New Parties in Electoral Competition:
Examining the Formation of New Political Actors
Katrin Praprotnik
University of Hamburg
[email protected]
Abstract. Parties play an important role in representative democracies. They aggregate societal demands, contest at elections, and recruit political personnel. It thus comes with little
surprise that political scientists have drawn considerable interest in analysing parties, comparing party systems and explaining government formation, duration and termination processes.
However, much less is known about the entry of new parties into the party system. Therefore, the present paper analyses the factors that explain both the emergence of new relevant
parties. In contrast to previous studies, party formation refers to a party’s founding year and
is therefore measured independently from an election. I focus on the benefits and costs that
might influence political entry decisions. Political, institutional and socio-economic factors
that might further shape party system change are taken into account. The multivariate models
analyse the formation and the success of new actors in seven Western European democracies
(1990-2015). The findings will contribute to our understanding of representation and party
competition.
Paper prepared for presentation at the IPSA World Congress of Political Science, Poznań
(Poland), July 23-28, 2016.
1 Introduction
Almost five decades ago, in their seminal book Party Systems and Voter Alignments, Lipset
and Rokkan (1990) concluded that party systems are stable and that the margin for new political actors is rather small. While comparing the party systems of the 1920s and 1960s has
comprehensively led them to their hypothesis on frozen party systems, the emergence of new
political actors such as green parties and the electoral success of especially populist right-wing
parties have challenged their conclusion.
At the same time, more and more scholarly attention has been drawn to these new actors which were successfully contesting in electoral competition. These first studies on new
party emergence were limited to the examination of one specific party family. Scholars focused on an explanation for the electoral success of either left-libertarian (Kitschelt 1988;
Müller-Rommel 1993; 2002; Poguntke 2002), or populist right-wing parties (Arzheimer 2009;
Jackman and Volpert 1996; Swank and Betz 2003) or regionalist parties (De Winter and Türsan 1998; Levi and Hechter 1985; Urwin 1983). Depending on the party family of interest,
different explanatory factors were tested within these studies. Their results enhance our understanding of factors that might work in favour or hinder the electoral performance of certain
types of parties at the polls. Likewise a better understanding of established parties, knowledge
on new parties is most relevant due to the key role parties play in representative democracies.
However, studies focusing on single party families necessarily fail to present a universal explanatory model on change and continuity in party systems. In acknowledgement of this
research gap, a second generation of the literature on new party emergence, tried to mingle
all potentially relevant factors into a single explanatory model. The authors argued that a
country’s political opportunity structure (POS) affects the success of new actors and therefore
the change in party systems. The term POS stems from the literature on social movements
2
and describes in its present context political, institutional and sometimes societal framework
conditions. While most of the hypotheses tested were plausible and the amount of empirical evidence provided in these studies was impressive (see e.g. Bolin 2014; Hino 2012; Hug
2001), the models still seemed to lack a comprehensive underlying theory which leads to a
parsimonious model of new party emergence.
In a similar way, Tavits (2006: 101) argues that the POS-label allows to test a variety of
factors but that the ’theoretical expectations related to every specific variable are not always
fully elaborated’. She presents an analysis of new party entry following Cox’ (1997) theory
of strategic entry. Cox’ (1997) theory rests upon rational actors that calculate their costs and
benefits of entering the electoral arena. It further includes the probability of electoral support
that actors take into account when weighting costs and benefits. This approach identifies and
categorizes relevant factors that are aligned to party entrance, i.e. costs and benefits, and
allows for a straight, parsimonious empirical test of the model expectations.
While the theoretical model therefore puts the decision of rational actors at the centre,
the dependent variable, like in previous studies, is still operationalised as the number of new
parties successfully reaching legislative representation at the time of an election (Tavits 2006:
106). This measurement, however, neglects the actor’s actual decision point of launching a
new party. It is unable to detect the time when an individual or a group of individuals weighting
costs, benefits and taking the probability of electoral success into account takes place and
ultimately leads to the formation of a new party. It is furthermore unable to convincingly
transfer factors from the previous literature such as GDP growth, inflation or unemployment
into a theory of strategic entry. If these framework conditions are included as control variables
and measured at the time of an election, they might help to explain why voters support these
parties, but they fail to add to an understanding of rational actors forming a new party.
Therefore, the present paper follows Tavits’ (2006) approach on testing party system change
3
based on Cox’ theory of strategic entry, but measures the formation of a new party in the year
an actor actually registers as party. This operationalisation is independent from an election and
I contend that it complies more closely with the theoretical argument of rational cost-benefit
decisions made by potential new parties. The empirical evidence stems from the formation
and success of new relevant political actors in ten Western European democracies between
1990 and 2015. In this study, new relevant political actors are parties that reach legislative
representation at any election following its registration as a party.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: The subsequent section will lay out the
theoretical argument and develop hypotheses on the formation and of new political actors.
