Exogenous Shocks and Party System Development: What is the Effect on New Party Entry?

The topic of electoral volatility was not at the center of academic work in Latin America until Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully’s seminal 1995 work Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium). Preceding analyses primarily focused on explaining the breakdown of democratic politics in the region during the 1960s and 1970s. Conventional wisdom that departed from the classic work of Sartori in Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976), maintained that stable party systems are crucial for the durability of democracies, focusing his attention on aspects such as party system polarization and fragmentation. Mainwaring and Scully shift the discussion, arguing that previous literature on the region neglected and inadequately conceptualized an equally important property of party systems: their level of their institutionalization. According to Mainwaring and Scully, party system institutionalization (PSI) is formed by four different dimensions. The first is stability in the patterns of party competition. Thus, institutionalized party systems are those in which actors develop expectations, orientations, and behavior based on the premise that practices and organizations will prevail into the foreseeable future. Mainwaring’s 2018 work, Party Systems in Latin America (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), argues that this is the only relevant dimension in PSI, while considering that the other three are just underpinnings that facilitate it. So according to this work, an institutionalized party system is the one in which a stable set of parties interacts regularly in stable ways. This stability of interparty competition is traditionally measured with the Pedersen volatility index, a comprehensive measure of the net systematic shift in levels of electoral support for parties across elections. As volatility is negatively correlated with this important dimension of party system institutionalization, conventional wisdom holds that political representation deteriorates when there is persistent high volatility. To this debate, the well-cited 2006 article by Mainwaring and Torcal, “Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization” (cited in Electoral Volatility as an Expression of Party System Equilibrium), adds the idea that this lack of stability in the patterns of competition in party systems, measured by electoral volatility, is a typical characteristic of new and developing democracies. According to that study, the most important defining characteristic of party systems in less developed countries is captured by their lack of institutionalization, in other words, the amount of electoral volatility in their party systems. Since the publication of these three contributions, the debate on party system dynamics in the region has focused on cross-national levels of electoral volatility, their relationship with other indicators of party system stability, and their consequences for democratic quality and performance, while also broadening the analysis to Europe.

Considerable evidence suggests that social diversity increases the number of political parties. While a vast literature examines this relationship by measuring social diversity as ethnic fragmentation, the convenience of capturing the level of social heterogeneity by using alternative indicators has been traditionally overlooked. In this article, I offer new evidence that documents the impact of social diversity on party system size by proxying the former as the number of social classes. Using both objective class positions and subjective class identifications and employing two different datasets that cover democratic legislative elections around the world between 1981 and 2015, I find that the effective number of social classes has a positive effect on party system fragmentation when the average district magnitude in a democracy is high. Given the difficulty to test these effects in a cross-country environment net of unobserved heterogeneity, I examine the robustness of the findings in Spain between 2000 and 2016, an ideal case due to large differences in district magnitude and a changing party system. Overall, the results suggest that high levels of social diversity are likely to increase party system fragmentation when the electoral system is permissive enough.

This article is part of the special cluster titled Parties and Democratic Linkage in Post-Communist Europe, guest edited by Lori Thorlakson, and will be published in the August 2018 issue of EEPS This article introduces a special section on parties and democratic linkage in post-communist Europe. It sets out the main objectives and research questions that guide the four articles in this special section, presenting these in the context of the comparative politics literature on party and party system change and democratic development. It introduces the key arguments of the articles in the section, arguing that the contributions identify regionally distinctive patterns of party and party system behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe. These patterns have fuelled a quest for more suitable conceptual and measurement tools and call for diversity in comparative analysis, combining intra and inter regional comparison.

Legislative policy-making authority, party system size, and party system nationalization

In this article, I explore the nature of party systems that have emerged in Africa in the wake of the adoption of democratic political systems after 1990. Although political parties help shape core democratic processes and institutions, parties and party systems have received relatively scant attention in the scholarly literature on democratization in Africa. I argue that party systems in most African countries are built on quite a different foundation from the one that undergirds both advanced industrial democracies and the theories about party systems generated by their experiences. I assess the strengths and limitations of the comparative literature on party system development in the light of African experiences, and argue for a more critical examination of concepts from that literature that have been widely used to assess the prospects and progress of party system institutionalization, including pluralism, system fragmentation and volatility.

