Measuring, Assessing and Evaluating Changes in European Party Politics

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Bringing together scholars from three different continents, this panel examines key developments in party politics across the Europe, focusing not just on the dynamics of party systems, but also on individual parties within those systems. Drawing on extensive databases that cover both Western and Eastern Europe, they highlight not just how that division is increasingly unhelpful in explaining developments, but also how seemingly different initial conditions generate similar outcomes in terms of party organization and party system institutionalization. Moreover, the papers offer new measures of party system institutionalization, party age and party statutes. Furthermore, the papers feed into deeper concerns about the health of democracy across the European continent.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 15: European Politics and Society

Individual Presentations

• Young or New? A Temporal Approach to the Institutionalization of Party Systems - Fernando Casal Bertoa, University of Nottingham; Zsolt Enyedi, Central European University

• The Long Shadow of First-time Elections - Pedro Riera, Carlos III University of Madrid; Joaquin Artes, Universidad Complutense

• Diffused Polarisation: Issue Diversity and Satisfaction with Democracy - Julian Hoerner, London School of Economics and Political Science; Sara B Hobolt, London School of Economics

• How Issue Salience Explains the Decline of Social Democrats in Europe - James Dennison, European University Institute

Chair

• Catherine E. De Vries Free University Amsterdam

Discussant

• Catherine E. De Vries Free University Amsterdam