Robert Harmel and Jan Sundberg, "Preface" to a special issue, "Change in the Role of Parties in Democratization," Party Politics, 7 (September 2001), 539-541.

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The literature on both 'parties in democracy' and 'democratization' is vast, but this collection of articles augments the much smaller volume of work focusing on parties in democratization. There has also been a great deal of research, much of it done recently, on change in parties and in party systems, as well as a burgeoning interest in change in the processes of democratiza-tion from one `wave' to the next. However, there has been less attention focused directly on the subject of this issue of the journal: change in the roles o f parties in democratization.

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