Graphic from original book jacket.

Political Parties: A Cross-National Survey was originally published in 1980 by The Free Press, a Division of Macmillan Publishing Company, New York. ISBN 0-02-916120-7. Political Parties went out of print in the mid-1980s. The Free Press surrendered copyright to me in 1997. I began to post this web version in April 2000. My students at Northwestern helped complete it in August 2000. This version of Political Parties conforms closely to the printed volume, which covered 1,019 pages in 8.5" by 11" format. For readability on a computer screen, the double-columned text was converted to single columns. To facilitate citing the book, all pagination of this version matches pages in the printed version.

CONTENTS
	HOW TO USE THIS BOOK ix
	PREFACE xi
	ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
	PART ONE: VARIABLES, CODES, AND SUMMARY STATISTICS
	PART TWO: INFORMATION ON POLITICAL PARTIES BY COUNTRY
	PART THREE: [unpublished in book due to length] BIBLIOGRAPHIES ON PARTY POLITICS, 1950-62

Text from original book jacket This is the first systematic, comprehensive, empirically-based study of political parties around the world. The result of more than fifteen years' work, this encyclopedic volume is a unique handbook for the comparative analysis of party politics and a rich source of information on political parties. It looks at 158 political parties operating in 53 countries from 1950 to 1962, with a further tracing of these parties' histories through 1978. Fifty countries were randomly selected for detailed study--five from each of ten cultural-geographic regions--to provide a representative sample of party systems. Three other countries--the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada--were included for substantive interest. The countries represent all regions, political cultures, and types of party systems in the world. Within each country, all parties--legal and illegal--meeting minimum standards of strength and stability were chosen for study, including not only "competitive" parties but also those with ''restrictive" or ''subversive'' orientations. Over 3,500 primary and secondary sources were consulted in scoring the parties on more than one hundred variables, each measuring a major concept. For example, the party's "year of origin" or age is one measure of its degree of "institutionalization." These variables and concepts constitute the study's conceptual framework, which contends that most of the cross-national variation in political parties can be analyzed under only ten general concepts: institutionalization, governmental status, social support, issue orientation, goal orientation, autonomy, degree of organization, centralization of power, coherence, and involvement. Over 1,000 pages long, this massive study is organized into two parts. Part One outlines the conceptual framework, explains the operationalization of the variables for research, and summarizes the ratings of the parties separately for two time periods--1950-1956 and 1957-1962--allowing for party change over time. Part Two devotes a section to party politics in each country, discussing each party in detail. The scores assigned to the parties on the variables are accompanied by comments about the party's practice and the availability of information to judge party practice. The material prepared for this publication has been scrupulously reviewed by 46 foreign experts drawn from around the world. All the research is an outgrowth of the International Comparative Political Parties project, established in 1967 at Northwestern University. Directed by Dr. Janda, the project was supported by the National Science Foundation. A reference of international scope and significance, POLITICAL PARTIES is an invaluable sourcebook for those interested in political parties throughout the world. [Kenneth Janda is now Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.]