One of the prime incentives for this dissertation was the renewed interest in the role of party agency for the emergence and structuring of party systems that came up in the course of the discussions about the third wave of democracy and the concomitant challenges to the theoretical fundamentals of common party system theory. In addition, scholarly discourse on the third wave brought up again the question as to how the party system as an independent variable impacts on processes of democratic consolidation, national integration and socio-economic development.Trying to examine the role of party agency in this regard and to assess the role of the party system as the independent variable, the dissertation deals with two regional and temporal contexts and a political phenomenon pertinent to these contexts that most often have ranked as unique or paradoxical in scholarly assessments. Academic accounts of post-colonial India are interspersed with references to a deviant case of, or an empirical anomaly to, party system and democratic theory, and the conventional vocabulary used to describe post-apartheid South African political development frequently resorts to such terms as political miracle or societal exceptionalism. A similar confusion and vagueness prevails with regard to the specific configuration of a democratic and competitive party system characterised by the towering and prolonged dominance of one party. The study is an attempt to shed light on these contexts and their party systems by departing from the conventional �paths� of party system theory as well as from the relativist assessments of post-independent India (1947-67) and post-apartheid South Africa (1994-). This is done by means of a diachronic comparison of the two countries� party systems with a distinct focus on the role of party agency in the shaping and maintenance of one-party-dominance and on the role of the two party systems as independent variables. Chapter 1 deals with the conceptual, theoretical and methodological problems, incentives and questions inherent in the kind of cross-national and diachronic comparison attempted in this study. Chapter 2 gives a brief outline of the regional settings at the time democratic party competition was beginning to take shape, outlines the institutional boundaries within which the two party systems were/are located, looks at the main characteristics of the electorate in post-independent India and post-apartheid South Africa and �takes stock� of the two party systems in terms of a broad outline of the dominant party and the relevant opposition parties. The next three chapters present the bulk of the empirical analysis and deal with the emergence, working and functions/effects of one-party-dominance in India and South Africa respectively. Each chapter refers to the basic outline of the analytical framework depicted above and combines theoretical arguments with empirical, as well as historical, givens of the two party systems under examination. Whereas chapter 3 examines how the two party systems were �shaped from above�, i.e. how party agency helped to achieve the dominant position of the INC and ANC respectively, chapter 4 examines the mechanisms of control employed to maintain dominance and the mechanisms of party competition prevailing in the two regional contexts. Both chapters deal with the party agentive factors identified in the analytical framework as responsible for the achievement and maintenance of one-party-dominance in the form of short analytical narratives. The last of these three chapters (chapter 5) sums up and discusses the effects and (redefined) functions of party systems in changing societies and gives an account of how both countries� party systems have fared with regard to these effects and in terms of fulfilling these functions. Chapter 6 takes up the differences and similarities of the two regional contexts as they have emerged out of the preceding three chapters, relates the �lessons� of the Indian experience to the prospects of one-party-dominance in South Africa by means of a comparison and reassesses the two key theses of the study, namely that a) party agency and strategy were among the most decisive factors in the formation and development of the two regional contexts� systems of one-party-dominance and are, in general, crucial for party system formation and development (they are especially relevant in the shaping of one-party-dominance in changing societies); and that b) systems of one-party-dominance have a potentially (but not necessarily) benign effect on processes of democratisation, national integration and democratic development in the crucial period of changing societies� transition to democracy and democratic consolidation.

It can hardly be denied that the process of forming party system is long-term, complex and multidimensional one. The features of the “systemness”, e.g. stability, durability and predictability, may be achieved only after several years of democratic development. Thus, the analysis of the changes which take place in short period may give limited effects because of rapid changes of most frequently used quantitative parameters of the party system. From the other side, the comparison of the results of two or more consecutive parliamentary elections allows us to describe and to interpret some trends in political development. The aim of this article is to show the changes in the structure of political competition and in the number and size of the main parties, affecting the level of fractionalization and concentration of Polish party system between 2005 and 2007. By using traditional measures of stabilization of party systems on electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas, I have tried to answer the question whether are there the symptoms of stabilization of Polish party system after 2005, or not. Comparing effective number of parties, the level of fractionalization and concentration, and the modes of forming the cabinet I have come to conclusion that, contrary to 2005 parliamentary election, there are some signs of party system stabilization in its two dimensions: representativeness and effectiveness. The structure of political scene seems to be more stable: no relevant party has appeared on it since 2001, the number of parties represented in the Sejm has diminished, the level of support for the strongest parties has increased and the electoral volatility has been lower in 2007 than in 2005. What is new after 2005 is that the structure of competition has changed. Two strong, conservative right-wing groupings have been main contenders and the post-communist Left is, for the time being, practically excluded from the struggle for power. The further stabilization of party system depends on capability to maintain this pattern of political competition.

