Fernando Casal Bértoa - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics provides students, researchers, practitioners, and interested readers with the most complete analysis of Polish politics and society yet published. Including cutting-edge contributions from specialist scholars across the world, it is a comprehensive and up to date reference work and authoritative source on Polish Politics. Poland is the fifth largest European Union (EU) member state, representing in terms of size and population more than half of the EU enlargement in 2004. On October 27th 2021, it celebrated the 30th anniversary of the first free and fair parliamentary elections. During these 30 years, the country has achieved unprecedented progress and has gone through substantial political and economic transformation. These dynamics make Poland a fascinating laboratory to unfold complexities of post-communist processes and developments, from transition to democracy, to democratic backsliding and backward. Although Poland itself is reasonably well-researched, above all together with other Central East European countries, a prestigious systematic and in-depth analysis in English language in the format offered by an Oxford Handbook is unprecedented.

Party System Closure maps trends in interparty relations in Europe from 1848 until 2019. It investigates how the length of democratic experience, the institutionalization of individual parties, the fragmentation of parliaments, and the support for anti-establishment parties, shape the degree of institutionalization of party systems. The analyses presented answer the questions of whether predictability in partisan interactions is necessary for the survival of democratic regimes and whether it improves or undermines the quality of democracy. The developments of party politics at the elite level are contrasted with the dynamics of voting behaviour. The comparisons of distinct historical periods and of macro-regions provide a comprehensive picture of the European history of party competition and cooperation.The empirical overview presented in the book is based on a novel conceptual framework and features party composition data of more than a thousand European governments. Party systems are analysed in terms of poles and blocs, and the degree of closure and of polarization is related to a new party system typology. The book demonstrates that information collected from partisan interactions at the time of government formation can reveal changes that characterise the party system as a whole.The empirical results confirm that the Cold War period (1945-1989) was exceptionally stable, while the post-Berlin-Wall era shows signs of disintegration, although more at the level of voters than at the level of elites. After three decades of democratic politics in Europe (1990-2019), the West and the South are looking increasingly like the East, especially in terms of the level of party de-institutionalization. The West and the South are becoming more polarised than the East, but in terms of parliamentary fragmentation, the party systems of the South and the East are converging, while the West is diverging from the rest with its increasingly high number of parties. As far as our central concept, party system closure, is concerned, thanks to the gradual process of stabilization in the East, and the recent de-institutionalization in the West and South, the regional differences are declining.Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston, and Jonathan Slapin, Professor of Political Institutions and European Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich.

The question of how political parties are, and ought to be, regulated has assumed an increased importance in recent years, both within the scholarly community and among policy-makers and politicians as the state assumes an increasingly active role in the management of, and control over, their behaviour and organisationThis book concentrates on the regulation of political parties in the EU post-communist democracies, and on Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, in particular. In analysing the various dimensions of party regulation, it builds on the main premises derived from the neo-institutionalist literature in political science, concerning the ways in which the (formal and informal) rules and procedures may influence, constrain or determine the behaviour of political actors. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive overview of the regulation of Eastern European political parties provided by leading experts in the field and casts theoretical and empirical light on the manner in which the constitutional and legal regulation of party organizations and finances have had an impact (or not) on the consolidation of party politics in post-communist Europe since 1989.This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Political Parties and Behaviour, East European and Post-Communist Politics and Comparative Politics.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the regulation of party finance in post-Soviet countries by leading academics and practitioners in the field.Through a series of cutting-edge chapters, using both original quantitative and qualitative data, it systematically sheds theoretical and empirical light on the way party funding regulation has evolved since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as on the manner in which the legal regulation of party finances has had an impact (or not) on the evolution of party politics and democratic consolidation in the region. The book examines regulation in post-Soviet countries like Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia and Ukraine. In analysing the various dimensions of party funding regulation and their impact on political parties, party systems and democracy, it looks at the past and future, and makes recommendations on how legislation could be improved in order to further party development, party system stabilisation and democratic consolidation for all the countries in the region.This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, practitioners and journalists interested in political party finance and anti-corruption, and more broadly to political parties, democracy and democratic governance, and post-Soviet/Russian and East European politics.Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the regulation of party finance in post-Soviet countries by leading academics and practitioners in the field.Through a series of cutting-edge chapters, using both original quantitative and qualitative data, it systematically sheds theoretical and empirical light on the way party funding regulation has evolved since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, as well as on the manner in which the legal regulation of party finances has had an impact (or not) on the evolution of party politics and democratic consolidation in the region. The book examines regulation in post-Soviet countries like Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia and Ukraine. In analysing the various dimensions of party funding regulation and their impact on political parties, party systems and democracy, it looks at the past and future, and makes recommendations on how legislation could be improved in order to further party development, party system stabilisation and democratic consolidation for all the countries in the region.This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, practitioners and journalists interested in political party finance and anti-corruption, and more broadly to political parties, democracy and democratic governance, and post-Soviet/Russian and East European politics.Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

This book represents the first comprehensive study of the evolution of parties and party systems in all nine democratic European states with less than one million inhabitants.As small political units have for long been considered to be most conducive to stable democracy, this volume analyses the actual role of political parties and partisan competition in the operation of modern democracy in those European microstates. Drawing on the crucial contribution of leading country experts in the field, it provides rich, systematic contextualized knowledge on these lesser-known cases. It further contributes to the mainstreaming of small state research in social science studies by comparing the experience of party politics in European microstates with that of larger countries in the same region of the world.This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of party systems and political parties, elections and democracy, small states, European politics and more broadly of comparative politics.

This edited collection, in honour of the late political scientist Peter Mair, contains original chapters that are directly linked to his theoretical and/or methodological ideas and approaches. Peter Mair demonstrated that political parties have traditionally been central actors in European politics and an essential focus of comparative European political science. Though the nature of political parties and the manner in which they operate has been subject to significant change in recent decades, parties remain a crucial factor in the working of European liberal democracies. This volume analyses recent developments and current challenges that European parties, party systems and democracy face.The volume will be of key interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, democracy studies, political parties, and European politics and European Union studies.

This book represents the first comprehensive study of the evolution of parties and party systems in all nine democratic European states with less than one million inhabitants.As small political units have for long been considered to be most conducive to stable democracy, this volume analyses the actual role of political parties and partisan competition in the operation of modern democracy in those European microstates. Drawing on the crucial contribution of leading country experts in the field, it provides rich, systematic contextualized knowledge on these lesser-known cases. It further contributes to the mainstreaming of small state research in social science studies by comparing the experience of party politics in European microstates with that of larger countries in the same region of the world.This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of party systems and political parties, elections and democracy, small states, European politics and more broadly of comparative politics.

The question of how political parties are, and ought to be, regulated has assumed an increased importance in recent years, both within the scholarly community and among policy-makers and politicians as the state assumes an increasingly active role in the management of, and control over, their behaviour and organisationThis book concentrates on the regulation of political parties in the EU post-communist democracies, and on Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, in particular. In analysing the various dimensions of party regulation, it builds on the main premises derived from the neo-institutionalist literature in political science, concerning the ways in which the (formal and informal) rules and procedures may influence, constrain or determine the behaviour of political actors. In doing so, it provides a comprehensive overview of the regulation of Eastern European political parties provided by leading experts in the field and casts theoretical and empirical light on the manner in which the constitutional and legal regulation of party organizations and finances have had an impact (or not) on the consolidation of party politics in post-communist Europe since 1989.This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of Political Parties and Behaviour, East European and Post-Communist Politics and Comparative Politics.