Drawing on the expertise of an impressive team of internationally known specialists, the book engages systematically with the evidence to show that, while a degree of popular cynicism towards them is often chronic, though rarely acute, parties have adapted and survived as organizations, remodelling themselves to the needs of an era in which patterns of linkage and communication with social groups have been transformed.

• 1: Paul Webb: Introduction: Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies


• 2: Paul Webb: Political Parties in Britain: Secular Decline or Adaptive Resilience?


• 3: Change and Functionality Luciano Bardi: Italian Parties


• 4: Susan E. Scarrow: Party Decline in the Parties State? The Changing Environment of German Politics


• 5: Andrew Knapp: France: Never a Golden Age


• 6: Kris Deschouwer: The Colour Purple: The End of Predictable Politics in the Low Countries


• 7: Jan Sundberg: The Scandinavian Party Model at the Crossroads


• 8: R. J. Murphy and David M. Farrell: Party Politics in Ireland: Regularizing a Volatile System


• 9: Ian Holliday: Spain: Building a Parties State in a New Democracy


• 10: Simon Hix: Parties at the European Level


• 11: John C. Green: Still Functional After All These Years: Parties in America, 1960-2000


• 12: R. Kenneth Carty: Canada's 19th Century Cadre Parties at the Millennium


• 13: Ian McAllister: Political Parties in Australia: Party Stability in a Utilitarian Society


• 14: Jack Vowles: Parties and Society in New Zealand


• 15: Paul Webb: Conclusion: Political Parties and Democratic Control in Advanced Industrial Societies