Political party assistance and political party research: towards a closer encounter?

Autor: Gero Erdmann
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Democratization. 17:1275-1296
ISSN: 1743-890X
1351-0347
DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2010.520551
Popis: Generally speaking the effects of international political party assistance are viewed negatively or at least controversially. This study attributes some of the shortcomings of political party aid to the poor relationship between assistance providers and political science party research. They simply operate in different worlds. Party assistance lacks clear-cut concepts and strategies in practice, which makes it difficult to evaluate it adequately. At issue is its ‘standard method’, with its ‘transformative’ intention to change the party organization of the assistance receivers. At the same time, the scholarship on political parties can provide only limited help to assistance providers due to its own conceptual and methodological restrictions, such as the Western European bias of its major concepts, the predominance of a functionalist approach, and the scant empirical research on political parties outside Europe and the US. Taking a cue from recent political party research, we could begin to question the ov...
Databáze: OpenAIRE