Democratic Politics and Party Competition

Judith Bara is a Lecturer in Politics, at Queen Mary, University of London and a Research Fellow in Government at the University of Essex, UK.Albert Weale is Professor of Government at the University of Essex, UK. He is also co-Editor of the British Journal of Political Science and Fellow of the British Academy.

• Introduction 1. The Comparative Study of Democracy Part 1. Applications 1. Party Government Formation and Policy Preferences: Keman and Budge Revisited 2. A Common Space for Electors and Parties? Comparing Electoral and Party Position on the Left-Right Continuum 3. Parties in Democracy, Democracy in Parties 4. Party Families and European Parliament Party Groups 5. Do Parties Reflect Public Concerns? Part 2. Challenges 6. Does the Median Voter Theorem Wipe Out Political Participation? 7. The Dimensionality of Party Ideologies 8. Occam No, Archimedes Yes 9. Political Space and Its Inhabitants 10. 'Party Defined' Spaces Revisited Part 3. Extensions 11. Why Does Ideology Figure so Little in Vote Models When It Looms so Large in Models of Party Competition? 12. What Do We Want Elections to Do and How Do We Want Them to Do It? 13. Conceptions of Political Tolerance in Great Britain and the United States 14. Preference Shaping Theories 15. Democratic Welfarism and Its Normative Basis