This book addresses an almost completely neglected branch of community politics: the comparative analysis of local party systems. Accordingly, Local Parties in Political and Organizational Perspective opens new views to a variety of relations between political systems and local communities in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and other nations. The authors unite specific national case studies with an original theoretical framework, resulting in an anthology with uncommon coherency.

Theoretical generalizations are tested with cross-national data; each case study, in turn, demonstrates a localized version of the larger framework, using specific historical political outcomes as examples.