This book examines the actual behavior of 400 governments in 20 postwar democracies (including those of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Israel) to determine how political parties operate and shape the special characteristics of individual governments. It concludes that parties do function more or less as modern democratic theory says they should, and provides an understanding of democratic government and its moral justification.

Enriching and empowering its readers, this work gives the most detailed and extensive data available on the policies and preferences of key democratic actors: parties, governments, and electors in twenty-five democracies over the whole post-war period. It provides a helpful CD-ROM, documentation and suggested uses for data, as well as extensive background information. Economists, socialists, and historians will find the book highly useful; political scientists, policy analysts, rational choice theorists, and comparativists will find it a must.

How does representative democracy work in the modern age? Examining 21 post-war democracies, this strikingly innovative approach by two world-class scholars demonstrates how the voter in the middle--the median elector--empowers the centre party in parliament to translate political preferences into public policy.

The relevance of this book to central concerns of political and social science hardly needs emphasizing. Parties are the organizing force of democratic governments, giving coherence and direction to their policies and relating them to popular preferences. Election programmes are crucial to this role, providing electors with some insight into the policies they are voting for, and parties themselves with a starting point for their activity in government. Discussion begins with a comparative assessment of the impact of election pledges on government action. The book goes on to describe...

Since the 1980s, political scientists have developed a renewed interest in the study of political institutions, based on the assumption that "institutions matter" -that is, that formal governmental institutions and constitutional-legal rules (as well as informal institutions like parties and interest groups) are crucial determinants of the shape of politics and policy outcomes. In this respect, the "new institutionalism" resembles the "old institutionalism" of pre-behaviorist days, but the crucial difference between the two is that the new institutionalists are committed to systematic...

The relevance of this book to central concerns of political and social science hardly needs emphasizing. Parties are the organizing force of democratic governments, giving coherence and direction to their policies and relating them to popular preferences. Election programmes are crucial to this role, providing electors with some insight into the policies they are voting for, and parties themselves with a starting point for their activity in government. Discussion begins with a comparative assessment of the impact of election pledges on government action. The book goes on to describe...

Direct democracy involves citizens in discussion and decisions about what the government is to do, rather than leaving this to officials or parliaments. It thus challenges the restrictions placed by representative democracies such as Britain and the United States on political consultation and popular participation. Why should responsible adults not take public decisions as well as making their own individual choices? One affects them just as much as the other.


Can ordinary citizens make good public policy though? Many lack education and expertise and may not even be...

A pioneering textbook which explains the dynamics of politics across Europe in the post-Cold war era. Comparing democratisation, transition to a market economy and increasing economic and political integration in the countries of central and eastern Europe with experiences in Scandinavia, and southern and western Europe, the book provides a wealth of information and analysis on the state of Europe at the end of a momentous century of European and World history.

This study offers an analysis of the UK's current economic policy options and a plan for improving life for ordinary citizens via a sensible and realistic understanding of governments' limited ability to manage economic performance. It provides a manifesto which political parties could immediately adopt to make life better for all.

Examines the state of the British political system during the 1990s covering such areas as: economic difficulties and government response; bureaucratic networks; parties and electors; political communications; and relations with outside governments.