Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: A sophisticated introduction that places British Politics in its historical context.

Product Description: This book provides estimates of party positions, voter preferences and government policy from election programmes collected systematically for 51 countries from 1990 onwards. It provides these estimates directly for computer use on the CD ROM provided with it...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This Handbook of Democratic Government is the first compact and comprehensive data collection which simultaneously provides comparative and complete information on the composition of governments between 1945 and 1998 in 48 countries across the democratic world...read more

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In democracies, contemporary politics is party politics, and parties serve to organize the political process even as they ensure democratic representation of minority and majority policy preferences. How do they do this? In great part, as this ambitious survey shows, parties translate policy preferences into policy priorities by articulating and enacting clearly defined party platforms...read more

Product Description: This comprehensive book examines comparatively the major political development of our time: the explosion of democracy in Europe and the Third World, and its deepening in the West. The book analyzes how the new democracies are experimenting with Western models while also highlighting how these models are themselves seriously problematic...read more

Product Description: The Handbook of Democratic Government is the first compact and comprehensive data collection for 20 countries which simultaneously provides comparative and complete information on the composition of governments. Parties, ministries, portfolios, ministers and parliamentary support are listed, as well as duration, type of government and reasons for termination...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: Comprehensive and accessible coverage of key aspects of the British political system, written by a team of distinguished scholars. Originally published in 1983, this third edition has been fully revised and updated. Deals with the underlying processes of British politics with the emphasis on socio-economic factors affecting political behaviour...read more

Product Description: Coalitions are the commonest kind of democratic government, occurring frequently in most countries of Western Europe. It is usually assumed that political parties came together in a government coalition because they agree already, or can manage to reach an agreement, on the policy it should pursue...read more