Territorial Party Politics in Western Europe

During the last decades, several West European states have gone through a process of decentralization, involving the shift of significant legislative powers to sub-national entities or regions. As a result their party systems have become multi-layered, featuring a variety of regional party systems that often differ considerably from the state-wide system. State-wide parties are the key integrative force in such a multi-level party system. Yet, in order to play their integrative role, state-wide parties must perform a difficult balancing act. Securing votes in regional elections requires that they give sufficient autonomy to their regional branches and give them some strategic leeway, without however jeopardizing the cohesion and programmatic coherence of the party as a whole. This book offers a powerful synthesis of research in party politics, federalism and regional politics and extends existing insights by bringing in new empirical evidence on the territorial organization and strategies of state-wide parties in five federal or regionalized states in Western Europe: Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

ISBN 0230521622   Pages 336 ISBN13 9780230521629 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Palgrave Macmillan   Weight (grammes) 517 Imprint Palgrave Macmillan   Published in Basingstoke Format Hardback   Height (mm) 223 Publication date 27 Nov 2008   Width (mm) 143 Library of Congress 2008030662   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 324.2094   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC22

Introduction		Territorial party politics in Western Europe : a framework for analysis by Wilfried Swenden and Bart Maddens		1
1		Towards a regionalization of statewide electoral trends in decentralized states? : the cases of Belgium and Spain by Kris Deschouwer		31
2		Territory and electoral politics in Germany by Dan Hough and Michael Koss		47
3		Rediscovering the region : territorial politics and party organizations in Germany by Klaus Detterbeck and Charlie Jeffery		63
4		Decentralization and party organizational change : the case of Italy by Jonathan Hopkin		86
5		Decentralization and party organizational change : the British and Spanish statewide parties compared by Elodie Fabre and Monica Mendez-Lago		102
6		Devolution and party organization in the UK : statewide parties and statewide-regional branch relations over candidate selection in Scotland and Wales by Jonathan Bradbury		119
7		Splitting the difference : the radical approach of the Belgian parties by Frederik Verleden		145
8		Authority in multilevel parties : a principal-agent framework and cases from Germany and Spain by Pieter van Houten		167
9		Governing strategies in multilevel settings : coordination, innovation or territorialization? by Irina Stefuriuc		183
10		How statewide parties cope with the regionalist issue : the case of Spain; a directional approach by Bart Maddens and Liselotte Libbrecht		204
11		Statewide parties and regional party competition : an analysis of party manifestos in the United Kingdom by Elodie Fabre and Enric Martinez-Herrera		229
		Concluding observations by Wilfried Swenden and Bart Maddens		249
		Notes		271
		Bibliography		280
		Index		300

'The book is not only 'important'; I feel it is truly ice-breaking. Taking into account that federalism and party research are commonly two very distinct parts of the science, the prime merit of the book and its contributors is that they try to overcome this gap by bringing these 'alien' approaches together.' -- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Renzsch, Jean-Monnet Chair of European Studies, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany 'How does territorial decentralization affect party systems? Bart Maddens and Wilfried Swenden assemble specialists to examine this question for state-wide parties in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and Great Britain. They find evidence that decentralization influences how parties organize and campaign in state-wide and regional elections, though mediated by party preferences on decentralization and the party's participation in government. This study draws creatively from work on parties and on decentralization--two literatures rarely combined--to formulate a series of testable hypotheses. It is a very nice example of how connecting islands of research can produce innovative research. The measured approach in hypothesizing, mixing and matching of cases and methods, and drawing conclusions sets a high standard. This book will inspire students of party dynamics in multilevel systems.' - Liesbet Hooghe, Zachary Taylor Smith Professor in Political Science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, USA, and Chair in Multilevel Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands 'Party politics has been an under-explored area in the booming field of European regional studies. Swenden and Maddens have brought together some of the most active scholars in the area to produce a set of papers that are theoretically sophisticated and empirically well-informed. The volume is truly comparative and will be essential reading for students of territorial politics in Europe.' - Michael Keating, Professor of Regional Studies, European University Institute, Firenze, Italy

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