Chapter 11: Post-Industrial Democracies: Political Economy and Democratic Partisan Competition

Herbert Kitschelt

Post-industrial democracies: Political economy and democratic partisan competition There is no other region of the world that has attracted as much systematic theory-guided comparative research in political science as today's set of affluent, post-industrial, politically, and economically stable democracies (abbreviated: PI-democracies). Except Japan, all of them are Western European or derivatively European as British settler democracies. Internationally, after World War II, this group of countries, crystallized around a network of military alliances with the United States as its hub, was the main antagonist of the communist bloc. Comparative political science has pursued primarily four broad subjects of research with regard to PI-democracies. First, a great deal of attention has been devoted to their democratic institutions, especially their electoral systems, the relationship between legislative representation and executive power, and the centralization, or decentralization of authoritative decision-making between national and sub-national governments. Second, a huge number of studies have examined political participation ...

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