Political parties are nothing without their people – especially without candidates. When candidates change, so do parties. Even in parties that look stable, candidate change happens below the surface, ultimately altering what the parties stand for. Inspired by evolutionary theories, Party People: Candidates and Party Evolution conceptualizes candidates as ‘party genes’ and develops a candidate-based approach to party evolution.
Based on a new database of 200,000 electoral candidates from over 60 elections across nine CEE democracies, the book presents a groundbreaking study of party evolution using candidate change as an indicator of party change. In addition, the book offers a series of methodological and conceptual advances for the measurement of candidate turnover, party fission and fusion, programmatic change, and party leadership change.
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The authors
Dr Allan Sikk is an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His research focuses on European electoral and party politics, research methods, and political and social transformation in Central and Eastern Europe. His work has been published in journals including the European Journal of Political Research and Party Politics, and in edited volumes from Oxford University Press and Routledge.
Dr Philipp Köker is a Lecturer and Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science, Leibniz University Hannover. His research focuses on presidential politics, political parties and elections, and comparative constitutional law. He is the author of Presidential Activism and Veto Power in Central and Eastern Europe (Palgrave, 2017) and of contributions to Democratization, East European Politics, Party Politics, the Review of Central and East European Law, and The Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics, among others.
p.koeker@ipw.uni-hannover.de
@PhilippKoeker