Parties Without Partisans

Abstract This is a broad cross‐national study of the role of political parties in contemporary democracies. Leading scholars in the field assess the evidence for partisan decline or adaptation for 20 OECD nations. This book documents the broadscale erosion of the public's partisan identities in virtually all advanced industrial democracies. It demonstrates how political parties have adapted to partisan dealignment by strengthening their internal organizational structures and partially isolating themselves from the ebbs and flows of electoral politics. Centralized, professionalized parties with short time horizons have replaced the ideologically driven mass parties of the past. Parties without Partisans is the most comprehensive cross‐national study of parties in advanced industrial democracies in all of their forms—in electoral politics, as organizations, and in government.