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The electoral explosion that overthrew the established patterns of Canada's national party system in 1993 marked the end of yet another cycle in Canadian party system development, for there had been similar reshapings in the early 1960s and in the 1920s. In each case, the party transformations were about more than shifting electoral alignments and party fortunes, they also involved radical changes in the organization and activities of the parties concerned. However, although the formal organizational structure of Canadian parties has varied considerably, they have all been essentially cadre‐like in their structure and character, and the core linkage problem has been one of tying an American society to European‐style governing institutions. Electoral realignments have also been cast in geographic rather than social structural terms, and recent decades have seen the disintegration of the party system in a different sense as federal (national) politics has become increasingly disentangled from provincial politics. The introduction discusses these topics; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine the possible crisis in party legitimacy in Canada, the cadre organizations of the Canadian cadre parties, and the functions of the Canadian cadre parties in a modern polity (governance, political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, participatory organizations, and political communication and education).

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.

The American party system has experienced considerable change since 1960, and the meaning of this change is the subject of much debate, at the core of which is a basic question: how functional is the American party system after four turbulent decades? Depending on the evidence considered, scholars offer different answers to this question, ranging from a loss of functionality due to party ‘decline’ to potential gains from party ‘revival’. Reviews these arguments and assesses changes in key aspects of the American party system between 1960 and 1996. It finds some merit in both the ‘declinist’ and ‘revivalist’ points of view. There is a brief introductory section to the current situation, and this is followed by two further introductory sections, which present a more in‐depth discussion of the American ‘two‐party’ (Republicans and Democrats) system, and of party decline and revival. The next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine the popular legitimacy of American parties, the organizational strength of American parties, and the systemic functionality of American parties (governance and political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, political communication and education, and encouraging political participation).

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).

Since the 1970s, academic interest in ‘parties at the European level’ has gone full circle. The story began in the 1970s, in the wake of the decision to hold direct elections to the European Parliament (EP), with widespread expectation of the coming of transnational European parties, but in the 1980s, when it was apparent that European elections would not produce European parties, and that transnational party activity would be restricted to the ‘party groups’ in the EP, a period of scepticism towards transnational parties set in. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, with the ‘party article’ in the Treaty on European Union, the new role of ‘party leaders’ summits’ and the emergence of rival party‐political agendas for the single market, there is renewed discussion of the desirability and feasibility of Euro‐parties as a way of connecting voters’ preferences to the European Union (EU) policy process. The introduction discusses the roots of the contemporary European parties (which go back to 1972), and gives an outline of the new ‘Euro‐parties’ (Party of European Socialists (PES), European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP), European Liberal, Democratic, and Reform Party (ELDR), and European Free Alliance) and their common goals. The next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy (legitimacy via the European Parliament, and via the European elections), party organizational strength (organizational and behavioural cohesion, finance, staffing, members, and the media), and the systemic functionality of parties (governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, political recruitment, and political communication and education).

The 1949 (West) German Basic Law established a system of party‐based democracy that has now endured for more than half a century, yet today's political system is not identical to that of earlier years. Since the beginning of the 1980s, new party alternatives have made coalition politics harder to manage, the established parties have lost votes and members, and waning public support for all the parties has drawn unfavourab1e attention to the parties’ entrenched positions. These changes grew more pronounced in the 1990s, exacerbated, though not caused, by German unification, and developments reached a new stage in 1998, when one of the new parties of the 1980s, the Greens, became a party of government—an event made possible at least as much by the transformation of the Green Party itself as by a revolution in German politics. Nevertheless, despite the recent challenges to traditional political patterns, Germany remains very much a parties state, with parties still serving as the central mechanisms for political linkage and political decision‐making, and the same big parties being the principal players in state and federal coalition politics. The introductory sections discuss German parties and political institutions; the next three sections cover the same topics as the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength (finance, staffing, members, mass media, parties in eastern Germany), and party functionality (in governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, political recruitment and patronage, and political communication and education).

Scandinavian party systems have often been seen as ‘ultra stable’, a view that was certainly justified between 1945 and the early 1970; however, the general election of 1973 in Denmark signalled a new era of instability as the three major parties saw their aggregate share of the vote slashed; soon similar developments became visible in Norway, to some extent in Finland, and (a little later) in Sweden. The main political actors in the Scandinavian democracies are organized around conflicts between labour and capital, and between the rural peripheries and urban centres; the five party families of the classic Scandinavian model (social democracy, conservatism, liberalism, agrarian ‘centrism’, and communism) are deeply anchored in these social bases, with class especially having been a more important determinant of party loyalty than in other west European democracies; in particular, the mutual tolerance and moderation that parties typically accord each other in consensus democracies has resulted in the creation of an extensive and well‐known mixed welfare economy. However, the classic five‐party model no longer provides a comprehensive account of party politics in Scandinavia: since the early 1970s a variety of other parties, old and new, have emerged, and this has led to doubt as to whether the Scandinavian party systems remain distinctive, although they may still be located in the category of moderate pluralism. The increasing fragmentation of parliaments has also affected governments in different ways in the four countries. The introduction discusses these changes; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine (the erosion of) party legitimacy, party organizational strength (finance, members), and the systemic functionality of political parties (in governance, political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, and political communication).

