Parties without Partisans Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies

by Dalton, Russell J.; Wattenberg, Martin P.

• ISBN13: 9780199253098
• ISBN10: 0199253099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

If democracy without political parties is unthinkable, what would happen if the role of political parties if the democratic process is weakened? The ongoing debate about the vitality of political parties is also a debate about the vitality of representative democracy. Leading scholars in thefield of party research assess the evidence for partisan decline or adaptation for the OECD nations in this book. It documents the broadscale erosion of the public's partisan identities in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. Partisan dealignment is diminishing involvement in electoralpolitics, and for those who participate it leads to more volatility in their voting choices, an openness to new political appeals, and less predictablity in their party preferences. Political parties have adapted to partisan dealignment by strengthening their internal organizational structures andpartially isolating themselves from the ebbs and flows of electoral politics. Centralized, professionalized parties with short time horizons have replaced the ideologically-driven mass parties of the past. This study also examines the role of parties within government, and finds that parties haveretained their traditional roles in structuring legislative action and the function of government-further evidence that party organizations are insulating themselves from the changes transforming democratic publics. Parties without Partisans is the most comprehensive cross-national study of partiesin advanced industrial democracies in all of their forms -- in electoral politics, as organizations, and in government. Its findings chart both how representative democracy has been transformed in the later half of the 20th Century, as well as what the new style of democratic politics is likely tolook like in the 21st Century.

Author Biography

Russell J. Dalton, Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine Martin P. Wattenberg, Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
List of Tables	x
Notes on Contributors	xii
Introduction
Unthinkable Democracy: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies	3	(16)
Russell J. Dalton
Martin P. Wattenberg
PART I. PARTIES IN THE ELECTORATE
The Decline of Party Identifications	19	(18)
Russell .I. Dalton
The Consequences of Partisan Dealignment	37	(27)
Russell J. Dalton
Ian McAllister
Martin P. Wattenberg
The Decline of Party Mobilization	64	(15)
Martin P. Wattenberg
PART II. PARTIES AS POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Parties without Members? Party Organization in a Changing Electoral Environment	79	(23)
Susan E. Scarrow
Political Parties as Campaign Organizations	102	(27)
David M. Farrell
Paul Webb
From Social Integration to Electoral Contestation: The Changing Distribution of Power within Political Parties	129	(28)
Susan E. Scarrow
Paul Webb
David M. Farrell
PART III. PARTIES IN GOVERNMENT
Parties in Legislature: Two Competing Explanations	157	(23)
Shaun Bowler
Parties at the Core of Government	180	(28)
Kaare Strom
From Platform Declaration to Policy Outcomes: Changing Party Profiles and Partisan Influence over Policy	208	(30)
Miki L. Caul
Mark M. Gray
On the Primacy of Party in t Government: Why Legislative Parties Can Survive Party Decline in the Electorate	238	(23)
Michael F. Thies
CONCLUSION
Partisan Change and the Democratic Process	261	(25)
Russell J. Dalton
Martin P. Wattenberg
References	286	(25)
Index	311