Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation / Edition 1

by Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslaw Markowski, Gabor Toka

Overview

Post-Communist Party Systems examines democratic party competition in four postcommunist polities in the mid-1990s, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Legacies of precommunist rule turn out to play as much a role in accounting for differences as the institutional differences incorporated in the new democratic rules of the game. The book demonstrates various developments within the four countries with regard to different voter appeal of parties, patterns of voter representation, and dispositions to join other parties in legislative or executive alliances. The authors also present interesting avenues of comparison for broader sets of countries.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521658904
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	08/13/1999
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	476
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 9.02(h) x 1.26(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Introduction Democracy and Party Competition; Part I. Theory, Party Systems and the Procedural Quality of Post-Communist Democracy: 1. Historical legacies and strategies of democratization: pathways toward post-communist polities; 2. The quality of post-communist democracy: patterns of party competition, interest representation and governance; Part II. Setting and Research Strategy: 3. From communist rule to democracy: four central and East European countries; 4. Empirical research strategy; Part III. The Structuring of Party Competition: 5. Programmatic citizen-elite linkage strategies across post-communist polities; 6. Linkage strategies within party systems: diversity among parties; Part IV. Political Alignments and Dimensions of Competition: 7. Political divides and alignments: the politicians; 8. Electoral constituency alignments: emerging political cleavages?; Part V. Political Representation and the Quality of Democratic Governance: 9. Political representation; 10. The governability of post-communist democracies: collation politics between passions and policy interests; Part VI. Conclusion: 11. The diversity of post-communist democratic governance; Appendices; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"Welcome in the field." Comparative Politics

"This hefty tome is the most substantial piece of research yet to emerge from the study of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe." Choice

"This hefty tome is the most substantial piece of research yet to emerge from the study of the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe." Choice

"This outstanding volume, authorized by a multi-national team and deploying an empirically sophisticated and theoretically driven research program, attempts to explain variation in the quality of democratic accountability, governability, and responsiveness in four postcommunist states...The result is an engaging and highly nuanced account that highlights the structuring role of communist-era legacies in shaping choices concerning new political institutions and the quality of democratic procedures...the book is theoretically rich, methodologically innovative, and opens new avenues for further research...a work of great distinction." Slavic Review

From the Publisher