Political Parties and Political Systems: The Concept of Linkage Revisited

Kay Lawson's Political Parties and Linkages (1980) provided a systematic and theoretically bounded approach to the study of the linkage function of political parties, delineating participatory linkage, policy-responsive linkage, linkage by reward, and directive (coercive) linkage as the four different types of linkage performed by parties. The nine papers presented by Rommele (Mannheimer Zentrum fur Europaische Sozialforschung, U. of Mannheim, Germany), Farrell (politics, U. of Manchester, UK), and Ignazi (comparative politics, U. of Bologna, Italy) revisit Lawson's typology through discussion's of the development of the theory and critical reactions to it, analysis of European and Indian political parties and linkage, and a essay by Lawson herself responding to the themes of earlier chapters and reflecting on the evolution of her views on linkage. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR