Political Parties

This book examines how political parties face electoral competition. Covering the United States, Japan, India, Jamaica and South Africa, and five West European countries, namely Britain, France, Italy, Norway and West Germany, it studies party response to social and electoral changes, including weakened voter-party links, party identification, new campaign technologies and in some cases new political structures. The contributors focus on four main issues: party organization; relations between party elites and between these elites and party members; party-voter relations; and the financial arrangements of the parties. This reveals complex patterns of change over the last 30 years, with no single, dominant model of party structure emerging. The contributors are Alan Ware (USA), Peter Byrd (Britain), Byron Criddle (France), William E. Paterson (West Germany), James Warner Bjorkman (India), David Hine (Italy), Richard Hodder-Williams (South Africa), J.A.A. Stockwin (Japan), Derek W. Urwin (Norway) and J. Edward Greene (Jamaica).