Dominant Political Parties and Democracy

Matthijs Bogaards is Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. Françoise Boucek is Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics at Queen Mary University London, UK.

• 1. Introduction: Setting a New Agenda for Research Part 1: Concepts and Measures 2. Rethinking Dominant Party Systems 3. Measuring One-Party Dominance with Voting Power Indices 4. District-Level Dominance and Vulnerability under the French Fifth Republic Part 2: Cases and Comparisons i: Sub-national Dominance 5. Big Fish in Small Ponds: A Comparison of Dominant Parties in the Canadian Provinces and German Länder 6. Hard and Soft Dominance: Assessing the Case of the Bavarian CSU ii: The Intra-Party Dimension of Dominance 7. The Factional Politics of Dominant Parties: Evidence from Britain, Italy and Japan 8. Dominance without Factions: The Liberal Party of Canada iii: Dominance and Democracy 9. A Resource Theory of Single Party Dominance: The PRI in Mexico 10. One-Party Dominance in South-Africa 11. Laying a Foundation for Democracy or Undermining It? Dominant Parties in Africa’s Burgeoning Democracies 12. Conclusion