This is the first book in either English or German to analyse the development of Germany's newest political party, the Left Party. It compares and contrasts the party's development with that of Germany's most well-known outsider party - the Greens. It also analyses the party's performance in office in two eastern German Länder.

DAN HOUGH is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sussex, UK. He has published widely on parties and party systems, devolution and constitutional change in the UK and German politics. His recent publications include The Politics of the New Germany (with Simon Green and Alister Miskimmon, 2007) and Devolution in Comparative Context (edited with Charlie Jeffery, 2006).

MICHAEL KOß is Visiting Scholar at the Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, Germany. His research centres on party politics and party systems, party finance, comparative politics, federalism and new institutionalism. He has published a number of articles and book chapters on the Left Party in Germany and on left parties in a comparative context.

JONATHAN OLSEN is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, USA. He has published widely on German politics, European politics, political parties and party systems and extremist parties, including Nature and Nationalism: Right-Wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany.