Book Review: 'The Making of the Democratic Party in Europe, 1860–1890' by Anne Heyer, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, 289 pages. ISBN: 978-3-030-8774-7, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87748-4

Abstract

In her new publication The Making of the Democratic Party in Europe, 1860-1890 Anne Heyer tries to enrich our understanding of parties and party organization by looking back into the formative years of modern parties in Western Europe. If parties are not merely perceived as structural phenotypes, but also as actively created organizations by concrete actors in a specific context, this perspective might pave the way for a more nuanced and dynamic understanding of political parties. Heyer proposes that a contextualizing view back into the ideas, narratives and practices paving the way of party formation in the 19th century, may enrich our current understanding of parties as dynamic and lively practiced organizations that are indeed capable of innovative change. If they are recognized as active, lively and energetic, crisis might not be the final stage of a linear evolution of parties – it might be the starting point of party innovation instead of party decline.