Party Politics in New Democracies

by Paul Webb, Stephen White

Overview

The sister volume to Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies, this book offers a systematic and rigorous analysis of parties in some of the world's major new democracies. Drawing on a wealth of expertise and data, the book assesses the popular legitimacy, organizational development and functional performance of political parties in Latin America and post-communist Eastern Europe. It demonstrates the generational differences between parties in the old and new democracies, and reveals contrasts among the latter. Parties are shown to be at their most feeble in those recently transitional democracies characterized by personalistic, candidate-centered forms of politics, but in other new democracies—especially those with parliamentary systems—parties are more stable and institutionalized, enabling them to facilitate a meaningful degree of popular choice and control. Wherever party politics is weakly institutionalized, political inequality tends to be greater, commitment to pluralism less certain, clientelism and corruption more pronounced, and populist demagoguery a greater temptation. Without party, democracy's hold is more tenuous.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199289660
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/23/2009
Series:	Comparative Politics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Webb is Professor of Politics at the University of Sussex. He is author or editor of numerous publications, including The Modern British Party System , Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Societies (OUP, 2002, coedited) and The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies (OUP , 2005, coedited). He is currently an editor of the journals Party Politics and Representation.

Stephen White is Professor of International Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Glasgow, and a Senior Research Associate of its School of Slavonic, Central and East European Studies. A former president of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies and chief editor of the Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, his recent books include Russia After Communism (coedited, 2002), Postcommunist Belarus (coedited, 2005) and Developments in Russian Politics (2005).

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Conceptualizing the Institutionalization and Performance of Political Parties in New Democracies, Paul Webb and Stephen White
2. Russia's Client Party System, Stephen White
3. Political Parties in Ukraine: Virtual and Representational, Andrew Wilson and Sarah Birch
4. Poland: Party System by Default, Krzysztof Jasiewicz
5. Building Party Government: Political Parties in the Czech and Slovak Republics, Petr Kopecký
6. The Only Game in Town: Party Politics in Hungary, Zsolt Enyedi and Gábor Tóka
7. Parties and Governability in Brazil, Barry Ames and Timothy J. Power
8. 'Que se Vayan Todos!' The Struggle for Democratic Party Politics in Contemporary Argentina, Celia Szusterman
9. Strong Parties in a Struggling Party System: Mexico in the Democratic Era, Joy Langston
10. The Durability of the Party System in Chile, Alan Angell
11. Political Parties in Costa Rica: Sustaining Democratic Stability in a Latin American Context, John A. Booth
12. Political Parties in New Democracies: Trajectories of Development and Implications for Democracy, Paul Webb and Stephen White
Index