Territorial Party Politics in Western Europe (PDF)

WILFRIED SWENDEN is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and a member of the territorial politics research group. He is the author of Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe: A Comparative and Thematic Analysis and has published widely on comparative federalism, regionalism and Belgian politics.

BART MADDENS is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Political Research at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He is the author of numerous articles in scholarly journals on electoral behavior, party politics, nationalism, Belgian politics and the monarchy.

'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,