Historical (i.e. Defunct) European Party Systems
The fourth chapter presents the profile and the condensed history of the 21 historical party systems that ceased to be democratic. Here we discuss the dynamics of the changes, and relate them to the ideological configurations and alliance structures. We show that the changes in closure figures indicate well the transformations of party politics, we link developments in the governmental arena to the conflicts in the party system in general, and we associate each party system with a specific trajectory of closure development and a specific party system type. We show how, in clear contrast to currently functioning European party systems, the plurality of historical party systems fit into a multi-polar configuration that impeded them from reaching higher levels of systemic stability. Tellingly, we find no instances of consistent growth and high-level stabilization or grand coalitions. Two-party and two-plus-one party systems, so common in currently functioning party systems, were also extremely rare among the collapsed systems.