[book review] Localising political party appeals

Abstract

Democratic political parties get categorised in manifold ways, for instance with reference to their size, ideology or roles in the political system. Yet, when it comes to their spatial focus in terms of representation, strategy and policy, we rather crudely identify some as regional parties and assume that all other parties focus on the whole nation in a uniform manner. Scott Morgenstern’s book challenges this limited vision and provides us with the tools for a more sophisticated understanding. The book investigates to what extent individual parties’ voter bases are localised or nationalised and thus brings political geography into the study of parties. Using readily available district-level voting data in innovative ways, Morgenstern shows a way of analysing parties’ behaviour and their role in the democratic state from a novel perspective. Show more