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Party System Change - Approaches and Interpretations (Paperback, Revised)
Loot Price: R2,317
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Party System Change - Approaches and Interpretations (Paperback, Revised)
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This unique and important new book looks at how we interpret the
evidence of change and stability in modern parties and party
systems. Focusing primarily on processes of political adaptation
and control, it also concerns how parties and party systems
generate their own momentum and 'freeze' themselves into place.
Amidst the widespread contemporary discussion of the challenge to
modern democracy and the crisis of traditional forms of political
representation, it offers a welcome emphasis on how party systems
survive, and on how change, when it does occur, may be analysed and
understood. The first part of the book deals with questions of
persistence and change, and with the vulnerability and endurance of
traditional parties. In the second part, attention shifts to the
question of party organization, and to the ways in which the
established parties are increasingly coming to invade the state,
finding there a new source of privilege and a new means of ensuring
their own survival. The third part of the book focuses on
structures of competition in Western party systems, as well as on
the problems associated with the consolidation of the new party
systems in post-communist Europe. This is the first book to be
entirely devoted to the question of party and party system change,
and offers and essential guide to the understanding of this crucial
theme. 'Peter Mair has produced a book that represents political
science at its most erudite . . . It is a learned work based on
wide reading. It is brimming with references to the contributions
of other scholars.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'Building on
several previously published essays of his, Mair has produced a
precious little book. I particularly admire his ability to
construct his argument with reference to the existing theories and
to buttress it resorting to the available data. Moreover, he
cleverly suggests different lines of interpretation and areas where
new research is needed....there is a lot to be learned and to be
utilised in Mair's analysis. The book is to be commended both for
what it says and for what it suggests'. Gianfranco Pasquino, West
European Politics 'With this volume Peter Mair brings together
nearly a decade's worth of his work on European political parties.
All but two chapters have been previously published, but in such a
range of locations that the breadth and depth of his scholarship
will likely have been underappreciated by all but the most
dedicated students of European political parties. . . . The book
has many strengths. It offers an important counterpoint to a
literature that has become perhaps too focused on survey research
and the behaviour of voters. The distinctions made between party
system, party as organization and party in the electorate, while
not completely novel, have been used with good effect to clarify
the analysis of electoral change. Mair has drawn our attention,
once again, to the intriguing notion of party autonomy vis-(-vis
the state and civil society. The book is exceptionally clearly
written and displays the author's encyclopedic knowledge of
European political parties. Donald E. Blake, Canadian Journal of
Political Science
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