Cover Page -- Title -- Copyright -- Summarycontents -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Notes on the Editor and contributors -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Part One The Comparative Approach To Democracy -- 1 The Comparative Approach to Democracy -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 The pursuit of political order: democracy and performance -- 1.3 Politics, polity and policy: towards an interactive model of actors and institutions -- 1.4 New institutionalism and political room to manoeuvre in democracies -- 1.5 The political chain of democratic command and control -- 2 The Development of the Study of Comparative Politics -- 2.1 The academic tradition -- 2.2 The political shocks of the twentieth century and the erosion of institutional certainties -- 2.3 Academe and a changing political universe -- 2.4 The new comparative politics -- 2.5 Inevitable reactions -- 2.6 Rethinking Europe -- 2.7 Different research strategies for studying democracy -- 2.8 New approaches to the study of democratic politics -- 2.9 The great new challenges -- 3 Comparing Democracies: Theories and Evidence -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Doing comparative research: substance and method -- 3.3 The concept of democracy as a comparative variable -- 3.4 Explaining variations of democracy -- 3.5 Democracy and diffusion: the viability and performance of democraticness -- 3.6 Concluding remarks -- Appendix: Variables and sources -- Part Two Parties And Government In Democracies -- 4 Comparative Government and Democracy -- 4.1 Studying democracy comparatively -- 4.2 Comparative evidence on democracy as a process -- 4.3 Modelling party democracy -- 4.4 Comparative data sets -- 4.5 An overview of results from comparative statistical investigation -- 4.6 A validated and specified model of democratic processes -- 4.7 Specifying models for particular policy areas.

4.7.1 Non-mediated processes: education -- 4.7.2 Popular influence on the overall size of government -- 4.7.3 Party priorities in welfare and defence -- 4.7.4 Electoral choices between government priorities - where there is a choice -- 4.8 General lessons from modelling democratic processes -- Appendix: Targeting policy priorities: a purposive statistical model -- 5 Voters, Elections and Ideology in European Democracies -- 5.1 Introduction -- 5.2 The state of the art: theories of electoral behaviour -- 5.2.1 The sociological approach -- 5.3 Institutions and the electoral diversity of European established democracies -- 5.4 The role of ideology in elections -- 5.5 Electoral participation and political disillusionment -- 5.6 European parliamentary elections -- 5.7 Conclusions -- 6 In the Aggregate: Mass Electoral Behaviour in Western Europe, 1950-2000 -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 Aggregate electoral change -- 6.3 Mass electoral participation -- 6.4 Aggregate electoral volatility -- 6.5 Electoral support for new political parties -- 6.6 Electoral support for the Greens and the extreme Right -- 6.7 Conclusion -- Part Three Democratic Institutions And Political Action -- 7 Interest Intermediation: the Cases of Consociational Democracy and Corporatism -- 7.1 Introduction: What is corporatism and consociational democracy about? -- 7.2 Who discovered it when? -- 7.3 Consociational and consensus democracies: definitions and data -- 7.4 Corporatism classified: definitions and data -- 7.5 Corporatism and consociationalism: Is it nearly the same? -- 7.6 Rise and decline of consociationalism and corporatism -- 7.7 The persistence and viability of negotiation democracy -- 7.8 Conclusions -- 8 The Impact of Political Parties, Constitutional Structures and Veto Players on Public Policy -- 8.1 Democratic policy-making -- 8.2 The parties-do-matter hypothesis.

8.3 Measuring party composition of government and findings from parties-do-matter theory -- 8.4 Incumbent parties, constitutional structure and veto players -- 8.5 The impact of constitutional structures and veto players on public policy -- 8.6 Conclusion -- 9 Comparative Politics and the Welfare State -- 9.1 Introduction -- 9.2 A history of theories -- 9.2.1 Functional accounts -- 9.2.2 Social Democracy as a model of the welfare state -- 9.2.3 Challenges to the social democratic thesis -- 9.3 Rethinking welfare state theory -- 9.3.1 The theory of welfare state regimes -- 9.3.2 The institutionalist turn -- 9.4 Risks and social security -- 9.4.1 Liberalism, social democracy, and paternalism -- 9.4.2 Systematic differences -- 9.4.3 Challenges and reforms -- 9.5 Political issues and theoretical perspectives -- 9.5.1 Political issues -- 9.5.2 Theoretical perspectives -- Part Four The Political Performance Of Democracies -- 10 Policy Performance in the Democratic State: an Emergent Field of Study -- 10.1 Introduction -- 10.2 Why the post-war world was different -- 10.3 The 'politics-does-matter' debate -- 10.4 Pathways to policy -- 10.5 Constrained autonomy and policy convergence -- 10.6 The impact of interests -- 10.7 The complexities of partisanship -- 10.8 The institutions of government -- 10.9 Conclusions -- 11 Democratic Performance: Are There Institutional Effects? -- 11.1 Introduction -- 11.2 Institutional effects -- 11.3 Democratic institutions: intrinsic or extrinsic importance? -- 11.3.1 Institutional importance: intrinsic or extrinsic -- 11.3.2 Institutions: rules or actors -- 11.4 Impact of democracy: de Tocqueville's model -- 11.4.1 Level of human development -- 11.4.2 Welfare state policies -- 11.4.3 Equality -- 11.4.4 Summing up -- 11.5 Democracy: the differentia specifica -- 11.5.1 Two ideal-types of democracy?.

11.5.2 How much institutional convergence? -- 11.6 Institutional performance in democracies -- 11.7 Are there democratic institutional effects? -- 11.8 Which type of democracy is best? -- 11.9 Conclusions -- Appendix 1: Variables and sources -- Appendix 2: Classification of democratic regimes -- 12 Democratic Institutions, Governance and Political Performance -- 12.1 The meaning of the concept of democratic governance -- 12.1.1 Government and governance: multifarious concepts -- 12.1.2 Towards a definition of government -- 12.2 Government and the political system: governance -- 12.2.1 Government as a structural element of society -- 12.2.2 Political institutions and the structure of government -- 12.3 Political regimes and the shaping of government -- 12.3.1 Representative government -- 12.3.2 Presidential government -- 12.3.3 Parliamentary government -- 12.3.4 Dual power government -- 12.4 The form of government: Format and organization -- 12.4.1 State format and the shaping of government -- 12.4.2 The organization of representative government -- 12.5 Political performance and democratic governance -- 12.5.1 The policy performance within democracies -- 12.5.2 Types of democratic government and policy performance -- 12.5.3 The impact of state format and organization of government on policy performance -- 12.6 Democratic government and democratic governance -- 12.6.1 State format, type of government and level of democraticness -- 12.6.2 Policy performance, democratic performance and the quality of life -- 12.6.3 Dissatisfaction, underperformance and democraticness -- 12.7 Conclusions -- Appendix: Variables and sources -- Bibliography -- Index.