This book is a welcome addition to the literature on the transformation of political parties. The global reach of this edited volume is quite impressive, with coverage of cases from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and postcommunist Europe. It is, in my view, a significant contribution to the empirical literature on political party change. Parties that were designed to do one thing (govern in an authoritarian regime) that then transform themselves to do something fundamentally different (compete in elections) is a fundamental organizational transformation. In many ways, analysis of this phenomenon should be seen as part of the new wave of literature on political parties that includes the transformation of rebel groups into political parties. Such works should contribute greatly to our understanding of how parties change.

The book begins with a very well-developed introductory chapter by James Loxton. He starts with a definition of authoritarian successor parties (ASPs) as “parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes, but that operate after a transition to democracy” (p. xvii). This very broad definition includes two subtypes: (1) parties that directly emerge from authoritarian regimes (former governing parties) and (2) those he calls “reactive authoritarian successor parties”: parties formed by high-level incumbents in anticipation of a transition (this subtype appears to include some parties of the official opposition). Loxton defends his definition because focusing on the highest level on Giovanni Sartori’s conceptual ladder of abstraction allows the project to make very broad cross-regional comparisons

The book itself is organized along three themes—why ASPs persist, why they succeed, and the impact they have on democracy. Most of the introduction focuses on the factors that explain party persistence and success. To survive, ASPs must deal with their authoritarian inheritance and authoritarian baggage. Loxton identifies four strategies that ASPs have embraced in dealing with their pasts: contrition, obfuscation, scapegoating, and embracing the past. There is evidence of all four strategies illustrated in the book. Further, drawing on the extant literature, Loxton also identifies other structural factors that affect persistence and performance, including performance of the previous regime, performance of the new democracy, the nature and timing of the transition to democracy, electoral institutions, the previous authoritarian regime type, and the post-authoritarian competitive landscape.

The individual chapters are organized around the three themes identified earlier. In part 1 three chapters tackle the issue of why authoritarian successor parties persist. Herbert Kitschelt and Matthew Singer in chapter 1 argue that former ruling parties have important advantages over other ASPs. Because many ruled for long periods of time they were able to build important linkages with constituencies that helped these former ruling ASPs to persist. Using data from the Democratic Accountability and Linkages Project, they argue that ASPs that established clientelistic connections with particular constituencies were better able than other parties to compete in the democratic period.

Chapter 2, by T. J. Cheng and Teh-fu Huang, examines the cases of Taiwan’s Kuomintang and South Korea’s Democratic Justice Party/Saenuri and argues that their post-authoritarian electoral success was due to the authoritarian inheritances of economic development and law and order, which benefited each party in the period of democratic competition. Similarly, even authoritarian parties that emerged from personalist authoritarian regimes (or what Loxton and Steven Levitsky in chapter 3 call “personalist authoritarian parties”) can succeed electorally if there was a strong record of economic achievement.

Part II focuses on why some ASPs are more successful than others. Anna Gryzmala Busse, focusing on the ultimate electoral failures of the communist successor parties (CSPs) in Poland and Hungary, argues that these parties were in fact victims of their own successes. The Hungarian Socialists and the Polish Social Democrats came to power because they promised reform and managerial competence; ultimately, corruption scandals undermined this line of argument, and both parties failed to live up to their promise of being more competent than their rivals. In chapter 5, Rachel Beatty Riedl argues that the ASPs in Africa that were able to maintain linkages to important elites (echoing the themes expounded on by Kitschelt and Singer in chapter 1) were more likely to persist under democratic competition. However, when some of these parties tried to reach out to other constituencies, they collapsed. In chapter 6, which is also about sub-Saharan ASPs, Adrienne LeBas argues that strong competition faced by ASPs strengthened them and made them more cohesive (and successful) in response. In chapter 7, Timothy Power argues that the two ASPs in Brazil—the PDS (the former ruling party) and the PFL (the “authoritarian reactive party”)—differed in their ability to persist in the period of democratic competition. The PDS performed well in the post-authoritarian period because it retained access to state resources. Not surprisingly the PFL did not do well because it lost such access.

Finally, in part III, three chapters examine the impact that ASPs have had on democracy. In chapter 8 Gustavo A. Flores-Macías argues that the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) survival has been harmful to democracy in Mexico, interestingly for the very reasons that earlier chapters contended enabled ASP persistence and electoral success. By maintaining ties with constituencies that promoted subnational authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses, the PFRI has done much to undermine Mexico’s path toward democracy. In chapter 9 Dan Slater and Joseph Wong, in contrast, argue that the KMT in Taiwan, South Korea’s DJP, and Indonesia’s GOLKAR have contributed to democracy-building because they have provided channels for representation of important interests that supported the authoritarian regime, bringing in groups that may have opposed democratization. Finally, in chapter 10 Daniel Ziblatt examines “old regime conservative parties” from the nineteenth century and their transformation into parties promoting democracy, thereby bringing old regime elites into democratic competition.

Although this book is a welcome contribution to the existing literature on party transformation, it has, in my view some conceptual and theoretical problems. First, it is interesting that Loxton uses Sartori to defend the use of abstraction in defining ASPs. Sartori, it should be remembered, also warned against conceptual “stretching” (“Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64, 1970). The current definition of ASPs includes not only parties that ruled but also those that did not rule (but presumably were formed from authoritarian elites). For me, ASPs are not just any party that emerged from authoritarian regimes, but are akin to what Kitschelt and Singer call “former authoritarian ruling parties” in chapter 1. For instance, what made the CSPs “successor” parties was that they used to be the parties that ruled: they inherited the bulk of the ruling parties’ resources and did not have to start from scratch. This is what made them a specific type of party that competed in the postcommunist space. Some of the “reactive” parties that are included in Loxton’s definition would include parties that started from “scratch,” although they were formed by some authoritarian elites (which would include the parties discussed in chapter 10 by Daniel Ziblatt). Are they successor parties or what many in the political party literature call “elite” or “cadre” parties?

This leads me to my second concern with this book. There appears to be little attempt to link the major themes developed in the volume with mainstream theoretical work on political parties and party change. Mention of the literature on the evolution of party species or families and on party change would have been very helpful in conceptualizing ASPs and moving their study into the mainstream of the literature on political parties (see, for instance, Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, “Species of Political Parties: A New Typology,” Party Politics, 9, 2003; Peter Mair and Cas Mudde, “The Party Family and its Study,” Annual Review of Political Science, 1, 1998; Robert Harmel and Kenneth Janda, “An Integrated Theory of Party Goals and Party Change” Journal of Theoretical Politics, 6, 1994).

As a result of these conceptual and theoretical issues, there are a variety of different types of parties included in this book, all under the heading of ASPs. Adopting such a broad conceptualization of an ASP detracts from its identification as a clear party subtype (which the early literature on the CSPs identified). Further, as suggested by much of the mainstream literature on party change, the CSPs evolved into parties familiar to existing typologies, and the conceptual utility of continuing to label them a distinct subtype in postcommunist politics disappeared. Surely the ASPs have done the same, evolving into organizations that fit into existing party frameworks. Or do they remain unique? I think the book could have done a better job of engaging with the existing literature on political party change to frame the study of ASPs.

Nonetheless, despite these criticisms, I believe that this book is an important contribution to the literature on party change. It should be included in the list of required readings for any scholar interested in the question of how party organizations change.