Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Comparative Politics)

330 Pages·2002·1.65 MB·English

by  Russell J. Dalton

Parties Without Partisans
Comparative Politics
ComparativePoliticsisaseriesforstudentsandteachersofpoliticalsciencethat
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PoliticalInstitutions:DemocracyandSocialChange
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Parties Without Partisans
Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies
Edited by
Russell J. Dalton
and
Martin P. Wattenberg
GreatClarendonStreet,OxfordOX2 6DP
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Partieswithoutpartisans:politicalchangeinadvancedindustrialdemocracies/editedby
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Includesbibliographicalreferences(p.)andindex.
1. Politicalparties. 2.Representativegovernmentandrepresentation.3. Comparative
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Preface
Political parties in advanced industrial democracies are changing in multi-faceted ways. Some scholars write of parties
indecline,others of partiesin resurgence, and stillothers of partiesas transformed. What accounts for these differing
conclusions?Wesuspectedattheoutsetofthisprojectthattheanswerstems from thefactthatmostpublicationsdeal
with only one of three general areas of work on the subject: parties in the electorate, as organizations, and in
government.Asdemonstratedinthisvolume,conclusionsaboutchangesinpartiesdoindeedvarygreatlyaccordingto
perspective. At the risk of oversimplification, parties in the electorate do appear to be weakening most everywhere,
whereas parties in government have largely maintained theirfunctions, and parties as organizations have adapted to a
vastly different environment through new methods and procedures. The findings, we believe, signal a considerable
change in the nature of democratic politics that are just beginning to be felt.
A prime goal of this work was to bring together scholars who focus on different aspects of parties and get them to
address each other's findings and conclusions. We first convened a planning meeting in Laguna Beach, California to
discuss how we could best proceed. We agreed to begin from a functional perspective, comparatively examining the
various functions that parties are thought to perform in any democracy. The group decided to focus on partisan
changes in the established democracies of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
since 1950. We also settledon tryingto get as many of these countries coveredin each chapter as possible, relying on
archived data, published sources of information, and email queries to various country experts.
After theinitialplanningmeeting, weassembledagainduring anAmericanPoliticalScienceAssociationmeeting atthe
backroom of a Washington, D.C. restaurant whereNewtGingrichand company reportedlyplanned out the‘Contract
With America.’ Although some of us were not particularly impressed with Newt's taste in food, we agreed that most
parts of the project were coming along well and that we were ready for a full-fledged conference on changes in party
politics. This next meeting took place over two days in March of 1998 in Newport Beach, California, at which time
most of the results presented here were discussed. We want to thank Ken Carty, Gary Cox, and Barbara Sinclair for
critiquing our findings at this conference, and helping to improve the final product.
Subsequently, many of the contributors took numerous opportunities to get together to discuss substantive details at
various conferences and meetings.
vi
(McAllister and Wattenberg even worked out some of the details of Chapter 3 while waiting for the morning sun to
melt ice on a 4-seater Cessna plane at the Canberra airport.) Country specialists who authored one chapter often
helped to provide data resources for the authors of other chapters; and multiple versions of most chapters were
circulated among the project members. It is our hope that the normal coordination problems inherent in any edited
volume have been largely minimized by the truly interactive and cooperative nature of this project.
We owe a great debt to the many people around the world who collected data upon which this book relies. It is a
testament to modern political science that large scale data collection projects—such as national election studies, the
Katz and Mair collection of party data, and the comparative manifesto data—are now available for comparative
research. Many of our chapters quite openly build upon these data sources, and we gratefullyacknowledge the efforts
of others in compiling these data. We also wish to thank the many people around the world who answered the email
queries of various contributors to this book and generously shared information with us. The Internet has not only
contributed to greater efficiencies in the worldeconomy; it has also facilitated broad comparativescholarly work such
as found in this volume.
ThiscommunicationstechnologyalsomadeitincrediblyeasytodealwiththefinepeopleatOxfordUniversityPressin
theUnitedKingdom, whoreadilyanswered our queries from Oxford whileweweresleepinginCalifornia. Wewishto
thank Dominic Byatt for his invaluable support and guidance and to Amanda Watkins for smoothly managing the
details of turning a manuscript into a book.
The bulk of the financial support for this project was generously provided by the Center for the Study of Democracy
at the UC, Irvine.In addition, the Center for German and European Studies at the Universityof California, Berkeley
provided two grants for research assistants. We are greatly indebted for all this support.
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Notes on Contributors xii
INTRODUCTION
1. Unthinkable Democracy: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies – RUSSELL J. DALTON
AND MARTIN P. WATTENBERG 3
PART I. PARTIES IN THE ELECTORATE
2. The Decline of Party Identifications – RUSSELL J. DALTON 19
3. The Consequences of Partisan Dealignment – RUSSELL J. DALTON, IAN MCALLISTER AND
MARTIN P. WATTENBERG 37
4. The Decline of Party Mobilization – MARTIN P. WATTENBERG 64
PART II. PARTIES AS POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS
5. Parties without Members? Party Organization in a Changing Electoral Environment – SUSAN
E. SCARROW 79
6. Political Parties as Campaign Organizations – DAVID M. FARRELL AND PAUL WEBB 102
7. From Social Integration to Electoral Contestation: The Changing Distribution of Power within
Political Parties – SUSAN E. SCARROW, PAUL WEBB AND DAVID M. FARRELL 129
PART III. PARTIES IN GOVERNMENT
8. Parties in Legislature: Two Competing Explanations – SHAUN BOWLER 157
viii
9. Parties at the Core of Government – KAARE STRøM 180
10. From Platform Declarations to Policy Outcomes: Changing Party Profiles and Partisan Influence
over Policy – MIKI L. CAUL and MARK M. GRAY 208
11. On the Primacy of Party in Government: Why Legislative Parties Can Survive Party Decline in the
Electorate – MICHAEL F. THIES 238
CONCLUSION
12. Partisan Change and the Democratic Process – RUSSELL J. DALTON AND MARTIN
P. WATTENBERG 261
References 287
Index 312
List of Figures
2.1 Partisan Attachment in Europe, 1976–1992 27
3.1 Trends in Electoral Volatility within Eighteen Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1950–97 39
3.2 Trends in the Effective Number of Parties in Twenty-one Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1945–97 42
3.3 Instability of Partisanship across Panel Waves 46
4.1 Turnout Decline in the OECD Nations (excluding Scandinavia) 73
9.1 Party Democracy and its Alternatives 184
10.1 Average Volatility of Left–Right Issue Saliency in Party Manifestos, 1948–1988 218
10.2 Average GDP Growth, Inflation, and Unemployment, 1949–1997 225
10.3 Average Welfare, Defence, and Government Spending, 1949–1995 226
11.1 The ‘Partyness’ of Elections 242
11.2 The ‘Partyness’ of Policy-Making 244
11.3 The ‘Partyness’ of Administration 246
12.1 The Relationship between Party Control of Leadership Selection and Rules to Privilege Parties in
Parliament 275