It is generally acknowledge that a higher degree of party and party system institutionalisation is positively correlated with the consolidation of democracy. It is, thus, useful to compare different levels and types of insititutionalisation. In this article the distinction made by Levitsky...

Starting from controversial findings about the relationship between party systems and the prospects of democratic consolidation, this article argues that problems can only be properly addressed on the basis of a differentiated typology of party systems. Contradictory research results do not pose...

Surprisingly, the outcome of the 1999 and 2004 elections in Indonesia and the resultant constellation of political parties are reminiscent of the first Indonesian parliamentary democracy of the 1950s. The dynamics of party politics is still marked by aliran ("streams"), i.e. some of the biggest...

The basic patterns of the initial Indonesian party system have reemerged after more than four decades of authoritarianism. The cleavage model by Lipset and Rokkan is well-suited to analyzing the genesis of and the most salient features of this party system. However, in applying the approach,...

The institutionalization of political parties is said to be important for democratic development, but its measurement has remained a neglected area of research. We understand the institutionalization of political organizations as progress in four dimensions: roots in society, level of...

Despite earlier assumptions that ethnicity is a central feature of African party systems, there is little substantial evidence for this claim. The few studies with an empirical foundation rarely rely on individual data and are biased in favor of Anglophone Africa. This paper looks at four...

Recent publications suggest that exclusively ethnoregional parties are as rare in sub- Saharan Africa as elsewhere. At the same time, the idea that ethnicity is a very special feature of African party politics persists. The paper acknowledges the general relevance of ethnicity in party...

Generally speaking, the effects of international political party assistance are viewed nega-tively, or at least controversially. This study attributes some of the shortcomings of political party aid to the poor relationship between assistance providers and political science party research. They...