The article examines the peculiarities of the formation and development of multiparty system in the regions at the present stage of Russia’s political development. The article analyzes the processes of transformation of the Russian party system in the context of systematic changes in the mechanisms of legislative regulation of their party and political activities. The aim of the study is to determine the degree of influence of the regional party system on the exercise of political power in Russian regions. This is necessary to determine the main directions for improving the system of party legislation in the process of establishing a new political system. Conclusions. As a result of the conducted research, a number of unresolved contradictions in the formation and development of the modern Russian regional party system have been identified. These contradictions do not allow this type of party system to achieve the level of influence that would give them the opportunity to really and effectively participate in the current political process. It can be argued that the party systems that have developed today in the regions are lagging behind in their development in comparison with the all-Russian party system. The author concludes that in order to change the current situation, it is necessary to improve the quality of representation from political parties in regional and municipal authorities. In order for political parties in the regions to articulate the interests and needs of various social groups, they must have the necessary power resources in making decisions on the leadership and management of the region. One of such ways to increase the level of influence of the regional party system is, in the author’s opinion, the reform of party legislation in the direction of creating broader opportunities, both for creating parties of different political spectrum and for increasing their power capabilities.

In 1970, Richard Rose and Derek Urwin published a seminal piece on the stability of party support in Western democracies, ‘Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945’. Everywhere they looked, established parties seemed to reflect stability rather than change, lending credence to the notion that party systems were ‘frozen’. Numerous subsequent studies, however, have produced mixed results. Part of what seems to be fueling this debate lies in the disparate measures researchers use to gauge stability. In this update of Rose and Urwin's study, I address the issue of comparable results by maintaining the same data source and methods they used to gauge the stability of party support, extending the study to the present. The results indicate that party system instability is on the rise throughout much of the West since 1970, with statistically significant increases seen in Scandinavia and across all regions combined. Furthermore, the parties which seem to be experiencing the most change are not only the newest parties – as the frozen cleavages thesis might predict – but also those parties formed during the interwar period, the large majority of which showed much greater stability in 1970.

Newcomer parties are additions to a country’s ‘original’ party system. Germany is an interesting case to study with respect to the emergence and demise of newcomer parties. While it had a famously stable party system for much of its post-war history, three newcomer parties which deserve attention have emerged since the 1990s. With Die Linke, Pirate party, and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), this chapter discusses one newcomer party which is fully established, one which did not consolidate, and one whose fate is not clear yet, despite significant success, amidst programmatic shifts and leadership turmoil. The chapter details why and how these three parties emerged and alongside which conflict lines and cleavages and discusses their programmatic and policy developments. What the chapter demonstrates is that parties can appear and disappear, and that electoral volatility is both opportunity and lethal threat to newcomer parties.

ABSTRACTThis article identifies the limits and possibilities of the federal comparison for the European Union party system. Can the literatures on parties and party systems in multi-level systems deliver more insights to the analysis of the developing life of parties and party competition in the European Union? What are the most productive dialogs between scholars of federal and multilevel parties and scholars of European Union parties? It argues that the study of representation in the EU involves two key multi-level challenges: vote choice in a multi-level setting and party system development through upward aggregation. Drawing more closely from the comparative federalism literature can provide analytical leverage for both issues.

This article examines the development of the east German party system from the peaceful revolution in the former GDR to the aftermath of the 1994 federal election. It takes into account its format, polarisation, fragmentation, asymmetry, volatility, legitimacy, segmentation and government durability. The analysis shows that there was not only a complete transformation of the former GDR's party system between autumn 1989 and autumn 1990 but also a general change of the east German party system between 1990 and 1994. Both at the federal and at the Land level, the high volatility resulted in a considerably less fragmented system with a parliamentary format reduced to three parties: the CDU, SPD and PDS. The change in the electoral dimension also led to an increase in segmentation and to government instability at the Land level and coincided with a decrease of legitimacy. Reasons for the party system change are to be be found in developments at the macro‐level, that is, the institutional framework party compe...