Spain has made a number of experiments with democracy, but only since the mid‐1970s has this been successful. At that time, strenuous efforts were made to ensure that political parties would come forward, and as a result the new democracy had two key aspects: the creation of synthetic parties (in the sense that they are supported more from above than below), and the building of a parties state. The introductory part of the chapter discusses these changes and also has a section looking at the institutional framework that had such a shaping effect on party politics; this discusses the electoral system, and the rules governing parliamentary group organization and party finance. The next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy (party membership, electoral turnout and volatility, popular assessments, party–voter ties, and evaluating party legitimacy), party organizational strength (parliamentary party organization, mass party organization, party finance, ‘goods in kind’ received by parties, and evaluating party organizational strength), and the systemic functionality of parties (governance, political recruitment and patronage, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, political communication and education, and evaluating the systemic functionality of parties). The concluding section assesses the viability of Spain's parties state and gives a comparative analysis of its experience of democracy.

Experience of modern political parties during the last fifty years can be briefly summarized under two headlines: the rise of the catch‐all party (Volksparteien) after the Second World War (earlier in the US), and the ‘crisis’ and restructuring of the catch‐all parties under profound challenges and severe ‘stress’ since the late 1970s. Both processes have been interrelated as it often seems that the ‘crisis’ has been due in part to a number of inherent characteristics and weaknesses of catch‐all parties, and that the ‘pure type’ of catch‐all party has been somewhat transitory in structure despite its apparent longevity. The analysis presented in this chapter of the character and the potential outcome of the perceived present ‘crisis’ begins with a description of the principal dimensions of the problem at hand. The next section, ‘Catch‐all parties and the Parteienstaat’ discusses the definition, characteristics, constellations, and the historical context and organizational modernization of the catch‐all party, which cannot be separated from the respective constellations of party systems and from the emergence of the European invention of the party state (Parteienstaat). The last main section of the chapter looks at the various symptoms of the perceived crisis of the catch‐all party, and the implications of the ‘third wave’ of politico‐organizational modernization of the final decades of the twentieth century, which is shown to have led to tentative new types of party, including numerous ‘catch‐all plus’ phenomena and a search for new terms to describe a ‘fourth’ type of party.

The first introductory section discusses the evolution of the current party system in New Zealand, from a system dominated by the two parties around which it had aligned in the 1930s, to the consequences for party composition and representation of the change from the first past the post (FPTP) or single‐member plurality (SMP) electoral system, to the new mixed‐member proportional (MMP) system under which the 1996 and 1999 elections were fought. The second introductory section discusses theoretical issues associated with party system dealignment that has resulted. The next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength (party finance, staffing, membership activity, and media), and systemic functionality (governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political recruitment, and political communication and education).

General Charles de Gaulle, founder of the Fifth French Republic in 1958, was a bitter opponent of the unchecked power of political parties, for which he blamed the failure of earlier Republics, but his vision of the future was as naïve as his diagnosis of the past was tendentious, for the problem of the Third and Fourth Republics was rather the weakness of parties. The main surprise of the Fifth Republic was the emergence, from 1962, of the secure parliamentary majorities that France had hitherto lacked; in addition, since 1965, when de Gaulle himself found that he needed party support to campaign for re‐election, the presidency itself has been a key stake in party competition. These two developments transformed the role of parties, and the party system of the Fifth Republic may now be described as one of bipolar multipartism. This contains two distinct and opposed sets of dynamics (pressures): bipolarity, (which is encouraged in important ways by France's political institutions), and forces in the party system pointing towards fragmentation and multipartism; these pressures exist in every party system, but the French case is unusual because they are so evenly balanced. The introduction discusses this situation; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength (finance and staffing, and activism, and parties in civil society), and party functionality (in political recruitment, governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political participation, and political communication and education).

Belgium and the Netherlands are often taken and presented together as the ‘Low Countries’, and there are good reasons for treating the two countries as part of a single category, since both are textbook examples of divided societies, which display the subcultural vertical segmentation that has travelled conceptually as verzuiling (desegmentation or pillarization) and share the well‐known features of consociational democracy. Being neighbours, moreover, Belgium and the Netherlands share much common history, although the border separating the two countries is highly significant, and explains a number of important differences between them. In both countries, the major parties can be grouped into three party families: religious (Christian), liberal, and socialist, and in both there has been party change since the 1960s, in which the losers have been the Christian and Socialist parties, and the Liberals have gained support; however, specific patterns have been quite different. Most symptomatic of the passing of the old politics has been the formation of the so‐called ‘purple’ governments, which exclude Christian Democrats, but draw together the ‘red’ socialists and the ‘blue’ liberals. The introduction discusses these changes (including depillarization and the erosion of consociationalism), and the differences between the two countries; the next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy (voter turnout, party membership, partisan identification, bridging the ‘gap’ between voters and office‐holders, and the Belgian legitimacy crisis), the strength of party organizations, and the systemic functionality of parties (in governance and recruitment, and linkage functions—participation, aggregation, and communication).