During the early 1960s, a number of prominent political and social theorists argued that one of the major results of the phenomenal economic growth of Western Europe after World War II was the "deradicalization" of politics. Ideology would cease to be a major' factor as the radical parties of the left and right responded to a breakdown in traditional class cleavages to pursue "pragmatic" programs of economic reforrn.! More recent studies focusing on value changes (Inglehart, 1971) and capital-labor confrontations (Hibbs, 1976) in these countries suggest, however, that ideological politics has not disappeared. This paper examines trends in strength of the communist parties in ten West European nations to determine whether their hypothesized decline as a result of economic development/ has occurred