ABSTRACT
Despite the singular title that is commonly used to refer to it, party theory is not a single coherent enterprise. In fact there are many party theories, each based on its own assumptions. At root, however, students of comparative politics in general, and those who deal with comparative political parties in particular, tend to think in terms of a discipline divided into two research camps. While some scholars collect, count and classify data, process it by computer, discover statistically significant correlations and devise causal explanations, others engage in historical research through in-depth examination of specific cases. This division in the discipline is one of the reasons that theory-building in party research is getting a little long in the tooth; while its empirical applications do not perform much better. Another reason for this is that because a significant body of work has already accumulated, external queries about the nature of the problems it addresses are often shrugged off; that which is used on a large scale is automatically considered useful.