The third section presents the data on new parties and discusses the operationalisation of the
independent variables. The fourth section is devoted to the multivariate analyses of formation
and success of new relevant parties. The last section concludes.
2 Theory
The intriguing aspect of Tavits’ (2006) approach to answer the question of party system change
is that her underlying assumption appears to be both well-established and simple. Building
on Cox’ (1997) theory of strategic entry, she states that political elites are rational actors.
This assumption is well-established, because it transfers a widely-held expectation about the
behaviour of political parties to the behaviour of future parties or ’proto-parties’ (Lucardie
2000). This assumption is simple, because it defines the actor’s motivation regardless its party
family and therefore aims to examine party system change in general. The model only implies that elites calculate their expected costs and benefits and take the probability of electoral
support into account before making a political entry decision.
4
Therefore, to understand party system change it is crucial to look at and pinpoint the
time the benefits finally outweigh the costs and the probability of success appears to be
favourable so that an actor decides to launch a new party. This, however, is not done by
Tavits’ study which examines the emergence of new parties at the time of an election (also see
Tavits 2008). Yet, the actual party formation is most seldom the Election Day - not at least
because actors have to prepare themselves in order to contest an election in the first place.
The present study thus builds upon Tavits’ (2006) theoretical concept and analyses new party
emergence alongside the three categories costs, benefits of formation and probability of electoral support. The formation of a new party is understood as the time an actor launches its
new party (i.e. party convention, press conference or registration in a country’s list of parties).
Before the next session will lay out the operationalisation of new party formation applied in
this paper in greater detail, the remainder of this section will concentrate on the factors that
influence the political entry decision.
Benefits of formation
A rational individual or a group of rational individuals thinking about the formation of a party
will start by calculating both the costs and the benefits of an entry into the political arena. I
expect that the prospect of benefits will work in favour of forming a new party while the costs
will decrease an actor’s excitement.
Thus, the benefits are decisive for entry decisions. Again, the nature of new party benefits
can be inferred from those of established parties. Established parties are most commonly
described as policy-, office-, and vote-seeking (Strøm 1990a). While there is an ongoing
debate about whether parties ultimately value policy influence or political offices most, Strøm
5
and Müller (1999: 9) convincingly argue that parties are only instrumentally vote-seeking. Or,
put differently, votes are a means to an end, but not a means in itself. Consequently, I contend
that the explanatory power of new party formation may either lie within new actors’ policy or
office motivation.
If new actors launch a party to fill political offices, they might hope to gain seats in the legislature and to even participate in the government. The fulfilment of this goal will reward the
individual politician with both money and prestige of holding a public office (Downs 1957).
However, even if office-goals motivate political actors to launch a new party, the variation and therefore the explanatory power of new party formation - appears to be limited between
political systems (see also Tavits 2006: 104). Including office benefits might therefore not add
to the explanatory model of new party formation. Hug (2001) took a different approach and
operationalised benefits with the dis-proportionality of the electoral system and measures of
the diversity of the party system, such as the number of parties in government or government
change. However, his results showed no effect of benefits on new party formation and his
measure appears to grasp more the probability of getting office benefits, than the actual benefits of office aligned to a seat in the legislature and government participation. In a similar vein,
Tavits (2006: 104) argues that the variation in expected benefits is much higher with regard to
policy pay-offs. If it is assumed that political actors strive to influence public policy, then their
decision of launching a new party should depend on their policy influence as political party
compared to their policy influence as an extra-parliamentary actor. This line of argumentation borrows from Strøm’s (1990b) work on minority governments. He argues that minority
governments are not a symptom of crisis, but the result of a deliberate decision not to join a
coalition made by a rational party. He further claims that the so-called government-opposition
differential influences a party’s decision as to whether participate in government or not. The
government-opposition differential subtracts a government party’s policy influence from an
6
opposition party’s policy influence. If the government-opposition differential is low, then opposition parties still have relatively high policy influence (e.g. through a strong committee
system) and minority governments are more likely to form.
Similar, I argue that a party-interest group differential might affect the decision of forming a party in order to influence policy. If interest groups are able to change public policy via
extra-parliamentary channels, then the additional benefit of becoming a party appears rather
low. The level of policy influence outside the legislature depends on the level of corporatism
in a country. For Pryor (1988: 317), in corporatist countries, the ’power to make important
economic policies is transferred from the parliament and government to semiprivate organizations’ (also see Siaroff 1999: 177). These countries have implemented extra-parliamentary
channels through which interest groups may affect public policy. Consequently, the lower the
level of corporatism, the higher the additional policy benefits of legislative representation and
therefore the more likely new party formation to collect these payoffs. Consequently, the first
hypothesis reads.
