Primary elections for choosing party leaders and candidates are now becoming commonplace in Europe, Asia and America but questions as to how much they hinder a party?s organizational strength and cohesion or affect electoral performance have largely been ignored outside of the USA. Party Primaries in Comparative Perspective gives a much-needed conceptualization to this topic, describing the function and nature of primary elections and providing a comparative analytical framework to the impact of primaries on the internal and external functioning of political parties.