Altering Party Systems: Strategic Behavior and the Emergence of New Political Parties in Western Democracies

224 Pages·2001·10.32 MB·English

by  Simon Hug

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Altering Party Systems
Interests, Identities, and Institutions in Comparative Politics
Series Editor:
Mark I. Lichbach, University of California, Riverside
Editorial Advisory Board:
Barbara Geddes, University of California, Los Angeles
James C. Scott, Yale University
Sven Steinmo, University of Colorado
Kathleen Thelen, Northwestern University
Alan Zuckerman, Brown University
The post-Cold War world faces a series of defining global challenges: virulent forms
of conflict, the resurgence of the market as the basis for economic organization, and
the construction of democratic institutions.
The books in this series take advantage of the rich development of different
approaches to comparative politics in order to offer new perspectives on these prob
lems. The books explore the emerging theoretical and methodological synergisms and
controversies about social conflict, political economy, and institutional development.
Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System
and Social Cleavages in India, by Pradeep K. Chhibber
Gendering Politics: Women in Israel, by Hanna Herzog
Origins of Liberal Dominance: State, Church, and Party
in Nineteenth-Century Europe, by Andrew C. Gould
The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil, by Barry Ames
Political Science as Puzzle Solving, edited by Bernard Grofman
Institutions and Innovation: Voters, Parties, and Interest Groups in
the Consolidation of Democracy-France and Germany, 1870-1939,
by Marcus Kreuzer
Altering Party Systems: Strategic Behavior and the Emergence of
New Political Parties in Western Democracies, by Simon Hug
Altering Party Systems
Strategic Behavior and the Emergence
of New Political Parties
in Western Democracies
SIMON HUG
Ann Arbor
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PREss
Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2001
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
e
Printed on acid-free paper
2004 2003 2002 2001 432
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise,
without the written permission of the publisher.
A CI P catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hug, Simon.
Altering party systems: strategic behavior and the emergence of new
political parties in Western democracies / Simon Hug.
p. cm. - (Interests, identities, and institutions in comparative politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-472-11184-1 (cloth: alk. paper)
I. Political parties-Mathematical models. 2. Democracy-Mathematical
models. I. Title. II. Series.
JF2051 .H83 2001
324.2'09171 '3-dc21 2001018111
ISBN13 978-0-472-11184-8 (cloth)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02405-6 (electronic)
Contents
Acknowl edgment s Vll
1. Introduction
2. Tales of New and Old Political Parties 11
3. A Theoretical Model 37
4. Studying New Parties 65
5. The Emergence of New Parties 79
6. The Initial Success of New Parties 125
7. Conclusion 147
8. Appendix 151
References 189
Index 205

Acknowledgments
This book is based on my dissertation "Time to Party? Strategic Behavior and
the Emergence of New Political Parties" (University of Michigan 1994). On
the long journey from a vague idea to a dissertation and finally to a book I ac
cumulated debts to many people. Enumerating them all would be tedious and
would almost certainly lead to embarrassing omissions. To avoid both pitfalls
I will refrain from using any names in these acknowledgements. All persons
who have helped me and given me support on this journey will recognize them
selves in the following lines.
To start without the help of my family I would have not been able to under
take my studies and pursue them to the present stage. Their constant support
facilitated my intellectual progress at all times. Professors in the Department of
Political Science of the University of Geneva have given me, first, as teachers,
then as colleagues, the craving for research in this fascinating field. Thanks
to grants from the Fulbright Commission and the Fondation Schmidheiny, I
was able to pursue my studies at the University of Michigan. With extreme
luck, I found teachers, colleagues and friends who helped enormously in giv
ing shape to my ideas and in rendering them concrete. Back at the University
of Geneva, I returned to colleagues and friends who encouraged me in my ideas
and helped me complete this dissertation. The final version of the manuscript
was completed while I was visiting the Department of Political Science at the
University of California, San Diego. The intellectual (and physical) environ
ment made this tedious task almost a pleasure. During these last revisions I
was able to draw on the excellent comments by two reviewers and, to make an
exception to my rule of not employing names, by Chuck Myers from the Uni
versity of Michigan Press. The second exception I wish to make is in thanking
John Brehm for letting me use his LaTeX styles to typeset this book. Thanks is
due to all of them, since without them I would still be stuck with a vague idea.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Scholarly interest in new political parties has followed strong attention-cycles,
largely defined by the changing success of several classes of new actors on the
electoral scene. Green parties stimulated the study of new parties with their
early successes in the late seventies. Their waning, especially of the German
Greens (Poguntke 1990; Frankland 1995a, 1995b) at the end of the eighties,
has heavily reduced the attention paid to their fate. Shortly before the end of
this decade, several right-wing parties have emerged and provided further stim
ulus for research on the reasons for their existence (Husbands 1992a, 1992b;
Ignazi 1992). Should these parties have a fate similar to that of the German
Greens, the study of new parties would most likely experience another set
back.1
Understanding the formation of new parties is important for at least three
reasons. First, some new parties, even when starting small, are here to replace
established parties.2 Consequently, they significantly modify the party sys
tems in which they appear. Second, even when new parties are not successful
in becoming central actors, e.g., in government policies, they have, by their
sheer presence, an impact on the electoral competition. Good examples for
this tendency are changes in positions taken by several conservative parties on
the immigration issue after the surge of right-wing parties in Europe. Similarly,
Green parties have had a long-lasting impact on environmental policies in most
developed countries (Schmitt 1987; von Oppeln 1989; Rohrschneider, 1990).
To a certain degree, they blackmail established parties (Downs 1957, 128).
Third, groups that consider forming a new party sometimes threaten existing
parties. They force the latter to adopt policies that they would have preferred
not to address. Here it becomes crucial to understand why new parties do
not form. Beyond these three substantive reasons, the numerical importance
of new political parties, even when taken on its own, gives reason enough to
I . These trends also clearly appear in systematic studies of the literature on parties and party
systems in Westem Europe (Bartolini. Caramani and Hug 1998; Caramani and Hug 1998).
2. Janda (1980) in his sample of new parties finds several which have replaced existing par
ties. Similarly. Downs (1957. 128f) illustrates his theoretical framework by using the replacement
ofthe Liberals by the Labour party in Great Britain.