Political opportunity structures and the parliamentary entry of splinter, merger, and genuinely new parties
| Author | Mihail Chiru,Marina Popescu,István Gergő Székely |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720943432 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395720943432
Politics
2021, Vol. 41(3) 316 –333
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0263395720943432
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Political opportunity structures
and the parliamentary entry of
splinter, merger, and genuinely
new parties
Mihail Chiru
University of Oxford, UK
Marina Popescu
Median Research Centre, Romania
István Gergő Székely
Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, Romania
Abstract
Drawing on an original sample of 351 elections held in new and consolidated democracies
from 1960 to 2013, this article examines the likelihood that new parties gain parliamentary
representation as a function of electoral system permissiveness and contextual factors that shape
political entrepreneurs’ perception of political opportunity. We distinguish between the success
of genuinely new parties and that achieved by splinters or parties formed through mergers. We
find that the district magnitude matters for the success of all three types of newcomers, while the
electoral formula and proportionality matter only for the parliamentary entry of splinter parties.
Another novel finding is that government instability facilitates the success of genuinely new and
splinter parties. The analysis also shows that, irrespective of the type of transition, the more
elections have taken place since then, the less likely it becomes that genuinely new parties and
merger new parties enter parliament.
Keywords
electoral systems, parliaments, party mergers, party splits, political parties
Received: 5th November 2019; Revised version received: 6th May 2020; Accepted: 23rd June 2020
Introduction
Oftentimes, successful new parties disrupt established patterns of party competition and
provide disillusioned citizens with new options, thereby increasing the responsiveness
Corresponding author:
Mihail Chiru, Russian and East European Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of
Oxford, 11 Bevington Road, Oxford OX2 6NB, UK.
Email: mihail.chiru@area.ox.ac.uk
943432POL0010.1177/0263395720943432PoliticsChiru et al.
research-article2020
Article
Chiru et al. 317
and accountability of policy-making. But they can also hinder accountability by introduc-
ing new brands and confusion about who is responsible for what. Hence, the relevance of
studying new party success in a systematic manner as a key to how political innovators
and the citizens who support them change the ability of party systems to meaningfully
aggregate popular preferences (Riker, 1986).
This article studies new party success by focusing on a measure of success that is com-
parable across political systems: new party parliamentary entry. Most existing studies on
new parties (Emanuele and Chiaramonte, 2016; Harmel and Robertson, 1985; Mainwaring
et al., 2017; Powell and Tucker, 2014; Willey, 1998) concentrate on their electoral success
as measured through vote share.1 Bolin’s (2014) study is probably the only exception.
Similar to Bolin, we argue not only that winning parliamentary representation is a less
arbitrary measure of electoral success than vote share, but also that it allows for a more
accurate cross-country comparison.
Of the many factors that impact the likelihood of new party success we focus on facili-
tating conditions rather than direct motivations. Demand side factors, such as the dissat-
isfaction of voters or political entrepreneurs with the performance of the existing political
parties or the appearance of a new societal divide (Rydgren, 2003), may be more influen-
tial than the opportunity structure (Kitschelt, 1986: 58), which comprises those institu-
tional and contextual factors that shape the response of relevant political actors to changes
on the demand side. However, manipulating the opportunity structure seems to be the
most promising route for institutional design to influence the emergence of new parties,
and hence the public good that they are expected to bring about.
In this article, we address both key aspects of the opportunity structure. On one hand,
scholars have emphasized the role played by the institutional context in shaping the
chances of new parties (Rohrschneider, 1993; Willey, 1998). This refers mainly to elec-
toral system features, such as its degree of proportionality or the size of the electoral
threshold, but also to constitutional arrangements such as parliamentarism versus presi-
dentialism (Harmel and Robertson, 1985; Hino, 2012). On the other hand, certain contex-
tual factors shape how political entrepreneurs perceive the political opportunity structure
and their cost–benefit calculus regarding the viability of a new party project (Cox, 1997):
the cost of entry, benefits of office, the chances to attract voters, and to enter parliament
and government given existing patterns of party competition (Tavits, 2008; Zons, 2015).
These factors range from short-term economic conditions such as the level of unemploy-
ment or inflation (Tavits, 2006) to government instability, the fragmentation of the party
system (Bolleyer and Bytzek, 2013), or the limited programmatic diversity of established
parties (Zons, 2015). We address our central research question – ‘How do institutional
barriers and contextual factors related to the political opportunity structure influence new
party entry to parliament?’ – by analysing an original dataset that includes 351 elections
in 35 democracies, from 1960 to 2013.
The present article revisits the explanatory power of the factors mentioned above
while making four original contributions. First, we distinguish more subtypes of new par-
ties then the extant literature did and show that the influence of various factors on new
party success depends on which type is examined: genuinely new parties, splinter new
parties, and parties that emerge as a result of mergers.
Second, the effect of electoral system permissiveness is tested more comprehensively,
moving beyond the role of electoral thresholds to take into account electoral formulas,
district magnitude, and the proportionality of the translation of votes into seats.
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
