Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (ECPR Press Classics) - Softcover

Giovanni Sartori

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954796616 ISBN 13: 9780954796617

Publisher: ECPR Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this rich and broad-ranging volume, Giovanni Sartori outlines what is now recognised to be the most comprehensive and authoritative approach to the classification of party systems. He also offers an extensive review of the concept and rationale of the political party, and develops a sharp critique of various spatial models of party competition. This is political science at its best – combining the intelligent use of theory with sophisticated analytic arguments, and grounding all of this on a substantial cross-national empirical base. Parties and Party Systems is one of the classics of postwar political science, and is now established as the foremost work in its field.

About this title

About the Author

Giovanni Sartori was born in Florence, Italy, in 1924, and was appointed Professor of Political Science at the University of Florence in 1963. He has been a visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale, and in 1976 he succeeded Gabriel Almond as Professor of Political Science at Stanford. In 1979 he was appointed Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, New York, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Sartori is the author of numerous books across a range of fields in political theory and comparative politics, including Parties and Party Systems (1976), The Theory of Democracy Revisited (2 volumes, 1990), and Comparative Constitutional Engineering (2nd ed, 1997). His most recent books are Homo Videns (2nd ed, 2000), Pluralismo, Multiculturalismo, Estranei (2nd ed, 2002), and Mala Tempora (2004), which has been a bestseller in Italy. In 2005, Parties and Party Systems was also published in a Chinese translation.

Review

Sartori ...is particularly strong on conceptualisation, is insistent on the need for precision and consistency in the use of terms, and carefully distinguishes parties from factions, movements, and pressure groups.... The pay-off from the framework is seen in the brilliant exposition where the number of parties, moderated by ideology, is related to a wide array of characteristics of political systems... Sartori's book is a major contribution to the studies of comparative politics and political concepts, written with a remarkable feel for the English language. (Dennis Kavanagh)

About this edition

• Publisher: ECPR Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0954796616
• ISBN 13: 9780954796617
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368