Party system closure and openness: conceptualization, operationalization and validation

The degree of closure of the governmental arena is a central aspect of the stabilization of party systems, and yet little systematic effort has been devoted to its operationalization. The article proposes a new index, examines its reliability and validity, and reports the ranking of 60 party systems. By redefining the units of measurement we suggest new indicators that are uniform and transparent in their logic of construction, can be applied both to specific government-changes and to time periods, and are sensitive to the degree of change. The article finds a hierarchy among the components of party system closure, dominated by coalition formula. While new and established democracies can both produced closed patterns, the analysis of inter-war European party systems shows that closed systems are less prone to authoritarian takeover. The article demonstrates the power of inertia: the completely closed configurations stand out as the most durable ones

How unstable? Volatility and the genuinely new parties in Eastern Europe

Measuring of party system stability in Eastern Europe during the first decade of democratic elections presents problems. The traditional quantitative measure - volatility - does not distinguish between the dynamics among incumbent parties and the rise of genuinely new ones. I propose a new additional measure - success of genuinely new parties - and compare it to volatility. The subsequent performance of initially successful genuinely new parties is analysed. While volatility has been remarkably high in East European countries, the genuinely new parties have, in general, not been very successful. Instability of party systems in the region stems rather from the inner dynamics of incumbent actors than from the rise of new contenders

Party systems in Central East Europe Dimensions of system stability

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:8491.303(317) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Does government performance matter? Electoral support for incumbents in six post-communist countries

For two decades, the Central and Eastern European party politics has been characterized by the widespread inability of parties to secure stable political support (reflected in high levels of electoral volatility) to allow their presence in government for consecutive terms. This paper investigates the factors that trigger support for incumbent parties in post-communist countries. In doing so, it examines the effect of individual evaluations at the systemic level (i.e. satisfaction with democracy, government activity), partisan attachment (i.e. preference), and objective indicators of individual economic success (i.e. the level of income) on the vote for incumbents. This cross-national analysis is conducted at the individual-level in six post-communist countries chosen on the basis of the most similar system design. The study uses data from election surveys at two different moments in time (mid-1990s and the first elections of the 2000s) and combines bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses. The results indicate that partisanship and positive evaluations of the government explain most of the vote for incumbents. Apart from these visible patterns, there are some other valuable results in specific countries understandable solely within the larger domestic political context