Review by Choice Review
The question of how democracies should deal with parties that challenge the democratic order is at the center of this important, timely book. Downs (Georgia State Univ.) labels them pariah parties to indicate the disdain with which the political establishment views them and to capture parties that are often called extremist, radical, populist, or nationalistic. The examples are drawn from Western and Eastern Europe, but the findings are of interest to a wider scholarly audience. Downs explores the divergent responses to pariah parties; they range from bans and isolation to collaboration, co-optation, and ignorance. According to him, responses are determined by a mix of factors that take into account historical legacies, including visions of democracy, institutional settings, and what he terms individual-level factors. The case studies are drawn from a diverse set of countries to illuminate the tactics aimed at either discrediting pariah parties (e.g., Belgium) or including them (e.g., Austria, Switzerland, and Denmark). He explores the impact of anti-immigrant parties on established political parties, in particular the German Social Democratic Party. This theoretically insightful and empirically rich study shows that there is no universal way of dealing with these parties; the choices come with risks and consequences, no matter what they are. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. H. A. Welsh Wake Forest University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