H1. The lower the level of corporatism the more likely a new party will form.
Measuring party emergence independent from an election allows to take the timing new parties
are formed into account. Since the registration of a new party will immediately cause both
monetary costs and transaction costs (see discussion below), it seems most reasonable that an
actor forming a new party will try to collect its benefits as soon as possible. The following
hypothesis thus expects an interaction between the benefits and the timing of the next election.
H2: The higher the level of corporatism and the closer an election the more likely a new
party will form.
7
Costs of formation
The before-mentioned benefits will then be weighed against the expected costs of new party
formation. The formation of a party results both directly and indirectly in different types of
costs.
Direct formation costs occur when the actor registers a new political party. These costs
may either be monetary costs or transaction costs when it comes to organizing a new party such
as finding a party name, formulating party statues or establishing membership specifications
(which are usually a prerequisite for registering a party). In order to complete these challenges
successfully, new actors require a certain amount of resources. In a similar vein, Lucardie
(2000: 178, emphasis in the original) concluded that resources might not be a sufficient but
necessary condition for launching a party, because otherwise a potential new party would
remain a ’political fantasy in the head of its auctor intellectualis.’ These costs, however, are
somewhat stable between countries. They might therefore add little to a better understanding
why new actors form in some countries but not in others.
Indirect costs of new party formation are understood as costs that are caused when a party
finally takes part in an election (which is not necessarily at the time of new party formation).
Again, these costs may take on a variety of different forms. Running for an election may
depend on a certain number of signatures of voters (or of parliament members), on deposit
requirements or a combination of both. Deposit requirements may be reduced due to public
funding. However, public funds usually hinge on a party’s electoral success at the polls and
whether a party may collect and reduce its costs therefore remains open prior to the election.
One of the first cross-national tests of ballot requirements conducted by Harmel and
Robertson (1985) failed to detect an influence of ballot access on new party formation. Their
measurement, however, was based on their own judgement and only differentiated three difficulty levels. More recent studies tested the effects of deposit and signatures requirements
8
and were able to link these variables to new party formation. In her analyses of 20 Western
European democracies, Rashkova (2010) shows that an increase in the number of signatures
significantly reduces the chances of new party entry. Her result contrasts studies by Tavits
(2006; 2008) and Hug (2001) that show the opposite effect when analysing both Western and
Eastern European countries. Tavits (2006: 111) speculates that a high number of signatures
might give new actors ’a false sense of security’ that their party will succeed at an election
which might consequently lead to a higher number of new actors. With regard to deposit requirements, the literature highlights a negative impact on the number of new parties (Rashkova
2010; Tavits 2006; 2008).
Overall, I expect that these costs are taken into account by potential new actors and
negatively affect the actual formation of a new party.
H3. The higher the ballot access requirements the less likely a new party will form.
Probability of electoral support
Finally, an actor’s political entry decision depends on the probability of electoral support, i.e.
on the chances of gaining legislative representation which will be taken into account by the
models. Tavits (2006) was the first author to use this term in a study on new party formation.
Her operationalisation builds on the assumption that the duration of a country’s democratic
stability decreases electoral volatility and yields towards a more stable party system. Therefore, Tavits (2006) includes the duration of democracy in her analyses. The present paper
takes on a different approach. Since I am interested in the political elite’s decision to launch a
party irrespective of the Election Day, a democracy’s age is too crude of a measure - especially,
since the analyses cover more recent party formation processes after 1990.
9
While Tavits (2006) introduced a new term into the theoretical reasoning on new party formation, the basic idea resembles previous arguments on the political opportunity structure (POS).
Both, the probability of electoral support and the POS, refer towards external factors influencing new party formation beyond the control of the new party. To be sure, the POS remains
an open and vaguely defined concept in the relevant literature that subsumes different factors
under one label (see e.g. Bolin 2014; Harmel and Robertson 1985; Hino 2012; Hug 2001). I
will follow Hino’s (2012) most recent differentiation to disentangle the elements that influence the probability of electoral support and therefore, ultimately, a political entry decision.
Hino (2012: 5) differentiates between political and institutional facilitators of a country’s political opportunity structure. He further stresses the relevance of socio-economic conditions in
addition to the POS.
