The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. By Daniele Caramani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 347p. $75.00 cloth, $28.99 paper.

Daniele Caramani endeavors to document and explain the nationalization of party systems in Western Europe, the process by which the localized and territorialized politics of the nineteenth century (clientelistic politics dominated by local personalities) was replaced by nationwide functional alignments on the basis of class, in particular. This nationalization process was a crucial step in the structuring of party systems in the first century of electoral (democratic) politics. Although central to Western European electoral developments, it has received little scholarly attention, a gap that Caramani means to fill through empirical verification.