At the beginning of the ХХІ century, the European Union, particularly its states parties faced a number of complex and unresolved issues. One of the important manifestations of political change that took place in some EU countries was the evolution of party systems. Due to the active globalization processes and the urgent problems facing Europe, it can be asserted that the European party system is currently degrading. Recently, during the years of crisis (economic, migration, political, etc.) there took place a rundown of political parties and a loss of parties’ influence on various local organizations, and most importantly on the electorate. A characteristic feature of the changes that took place in the established political configurations was a clear-cut disruption of party coordinates. The classic division into the right, the left and the centrists proves this. However, in reality it remained, basically, only in the ideological software of the parties. At the same time, the real political course of the party space’s main subjects became less and less conveyed. In truth, this character separates the leading political forces of modern Europe into two directions. Firstly, these parties proclaim to find a way out of the crisis by any means in their activities and at the same time improve the system of integration and globalization relations. In particular, in the scientific community (conservatives, liberals, etc.) they are called traditional parties. Secondly, there is another party side in which ideological and political criteria are expressed more explicitly. There are radical socialists who are dissatisfied with the current social structure of the (modern) state; radical nationalists who oppose the immigration component in modern European life; and separatists who excoriate EU regional strategy. All these points are actively supported by parties that have been defined as anti-systemic by the scientific community.

This chapter examines characteristics and causal factors related to the Philippine party system. Using Mainwaring and Scully’s institutionalization framework as a point of departure the chapter first demonstrates that the Philippines is indeed under-institutionalized (inchoate) and discusses changes in the degree of institutionalization over time. It then presents an explanation for why the party system has developed as it has in the Philippines, an explanation which also accounts for the changes we observe over time. Specifically, the chapter argues that the development of the Philippine party system is tied to the manner in which democracy unfolded in the Philippines. Early decisions by colonial administrators and Philippine elite had the unintended consequence of entrenching a particular style of political party which has dominated the Philippines polity ever since. In the decades since, when the question of institutional reform has arisen the Philippines elite has consistently and sometimes strategically opted for outcomes that were inimical to greater party institutionalization.

The main goal of this article is to highlight the Lithuanian political party system of legal regulation of formation of traditions and the disclosure of the legal framework in 1919–1940. This article discusses examination of the development of Lithuanian party system and identifies common patterns.The research is focused on the analysis of the legal regulation of the system of Lithuanian political party. The author discusses legal and historical issues and takes no notice of the issue of political considerations. The author also discusses the historical and political circumstances, which prompted the current legal framework, examines the influence of party system evolution of the statehood of Lithuania and the development of constitutionalism.There are a few authors, who made some researches on a few legal issues, e.g., in the monograph by Professor M. Romeris (“Lietuvos konstitucinės teisės paskaitos”, 1937), the development of political regime and its influence on the political party system was discussed. His monograph “Reprezentacija ir mandatas” (1926) studied the legal regulation of election and its influence of representation of citizenships in the government of the country. One of the most relevant to the subject of the research studies was conducted by E. Šileikis (“Politinių partijų instucionalizavimas”, 1997), where he presented the historical development of regulation of political parties in Lithuania and outlined the significance of modern political parties more extensively. In J. Bulavas’ monograph (“Rinkimai ir ‘tautos atstovavimas’ buržuazinėje Lietuvoje”, 1956), the legal status of political parties, military and emergency and high-security conditions in Lithuania during the interwar period were analyzed. His monograph „Klasės ir politinės partijos Lietuvoje 1919-1926 metais“ (1978) studied the legal regulation of the political parties in the independent Lithuania.This article analyzes the normative legal acts of the independence period of Lithuania, which have regulated the formation of political parties, the legal framework of their activities and meetings. These normative legal acts’ influence on the formation of the political party system of Lithuania is discussed. The research is made on the legalization process of illegal organizations and political parties. It pays attention to the changes of legal regulation of political parties and its dependence on the regime. Moreover, the article compares legal regulation in different periods of development of the regime of the Republic of Lithuania in 1918–1940. Furthermore, the comparison of the changes of legal regulation within the periods of 1918–1926 (the period of the democratic regime) and 1926–1940 (the period of the undemocratic regime) is made.