The Lives of New Parties: Burning Bright, Burning Out, or Fading Away?

Abstract

The last three decades have provided scholars interested in European new parties with plenty of study material. Firstly, the creation of second-order elections introduced new levels of Electoral competition especially beneficial to newcomers (Re if & Schmitt 1980). Elections for the European Parliament, for instance, not only brought out voters more willing to support new peripheral parties; the proportionality of the electoral system often used enhanced new parties’ chances of achieving an electoral breakthrough. Similarly to this supranational electoral level, increased federalisation and devolution introduced a range of subnational parliaments for which new parties could compete. Secondly the ecological parties born in the eighties are still part of many European party systems, albeit with varying levels of success. There being two sides to every coin, right-wing parties of a more radical nature also began to see the light at the same time as the greens. A third development opened the door for party formation on a far larger scale than what was discussed above. The end of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern European countries lead to the establishment of party systems containing almost exclusively new parties. This panel seeks to understand the fate of parties that have initially succeeded in making a dent in the political arena by at least crossing the threshold of representation. In using Pedersen’s analogy of parties as mortal organisations (Pedersen 1982), we wish to emphasise the varying success that these new parties encounter. Whereas some parties have become established presences in their national party systems, others simply vanish. What accounts for this variation in the success rate of parties having entered the electoral fray in the last 30 years? What role do formal institutions such as electoral rules play? To what extent do established parties in the same party system courage/discourage a new party’s progress? What can an actor-centred approach and a disregard for the unitary-actor assumption teach us?

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