ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |13 pages

Party Politics in European Microstates

One Step Towards Mainstreaming

chapter 1|20 pages

San Marino's Increasing Instability

Politics in the Oldest, Smallest Party Democracy in the World

chapter 3|16 pages

Monaco's Political System

National Particularities and Foreign Influences

chapter 4|20 pages

The Evolution of Andorra's Party System

From Parties of 'Notables' to a Predominant-Party System

chapter 5|19 pages

A Political Party System in Flux

Iceland's Political Culture and Smallness

chapter 6|19 pages

Malta

Party Politics in a Small Island State

chapter 7|20 pages

Party Politics in Luxembourg

Stable, Consensual and Pragmatic

chapter 8|17 pages

Party Politics in Montenegro

In the Shadow of the Statehood Issue

chapter 9|15 pages

Nationalism Clientelism and Anti-politics

Party Politics in the Republic of Cyprus

chapter |17 pages

Conclusion

Party Politics in European Microstates: Similar but Different