Party System Instability in Europe: Persistent Differences in Volatility between West and East?
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13510340601024322
ISSN1743-890X
Autores Tópico(s)European Union Policy and Governance
ResumoAbstract To fully understand the function of volatility in today's European democracies, it is necessary to employ the principal-agent model. Where democracy is exercised in the form of party government, then it is especially essential to enquire into how the electorate can monitor politicians. Electoral volatility may increase the responsiveness of the party system to the electorate and increase the accountability of politicians. Party system instability is persistently higher in the east European democracies than in western Europe. System transition in eastern Europe passes through the party system, as new parties enter the electoral arena. Political innovation in western Europe also passes through the party system, where new movements appear alongside the established parties. However, there are signs of decreasing volatility in the east, whereas volatility is on the rise in several west European democracies. There will be convergence between west and east European democracies: both will experience considerable volatility in the future. This is a positive gain for democratic vitality in Tingsten's conception. The level of party system fractionalization is already the same over the regions of Europe. The principal-agent model would favour several agents as well as agent switches, which means a moderate level of party system instability. Keywords: electoral volatilityprincipal-agent modelparty system fractionalizationelectoral thresholdsdemocratic vitality Notes 1. Democratic vitality, according to Herbert Tingsten, stands for the interest of citizens in politics, policies, and elections as well as the respect shown by parties for rule of law institutions. See Herbert Tingsten, The Problem of Democracy (Totowa, NJ: Bedminster Press, 1965). 2. Starting points for the analysis of party system change in Europe included the following: Richard Rose and Derek W. Urwin, 'Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945', Political Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1970), pp.287–319; Mogens Pedersen, 'The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1979), pp.1–26; Mogens Pedersen, 'Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility in European Party Systems, 1948-1977: Explorations and Explanations', in Hans Daalder and Peter Mair (eds), Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983), pp.29–66. These were followed by Ivor Crewe and David Denver (eds), Electoral Change in Western Democracies: Patterns and Sources of Volatility (London: Croom Helm, 1985) and Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability:The Stabilisation of European Electorates 1885-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also the more recent discussion in David M. Olson, 'Party Formation and Party System Consolidation in the New Democracies of Central Europe', Political Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (1998), pp.432–64; Kenneth M. Roberts and Erik Wibbels, 'Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America: A Test of Economic, Institutional, and Structural Explanations', American Political Science Review, Vol. 93, No. 3 (1999), pp.575–90; Sarah Birch, 'Electoral Systems and Party System Stability in Post-communist Europe', Paper prepared for the American Political Science Association meeting, San Francisco, 2001; Richard Gunther and José R. Montero, 'The Anchors of Partisanship: A Comparative Analysis of Voting Behavior in Four Southern European Democracies', in P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Richard Gunther (eds) Parties, Politics, and Democracy in the New Southern Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), pp.83–152; Jack Bielasiak, 'The Institutionalization of Electoral and Party Systems in Postcommunist States', Comparative Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (2002), pp.189–210; Andrew Drummond, 'Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970-1995', Paper 02-02, Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine (2002); Jack Bielasiak, 'Party Competition in Emerging Democracies: Representation and Effectiveness in Post-communism and Beyond', Democratization, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2005), pp.331–56; Richard Gunther, 'Parties and Electoral Behavior in Southern Europe', Comparative Politics, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2005), pp.253–75; Alan Sikk, 'How Unstable? Volatility and the Genuinely New Parties in Eastern Europe', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2005), pp.391–412; Margit Tavits, 'The Development of Stable Party Support: Electoral Dynamics in Post-Communist Europe', American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 2 (2005), pp.283–98; Daniele Caramani, 'Is There a European Electorate and What Does It Look Like? Evidence from Electoral Volatility Measures, 1976-2004', West European Politics, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2006), pp.1–27. 3. See the discussion in Eric Rasmusen (ed.), Readings in Games and Information (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Time has now come to apply the principal-agent approach to politics, given its successful application in both economics and law – see Jean-Jacques Laffont (ed.), The Principal Agent Model: The Economic Theory of Incentives (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003). 