ABSTRACT

The most notable outcome of this collaborative research effort is that it highlights two important tendencies in the literature. At the theoretical level there is a recognition that traditional party system classifications are insufficient tools for conceptualising single-party dominance and for analysing its durability or breakdown in specific settings. The need is felt to go beyond or at least to reinvent categories and classifications. Contributions in this volume demonstrate that party dominance is a multidimensional concept and multifaceted phenomenon that manifests itself in multiple arenas of party competition and thus can be measured in different ways and with methodological tools that are appropriate to each arena. By measuring dominance differently in the electoral, parliamentary and executive arenas of party competition, the measures and methods developed and applied in this volume substantiate quantitatively the framework of analysis of one-party dominance outlined by Boucek (1998). At the empirical level, however, we see the surprising resilience of well-established types and typologies (for an overview, see Bogaards 2004). Case studies and comparisons of dominant parties still rely on classificatory schemes that have their roots in the political science of the 1960s and 1970s. The most interesting development is that some analyses are beginning to combine the development of new measures of one-party dominance with their empirical application. Our volume contains several examples. This, to our mind, is the way forward.