New Party Entrance : Analyzing the Impact of Political Institutions

Although research on new parties now is more common than just a couple of decades ago, we still lack a more general theory of when new parties manage to enter national parliaments for the first time. In this article I try to fill some of the gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of certain formal political institutions. Using a dataset made up of election results held in 18 West European countries between 1960 and 2005, some tentatively important political institutions are scrutinized. I find the electoral system is an important factor in the explanation of when new parties enter national parliaments. The impact of state subsidies to parties is, on the other hand, rather weak. This runs contrary to the cartel thesis, which implies that such subsidies serve to block the entrance of new parties. Overall, however, the institutional framework can provide only a partial explanation and can only be seen as one aspect of new party entrance. Socio-economic factors as well as actor-centred factors are other aspects with potential explanatory power