Abstract
The book under review is co-authored by Robert Harmel, Professor of Political Science at Texas A and M University, Matthew Giebert, a doctoral student in Political Science at the same university, and Kenneth Janda, Payson S. Wild Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Northwestern University. It is divided into six chapters that deal with the historical context of American political parties; and gives an elegantly composed, brief, and astonishing correlation between the latter and those in the United Kingdom (UK) and other Western systems. It shows that American political parties in the mid-1900s were not as „irresponsible‟ as some have asserted, and that today‟s parties, while more „responsible‟ do not fit the present American political environment.