Ostrogorski

Just reading now. Always forget that this takes time. Ostrogorski is actually quite entertaining. If you like that sort of thing. It is a good history of the development of the Conservative and Liberal parties into modern organisations more like political parties as we understand them today. It was written in 1895 or thereabouts - before the rise of the Labour party and the schism and then collapse of the Liberals, so one therefore gets a different kind of perspective compared with later works on parties. Good stuff with some good detailed history that might be useful for charting contingencies and concrete events that were crucial in the development of disciplinary organisation. I have been marking pages with post-its vociferously. I will write something up on this very soon...