Kenneth F. Greene is Assistant Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research on regimes, political parties, and voting behavior has been published in Comparative Political Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, Politica y Gobierno, and Foreign Affairs en Espanol. He has served as Co-Principal Investigator on two National Science Foundation grants for elite and voter survey research in Mexico, won a Fulbright-Garcia Robles fellowship, and held visiting positions at the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University and at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.

"In this scholarly tour de force, Greene combines original formal models and other careful methods in developing a novel and persuasive argument for the longevity and decline of dominant parties. This book contributes significantly to our understanding of Mexican politics, the comparative study of competitive authoritarian regimes, and party formation." -Jorge I. Domínguez, Harvard University

• Part I. The Macro Perspective: 1. A theory of single-party dominance and opposition party development; 2. Dominant party advantages and opposition party failure, 1930s–90s; Part II. The Micro Perspective: 3. Why participate? A theory of elite activism in dominant party systems; 4. The empirical dynamics of elite activism; Part III. Implications: 5. Constrained to the core: opposition party organizations, 1980s–90s; 6. Dominance defeated: voting behavior in the 2000 elections; 7. Extending the argument: Italy, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan.