Review by Choice Review
Szczerbiak (Univ. of Sussex, UK) presents carefully researched conclusions about the major political parties in Poland from 1989 through the 1998 local government elections. The findings are based on interviews and assessment of extensive data on both the parties and election results. The central hypothesis sets up a test of whether Polish parties fit Western catchall or mass-party models. He pays attention to parliamentary and extraparliamentary parties, party machines, the electoral base of the parties, party membership, and the relationship between the parties and the state. Important conclusions center on the differences between Polish parties and the catchall parties that characterize recent politics in the West. Polish parties differ in their close ties to the state, in the weakness and lack of resources of local offices, in the low level of popular identification with the parties, and in the fact that they are trying to capture voters for the first time. Only the successor parties to the communists fit the mass-party model. For comparable results on Russian political parties, see Thomas F. Remington's Politics in Russia (2d ed., 2002). Recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above. J. W. Peterson Valdosta State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
