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Political parties are such a fundamental part of democratic political life that they take on an appearance of stability and solidity that is rarely questioned—hence, when a political party collapses, political scientists are usually taken by surprise. In this context, the remarkable collapse in 1982 of Spain's governing party, the Union de Centro Democrático (UCD), long regarded as an exception to the rule of party stability, may provide some clues as to the causes of recent cases of party crisis. The catastrophic defeat of the UCD in the 1982 general election was primarily the result of a reaction by the electorate against the highly visible internal struggles and schisms, which beset the party during the preceding two years, and in many respects, represented a ‘punishment vote’ by an electorate that had become fed up with squabbles that had even reached the point (in an attempted military coup in 1981) of threatening the survival of the new democratic regime itself. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the origins of these destructive intra‐party conflicts, for which several different explanations have been set forth by scholars and journalists, and by UCD leaders themselves, the most important being that the UCD was insufficiently ‘institutionalized’. The first part looks at the concept of institutionalization, and further sections look at: the creation of the UCD—factions, incompatibilities, and the transition to democracy; the cost of constitutional consensus; the model of the party—catch‐all, factional or holding‐company; and internal conflict and external opportunities—a discussion of rational exits (defections) from the UCD.

Some scholars have concluded that the existing literature on parties is sufficient, and that there is little more that can be learned through additional study in the aftermath of a century of scholarly research on the topic. Others maybe led to dismiss further empirical study of parties on the grounds that parties are becoming increasingly irrelevant, since they are failing to respond successfully to a series of challenges, and many of their functions are performed better by less formally organized social movements, by direct contact between politicians and citizens through the broadcast media or the internet, or by innovations in direct democracy; in the view of this group of scholars, parties maybe seen as in an inexorable process of ‘decline’. Finally, there maybe some who have concluded that scholarly research on parties has failed to advance the task of developing rigorous and persuasive theory, and that further efforts along these lines are doomed to fail. Begins by reviewing each of these assertions, and concludes that such negative views are unwarranted. It concludes with a brief overview of the contributions made by the authors in each of the three parts of the book, which examine the core concepts that have guided empirical research on parties (reconceptualizing parties and party competition), their organizational structures (party organization and party models), and the changing and sometimes problematic nature of their relations with citizens in democratic political systems (party linkages and attitudes to parties).

This chapter is the third of six on the question of political representation in the EU, and the third of four that put the five requirements of the Responsible Party Model (outlined in Ch. 6) to an empirical test. The questions investigated here are whether voters have preferences on the issues at stake, and whether those preferences motivate their electoral choices; the analysis is carried out using data from the European Election Study 1994. The data are found largely to support the condition that voters hold policy preferences. They also allow two contrasts to be made while studying determinants of party choice—nation‐specific issues can be contrasted with common issues, and position issues (as exemplified by the common European currency, border control, and unemployment) with valence issues; it can then be seen which of these types of issues are most important in explaining party preferences. In addition, degrees of policy voting can be contrasted in each of the political systems. The results are hardly supportive of the Responsible Party Model in that hardly any motivational basis is found in terms of specific issues and policies for voters’ party preferences; however, the model becomes more persuasive when the focus is not only on specific policy and issue concerns but more generally on substantive political concerns and voter orientations relating to the left–right ideological position of parties.

Concerned with the development of party organizations in twentieth‐century democracies, and deals specifically with the shifting balance of power between what has earlier been termed the three organizational ‘faces’ of party: the party on the ground, the party in central office, and the party in public office. An evaluation is made of the changing balance among these three faces in the context of four models of party organization: the cadre (or elite) party, which was the dominant form of party organization prior to mass suffrage; the mass party, which emerged with, or in anticipation of and to militate for, mass suffrage, and which was widely regarded, particularly in Europe, as the ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’ form of party organization for most of the twentieth century; the catch‐all party, development towards which was first commented upon in the literature in the 1960s, and which has come to rival the mass party not only in prominence but also in the affections of many analysts; and finally, what is called here the cartel party, a new and emerging model of party organization, which Katz and Mair believe to be increasingly evident among established democracies in recent years. In tracing the shifting balance of power among the three faces and across the four models of party organization, the authors contend that the most recent stage of development has resulted in the ascendancy of the party in public office, and the concomitant ‘relegation’ or subordination of the other two faces. Moreover, while parties on the ground sometimes continue to flourish, they suggest that the ostensible empowerment of party memberships, or even their greater autonomy, may nevertheless, be compatible with an increased privileging of the party in public office. Finally, both the sources and implications of party organizational change are briefly discussed, and it is suggested that there is an association between the most recent shifts in the internal balance of intra‐party power, on the one hand, and the apparent growth in popular feelings of alienation from parties, on the other.

