Political Parties in Conflict-Prone Societies: Regulation, Engineering and Democratic Development

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Well-functioning political parties are essential components of democracy. They organize voters, aggregate and articulate interests, craft policy alternatives, recruit and socialize new candidates for office, set policy-making agendas, integrate disparate groups and individuals into the democratic process, and provide the basis for coordinated electoral and legislative activity. But political parties in many developing democracies remain weak and underdeveloped, often being based around personal, ethnic or regional ties rather than national interests.

Today, with more states deciding their leaders through multiparty elections than ever before, many developing democracies seek to shape the development of political parties and party systems by regulating the way parties can form, organize and behave. Most of these ambitious initiatives and innovations emanate from new democracies rather than established Western examples. This volume examines this growing trend in conflict-prone societies towards promoting stable and inclusive political parties via political party regulation and engineering in developing democracies around the world.

This publication is published by the United Nations University Press and can be purchased here

Part I: Introduction

1 Introduction
Benjamin Reilly

2 Party regulation and constitutionalization: A comparative overview
Ingrid van Biezen

3 Comparative strategies of political party regulation Matthijs Bogaards

Part II: Regional experiences

4 Political engineering and party regulation in Southeast Asia
Allen Hicken

5 Regulating minority parties in Central and South-Eastern Europe
Florian Bieber

6 Political parties in conflict-prone societies in Latin America
Matthias Catón and Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla

7 Party regulation in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America: The effect on minority representation and the propensity for conflict
Jóhanna Kristín Birnir

8 Party regulation and political engineering in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific islands
Henry Okole

9 Party regulations, nation-building and party systems in southern and east Africa
Denis K. Kadima

Part III: Thematic perspectives

10 Party regulation and democratization: Challenges for further research
Iain McMenamin

11 Party regulation in conflict-prone societies: More dangers than opportunities?
Vicky Randall

12 International support for political party development in war torn societies
Krishna Kumar and Jeroen de Zeeuw

13 Conclusion
Per Nordlund

Index

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