Towards turbulent times: measuring and explaining party system (de-)institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015)

Chiaramonte, Alessandro; Emanuele, Vincenzo

doi:10.1017/ipo.2017.27

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…For the sake of comparability (see IDEA, 2020a), and to properly capture the effect of COVID-19 on electoral participation, we also look at pre-COVID-19 elections. Following previous scholarship (Casal Bértoa and Weber, 2018;Chiaramonte and Emanuele, 2019;Nwokora and Pelizzo, 2014;Scarrow, 2006), we collected turnout data in the very same polities and for the same electoral levels for the three previous elections. All in all, our final database has 131 observations 11 (33 polities times four elections in each, that belongs to 25 countries).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Coronavirus Pandemic and Voter Turnout: Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Electoral Participation

Santana¹,

Rama²,

Bértoa³

2020

Preprint

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External shocks have been shown to be able to alter countries’ political dynamics in a deep manner. The number of works examining the impact of economic crisis, natural disasters or even terrorist attacks are numerous. However, the literature addressing the political effects of the current Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still in its infancy. Definitively, the pandemic has constituted an unpredictable external shock not only affecting the health of millions around the planet but also damaging the economic and social stability of most countries. Politically, it has forced electoral authorities in some countries to postpone elections (e.g. Kiribati, North Macedonia, Sri Lanka), to suspend voting rights for those infected with the virus (e.g. Galicia and Basque Country in Spain) or to adapt postal vote regulations (e.g. Bavaria in Germany) in order to guarantee citizens’ voting rights and diminish electoral fraud. Trying to fill a lacuna in the literature, the goal of this article is to give a first and nuanced examination on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted electoral participation all over the world. To that end we have collected data on all parliamentary, presidential and regional elections held worldwide during the first seven months since the COVID-19 outbreak became recognized as a health emergency of global scope and started to affect the organization of elections (March 1st-September 30th, 2020). Our results show that while voter turnout has not generally declined in comparison with those elections held before the pandemic, electoral participation is lower in polities hit by the pandemic the most, both in terms of infections and – especially - deceases. This seems to point to the fact that when faced with a choice (civic duty vs. personal risk), the fear of becoming infected will constrain voters to opt for the former.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Coronavirus Pandemic and Voter Turnout: Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Electoral Participation

Santana¹,

Rama²,

Bértoa³

2020

Preprint

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“…Much of the relevant literature explains electoral volatility by the openness of the electoral system, the fragmentation of the party system, the entry of new parties, and convergence between mainstream parties (e.g. Chiaramonte and Emanuele, 2018, 2019; Dejaeghere and Dassonneville, 2017; Spoon and Klüver, 2019; Tavits, 2008). We acknowledge that these factors influence party system volatility (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

Martin¹,

Lange²,

Brug

2020

Party Politics

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Political parties are increasingly confronted with electoral volatility. However, the support for some parties is more stable than that of others. Although it has been established that parties’ links to civil society stabilised their electorates in the period until the 1980s, it has not yet been investigated whether such links still fulfil this function in our volatile age. In this paper, we argue that traditional party connections, as well as links to modern day civil society organisations, continue to tie voters to parties. Using a novel dataset covering 149 parties in 29 elections in 14 West European countries, we establish that parties with stronger links to civil society do indeed have a more stable support base. This relationship holds for parties of the left and right. Our results demonstrate that parties’ societal embeddedness continues to play a role in understanding party competition in the 21st century.

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“…Just consider that in the whole sample, only five elections have experienced a PSInn higher than 20, and four of them fall in the last decade, being the Greek election of May 2012, the Icelandic and the Italian elections of 2013 and the Spanish election of 2015. All these latter occurred in a context of economic hardship and, as anticipated in 'Introduction' section, different scholars have linked the advent of the 2008 'Great Recession' to party system change (Hernández and Kriesi, 2015), showing a significant relationship between poor economic performance and party system deinstitutionalization in the last years (Chiaramonte and Emanuele, 2016).…”

Section: Psinn In Western Europementioning

confidence: 92%

A growing impact of new parties

Emanuele

Chiaramonte

2016

Party Politics

Self Cite

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Despite the large body of literature on the emergence and success of new political parties in Western Europe, few, if any, attention has been paid to investigate new parties from a systemic perspective, therefore exploring their potential effects on party systems. This article focuses on party system innovation (PSInn), defined as the aggregate level of ‘newness’ recorded in a party system at a given election. After having reviewed the extant literature on the topic, the article discusses what a new party is and provides a new index to measure PSInn. The article analyses the evolution of PSInn across 324 elections held in 19 West European countries from 1945 to 2015 and its cumulative effects over time. Although in most countries the party landscape today is still very similar to the one appearing after World War II, data offer clear evidence of a sharp increase of innovation in the last few years.

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Towards turbulent times: measuring and explaining party system (de-)institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015)

Cited by 14 publications

References 57 publications

The Coronavirus Pandemic and Voter Turnout: Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Electoral Participation

The Coronavirus Pandemic and Voter Turnout: Addressing the Impact of Covid-19 on Electoral Participation

Holding on to voters in volatile times: Bonding voters through party links with civil society

A growing impact of new parties

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