Product Description: The Manifesto data are the only comprehensive set of policy indicators for social, economic and political research. It is thus vital that their quality is established. The purpose of this book is to review methodological issues that have got in the way of straightforwardly using the Manifesto data since our two preceding volumes were published and to resolve them in ways which best serve users and textual analysts in general...read more

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

This revised and updated third edition of the highly praised New British Politics offers a lively, authoritative and comprehensive introduction to current British politics. Written by internationally known specialists from the top Politics Department in the UK, the book combines incisive and original analysis with clear and direct presentation, specially tailored to the needs of lecturers, teachers and students of British politics from A-level to University Second Year.

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

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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

Political parties are the central link in modern democracies: they get support from electors for their policies and put them into practice in government. At least, according to democratic theory. This book examines the actual behavior of 500 governments in 20 postwar democracies (including the East European Community, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Israel) to determine how parties operate government. It concludes that parties do function more or less as modern democratic theory says they should, and provides an understanding of not only how democratic government works but also its moral justification. The Comparative European Politics series, published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research, is designed for students and teachers of political science and related disciplines. Each volume will provide an up-to-date survey of the current state of knowledge and research on an issue of major significance in European government and politics.

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 reach an agreement, on the policy it should pursue...read more