The political facilitators refer to the current voter-party relationships. Most importantly,
it captures the policy supply by the established parties and therefore the room of manoeuvre
for new competitors. While party convergences increase the chances of new party formation,
party divergence is expected to work in the opposite direction. This reasoning builds on Lipset
and Rokan’s (1990) study on party systems. If many societal cleavages are already represented
by the established parties and these actors already cover a broad competition space, then there
is less space for new actors (also see Lijphart 1984). Furthermore, if electoral volatility and
turnout is rather high, then new actors might be able to profit.
In the present study I control for the effective threshold as well as the district size in
order to capture the institutional aspect on a fine grade manner.
Lastly, the socio-economic conditions refer to a country’s economic well-being. The
literature on economic voting identifies economic growth, inflation and unemployment as the
three key indicators in that respect (e.g. Duch and Stevenson 2008; Lewis-Beck 1988; Van der
Brug et al. 2007). In times of negative economic performances, voters are more likely to
punish current governments and vote for either opposition or even new political parties.
10
To sum up, potential parties will weigh the benefits and costs of new party formation and will
take the probability of electoral support into account. I contend that if the benefits outweigh
the costs and an actor believes that the chances for a new party in the electoral arena are
favourable, it will launch a new party.
3 Case selection and data
The study examines the formation of new relevant parties in ten Western European democracies between 1990 and 2015. More specifically, the analyses cover the cases of Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, The Netherlands, and United
Kingdom. These countries were chosen because they are all well-established Western European democracies. Applying a most-similar system design allows me to focus on the differences that lead to differences in the party systems (Przeworski and Teune 1970).
Before the remainder of this section will present the data, I define the concepts of new relevant
party, party formation and electoral success. A party is understood as a new party if it either
starts as a splinter of an existing actor or if it forms independently from all other actors (Hug
2001: 79-80). Thus, mergers from two or more established parties are not treated as new
parties. In contrast to previous studies, I differentiate between party formation and electoral
success. While the former corresponds to the first public announcement of a party launch (i.e.
founding party congress or a party’s registration in the list of national parties), the latter refers
to a party’s election result. Note, however, that the analyses will only include new relevant
parties (NRP). New relevant parties were formed during the 1990-2015 period and reached
legislative representation in any national election after their formation.
11
Dependent variable
Table 1 provides an overview of the NRPs that were formed and reached parliamentary representation during the 1990-2015 period. The table highlights substantial variation between
the countries in the sample. While Germany experienced no new relevant party formation,
five parties successfully emerged in Ireland, The Netherlands and in the United Kingdom.
Between these two poles there is new party formation in Austria and France (4), followed by
Belgium, Denmark, and Finland (3 each), and Sweden (1). Overall, 22 new actors are classified as genuinely new parties and 13 are splinters from established parliamentary parties. The
average first electoral performance varies between 0.8 per cent in France and 6.7 per cent in
Sweden. An outlier with respect to electoral performance is the Dutch List Pim Fortuyn (LPF)
winning 17 per cent in the 2002 election. Their party leader Pim Fortuyn was assassinated
only nine days before the election. Their exceptional performance was explained by both the
popularity of its leader as well as by their voters’ dissatisfaction towards established parties
and the incumbents’ record (van Holsteyn and Irwin 2003: 61).
Despite this inter-country variation, all party systems but Ireland experienced the emergence
of (extreme) right-wing populist parties. In the Netherlands, both the above mentioned List
Pim Fortuyn and the Freedom Party (PVV) are understood as right-wing populist parties.
Pim Fortuyn founded his party in 2002 after being expelled from his former party Livable
Netherlands (LN). The internal conflicted peaked when Fortuyn stated in an interview that the
Islam is a backward culture, no immigrants should be allowed in The Netherlands and that the
first article of the constitution could be lifted to protect the freedom of speech (van Holsteyn
and Irwin 2003: 46). Geert Wilders left the Liberal Party (VVD) and, after remaining in
parliament as a one-man party Group Wilders, launched the PVV. The party split was caused
by the VVD’s favorable decision towards Turkey’s EU membership (van Kessel 2011: 75).
12
Table 1: Descriptive statistics on new relevant parties (NRP)
Formation
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Ireland
Sweden
The Netherlands
United Kingdom
Success
Genuine
NRPs
Splinter
NRPs
All
NRPs
# of
elections
Average
election result
2
2
0
3
2
0
3
1
3
4
2
1
3
0
2
0
2
0
2
1
4
3
3
3
4
0
5
1
5
5
8
7
8
7
5
7
6
7
7
6
5.2
2.8
3.8
1.6
0.8
1.8
6.7
5.7
2.7
Source: The data stems from the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s PARLINE database on national parliaments. In
addition, single case studies were consulted for the founding year.
