Party System De-institutionalization and Its Consequences on Democracy

• In Event: Populism and the Reshaping of the Post-War Political Order in Europe

Abstract

Over the last years, particularly after the hit of the post-2008 economic crisis, party systems in Western Europe have become increasingly unstable and unpredictable. Electoral volatility has generally increased, sometimes reaching unprecedented levels, and new parties have successfully emerged, thus changing the long-term established patterns of inter-party competition in the region. Given these outcomes, some scholars argue that Western Europe is experiencing an ongoing trend of party system de-institutionalization, whose consequences for democracy are still uncertain. So far, a large body of literature has explored the consequences of having a weakly institutionalized party system on democracy in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, emphasizing that it weakens electoral accountability, makes the system more vulnerable to the spread of populist discourses, negatively influences voters’ turnout and the incentives for politicians to curb corruption, and ultimately may foster the collapse of the democratic regime. However, such relationships have been overlooked in Western Europe, where highly institutionalized party systems have been the rule for a long time. This paper has the purpose to fill this gap by providing a systematic investigation about the consequences of party system de-institutionalization on democratic quality. Based on an original dataset combining systemic-level and individual-level data coming from multiple sources and allowing for cross-time and cross-country variation, the paper explores whether and to what extent the increasing instability and unpredictability of Western European party systems has negatively affected voters’ trust in political parties, institutions, and the democratic game.

Authors

• Vincenzo Emanuele, LUISS Guido Carli, Rome

• Alessandro Chiaramonte, University of Florence