Lexikon zur Geschichte der Parteien in Europa

This encyclopaedia of political parties fills a noticeable gap in the otherwise well covered field of political history. Written by over forty obviously competent specialists under the editorship of Dr Frank Wende, it describes authoritatively the 700 or so parties that are or have been represented in European parliaments. It comprises even the organisations set up under that name by totalitarian regimes to give an appearance of legitimacy to their dictatorial powers. It covers therefore in the main the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as there were before then no parliamentary parties in the sense understood today, except in Britain and to a certain extent in France during the Revolution.