Note: During the research period, no new relevant party that gained legislative representation at the national
level was formed in Germany.
Similarly, internal disagreements led to splits within the Austrian extreme right-wing Freedom
Party (FPÖ). First, in 1994, the party’s social liberal wing left the party and formed the Liberal
Forum (LIF). Then, in 2005, the popular Carinthian state governor Jörg Haider launched his
extreme right-wing New Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ).
Scholars have argued that the splinter Danish People’s Party (DF) is comparable to the
Austrian FPÖ and should be seen as an extreme right-wing populist party. Although this label
is challenged due to the party’s stances on welfare issues, the party fights against immigration,
political elites and is sceptical towards the European Union.
New parties in France emerged on the centre-right of the political spectrum. In 1994,
the right-wing Movement for France (MPF) was founded. A party comparable to the British
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP, founded in 1991) that campaigns for the withdrawal from the EU. A few years later, in 1999, the right-wing Rally for France (RPF) started
13
as a new party in France. Founded by the former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, the party
holds equally sceptical views against the EU and stands for a fight against globalisation. The
two most recent party formations in France are the New Centre (NC) and the Democratic
Movement (MoDem) in 2007. Both parties are positioned in the centre-right. Both new actors
are splinter parties.
In Belgium, the right-wing or conservative People’s Party (PP) was founded in 2009 and
reached parliamentary representation in the subsequent election. It fought against the political
elite and immigration.
Two out of the three Finnish new party formations are understood as radical right-wing
or right-wing newcomers. The Young Finns (NUORS) was founded in 1994 and mainly campaigned against over-bureaucracy in the European Union, their stances on integration became
somewhat more critical after 1997. In 1995, the True Finns (PS) was founded after the Finnish
Rural Party (SMP) went bankrupt. Several former SMP members were among the founding
members of the PS which is why the party is perceived as a SMP successor party. However,
the True Finns are categorized as a new party, since the actor complies with the definition that
states that new actors are actors registered on the list of parties and receiving legislative representation in the elections that follow (see also Bolin 2012). The party’s ideology is sometimes
described as agrarian, but more recent studies argue that the PS is a populist radical right party
that lacks xenophobic extremism (Arter 2010: 485).
The only new party formation in Sweden was the formation of the New Democracy
(Nyd) in autumn of 1990. The party reached parliamentary representation in the subsequent
1991 election. Initially the party was described as populist or populist right-wing party due
to their criticism of high taxes, inadequate punishments, large public sector and bureaucracy
(Widfeldt 1992). More recent studies claim that the party’s anti-immigration policy classifies
the actor as a populist radical-right party (Odmalm 2011).
Finally, although Germany experienced no new relevant party formation according to
14
this study’s definition of NRPs, the newly founded populist right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) currently has reasonable chance of parliamentary representation after the next
election. The party failed to reach the electoral threshold of five percent in 2013, but had ongoing electoral success at the local level. As of March 2016, the party is represented in half of
the sixteen German state parliaments.
New libertarian parties emerged in the United Kingdom (Respect Party), Austria (LIF and
NEOS - New Austria, NEOS), Denmark (New Alliance, NA) and The Netherlands (Livabel
Netherlands, LN). Ireland experienced new party formation on the left end of the political
spectrum. The Democratic Left (DL) was founded as a breakaway faction of the Worker’s
Party in 1992 and reached parliamentary representation in the same year. Similar, a split in
the Labour Party resulted in the formation of the Socialist Party (SP) four years later. In 2005,
the genuine new party People Before Profit Alliance was founded and reached parliamentary
representation in 2011. Most recently, the Independents 4 Change (I4C) in 2014 and the Social
Democrats (SD) in 2015 were launched.
Fewer countries experienced the formation of new green parties. In the Netherlands, the
Party for the Animals gained parliamentary representation with a platform on animal rights
and environmental protection. In 2013, former members of parliament for the Social Liberal
Party split and founded the Alternative (Å). The new green party passed the electoral threshold
in the subsequent election of 2015. In 1990, the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW)
started as a splinter party from the former and then dissolved British Green Party. It reached
parliamentary representation in the 2010 election by gaining one parliamentary seat.
Furthermore, new actors emerged that are less easy to classify on a traditional leftright scale like the Finnish Reform Group (REM) or the British Independent Kidderminster
Hospital and Health Concern (ICHC). REM positioned itself against the left-right thinking
and gained parliamentary representation between 1999 and 2003 based on a program against
15
income taxes. ICHC was founded in 2000 and campaigned on health issues. Several parties
were founded by well-known public figures: These are the Belgium List Dedecker (LDD) and
the Van Rossem List (ROSSEM) as well as the Austrian Team Stronach (STRONACH).
