The New Party Challenge: Accelerating Cycles of Party Birth and Death in Central Europe and Beyond

From Athens to Zagreb and from Riga to Reykjavik, new political parties are bursting into political life and quickly withering away again, one after the next. Established parties may survive but they rarely win back their lost voters who jump from new party to newer party with each election. Why do these new parties achieve such quick success and then collapse? Why do voters opt for one fragile new party after another? And what does the spread of these cycles mean for the health of democracy in Europe and across the globe? Central Europe, where the rapid rise and fall of parties has become routine, provides answers to these puzzles. Although the timing of these cycles often depends on accidents, these new patterns themselves are pervasive and systematic, the result of a combination of demographic change, organizational technology, social media, preoccupation with celebrity and corruption, and increasing concentration of wealth.