Determinants of Party Survival in Young European Democracies

Research on Western European party systems has identified multiple factors of party survival. In the Central and Eastern European (CEE) context, party death is more frequent. Yet, it is not very well understood. In the CEE context, two explanations have substantial empirical support: (1) non-negligible parliamentary representation and (2) the access to state funding for non-parliamentary parties. Several other factors have been suggested, but not tested in a systematic way. This paper addresses this gap by examining the impact of alternative determinants of party death such as voter dissatisfaction, the institutional framework and the presence of ideologically likeminded competitors. These factors were found to affect party death in Western Europe. Hence, this paper will reveal to what extent they travel to the newer CEE democracies where the incentives and goals of political elites may differ. Our hypotheses will be tested based on a new dataset including all elections that took place in the 11 CEE countries after their transition to democracy. The statistical analyses will be carried out by means of discrete time survival analysis. Our finding have important implications for the literature on representation and party system change.