These data on the formation of new parties are the basis for the dependent variables of the
analyses. In the models on new party formation, I use the number of new relevant parties per
country and year as my dependent variable. This operationalisation stands in contrast to previous studies on new party formation (see e.g. Bolin 2014; Hino 2012; Hug 2001; Rashkova
2010; Tavits 2006; 2008). While these studies count the number of new parties that gained parliamentary representation per country and election, my model examines new party formation
per country and year.
The remainder of the section will further specify the independent variables.
Independent variables
Ballot access requirements are measured as a categorical variable that distinguishes between
no special requirements (Finland, France, Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom), either signature
or deposit requirements (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany) and both signature and deposit requirements (Netherlands). This categorization relies on information provided by The
Electoral Knowledge Network (2016).
Following Tavits (2006), policy-benefits are operationalised with the Level of corporatism in
a country. Based on the rationale that policy influence outside parliament is easier in highly
corporatist systems, the need to form a political party in order to change how a country is run
is higher in pluralist systems. Two measures of corporatism are used in the analyses. One
is based on an ordinal aggregation of several scholarly classifications of corporatist countries
and the other uses a continuous classification proposed by Siaroff (1999).
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Next, an ordinal variable, Closeness to election, captures the remaining time until the next
regularly scheduled elections. It differentiates between the election year, one year, two years
and three or more years until the next election. The models further include an interaction
effect between Level of corporatism and Closeness to election.
Competition space is measured as the standard deviation of a country’s party position estimates on a general left-right scale derived from expert survey data (measure of party system
differentiation as proposed by Steenbergen and Marks 2007). This indicator is based on the
rationale that large standard deviations reflect a broad competition space and therefore reduce
a new actors’ potential electoral base. Smaller standard deviations reflect the reverse relationship. Since no expert survey covers the full investigation period, three data sources needed
to be combined. In order to capture the current competition space as closely as possible, the
general rule was to use the position estimate in the year the survey has been conducted as well
as in the years prior and following the survey and, if necessary, to take the average value between two survey waves. The expert survey conducted in 1989 by Laver and Hunt (1992) was
used to capture the competition space in 1990 and, as the average value with the Huber and
Inglehart data (1995), in 1991. The Laver-Hunt survey presents party position estimates on
various specific policy dimensions and, following the authors’ own interpretation (Laver and
Hunt 1992: 41, 126), the public ownership scale was used to position parties on the general
left-right scale.1 Between 1992 and 1995, the data come from the Huber and Inglehart (1995)
expert survey. Again, the 1996 data are mean values between their data and the subsequent
expert survey data available, i.e. the Chapel Hill expert survey data (Steenbergen and Marks
2007). Starting with 1997, the party position estimates come from the Chapel Hill Expert
Survey (CHES) trend file, 1999-2014 (Bakker et al. 2015; Hooghe et al. 2010; Steenbergen
1
Laver and Hunt use a 20-point scale ranging from 1 to 20. In order to make their point estimates comparable
to the 11-point scale, the values were transformed in the following way (x-1)*(10/19).
17
and Marks 2007). Surveys were conducted in 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014. Averaged
values are used in 2004, 2008, and 2012.
The Pedersen index of net volatility was used to calculate Electoral volatility in legislative
elections. The index reflects the sum of the absolute values of all electoral gains and losses
divided by two. It ranges from 0 (election results are the same as in the previous election) to
100 (only new parties succeeded at the election). The data come from Dassonneville (2015)
and were updated for the most recent 2015 elections.
The Turnout data come from Bolin’s (2014) data set on new party formation and were
updated based on the database of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (2016). Similar, the data on
Effective threshold and District size rely on Bolin (2014). A country’s Effective threshold is
either the level of national legal threshold or the so-called nationwide threshold of representation calculated based on Taagepera’s (2002) index of representation, whichever one is the
greater.
Finally, both the data on GDP growth and Inflation stem from the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD 2016a;b). The data on Unemployment rely on the EU
Commission’s database and reflects unemployed persons as a percentage of the civilian labour
force (European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs 2016).
4 Analysis
The analysis of new party formation is based on negative binomial regression models (see
Table 2). The dependent variable describes the number of new party formation per country
and year. The standard errors are clustered on countries. Due to a strong correlation between
18
Ballot access and District size, the latter variable was tested in a separate model (see model I
and model II in Table 3 in the appendix).
