Hans-Dieter Klingemann

This book is probably the most important source of evidence published up to now on the consolidation of democracy in Eastern Europe. It provides estimates of party positions, voter preferences and government policy from election programmes collected systematically for 51 countries from 1990 onwards. Time-series are presented in the text. This also reports party life histories (essential to over time analyses) and provides updated and newly validated vote statistics. All this information and much more is available on the devoted website described in the book. The final chapter gives instructions on how to access the data on your own computer. For comparative purposes, similar estimates of policy and preferences are given for CEE, OECD and EU countries. These estimates update the prize-winning data set covered in Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electors and Governments 1945-1998 - also published by OUP. A must-buy for all commentators, students and analysts of democracy, in Eastern Europe and the world.

Wahlen und Wählerverhalten im Wandel - Der Wahlsieg von Rot-Grün bei der Bundestagswahl 1998 - Die Entwicklung der Öffentlichen Meinung zwischen 1998 und 2002 - Themen und Ereignisse des Wahlkampfs - Die Kandidaten im Vergleich - Die TV-Duelle: Events mit Effekt? - Wahrnehmung und Bewertung durch die Wähler - Die Parteibindungen: Emotional oder rational? - Die Wahlentscheidung: Zur relativen Bedeutung von Kandidaten, Themen und Parteibindungen - Das Wahlergebnis

This book uniquely enriches and empowers its readers. It enriches them by giving them the most detailed and extensive data available on the policies and preferences of key democratic actors—parties, governments, and electors in 25 democracies over the post-war period. Estimates are provided for every election and most coalitions of the post-war period and derive from the programmes, manifestos, and platforms of parties and governments themselves. Thus, they form a uniquely authoritative source, recognized as such and provided through the labour of a team of international scholars over 25 years. The book empowers readers by providing these estimates on the website http://manifestoproject.wzb.eu/MPP1. The printed text provides documentation and suggested uses for data, along with much other background information. The changing ideologies and concerns of parties trace general social developments over the post-war period, as well as directly affecting economic policy making. Indispensable for any serious discussion of democratic politics, the book provides necessary information for political scientists, policy analysts, comparativists, sociologists, and economists. A must for every social science library—private as well as academic or public.