New Parties in Europe: A Comeback for the Parties or Just Another Symptom for Their Decline?

A “wave of new parties” is currently rocking the European Union member states: Looking only at the elections in 2015, 2016 and 2017, in 23 EU member states 31 new political parties have entered national parliaments. Political parties such as the Italian Five Star Movement, the Spanish Ciudadanos and Podemos, the German Alternative, the Greek parties To Potami, ANEL or the left Syriza as well as the French La République en Marche are part of this wave. Those parties differ not only regarding their categorization on the left-right-axis, but also in terms of their genetic model, their organization, their financing or the way they organized their election campaigns. Moreover the emergence of those new parties affects the existing ‘old’ parties in the national party systems as well as the political parties at the European level. Against this background, the Section will present Panels and Papers that address these topics.