In the acclaimed Politics of Democratic Consolidation, Nikiforos Diamandouros, Richard Gunther, and their co-authors showed how democratization unfolded in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, culminating in consolidated democratic regimes. This volume continues that analysis, posing the basic question: What kind of democratic politics emerged in those countries? It presents systematic analyses of the basic institutions of government and of the dynamics of electoral competition in the four countries (set in comparative context alongside several other democracies), as well as detailed studies of the evolution of the major parties, their electorates, their ideologies, and their performances in government over the past twenty years. The authors reach two major conclusions. First, the new democracies' salient features are moderation, centripetalism, and the democratization of erstwhile antisystem parties on the Right and Left. Second, no single "Southern European model" has emerged; the systems differ from one another about as much as do the other established democracies of Europe. Contributors: P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, University of Athens • Richard Gunther, Ohio State University • Thomas C. Bruneau, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey • Arend Lijphart, University of California at San Diego • Leonardo Morlino, University of Florence • Risa A. Brooks, Stanford University • José R. Montero, Autonomous University of Madrid • Giacomo Sani, University of Pavia • Paolo Segatti, University of Trieste • Gianfranco Pasquino, University of Bologna • Takis S. Pappas, College Year, Athens • Hans-Jrgen Puhle, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main • Anna Bosco, University of Trieste

When people discuss politics, they often mention the promises politicians make during election campaigns. Promises raise hopes that positive policy changes are possible, but people are generally skeptical of these promises. Party Mandates and Democracy reveals the extent to and conditions under which governments fulfill party promises during election campaigns. Contrary to conventional wisdom a majority of pledges—sometimes a large majority—are acted upon in most countries, most of the time. The fulfillment of parties’ election pledges is an essential part of the democratic process. This book is the first major, genuinely comparative study of promises across a broad range of countries and elections, including the United States, Canada, nine Western European countries, and Bulgaria. The book thus adds to the body of literature on the variety of outcomes stemming from alternative democratic institutions.

This book provides a systematic and comparative account of the rise of ‘new challenger parties’ across Western Europe. It analyses how parties that challenge the conventional party system by addressing issues neglected by existing parties can succeed and fail. Systematically comparing 229 elections since 1950 across 15 European democracies, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Benelux and Scandinavian countries, this book questions why new challenger parties are more successful in some countries than others, and analyses the conditions that determine their emergence and subsequent success or failure. As one of the first systematic and comparative examinations of new challenger parties, this book looks at both new politics parties and extreme-right parties, and the structures to aid their emergence at the time of an election. Identifying two distinctive stages of party development, the author adopts a ‘double-hurdle’ model involving, first, the chances of emergence, and second, sustained success. This framework, in combination with a wide-range of empirical data, provides for an innovative and insightful analysis of a neglected topic. New Challenger Parties in Western Europe will be of interest to students and scholars of government, comparative politics and political parties.

This volume analyses party system changes in Europe in the 21st century by considering several dimensions such as interparty competition, the cleavage structure, electoral volatility and the emergence of new actors.

How popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide, and how to restore confidence in democratic politics In recent decades, democracies across the world have adopted measures to increase popular involvement in political decisions. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates; ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly; many places now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more specific parties rather than two dominant ones.Yet voters keep getting angrier.There is a steady erosion of trust in politicians, parties, and democratic institutions, culminating most recently in major populist victories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Frances Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that devolving power to the grass roots is part of the problem. Efforts to decentralize political decision-making have made governments and especially political parties less effective and less able to address constituents’ long-term interests. They argue that to restore confidence in governance, we must restructure our political systems to restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party.

The abrupt transformation of one-party Communist regimes into political systems holding competitive elections challenges theories of democracy by evolution. Part One develops an inter-active model of how the supply of parties by political elites shapes the responses of inexperienced electors, and what this means for the institutionalisation of party systems and party identification. The model is then applied to elections since 1990 in ten Central and East European democracies that are now members of the European Union. Part Two provides a definitive and up to date text of election results and the formation and disappearance of parties in these ten countries. In addition, there is a lengthy chapter on elections in Russia.

One of the key shifts in contemporary politics is the trend towards greater personalization. Collective actors such as political parties are losing relevance. Citizens are slowly dealigning from these actors, and individual politicians are therefore growing in importance in elections, in government, within parties, and in media reporting of politics. A crucial question concerns how this new pattern could be restructuring politics over the long run - notably, whether the personalization of politics is changing the institutional architecture of contemporary democracies. The authors show that the trend towards personalization is indeed changing core democratic institutions. Studying the evolution of electoral systems in thirty-one European democracies since 1945, they demonstrate that, since the 1990s, there has been a shift towards more personalized electoral systems. Electoral systems in most European countries now allow voters to express preferences for candidates, not just for political parties. And the weight of these voters' preferences in the allocation of seats has been increased in numerous countries. They examine the factors that appear to be driving this evolution, finding that the personalization of electoral systems is associated with the growing gap between citizens and politics. Politicians and legislators appear to perceive the personalization of electoral systems as a way to address the democratic malaise and to restore trust in politics by reducing the role of political parties in elections. The book also shows, however, that whether these reforms have had any success in achieving their aims is far less clear. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The Comparative Politics series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Universite libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Muller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.