This chapter is the first of six on the question of political representation in the EU, and the first of four that put the five requirements of the Responsible Party Model (outlined in this chapter) to an empirical test. The questions investigated here are whether EU political parties are sufficiently distinct and cohesive to fulfil the partisan prerequisites of an effective system of political representation in the European Parliament. However, before this is done, a more formal description is given of the present structure of the EU party system, and an elaboration is presented of the partisan requirements of the Responsible Party Model of political representation. This model rests on the premises that government policy should be in line with the preferences of (a majority of) the electorate, that voters must have a choice between different policy proposals (position issues) offered by cohesive parties, and that voters have policy preferences and are assumed to vote for the party whose policy proposals they perceive to be closest to these preferences. The main part of the chapter uses data from the European Representation Study 1994 to test both the original Responsible Party Model and an alternative and more realistic variant based on weaker assumptions and inspired by the valence issue logic of Stokes and the issue salience theory of Budge and Farlie; in this alternative variant parties do not compete on specific policies (positions) but rather on the valence or salience of issues—effective representation is then no longer indicated by the congruence of policy preferences between party elites and party voters, but by the congruence of political agendas of representatives and represented.

This chapter is the second of six on the question of political representation in the EU, and the second of four that put the five requirements of the Responsible Party Model (outlined in Ch. 6) to an empirical test. The question investigated here is whether voters adequately perceive the substantive political differences between the parties. Specifically, the chapter sets out to assess to what extent European electorates met this requirement at the time of the 1994 elections for the European Parliament, using data from the European Election Study 1994 and the European Candidates Study 1994. Three types of such policy differences are distinguished: differences between party positions on three specific dimensions of EU policy (the position issues of the common European currency, border control, and unemployment); differences in the priorities parties wish to give to solving various problems (valence issues); and ideological differences in terms of left–right. The analyses showed that in 1994 voters in most European countries were not well aware either of the positions that political parties take on the three EU policy dimensions, nor did they have an adequate perception of the parties’ competence to handle political problems; however, they did perceive parties accurately in terms of left–right ideology.

Much of the literature on parties centres on decline and failure, but recently the decline hypothesis has come under attack on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and this has exposed major shortcomings in dominant views (models) of party development, which mostly have offered an externalist view of party development and cast political parties as passive takers of their environment. This view of parties is markedly at odds with the considerable leeway attributed to other political actors and organizations, and whatever the solution to this impasse maybe, it clearly requires looking at party development not only from ‘without’, but also from ‘within’, in ways that capture the two‐ways link between intra‐party politics and resources and inter‐party competition; this perspective brings back not only intra‐party politics as a crucial political arena but also parties as central political actors. Explores this possibility by applying the emerging ‘new’ organizational approach to the trajectory of the French Socialist Party (SFIO, the Section Française de l’lnternationale Ouvrière, until 1971, PS afterwards), which, in the 1970s, staged a spectacular renaissance, and within a decade brought it from near extinction to power—although since then, policy and moral failures have dissipated much of this popular enthusiasm. However, the left's victory at the 1997 elections, the popularity of the current Socialist‐led government, and the weak challenge posed by new politics formations, suggest that much of the capital the PS accumulated in the previous decade remains in place. Provides an internalist account of the PSs jagged trajectory in four parts: the first summarizes externalist approaches to party development; the second analyses the trajectory of the PS over the last three decades in terms of the match and mismatch between party organization and the environment; the third looks at regional variations within this national pattern; and the fourth discusses the resilience of factionalism and draws the implications of this case for the study of political parties.

This chapter is the fourth of six on the question of political representation in the EU, and the last of four that put the five requirements of the Responsible Party Model (outlined in Ch. 6) to an empirical test. The question investigated here is to what extent, at the end of the political process, parties and voters of similar political outlook find each other, i.e. that there is an issue congruence between members of the European Parliament and their constituents. A related issue is also included in the analysis—the extent to which the members of national parliaments are representative of their voters, since both channels of representation must be accounted for in any assessment of the quality of political representation in the EU. The first part of the chapter looks at the general question of the extent to which the European Parliament as a whole is representative of the European people as a whole; this analysis gives a mixed picture. The main analysis on political representation and issue congruence is then presented, and again gives a mixed—and somewhat paradoxical—result; the paradox is that the system of political representation at the European level, as measured against the criteria of the Responsible Party Model, is feasible so long as it is not concerned with issues that refer to the EU as such.

This chapter examines the development of political parties and the party system in post-communist Poland. Special attention is given to the ways in which elections, parliamentary and presidential, have contributed to the emergence and consolidation of political cleavages and the party system. Other factors, such as legislation, organizational structures, mass media, patterns of voting behaviour, and popular political attitudes, are discussed as well. Finally, the adequacy of the cartel party model in relation to Poland is assessed. The analysis focuses on the issue of the functionality of parties and the party system: have the unquestionable achievements of Poland in her democratic transition been generated within a political process in which parties played significant and functional role, or has Poland succeeded on the road to pluralist democracy despite her complex and confusing party system?

