Are Politics Local?: The Two Dimensions of Party Nationalization around the World - Softcover

Morgenstern, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108400345 ISBN 13: 9781108400343

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Are politics local? Why? Where? When? How do we measure local versus national politics? And what are the effects? This book provides answers to these questions, within an explicitly comparative framework, including both advanced and developing democracies. It does so by using a statistically-based and graphical account of party nationalization, providing methodology and data for legislative elections covering scores of parties across dozens of countries. The book divides party nationalization into two dimensions - static and dynamic - to capture different aspects of localism, both with important implications for representation. Static nationalization measures the consistency in a party's support across the country and thus shows whether parties are able to encompass local concerns into their platforms. Dynamic nationalization, in turn, measures the consistency among the districts in over-time change in electoral results, under the presumption that where districts differ in their electoral responses, local factors must drive politics. Each of the two dimensions, in sum, considers representation from the perspective of the mix of national versus local politics.

About this title

About the Author

Scott Morgenstern is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll Call Voting in the United States and Latin America's Southern Cone (Cambridge, 2004) and the co-editor of Legislative Politics in Latin America, (Cambridge, 2002), Pathways to Power (2008), and Reforming Communism: Cuba in Comparative Perspective (2017). His articles have appeared in the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Party Politics, Electoral Studies, and other journals.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108400345
• ISBN 13: 9781108400343
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312