Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations

by Peter Mair

This is the first full-length book to examine how we interpret evidence of change and stability in modern parties and party systems. Focusing primarily on processes of political adaptation and control, it also concerns how parties and party systems generate their own momentum and "freeze" themselves into place. Amid the widespread contemporary discussions of the challenge to modern democracy and the crisis of traditional forms of political representation, if offers a welcome emphasis on how party systems survive, and on how change, when it does occur, may be analyzed and understood.

Genres: Political Science

260 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 1997

About the author

Peter Mair (March 3, 1951 – August 15, 2011) was an Irish political scientist. He was professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence.

Career

Peter Mair was born in Rosses Point, county Sligo, Ireland, and studied history and politics at University College Dublin. He continued to work as assistant professor at the University of Limerick, Strathclyde, Manchester and the European University Institute in Florence during the 1980s. In 1987 at Leiden University he gained a doctorate, which as The changing Irish party system became a standard work on the Irish party system. In 1990, he co-authored the book Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability with Stefano Bartolini. It was awarded the ISSC/Unesco Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. He continued to work at Leiden University becoming professor of comparative politics in 1994 when he held an inaugural address entitled "Party democracies and their difficulties". In 2001 he became co-editor of the journal West European Politics. In 2005 he returned to the European University Institute to invest time in his research into democracy, indifference and populist parties.

He specialized in comparative politics and specifically in the study of parties and party systems.

Mair died suddenly while on holiday in Connemara with his family.