This book explores how intra-party politics affects government formation and termination in parliamentary systems, where the norm is the formation of coalition governments. The authors look beyond party cohesion and discipline in parliamentary democracies to take a broader view, assuming a diversity of preferences among party members and then exploring the incentives that give rise to coordinated party behaviour at the electoral, legislative and executive levels. The chapters in this book share a common analytical framework, confronting theoretical models of government formation with empirical data, some drawn from cross-national analyses and others from theoretically structured case studies. A distinctive feature of the book is that it explores the impact of intra-party politics at different levels of government: national, local and EU. This offers the opportunity to investigate existing theories of coalition formation in new political settings. Finally, the book offers a range of innovative methods for investigating intra-party politics which, for example, creates a need to estimate the policy positions of individual politicians inside political parties. This book will be of interest to political scientists, especially scholars involved in research on political parties, parliamentary systems, coalition formation and legislative behaviour, multilevel governance, European and EU politics.

A new and wide-ranging empirical overview of party policy in 47 modern democracies, including all of the new democracies of Eastern Europe.

It updates and radically extends Policy and Party Competition (1992), which established itself as a key mainstream data source for all political scientists exploring the policy positions of political parties.

This essential text is divided into three clear parts:

Part I introduces the study, themes and methodology

Part II deals in depth with the wide range of issues involved in estimating and analyzing the policy positions of key political actors.

Part III is the key data section that identifies key policy dimensions across the 47 countries, detailing their party positions and median legislators, and is complemented by graphical representations of each party system.

This book is an invaluable reference for all political scientists, particularly those interested in party policy and comparative politics.

This book explores how intra-party politics affects government formation and termination in parliamentary systems, where the norm is the formation of coalition governments.

The authors look beyond party cohesion and discipline in parliamentary democracies to take a broader view, assuming a diversity of preferences among party members and then exploring the incentives that give rise to coordinated party behaviour at the electoral, legislative and executive levels. The chapters in this book share a common analytical framework, confronting theoretical models of government formation with empirical data, some drawn from cross-national analyses and others from theoretically structured case studies. A distinctive feature of the book is that it explores the impact of intra-party politics at different levels of government: national, local and EU. This offers the opportunity to investigate existing theories of coalition formation in new political settings. Finally, the book offers a range of innovative methods for investigating intra-party politics which, for example, creates a need to estimate the policy positions of individual politicians inside political parties.

This book will be of interest to political scientists, especially scholars involved in research on political parties, parliamentary systems, coalition formation and legislative behaviour, multilevel governance, European and EU politics.

"Policy and Party Competition "(1992) established itself as one of the mainstream data sources used by political scientists, when exploring the policy positions of political parties and has become a standard data resource for comparative political science.
This new book updates and radically extends this work, providing a wide-ranging empirical overview of party policy in 47 modern democracies, including all of the new democracies of Eastern Europe. The book is divided into three parts:
- Part I introduces the study, themes and methodology

- Part II contains a set of substantive chapters dealing in depth with the wide range of issues involved in the estimating and analyzing the policy positions of key political actors.

- Part III is the data section identifying the key policy dimensions in each of the 47 countries, party positions and median legislators on each of these, and a two-dimensional representation of each party system.
This book will prove to be an invaluable reference for all political scientists, particularly those interested in party policy and comparative politics.