Political Parties and Democracy: Post-Soviet and Asian Political Parties: 3 (Political Parties in Context)

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Format: Hardcover
Pages: 299
Publisher: Praeger Publishers Inc
Published: Apr 2010
ISBN 10: 0313380600
ISBN 13: 9780313380600
Book Overview: This volume is an invaluable addition to the literature and fills an important gap in our knowledge. A number of leading experts in their respective fields have provided up-to-date analyses of developments in party politics in some leading post-Soviet countries. Each chapter is firmly embedded in the relevant comparative literature while providing unique insights into the specific features of the case in hand, based on detailed historical understanding and awareness of the uniqueness of each specific situation. The chapters represent a fine mix of empirical analysis and theoretical discussion. This is an exemplary collection that will no doubt become an important reference point and indispensable source for future studies. -- Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics, University of Kent A pathbreaking collection of top-quality writings on party politics by leading scholars around the world, Political Parties and Democracy opens a genuinely new frontier of knowledge, expanding the scope of analysis to the entire globe, combining theory with history, and raising a series of new research questions. -- Byung-Kook Kim, Professor, Department of Political Science, Korea University The Asian party has been largely neglected in comparative politics, but it does have a number of interesting characteristics. India, North Korea, and the Philippines have a propensity for dynastically based parties, and the geopolitically specialized party system in South Korea is quite distinctive. What is most recently noteworthy is the rise of competitive multiparty systems in countries previously comfortable with one-party dominant systems, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Japan. Even the Chinese Communist Party has begun some modest internal democratization. This fine collection provides a fascinating overview of party politics in Asia, with a special focus on the prospects for further democratization. -- Professor Lowell Dittmer Professor of Political Science and Editor, Asian Survey University of California at Berkeley Parties are the arteries and veins of western political systems. Their evolution over the past centuries has been incremental, keeping pace with larger changes in the society, economy and the legal system. However, while parties have generally evolved from below in western democracies, their trajectory in non-western societies has been different, and in many of these new democracies, where elites have sought to develop party systems from 'above', their fate remains uncertain. The most significant aspect of the five volumes edited by Kay Lawson is that they provide a comprehensive approach to the entire spectrum of parties cutting across all the major arenas of the world, with a general explanation that is as easily applicable to party consolidation as to party failure. The combination of general theory and finely grained empirical studies, by specialists who combine an indigenous insight into 'their' societies with questions of a comparative nature, make the five volumes a comprehensive and concise guide to the increasingly important field of comparative party politics. This is undoubtedly the most important scholarly cross-national analysis of party systems which brings political parties under the domain of comparative analysis without excluding political experience that defies the narrow confines of liberalism as a political ideology. A masterly achievement! -- Subrata Mitra, Professor of Political Science, South Asia Insitute, Heidelberg Univesity