The article presents to readers main ideas of the recently appeared «Political Parties and Democracy» that is comprised of five, stand-alone volumes. The development of political parties over the past century is analyzed as the story of three stages in the pursuit of power: liberation, democratization, and dedemocratization. In each volume, contributors explore the relationship between political parties and democracy (or democratization) in their nations at all three stages, providing necessary historical, socioeconomic, and institutional context, as well as the details of contemporary tensions. Three forms of dedemocratization are indentified and typology of links between parties and citizens are suggested.

This paper argues that parties are losing legitimacy because of their adaptation to the changing environment. In the passage towards the post-modern or «liquid» society parties had to respond to the shrinking of their resources produced by a decreasing membership in front of rising organizational costs. The solution to parties' difficulties has been found in penetrating the state precisely to exploit its resources to their benefit. In order to acquire more public resources they have to expand the patronage side of their activity. But this expansion has the negative effect of depressing the parties' symbolic and collective incentives for membership, so crucial to the parties' legitimacy. In this way parties are trapped into a vicious circle: more resources they acquire, the more they lose confidence and legitimacy.

We restate and clarify the idea of the «cartel party», a concept that has found considerable traction in studies of parties throughout the democratic world, including those far from the original research site and data on which the cartel model was based. The cartel party thesis holds that political parties increasingly function like cartels, employing the resources of the state to limit political competition and ensure their own electoral success. The thesis has been subject to varied empirical testing and to substantial theoretical evaluation and criticism. Against this background, we look again at the cartel party thesis in order to cla-
rify ambiguities in and misinterpretations of the original argument. We also suggest further refinements, specifications and extensions of the argument. Following a background review of the original thesis, we break it down into its core components, and then clarify the terms in which it makes sense to speak of cartelization and collusion. We then go on to explore some of the implications of the thesis for our understanding of contemporary democracies and patterns of party organization and party competition and we identify a possible agenda for future research in party scholarship.

This article reviews the English term, «governance». It defines «country governance» as the extent to which a state delivers to its citizens the benefits of government. It studies the effects of party system fragmentation, competition, and volatility on Rule of Law as a benefit of government. Data came from 189 countries with parliamentary parties and 2007 World Bank data on Rule of Law. More competitive and stable party systems scored higher on Rule of Law. Fragmentation had no effect.

In the last years many politicians, political parties and authorities seem to reverse their activities against the traditional democratic paradigm: instead of aggregating of social interests and conceptualizing of policy in accordance with public demands, they seek vice a versa to form public opinion in accordance with their own actual policy. Invisible spin-doctors begin to play an increasing role in this activity. Using of such technologies can become sooner or later dangerous for political legitimacy of governments.

There are two main approaches to explaining Russia's stunted party development. The first focuses on social and cultural factors «from below»: the weakness of an independent civil society, blurred class identities, a cultural resistance to party affiliation, and weak civic subjectivity. The second prioritises institutional design «from above», notably the «superpresidential» system towering above the government, parliament and the judicial system while reproducing a «monocentric» system to which all socio-political life is subordinated. These are exogenous factors, and there is also the endogenous approach, focusing on the behaviour of parties themselves. The sudden fall of the Soviet system disrupted the evolutionary emergence of a stable party system by cutting its links to society, and thus the party system was reconstituted from above by elites, a pattern that was reinforced by subsequent elections. Thus the party system was largely the outcome of elite interactions and will remain stunted until parties are able to re-establish genuine reciprocal links with society. In recent years the elite-driven party system has intensified, accompanied by the intensified «Mexicanisation» of Russian politics, the establishment of a one-party dominant political system. This paper combines analysis of endogenous with exogenous factors to survey the development of the Russian party system.

The influence of electoral volatility on the formation of new parties is examined. Argued is that in case of Russia this influence should be analyzed in the context of transition from the policy of stabilization to the policy of modernization. The later actualizes the problems of electoral volatility and shift from governability to effective representation in the process of party system formation.