Party Systems And Voter Alignments Revisited

Description:
This timely book updates, and takes stock of, Lipset and Rokkan's classic work Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, an influential work since its publication in 1967. With an introduction by the original author, Seymour Martin Lipset, it examines the significance of the original volume for the history of political sociology, and assesses its theoretical and empirical relevance for the study of elections, voters and parties now at the beginning of the 21st century. Most importantly this volume gives scope to new areas such as consociational democracies, small island states, and newly democratising Eastern and Central European and Third World countries. Lauri Karvonen and Stein Kuhnle reveal both the continued relevance of the Lipset/Rokkan approach and the problems related to structural change in the West, with further focus on conditions particular to cases outside the West. This book will be of great importance to all those working in politics or international relations, and anyone interested in the conditions of parties and electoral politics in the contemporary world. Erik Allardt University of Helsinki Dag Anckar Abo Akademi Kris Deschouwer Vrije Universiteit Mattei Dogan Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Lauri Karvonen

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Cleavages, parties and democracy Seymour Martin Lipset Theoretical and analytical developments 2. 'Party systems and voter alignments' in the tradition of political sociology Erik Allardt 3. The freezing hypothesis: an evaluation Peter Mair 4. How bright was the future? The study of parties, cleavages and voters in the age of the technological revolution Lauri Karvonen and Jostein Ryssevik Revisited themes 5. Are cleavages frozen in the English-speaking democracies? Richard S. Katz 6. Class, religion, party: triple decline of electoral cleavages in Western Europe Mattei Dogan 7. Change and stability in the Finnish party system? Pertti Pesonen 8. Japan - from emerging to stable party system? Joji Watanuki 9. The party systems of Spain: old cleavages and new challenges Juan Linz and Jose Ramon Montero New perspectives and areas 10. Freezing pillars and frozen cleavages. Party systems and voter alignments in the consociational democracies Kris Deschouwer 11. From post-communism to neo-communism? The reconstitution of the party systems of East-Central Europe Ulf Lindstrom 12. Party systems and voter alignments in the new democracies of the third world Vicky Randall 13. Party systems and voter alignments in small island states Dag Anckar