4. A good introduction to this discussion is Peter Mair, Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); see also Peter Mair,'The Freezing Hypothesis: An Evaluation', in Lauri Karvonen and Stein Kuhnle (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited (London: Routledge, 2001) pp.27–44. The following discussion is based on Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 'Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction', in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignment: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press, 1967), pp.1–64; Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (London: Methuen, 1964); Rein Taagepera and Matthew Soberg Shugart, Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); M. Pedersen, 'The Dynamics' and 'Changing Patterns' (note 2); Kaare Strom, Minority Government and Majority Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Otto Kirchheimer, 'The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems', in Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P, 1966), pp.177–200. 5. See the discussion on principal-agent models in Eric Rasmusen, Games and Information: An Introduction to Game Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994). 6. Recent developments in the party system in various parts of Europe are discussed in Leonardo Morlino, Democracy between Consolidation and Crisis: Parties, Groups, and Citizens in Southern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Jean-Michel De Waele, L'emergence des parties politiques en Europe centrale (Bruxelles: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1999); Peter Mair, Wolfgang C. Müller and Fritz Plasser (eds), Parteien auf komplexen Wählermärkten: Reaktionsstrategien Politischer Parteien in Westeuropa (Wien: Signum, 1999); Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslav Markowski and Gábor Tóka Post-communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); P. Nikiforos Diamandouros and Richard Gunther (eds), Parties, Politics, and Democracy in the New Southern Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Tomas Kostelecký, Political Parties after Communism: Developments in East-central Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Kurt Richard Luther and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (eds), Political Parties in the New Europe: Political and Analytical Challenges (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 7. The sources employed for constructing the two data-sets are portrayed in the Appendix. Based on the sources detailed there we have computed net volatility scores and the effective number scores for 145 elections in Europe from 1990 to 2005. 8. The Pedersen index measures the net changes for all the parties within a party system between two elections. The formula is presented in Pedersen,'The Dynamics' (note 2), p.4. The Laakso-Taagepera index measures the effective number of parties (based on votes) in a party system at a given election: the formula is presented in Markku Laakso and Rein Taagepera, '"Effective" Number of Parties: A Measure with Application to Western Europe', Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1979), pp. 2–27; see also Rein Taagepera, 'Effective Number of Parties for Incomplete Data', Electoral Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1997), pp.145–51. 9. We have checked how well our volatility scores tend to agree with scores reported in the literature. We have then relied on the following sources where volatility scores are reported for party systems in southern and central and eastern Europe: Rose, Munro and Mackie (see Appendix), p.119; Birch (see Appendix), p.124; Elisabeth Bakke and Nick Sitter, 'Patterns of Stability: Party Competition and Strategy in Central Europe since 1989', Party Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2 (2005), p.250; Murat Abuş, 'Democratization in the Balkans, 1990-2002', Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, Vol. 2, Nos. 3&4 (2003), p.103;; Bielasiak, 'The Institutionalization' (note 2), p.201; Bielasiak, 'Party Competition' (note 2), p.341, Gunther and Montero (note 2), p.90; Sikk (note 2), p.396; Tavits (note 2), p.285; Caramani (note 2), p.7. As for the country data-set (N = 38) our volatility score correlates quite strongly with the average for the scores reported in the literature (r = .96; N = 34); a similar procedure for the election data-set (N = 145) arrives at a slightly lower correlation (r = .84; N = 61). Our conclusion is that our measure for net volatility is reasonably reliable. 10. We discuss the relation between net and gross volatility in Svante Ersson and Jan-Erik Lane, 'Electoral Instability and Party System Change in Western Europe', in Paul Pennings and Jan-Erik Lane (eds), Comparing Party System Change (London: Routledge, 1998), p.29. 11. With respect to election systems in central and eastern Europe we rely on the following sources: Olga Shvetsova, 'A Survey of Post-communist Electoral Institutions: 1990-1998', Electoral Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1999), pp.397–409; Sarah Birch, 'Electoral Systems and Party Systems in Europe: East and West', Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2001), pp.355–77; Bielasiak, 'The Institutionalization' (note 2); Kareen Dawisha and Stephen Deets, 'Intended and Unitended Consequences of Elections of Elections in Russia and Post-communist States', Unpublished paper, Havighurst Center, Miami University, 2002; Birch, 'Electoral Systems' (note 2); Sarah Birch, 'Lessons from Eastern Europe: Electoral Reform Following the Collapse of Communism', Unpublished paper, Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, Canada, 2005; Andrew Reynolds, Ben Reilly and Andrew Ellis, Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook (Stockholm: IDEA, 2005). Additional informationNotes on contributorsJan-Erik Lane Jan-Erik Lane is Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Geneva, Switzerland. Svante Ersson Svante Ersson is Lecturer in Political Science, Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Sweden.
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