Parliamentary Cycles and Party Switching in Legislatures

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Mershon ◽  
Olga Shvetsova
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Two Systems ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Party Switching

This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of preelectoral positioning—contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics.

scholarly journals Party System Institutionalization in Democracies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mainwaring ◽  
Fernando Bizzarro ◽  
Aaron Watanabe ◽  
María Victoria De Negri
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
System Collapse ◽  
Party System Institutionalization ◽  
Party Institutionalization ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Democratic Elections

Party systems vary in many dimensions. Variation in the stability and predictability of the party system in democratic elections is captured by the concept of Party System Institutionalization (PSI). Where the party system is stable and predictable, it is institutionalized. Where it is in flux and major new contenders regularly appear, the party system lacks institutionalization. Fundamental differences among party systems revolve around the level of institutionalization. Institutionalized systems make governing easier, lower the probability of populists winning office, promote greater economic growth, and are associated with better public policy. Many scholars who work on Latin America, the post-Soviet region, Africa, and Asia have employed the concept “party system institutionalize” to analyze these regions. Because party systems do not develop in a linear way, in some cases this means the study of deinstitutionalization. When deinstitutionalization happens abruptly, it is called party system collapse or party collapse. The article focuses on PSI, erosion, and collapse in democratic regimes; a different literature analyzes party institutionalization under authoritarian regimes.

The functions and positions of political parties in consociational democracies: theoretical and empirical contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 28-33
Author(s):  
O. Morhuniuk
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Further Development

An article is devoted to the analysis of the functions and formats of political parties in consociational democracies. In particular, it is defined that parties that represent the interests of certain subcultures in society and that reach a consensus among themselves at the level of political agreements are called segmental. At the same time, parties that encapsulate different subgroups of the society that cooperate inside the party within main features of the consociational theory (grand coalition, mutual veto, proportionality in representations, and independence of segments or society subcultures) are called consociational. The theory of consociationalism has received a wide range of theoretical additions and criticism from political scientists over the past fifty years. And while political parties should have been, by definition, one of the key aspects of research within such democratic regimes (parties are part of large coalitions and agents of representation of certain subcultures), there is very scarce number of literature that focuses on this aspect. Therefore, the presented article provides a description of the functions of political parties that could be observed as inside their subcultures as well as in interaction with other segmental parties. Based on the experience of two European countries in the period of “classical” consociationalism (Belgium and the Netherlands), we explain the functions of the parties we have defined in such societies with examples of relevant consociational practices in them. Simultaneously with the analysis of segmental parties, the article also offers the characteristics of consociational parties. The emergence of such parties has its own institutional and historical features. The way of further development of the party system and the level of preservation of consociational practices makes it possible to understand the nature of changes in the societies. Similarly, the analysis of the forms of party competition and interaction between segmental parties makes it possible to outline the forms of those consociational changes that are taking place in the research countries.

A New European Dataset and the Measurement of Party System Closure

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Fernando Casal Bértoa ◽  
Zsolt Enyedi
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Volatility Index ◽  
Units Of Measurement ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Principal Tool ◽  
Party System Institutionalization

The second chapter introduces the dataset of the book, defines its units of measurement, and operationalizes its key concepts. We discuss the method of creating our principal tool of analysis, the composite closure index. We reflect in detail on the question of how experiences accumulated through time can be taken into account when measuring stability. Finally, in a validation exercise, we also investigate whether our closure index could have been used to predict which democracies collapsed around the world between the two World Wars. With this exercise we also show that closure is a better proxy for party system institutionalization than the more traditionally used indicator, the electoral volatility index.

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