Political Parties A Cross-National Survey This is the first systematic, comprehensive, empirically-based study of political parties around the world. The result of more than fifteen years’ work, this encyclopedic volume is a unique handbook for the comparative analysis of party politics and a rich source of information on political parties. It looks at 158 political parties operating in 53 countries from 1950 to 1962, with a further tracing of these parties’ histories through 1978. Fifty countries were randomly selected for detailed study–five from each of ten cultural-geographic regions–to provide a representative sample of party systems. Three other countries–the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada–were included for substantive interest. The countries represent all regions, political cultures, and types of party systems in the world.