Recent decades have seen a wave of institutional changes of the core democratic rules in advanced democracies. These changes include reforms of electoral systems; decentralization of power to sub-national governments; the creation or enhancement of direct-democratic institutions; a rise in...

Although it is generally seen as desirable that parties in government are both responsive and responsible, these two characteristics are now in increasing tension with one another. Prudence and consistency in government, as well as accountability, requires that governments conform to external...

This paper is intended to frame and describe a novel method of political party positioning within the European Union and beyond. Ever since the groundbreaking work by Downs in the 1950s, political scientists have derived a variety of methods to empirically determine the position of parties on...

The changing circumstances in which parties compete in contemporary democracies, coupled with the changing circumstances in which governments now govern, have led to a widening of the traditional gap between representative and responsible government. Although it is generally seen as desirable...