Table 2: Negative binomial regression models on new party formation
Model I
-0.238∗
0.288∗∗
(-1.75)
(2.24)
0.013
Control variables
Competition space
Electoral volatility
Turnout
Effective threshold
GDP growth
Inflation
Unemployment
Level of corporatism
Closeness to election
Interaction: corporatism*closeness
Ballot access
Model II
(0.04)
-0.168
-0.084
-0.060
0.029
(-0.84)
(-0.29)
(-0.51)
(0.08)
-0.400
0.058∗
0.006
-0.292
0.009
0.173
0.005
(-0.91)
(1.87)
(0.42)
(-1.28)
(0.11)
(1.59)
(0.06)
-0.405
0.058∗
0.006
-0.288
0.007
0.174
0.008
(-0.93
(1.84)
(0.40)
(-1.25)
(0.10)
(1.63)
(0.08)
Constant
-1.828
(-1.11)
-1.214
(-0.72)
lnalpha
-11.780
(-1.11)
-12.749
(-1.78)
N
Pseudo R2
252
0.072
252
0.073
Notes: * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01. In model II the variable Closeness to election has been transformed
so that lower values equal closeness to election. Consequently, the lower the variable Closeness to Election and
the lower the Level of corporatism (interaction effect), the more likely new party formation.
The discussion of the regression results starts with the findings regarding the benefits of new
party formation. Hypothesis 1 expects a negative relationship between corporatism and new
party formation. The rationale behind this expectation lies in the policy benefits that are feasible via extra-parliamentary channels in systems with high corporatist mechanisms. The negative and significant coefficient of the variable Level of corporatism supports this reasoning
and therefore, hypothesis 1. The higher the level of corporatism the less likely becomes the
formation of new parties in a party system. This finding is in line with Tavits’ results on new
party formation at the time of an election. The same does not hold true for the ordinal measure
19
of corporatism. Classifying systems based on a categorical scale does not yield significant
results (see model III and IV in Table 3 in the appendix). Similar, the coefficient does not
yield statistically significant results when controlling for district size. In the future the test
of corporatism will be extended towards more cases in order to test whether this conclusion
holds. Furthermore, not all cases fit perfectly into this scheme. Especially Austria, the probable most corporatist country, experienced no less than four new parties during the last 25
years. This descriptive finding runs counter the multivariate results and shows that sometimes
even in the most corporatist system political groups find themselves outside these informal
and formal channels and being represented on their own in parliament seems to be the best
way to influence public policy.
The second hypothesis expects an interaction effect between the Level of corporatism and
the Closeness to the next election. Model I in Table 2 reports that there is a significant and
positive relationship between the timing of an election and new party formation, i.e. the closer
an election the more likely the emergence of a new political actor. However, the interaction
effect does not support hypothesis 2.
Overall, this supports the present approach to examine party formation independent
from the Election Day. Prior studies on new party formation analysing newcomers at the time
of an election are able to enhance a better understanding on the demand side of elections.
Therefore, especially when looking at socio-economic indicators at the time of an election,
they rather measure the electorate’s willingness to vote for a new actor than the reasons behind
the formation of a new party by the political elite. The results indicate that political entry
decisions not necessarily match with elections.
While benefits and a shorter time to collect these benefits were expected to favour new party
formation, the costs are expected to hinder the launch of a new party. Therefore, hypothe-
20
sis 3 postulates that new party formation becomes less likely if registration requirements are
high. The negative coefficient Ballot access supports this argument, however, it fails to reach
standard levels of statistical significance. One explanation might lie in the combination of
signature and monetary requirements into one variable. In fact, the results in the previous literature on signature requirements are mixed (Hug 2001; Rashkova 2010; Tavits 2006; 2008).
Tavits (2006; 2008) and Hug (2001) even report a positive effect of signature requirements on
the number of new party entries. If this finding holds true, then signatures should not qualify
as actual costs in the process of party formation, but rather a more welcome self-control mechanism for newcomers (or ’false sense of security for the new party elites about their perception
of viability’, as Tavits (2006: 111) put it).
Turning now to the control variables of the political opportunity structure, the results partly
support the expectation that a more permeable opportunity structure favours new party formation. The figures in Table 2 show that an increase in the electoral volatility leads towards an
increase in political entry decisions. Put differently, the more people switch between parties
at the previous election, the higher the likelihood of new party formation during the following legislative term. Although the coefficients of Competitions space, Turnout and Effective
threshold are in the expected direction - the broader the present policy supply the less likely
new party formation, the higher the turnout the more likely new party formation and the higher
the effective threshold the less likely new party formation - their coefficients fail to reach standard levels of significance.
Furthermore, none of the socio-economic indicators have a significant effect on new
party formations. While the coefficients of both Inflation and Unemployment point towards
the expected direction and suggesting more new parties in times of increasing inflation and
unemployment rates, the coefficient of GDP growth points into the opposite direction, i.e.
new party formation becomes more likely in good economic times.
