Among the changes Mr. Gorbachev recommended was the end of exclusively party-list elections for Parliament, which prevent individual candidates from running for the legislature and keep the assignment of seats in the hands of party leaders.
Once used almost exclusively by party leaders, PAC's have proliferated rapidly this year, especially among newly elected senators.
It said Sinn Fein had to make a choice between "I.R.A. criminality and the path of an exclusively democratic party".
No longer exclusively the party of the working classes, its appeal has widened to the middle classes.
"But they're not going to make up their minds as they have in the past – this is my feeling – exclusively on party affiliation.
It was Disraeli above all who made the Conservative party a force that could be equally appealing to all of the country, and who stopped it from becoming an exclusively rural party forever condemned to obscurity.
Not so long ago, Hollywood's most vocal and politically active appeared to be exclusively Democratic party stalwarts, such as power couple Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, and the walking ego that is Sean Penn.
Voting almost exclusively along party lines, the Democratic-controlled Senate and General Assembly stayed long past midnight before adopting a budget that called for 16percentt more spending than the plan adopted last year, including more money for the state's troubled child welfare system, charity care, schools, local governments and increased property tax rebates.
Attempting to square this circle led to the prime minister's clumsy handling of the treaty-signing last year (he turned up, but hours after the official ceremony).The Tories, for their part, are now an almost exclusively Eurosceptic party; Europhile grandees such as the former cabinet ministers Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine have few heirs.
The bill passed 217-210, almost exclusively along party lines.
