Dominant Political Parties and Democracy

Concepts, Measures, Cases and Comparisons

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  • e-Book: 256 pages
  • Also available in Hardback
  • Published: May 2010
  • ISBN: 978-0-203-85011-4
  • Publisher: Routledge

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Series: Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science.

This book examines dominant parties in both established democracies and new democracies and explores the relationship between dominant parties and the democratic process.

Bridging existing literatures, the authors analyse dominant parties at national and sub-national, district and intra-party levels and take a fresh look at some of the classic cases of one-party dominance. The book also features methodological advances in the study of dominant parties through contributions that develop new ways of conceptualizing and measuring one-party dominance. Combining theoretical and empirical research and bringing together leading experts in the field - including Hermann Giliomee and Kenneth Greene - this book features comparisons and case studies on Japan, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Italy, France and South Africa.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, democracy studies, comparative politics, party politics and international studies specialists.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Setting a New Agenda for Research - Françoise Boucek and Matthijs Bogaards PART I: Concepts and Measures 2. Rethinking Dominant Party Systems - Patrick Dunleavy 3. Measuring One-Party Dominance with Voting Power Indices - Jean-François Caulier and Patrick Dumont 4. District-Level Dominance and Vulnerability under the French Fifth Republic - Nicolas Sauger PART II: Cases and Comparisons i: Sub-national Dominance 5. Big Fish in Small Ponds: A Comparison of Dominant Parties in the Canadian Provinces and German Länder - Amir Abedi and Steffen Schneider 6. Hard and Soft Dominance: Assessing the Case of the Bavarian CSU - Gordon Smith ii: The Intra-Party Dimension of Dominance 7. The Factional Politics of Dominant Parties: Evidence from Britain, Italy and Japan - Françoise Boucek 8. Dominance without Factions: The Liberal Party of Canada - R. Kenneth Carty iii: Dominance and Democracy 9. A Resource Theory of Single Party Dominance: The PRI in Mexico - Kenneth F. Greene 10. One-Party Dominance in South-Africa - James Myburgh and Hermann Giliomee 11. Laying a Foundation for Democracy or Undermining It? Dominant Parties in Africa’s Burgeoning Democracies - Staffan I. Lindberg and Jonathan Jones 12. Conclusion - Françoise Boucek and Matthijs Bogaards

Author/Editor Biography

Matthijs Bogaards is Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. Françoise Boucek is Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics at Queen Mary University London, UK.