21
5 Conclusion
This paper analysed the emergence of new political parties in ten western European democracies between 1990 and 2015. In contrast to previous studies (see e.g. Bolin 2014; Hino 2012;
Hug 2001), it proposes a research design that looks at party system changes during the legislative period, i.e. changes on the political supply side that occur independent from a national
election. The main argument of this approach rests on the rationale that potential parties are
- like established parties - rational utility-maximizers (Downs 1957). Consequently, the formation of a new party becomes the result of a calculated decision-making process. Building
on the assumption of rational proto-parties, allows to develop several expectations that work
in favour or hinder a political entry decision. Political elites will form a party if they expect
the benefits to outweigh the costs aligned to new party formation (compare Tavits 2006). Furthermore, in order to collect their benefits as soon as possible, the likelihood of new party
formation should increase as the time to the next regularly scheduled election decreases.
Looking at new party formation in ten countries, the multivariate analyses party supported
this reasoning. With regard to benefits, the results are in line with Tavits’ (2006) study on
new party formation. The present results show that higher levels of corporatism decrease the
number of newcomers at the polls. Future work on new party formation during the legislative
period should include more cases in order to evaluate whether the present conclusions remain
valid. Especially worthwhile might be to include further pluralist countries such as Spain
or Greece. In any case, the empirical evidence shows that a country like Austria which is
generally perceived as archetypical corporatist country, experienced four new party formations
since 1990. This is the second highest number of newcomers in the sample. This begs the
question whether the access to these extra-parliamentary channels was accessible for new
actors after all.
22
With regard to costs, the present study adds to the mixed and sometimes counterintuitive findings from previous studies. A further differentiation between the types of new
actors might add to our understanding of cost calculations before the formation of a new
party. Anti-cartel parties like the Belgian ROSSEM or the Austrian TEAM STRONACH
were founded by wealthy entrepreneurs who were less interested in the costs aligned to party
formation. Furthermore, the descriptive evidence on new party formation has differentiated
genuinely new and splinter parties. Future studies should examine whether they calculate their
costs (and benefits) differently.
Adding to this, the present study suggests that the time to the next election plays a
relevant factor. The distance to the next regularly scheduled election is negative and significant. Future studies might further investigate the circumstances under which political entry
decisions are formed.
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6 Appendix
26
Table 3: Negative binomial regression models on new party formation, robustness tests
Model I
Model II
Ballot access
Level of corporatism
-0.203
(-1.35)
-0.137
(-0.65)
Closeness to election
0.284∗∗
(2.20)
-0.0962
(-0.36)
Level of coporatism (ordinal)
Interaction: Corporatism*closeness
-0.0554
Model III
Model IV
-0.0249
(-0.05)
-0.0239
(-0.05)
0.276∗
(1.79)
-0.267∗∗
(-2.11)
-0.113
(-0.42)
-0.106
(-0.34)
-0.00612
(-0.06)
(-0.49)
Interaction: Corporatism (ordinal)*closeness
27
Competition space
-0.381
(-0.91)
-0.383
(-0.92)
-0.441
(-0.84)
-0.441
(-0.84)
Electoral volatility
0.0638∗
(1.66)
0.0635∗
(1.65)
0.0736∗∗
(2.51)
0.0736∗∗
(2.50)
Turnout
0.00691
(0.52)
0.00722
(0.54)
-0.00187
(-0.11)
-0.00190
(-0.11)
Effective threshold
-0.341∗
(-1.78)
-0.338∗
(-1.74)
-0.287
(-1.32)
-0.287
(-1.30)
District size
-0.00168
(-0.46)
-0.00156
(-0.42)
GDP growth
0.0117
(0.16)
0.0106
(0.15)
-0.00958
(-0.12)
-0.00961
(-0.12)
Inflation
0.172∗
(1.72)
0.172∗
(1.79)
0.206∗
(1.84)
0.206∗
(1.88)
Unemployment
-0.00372
(-0.04)
-0.00156
(-0.02)
0.00840
(0.08)
0.00870
(0.08)
Constant
-1.896
(-0.95)
-1.306
(-0.62)
-2.046
(-1.11)
-1.229
(-0.76)
lnalpha
-12.13
(-0.90)
-12.12
(-1.42)
-14.38∗∗∗
(-15.25)
-13.66∗∗∗
(-13.89)
N
pseudo R2
252
0.073
Notes: * p < 0.10; ** p < 0.05; *** p < 0.01.
252
0.073
226
0.092
226
0.092