European political parties’ complicity in democratic backsliding

Political Parties and Democratic Control in Advanced Industrial Societies

Few, if any, would deny that political parties are integral to representative democracy as we know it. And yet since the 1960s it has become increasingly commonplace to encounter references in academic literature, journalistic comment, and polemical assertion alike to the `decline of party', a contention usually predicated on the view that parties are `failing' in a variety of respects. We have...

Political Engineering and Party Regulation in Southeast Asia Forthcoming in Political Parties in Conflict - Prone Societies : Regulation , Engineering and Democratic

Ethnic Parties and Democratic Stability

Ethnic divisions, according to empirical democratic theory, and commonsense understandings of politics, threaten the survival of democratic institutions. One of the principal mechanisms linking the politicization of ethnic divisions with the destabilization of democracy is the so-called “outbidding effect.” According to theories of ethnic outbidding, the politicization of ethnic divisions inevi...

Political Parties in Conflict Prone Societies: Encouraging Inclusive Politics and Democratic Development

Political Parties in Confl ictProne Societies: Encouraging Inclusive Politics and Democratic Development P parties are an essential component of representative democracy. Th ey organize voters, aggregate and articulate interests, craft policy alternatives, recruit and socialize new candidates for offi ce, set policy-making agendas, integrate disparate groups and individuals into the democratic ...

From Private Organizations to Democratic Infrastructure: Political Parties and the State in Estonia

The article discusses the relationship between political parties and the state in Estonia. The analysis focuses on the development of a legal framework for political parties, different trends in public party financing, and the circulation of people between political and administrative elites. Elite circulation is examined by looking at the movement of people from political to bureaucratic posit...