"Institutions and Innovation analyzes the troubled history of French and German parties between 1870 and 1939 to develop a general explanation of how the development of responsive parties constitutes a key element for the consolidation of democracies, past and present.

It explains why French parties responded more swiftly than German ones to very similar changes in their economic and political environments, demonstrating that the national differences in party responsiveness played a key role in the collapse of Germany's Weimar Republic (1918-33) and the survival of the French Third Republic (1870-1939).".

"This book addresses the general fates of French and German democracy by asking three specific questions: (1) Why did German socialists reject Keynesianism while their French counterparts swiftly embraced it? (2) Why did German liberals fail to modernize their logistical infrastructure and electioneering methods? (3) Why were French conservatives more effective than the German equivalent in fending off the challenges posed by fascist and peasant insurgent movements in the 1920s and 1930s?".

"In answering these questions, the book engages new institutional theories and long-standing party literature to demonstrate that the electoral conduct of parties is structured in equal parts by socioeconomic and institutional constraints. The interdisciplinary focus sheds a critical light on the exceptionalism of purely historical accounts and reductionist and universal claims of ahistorical political science theories."--BOOK JACKET.