ABSTRACT
How Political Parties Respond focuses specifically on the question of interest aggregation. Do parties today perform that function? If so, how? If not, in what different ways do they seek to show themselves responsive to the electorate?
This fascinating book studies these questions with reference to Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. A chapter on Russia demonstrates how newly powerful private interest groups and modern techniques of persuasion can work together to prevent effective party response to popular interests in systems where the authoritarian tradition remains strong.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |25 pages
From people's movements to electoral machines?
Interest aggregation and the social democratic parties of Scandinavia
chapter |17 pages
Reaggregating interests?
How the break-up of the Union for French Democracy has changed the response of the French moderate right
chapter |30 pages
Radicals, technocrats and traditionalists
Interest aggregation in two provincial social democratic parties in Canada
chapter |29 pages
Latecomers but ‘early-adapters'
The adaptation and response of Spanish parties to social changes
chapter |23 pages
Representative rule or the rule of representations
The case of Russian political parties
