Investigating party organization: structures, resources, and representative strategies / Susan E. Scarrow and Paul D. Webb -- Part 1. How parties organize -- Assessing the strength of party organizational resources: a survey of the evidence from the political party database / Paul D. Webb and Dan Keith -- Which face comes first? The ascendancy of the party in public office / Luciano Bardi, Enrico Calossi, and Eugenio Pizzimenti -- The paradox of party funding: the limited impact of state subsidies on party membership / Ingrid van Biezen and Petr Kopecký -- Still connecting with society? Political parties' formal links with social groups in the twenty-first century / Elin Haugsgjerd Allern and Tània Verge -- Varieties of intra-party democracy: conceptualization and index construction / Benjamin von dem Berge and Thomas Poguntke -- Patterns of intra-party democracy across the world / Niklas Bolin ... [et al.] -- Part 2. The impact of party organization -- Party finance and perceived party responsiveness / Marina Costa Lobo and Isabella Razzuoli -- Candidate selection rules and democratic outcomes: the impact of parties on women's representation / Scott Pruysers ... [et al.] -- Rules of engagement? Party membership costs, new forms of party affiliation, and partisan participation / Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, Susan E. Scarrow, and Emilie van Haute -- The effects of manifesto politics on programmatic change / Annika Hennl and Simon Tobias Franzmann -- Party organization and party unity / Conor Little and David M. Farrell -- Conclusion: the study of party organization / Paul D. Webb, Thomas Poguntke, and Susan E. Scarrow -- Afterword / Richard S. Katz.

Political party organizations play large roles in democracie, yet their organizations differ widely, and their statutes change much more frequently than constitutions or electoral laws. How do these differences, and these frequent changes, affect the operation of democracy? This book seeks to answer these questions by presenting a comprehensive overview of the state of party organization in nineteen contemporary democracies. Using a unique new data collection, the book's chapters test propositions about the reasons for variation and similarities across party organizations. They find more evidence of within-country similarity than of cross-national patterns based on party ideology. After exploring parties' organizational differences, the remaining chapters investigate the impact of these differences. The volume considers a wide range of theories about how party organization may affect political life, including the impact of party rules on the selection of female candidates, the links between party decision processes and the stability of party programmes, the connection between party finance sources and public trust in political parties, and whether the strength of parties' extra-parliamentary organization affects the behaviour of their elected legislators. Collectively these chapters help to advance comparative studies of elections and representation by inserting party institutions and party agency more firmly into the centre of such studies.