Party Politics in New Democracies [Paperback]

The sister volume toPolitical 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.

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 Kopeck?
6. The Only Game in Town: Party Politics in Hungary,Zsolt Enyedi and G?bor T?ka
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 Pal³S