recommencement? The article examines mechanisms of party change in the homelands of Christian Democracy: Italy and Germany. It …-dependence as causal mechanism and the rational choices of party operatives reacting to historical challenges after 1945 …

The organization of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, arguably the most successful political party in the democratic …. This paper uses an historical institutional approach to analyze one of its key organizations, its Policy Affairs Research … Council (PARC) its chief party policymaking organ. We look at PARC and its development both before the 1994 electoral reform …

democracy aid be considered by scholars of party and electoral systems as an external variable that affects party system …The paper analyzes the work of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) from its founding in 1992 to the present … day. The WFD is a government sponsored NGO that administers democratic political aid in Eastern and Southern Europe …

How do the contours of electoral systems, party systems, and women's representation affect political engagement, and … of proportionality in electoral rules, the number and diversity of party choices, and the percentage of women in … and engagement appears to be direct, rather than indirect through its consequences for party system offerings or women …

Party competition is typically studied at the national level. In multilevel systems, this is an important shortcoming …, because the interactions between parties and party systems at different levels of government have relevant effects on the way … in which democratic institutions are distributed across a territory and on the quality of democracy – a key concern in …

Downesian spatial model. It is necessary to add a temporal dimension to explain when and why the broadening of party platforms …-all strategies are the existence of viable parties to the left of the catch-all party on the left-right continuum and the electoral …/right indicators as measures of party competition, suggesting that a multi-dimensional space is necessary to accurately depict …