Customer Reviews:
 explaining few and exceptional democracies April 14, 2002
Cases of perpetual one-party dominance among democracies in the industrialized societies are few and exceptional. So we could identify such polities as uncommon democracies. The aim of this volume is to probe the condition of such long-term dominances in the cases of Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Israel in the manner of comparative politics. Authors dissect the socioeconomic coalition, the electoral strategy, polity package, and organizational features of each dominant party, in other words, explanations are centered around the dominant party. Those variables and methodology are common to political scientists. But, personally, I spotted the prototype of Pempels conception of regime in this volume, which was fully developed in his recent title on Japan, Regime Shift. In that title, Pempel, the editor of this book, reorganizes oft-adopted, but vague, word, regime in systematic way. The regime is, he suggests, the three-dimensional concept: the socioeconomic coalition, policy profile, and political economic institutions. A successful regime is formed on the rock of socioeconomic coalition. This coalition set the policy profile of the regime which political economic institutions carry on. The overall points of this book become much more clear with Pempels conception. But Pempels Regime Shift cant replace this book. The former is exclusively devoted to the postwar Japan. So this book could provide the good comparative standpoint to readers.
explaining few and exceptional democracies April 14, 2002
Cases of perpetual one-party dominance among democracies in the industrialized societies are few and exceptional. So we could identify such polities as uncommon democracies. The aim of this volume is to probe the condition of such long-term dominances in the cases of Japan, Sweden, Italy, and Israel in the manner of comparative politics. Authors dissect the socioeconomic coalition, the electoral strategy, polity package, and organizational features of each dominant party, in other words, explanations are centered around the dominant party. Those variables and methodology are common to political scientists. But, personally, I spotted the prototype of Pempels conception of regime in this volume, which was fully developed in his recent title on Japan, Regime Shift. In that title, Pempel, the editor of this book, reorganizes oft-adopted, but vague, word, regime in systematic way. The regime is, he suggests, the three-dimensional concept: the socioeconomic coalition, policy profile, and political economic institutions. A successful regime is formed on the rock of socioeconomic coalition. This coalition set the policy profile of the regime which political economic institutions carry on. The overall points of this book become much more clear with Pempels conception. But Pempels Regime Shift cant replace this book. The former is exclusively devoted to the postwar Japan. So this book could provide the good comparative standpoint to readers.
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