Adapt or perish? How parties respond to party system saturation in 21 Western democracies, 1945–2011

This study examines whether (and how) parties adapt to party system saturation (PSS). A party system is oversaturated when a higher effective number of parties contests elections than predicted. Previous research has shown that parties are more likely to exit when party systems are oversaturated. This article examines whether parties will adapt by increasing the nicheness of their policy platform, by forming electoral alliances or by merging. Based on time-series analyses of 522 parties contesting 357 elections in twenty-one established Western democracies between 1945 and 2011, the study finds that parties are more likely to enter – and less likely to leave – electoral alliances if PSS increases. Additionally, a small share of older parties will merge. The results highlight parties’ limited capacity to adapt to their environments, which has important implications for the literature on party (system) change and models of electoral competition

Distance, dissatisfaction or a deficit in attention : why do citizens vote for new parties?

Why do voters vote for new political parties? This article tests the microfoundations of why voters support new parties. We examine three perspectives: that citizens vote for new parties because the established parties stand distant from the citizens' left-right position; that they vote for new parties because the existing parties ignore the issues that the citizens prioritize; or that they vote for new parties because the citizens are cynical about established parties in general. Based on an analysis of more than three decades of Dutch Parliamentary Election Surveys, we conclude that all three factors matter but that ideological distance is by far the strongest predictor

Representing their own? Ethnic minority women in the Dutch parliament

Ethnic minority women tend to be better represented in parliaments than ethnic minority men. What does this mean for their substantive representation? This article makes use of intersectional analysis to study how the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation differs within and between gender and ethnic groups. Drawing on written parliamentary questions and the committee memberships of MPs in seven parliamentary sessions (1995-2012) in the Netherlands, a strong link is found between descriptive and substantive representation. Female ethnic minority MPs more often sit on committees and table questions that address ethnic minority women's interests than male ethnic minority and female ethnic majority MPs. The link, however, is fragile as it is based on a small number of active MPs. This demonstrates the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding how representation works in increasingly diverse parliaments, which cannot be captured by focusing on gender or ethnicity alone

Explaining the effective number of parties : beyond the standard model

This study casts new light on the conditions determining the effective number of parties in elections. The state-of-the-art mostly considers the interaction between the permissiveness of the electoral system and social heterogeneity, labelled the standard model. This study argues that we should move beyond the standard model and also consider voters’ short term ideological preferences as well as the diversity of issues on the party system agenda. Moreover, the effects of these variables are expected to be conditioned by electoral system permissiveness. The hypotheses are examined on the basis of a longitudinal dataset containing information on 696 elections that took place in 79 countries between 1945 and 2011. Importantly, the hypotheses could only be confirmed on institutionalized party systems

Irrational parties, rational voters? Examining how new parties and voters react to party voter incongruence

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