Hanson utilizes a comparative-historical analysis of three cases of 'post-imperial democracy' to examine the importance of ideology in creating an enduring party organization in uncertain democracies.

Stephen E. Hanson is the Vice Provost for Global Affairs and the Herbert J. Ellison Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. Hanson is the author of Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions (1997), which received the 1998 Wayne S. Vucinich book award from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. His more recent publications include Postcommunism and the Theory of Democracy (2001, with Richard Anderson Jr., M. Steven Fish, and Philip Roeder), and articles in journals including Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and East European Politics and Societies. He also served as Assistant General Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series in Comparative Politics until 2008.

Part I: 1. Weberian methodological individualism; 2. A Weberian theory of ideology; 3. Ideology and party formation; Part II: 4. The founding of the French Third Republic; 5. The rise and fall of the Weimar Republic; 6. Post-Soviet Russia; 7. Conclusion: bringing ideology back in.