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¹³ In addition to factors influencing the rise of new parties, the flexibility of multi-party systems is constrained in other ways. First, they vary considerably in the number of parties that are competing for office. In Scandinavia, for example, Denmark has the highest number of major parties and Sweden the smallest, with Norway in between (the numbers are eleven, five and seven respectively for the period of our study). Some of the smallest parties running in the election have little chance of representation, and thus can be compared to third parties in two-party systems. Secondly, the specialization of the party structure (e.g. an Agrarian party, a Labour party, etc.) might limit the relevance of the parties for the broader electorate. There is thus conflict between the degree of specialization, which gives major interest groups ‘their’ party, and the wish of voters to have viable alternative parties from which to choose.

Thirdly, since confidence may be influenced by the functioning and outcomes of government, the way governments are created and operate becomes important. Multi-party systems frequently depend on coalition and minority governments. Coalition governments may not provide preferred policies because the parties forming the government must compromise on major political questions. Although the portrait of minority governments as poor performers has recently been challenged (see Strom, K., ‘Party Goals and Government Performance in Parliamentary Democracies’, American Political Science Review, 79 (1985), 738–54)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a minority government may alienate some of the coalition supporters, as the implemented policies will diverge from the policy positions these voters supported at the election. Similarly, compromises due to coalitional bargaining and/or bargaining with the opposition may lead to inconsistent policy making, instability (i.e., short-lived governments) and political turbulence, thus weakening the performance of the government. In turn, this might be detrimental to the level of confidence among the public.

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³³ Moreover, a system that allows for the formation of new parties, with a reasonable chance of representation, provides a learning experience for the citizens. Dissatisfaction with the old parties, creation of one or more new parties, which subsequently elect representatives to the parliament, are the first steps in the chain that can integrate protest through the established avenues of political discourse. This can happen if the protest party is brought into normal, institutionalized politics and becomes a permanent member of the political structure. If the new party fails after a period of representation in the parliament, which has happened to some of the new parties in Denmark, the supporters of the failed party are likely to develop a more positive attitude towards the old system, partly because they had an opportunity to try an alternative and because one of the established parties will probably have shifted to adopt a position closer to the voters' preference.

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