1st Edition

Parliamentary Opposition in Old and New Democracies

Edited By Ludger Helms Copyright 2009
    268 Pages
    by Routledge

    268 Pages
    by Routledge

    Previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies, this volume offers a broad comparative assessment of the many faces of parliamentary opposition in different political, legal and cultural settings.

    Issues of political opposition, and of parliamentary opposition in particular, are at the very heart of the study of democratic processes in different parts of the world. Written by leading scholars in the field, this book looks both at the core features of the parliamentary opposition itself and its role in the legislative and wider political process. This includes an inquiry into the manifold challenges that the parliamentary opposition in many countries has come to face in the more recent past, in particular the rise of different non-parliamentary opposition actors. The countries covered in this volume include the old democracies of the Anglo-Saxon world, continental Europe and Japan, and the new democracies and democratizing regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa. Another chapter looks at the manifestations of parliamentary opposition within the multi-level system of the European Union


    Introduction  1. Studying Parliamentary Opposition in Old and New Democracies: Issues and Perspectives  Ludger Helms  Part I: Parliamentary Opposition in Old Democracies 2. Parliamentary Opposition in Westminster Democracies: Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand  Andre Kaiser  3. Parliamentary Opposition under Minority Parliamentarism: Scandinavia  Flemming Juul Christiansen and Erik Damgaard  4. Parliamentary Opposition in Post-Consocational Democracies: Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands  Rudy B. Andeweg, Lieven De Winter and Wolfgang C. Muller  5. Parliamentary Opposition under (Post-)One-Party Rule: Japan  Takashi Inoguchi  Part II: Parliamentary Opposition in New Democracies  6. Parliamentary Opposition in Post-Communist Democracies: Power of the Powerless  Petr Kopecky and Maria Spirova  7. Parliamentary Opposition in Non-Parliamentary Regimes: Latin America  Scott Morgenstern, Juan Javier Negri and Anibal Perez-Linan  8. Parliamentary Opposition after Apartheid: South Africa  Robert A. Schrire  9. Parliamentary Opposition and its Alternatives in a Transnational Regime: The European Union in Perspective Ludger Helms Conclusion  10. Making Sense of Opposition  Philip Norton

    Biography

    Ludger Helms is Professor of Political Science at the University of Innsbruck.