Abstract
The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties provides a “soup to nuts” tour of the literature. Organised into seven sections, its forty chapters focus on what is new or state of art. Taken together, they depict a field that has moved a considerable distance from its earlier foci on party systems built around deeply entrenched cleavages and the transformation of parties from one type to another.
The Handbook begins with “Definitions and Evolution.” Its three chapters set the stage for the rest of the volume. In “Party Change Beyond the Classical Models” Oscar Mazzoleni and Reinhard Heinisch track a shift from typologies and party types to more detailed analyses of party change and call for more nuanced approaches to change. Exploring the typologies and schema that scholars have used to differentiate party systems, Zsolt Enyedi and Fernando Casal Bértoa argue that scholars need to develop concepts that can be applied to a broader range of systems. In between, Alfred Moore examines the increased attention that democratic theorists are paying to parties.
Part 2 considers “Party as an organisation.” Anika Gauja examines changing approaches to party organisation and the difficulty of applying models to the ways in which parties adapt. Next, Susan Scarrow and Paul Webb draw on the Political Parties Database to examine levels of membership and variations in the forms and extent of members’ activities. Chapters by Daniela Piccio on “Party finance”, Nicole Bolleyer on “Party Institutionalisation”, Myrto Tsakatika on “Parties and social movements”, and Tania Verge on “Parties and gender” round out the section.
Part 3 examines “Party ideology and party families”. James Dennison and Sophia Hunger open the section with “Cleavage politics in the twenty-first century”, reviewing arguments about freezing, alignment and dealignment, and the strengths and weakness of cleavage theory. Despite its attractiveness, they argue that cleavage theory lacks “conceptual clarity” and “provides a poor account for the rapidity and vast temporal variation in recent changes in party systems” (p.121). Rounding out the section are chapters on the major party families represented in many party systems.
Part 4, “Party competition and representation”, takes a different tack. Its six chapters consider whether parties emphasise valence issues or positions, issue competition and agenda setting, niche parties, coalition formation and governing, the degree to which parties represent voters, and personalisation.
Part 5, “Contemporary Issues and Challenges”, is more diverse. In it we find a chapter on “Populism and Parties” by Stijn van Kessel that would have been equally at home in part 3, along with chapters on parties’ responses to climate change, immigration, European integration, and gender, and chapters on post-conflict parties, and clientelism.
Part 6, “Regional Comparisons”, surveys parties in “the global South.” Its eight chapters explore parties and party systems in Russia and the post-Soviet States, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Arab Middle East, and India. The concluding section, “Methods for estimating party preferences”, contains chapters on textual analysis of manifestos, voting advice applications, and expert surveys.
Volumes like The Routledge Handbook of Political Parties serve multiple purposes. One is as a reference book. Another, a way of taking stock and mapping where the study of parties has gone and should be going. The Routledge Handbook scores well on the first. Clearly written and well-argued, its chapters follow a standard format that begins with a survey of the sub-field, moves on to recent advances and debates, and concludes with suggestions for future research. However, not all are easy reading: Contributing authors cram a good deal into limited space, often without tables or charts. Readers, accustomed to skimming to get through large volumes of material, may need to slow down to take in what authors are saying. Nevertheless, The Routledge Handbook is an excellent source for scholars wanting to clarify a point and a useful starting point for students beginning research of their own.
Mapping where the field should be going is another matter. The Routledge Handbook is different from its only predecessor, Richard Katz and William Crotty’s Handbook of Party Politics (Sage, 2006). The latter devoted several chapters to parties in the United States. In contrast, The Routledge Handbook takes the comparative literature as its base and treats American parties only in passing. Giving no quarter to American exceptionalism may be satisfying, but comparative politics studies differences and similarities. If the field is to be extended beyond its current geographic boundaries, then it may be useful to use the American case to ask questions about how parties operate in federal and/or presidential systems.
Other questions can be raised about the proposed extension to “the global south”. The eight chapters in part 6, are interesting but not necessarily jumping off points for further research. Saskia P. Ruth-Lovell’s chapter, “Political Parties in Latin America”, comes closest because there is more literature to analyse. Matthijs Bogaards’ chapter, “Political parties in Sub-Saharan Africa”, argues that parties there operate like cartel parties. That is intriguing but tells us nothing else about parties or the party systems in which they operate.
In a different vein, part 7, “Methods for estimating party preferences”, says little about other databases used by students of parties and ignores questions of how we compare. Both would be welcome elements in a handbook of political parties.
Finally, slicing and dicing parties into manageable bites results in a static picture of parties and party systems said to be undergoing change. The Handbook ignores leadership and candidate selection, says nothing about how parties contest elections, and treats governing only in the chapter on coalition formation and the chapters on parties’ response to contemporary issues.
Nevertheless, The Handbook is a welcome addition to the literature. Instructors may want to assign selected chapters - those on the Middle East and North Africa show how parties operate in non-democratic settings - or refer students to it to clarify points raised in class or other readings. Together with Katz and Crotty’s Handbook of Party Politics, it provides an excellent map of a changing field.
