960s.

In 2011, the Maghreb occupied a prominent place in world headlines when Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, became the birthplace of the so-called Arab Spring. Events in Tunisia sparked huge and sometimes violent uprisings. Longstanding dictatorships fell in their wake. The ensuing democratic reforms resulted in elections and the victory of several Islamist political parties in the Arab world. This book explores the origins, development and rise of these Islamist parties by focusing on the people behind them. In doing so, it provides readers with a concise history of Sunni Islam in North Africa, the violent struggles against European colonial occupation, and the subsequent quest for an affirmation of Muslim identities in its wake. Exploring Islamism as an identity movement rooted in the colonial experience, this book argues that votes for Islamist parties after the Arab Spring reflected a universal human need for an authentic sense of self. This view contrasts with the popular belief that support for Islamists in North Africa reflects a dangerous "fundamentalist" view of the world that seeks to simply impose archaic religious laws on modern societies. Rather, the electoral success of Islamists in the Maghreb, like Tunisia's Ennahdha party, is rooted in a reaffirmation of the Arab-Islamic identities of the Maghreb states, long delayed by dictatorships that mimicked Western models and ideologies (e.g., Socialism). Ultimately, however, it is argued that this affirmation is a temporary phenomenon that will give way in time to the fundamental need for good governance, accountability, and a stable growing economy in these countries. Written in an accessible format, and providing fresh analytical perspectives on Islamism in the Maghreb, this book will be a valuable tool for students and scholars of Political Islam and North African Politics.

This title was first published in 2000. With the advent of the Second World War, fascism became inextricably associated with anti-Semitism. It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find that a significant number of Jewish people were politically inclined towards the left and were actively involved in socialist movements. The essays in this volume seek to arrive at an understanding of Jewish involvement in Labour movements outside Israel from the end of the First World War to the final stages of World War Two. This was a period which saw the creation of several international socialist institutions. Gail Malmgreen looks at the American Jewish Labor Committee and examines the interaction between trades unions and the Jewish community. Deborah Osmond, Christine Collette and Jason Heppell discuss the contributions made by Jews living in Britain to Labour politics, including the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Labour and Socialist International. The reactions and stances of the British Labour party in relation to Zionism and the Holocaust are the subjects of essays by Isabelle Tombs and Paul Kelemen. David De Vries's study of the position of Jewish white-collar workers in British-ruled Palestine provides another perspective on the complex web of relationships between British and Jewish identity, class, labour and politics. An invaluable bibliography by Arieh Lebowitz of sources for the study of Jewish interaction with the American and British Labour movements completes this important survey.

When Neil Kinnock took over the leadership of the Labour Party in 1983, he inherited a divided organization, saddled with an array of unpopular left-wing policies. When he resigned in 1992, Labour was a radically different party, tightly organized and committed to working within the framework of a privately-owned market economy. "Crisis and Transformation: The Labour Party Since 1979" tells the story of Labour's struggle to survive during the turbulent years in opposition. The book charts the internal strife of the early 1980s, the transformation of Labour's structure, strategy and policies under Kinnock's leadership, and the party's rise to a position at the brink of power in the run-up to the 1992 election, at which its hopes were dashed again. Eric Shaw has provided the first systematic analysis of the evolution of Labour's policies, power structure and strategies during the 1980s and up until the present day. Using new sources and documents, he looks at how and why the transformation occurred, examining the pressures and constraints impeding the modernization process of the party, its shift to the political middle ground and the new professionalism of Labour's campaigning and o

West Bengal has often been perceived as somewhat of an aberration in the wider context of a rather chaotic Indian democracy, as the Left Front (spearheaded by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, CPIM) demonstrated a rare instance of political stability, decisively winning seven consecutive democratic elections from 1977 to 2006. Its development record has also been substantial, with a focus on land reforms, the panchayati-raj institution, and an agriculture centric development agenda. This book presents a reappraisal of the political economic history of the CPIM/Left Front regime against the backdrop of the Indian reform experience. It examines two distinct areas: the conditions that necessitated the regime to engineer a transition from an erstwhile agricultural-based growth model to a more pro-market economic agenda post-1991, and the political strategy employed to manage such a transition, attract private capital and at the same time sustain the regime's traditional rhetoric and partisan character. In order to develop a more textured understanding of the recent political developments in West Bengal, the author applies a historically nuanced and inductive political-economic analysis, which draws on published materials, and primary material such as government documents and interviews (with bureaucrats, political activists, members of the intelligentsia and ministers). A valuable contribution to the ongoing debate in the literature on the drifts underway with the Indian Left and India's economic transformation post-1990s, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Political Science, Government, Political Economy and South Asian Studies.