Abstract
Party systems have been perceived for a long time as highly persistent, stable, “frozen” subsystems of the polity. This dominant view has been put forward most eloquently by Lipset and Rokkan (1976) and has been adopted and adapted by others since. This article challenges this view by studying 19 Western party systems over their entire history. I show that in terms of party systems fragmentation, ideological polarization, and instability of the vote, most systems cannot be regarded as stable. Party systems have not been “defreezing” in the last few years; they have never really been frozen.
Subject
Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
60 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献