Offers brief definitions of political representation and legitimacy: the former is loosely defined as the concept of representative democracy, including both the institutions of responsible government and the process of political representation, i.e. the political process by which the making of government policy is related to the wants, needs, and demands of the public; the latter is defined as the belief that the existing political order is right. Four sections follow, the first of which tries to explain what is meant by political representation and legitimacy in the context of the EU. The next two sections explore the concepts of legitimacy and political representation in greater detail; these sections include outlines of the later chapters on these subjects in Parts I and II of the book, respectively. The section on political representation introduces the three main models of representative democracy: the Responsible Party Model (a coercive model in which political representatives are forced to take the policy preferences of the electorate into account at the penalty of being voted out of office); the intergovernmental model (which involves national systems of political representation); and the federal model (which operates at a European rather than a national level). Despite various caveats, the Responsible Party Model is viewed as a useful benchmark. The final section of the introduction briefly discusses the research design on which the book is based and notes that it is part of the publication programme of the European Representation Study 1994.

The process of European integration has challenged the sovereignty and the legitimizing mechanisms of the nation‐state without compensating with comparable democratic mechanisms at the European level. If the emerging political order is to qualify as democratic, parliaments as representative institutions will have to play a central role, and thus the prospects of national parliaments as well as of the European Parliament must be kept in focus. The responsible party model for linking European level politics with nation‐states’ people points towards a federative structure based on majority rule and territorial representation, but this is complicated by the fact that majority rule seems only to legitimate within a singular demos. The other principal alternative is the associative or corporatistic form of bargaining democracy, which may make a claim to legitimacy based on the outcomes delivered. The following chapters will consider the prospects of European integration through the interplay among the institutions and individuals involved in the process.

The traditional relationship between Labour government and trade unions shifted during 1997–2007 from the ‘union‐party bonding model’ to a ‘union‐distance model’. The creation of new political spaces and democratic arenas through devolution, however, has increased the number of linkages in the democratic chain, thereby creating new conduits through which interest groups can play a role in the policy‐making process.

As the primary organizational vehicles of electoral democracy political parties are themselves judged in terms of their democratic character. This chapter considers the arguments and evidence of both leading party theorists and empirical analysts on the role and influence of party members in different party types. It takes up the proposition that modern political parties have become public utilities, exploring the idea of whether or not stratarchical organizational forms provide a framework that allows parties to avoid what Michels believed was their inevitable oligarchic end.

This chapter begins by setting out the two motivations in writing this volume. The first is the availability of new research resources that allow the systematic study of the party government model in a way that was not possible in the past. The second is to contribute to the vigorous debate about party decline or change. The chapter then discusses the rise of party-based politics; the five main forms of linkage between political parties and voters; and the challenges to parties. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter extends the party linkage model by examining how citizens' Left-Right orientations influence their voting choices — the third step in the electoral linkage process described in Chapter 4. It begins by describing the empirical relationship between Left-Right orientations and vote in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) nations. It then turns to party aggregates to consider how well the political orientations of party voters as a bloc are matched by the position of the party they support. The results describe the extent to which parties represent the voters who elected them to parliament, at least in Left-Right terms. Finally, the implications of the findings from Chapters 4–6 for the party government model are discussed.

Sets out the aims of the book, arguing that the operation of insurance lies at the core of obligations law in both conceptual and practical terms. Explores significant obstacles to this understanding, explaining how and why the role of insurance has been understated in existing accounts of the law of obligations. The sources of this relative neglect include a near universal emphasis on liability rather than recoverability, and the prevalence of two-party models for analysis of private law. Introduces the book’s general approach both to obligations and to the role of insurance; and sets out the structure of the work and its intended contribution.

This chapter examines how and why parties have retained their predominant position within democracies in the face of so many predictions of their imminent demise. It argues that while there is evidence for party decline, there is at least as much evidence of party adaptation. The first section reviews the study' s broad findings, with particular reference to their implications for the party government model. The second section focuses on party adaptation and examines how, and in what ways, parties have adapted to the changing circumstances in which they find themselves. The third section outlines the mechanisms through which parties have maintained their dominance, from institutional design to organizational change. The final section covers the unanticipated threats that can emerge to damage parties that, by definition, they have difficulty adapting to.

This chapter draws on OECD data to examine how the constellation of parties in office can impact on the policy outputs of the government. It first describes how the party government model leads to parties functioning like unitary actors that produce nearly unanimous policy voting. It then outlines the literature on the role that parties can play in shaping policy, and looks at how we measure policy and its relationship to voters' and government positions on the Left-Right dimension. Finally, the chapter draws these themes together to determine what they tell us about how parties operate to attract votes, and the role of policy in the electoral equation.