Multiparty governments are based on delegation and compromises but, at the same time, coalition parties have at their disposal several legislative instruments to keep tabs on their partners. Whereas previous studies focused on policy divisiveness and issue salience as main factors able to explain parliamentary scrutiny, in this article we suggest uncertainty as a complementary factor. In particular, we theorize that the use of parliamentary questions (PQs) is a function not only of policy characteristics but also of actors involved in coalition governance. When ministers increase intra-coalition uncertainty, cabinet parties use PQs to extract information from ministers and to reduce uncertainty in policy implementation. Statistical analyses of all written and oral parliamentary questions in the Italian Chamber of Deputies between 2006 and 2018 support our main hypothesis that when intra-coalition uncertainty increases, coalition parties ask more questions of ‘hostile’ ministers.

Conventional theories of ethnic politics argue that political entrepreneurs form ethnic parties where there is ethnic diversity. Yet empirical research finds that diversity is a weak predictor for the success of ethnic parties. When does ethnicity become a major element of party competition? Scholars have explained the emergence of an ethnic dimension in party systems as the result of institutions, mass organizations, and elite initiatives. But these factors can evolve in response to an emerging ethnic coalition of voters. The author advances a new theory: ethnic cleavages emerge when voters seek to form a parliamentary opposition to government policies that create grievances along ethnic identities. The theory is tested on rare cases of government policies in Prussia between 1848 and 1874 that aggrieved Catholics but were not based on existing policies or initiated by entrepreneurs to encourage ethnic competition. Using process tracing, case comparisons, and statistical analysis of electoral returns, the author shows that Catholics voted together when aggrieved by policies, regardless of the actions of political entrepreneurs. In contrast, when policies were neutral to Catholics, the Catholic party dissolved.

New centrist anti-establishment parties (CAPs) are successful competitors in Central and Eastern Europe. Due to their emphasis on anti-establishment rhetoric and a moderate ideological platform, their breakthrough is usually explained by voters’ dissatisfaction with existing parties. However, little is known about the ideological component of their support. Expectations on the impact of ideology on vote choice in the protest voting literature range from ‘pure protest voting’, which denies any impact of ideology, to a more moderate approach, which combines protest and ideological considerations. Using survey data, I confirm that CAPs attract voters with lower levels of political trust, but ideology also matters. The degree of ideological sorting, however, varies. While some CAPs mainly attract voters from one side of the political spectrum, others attract voters from the left to the right more equally. The differences in the initial composition of their electorates have implications for the parties’ future.

Which of the new political parties that emerged in advanced democracies faded away and which ones managed to survive and why? Considering a party as dead once it ceases to nominate candidates in any elections, we develop two sets of hypotheses to account for party death derived from two conceptions of political parties. One conceptualizes parties as vehicles formed by career-oriented politicians eager to maximize individual rewards. Failure to deliver seats or government access is therefore expected to predict an earlier death. The other conceptualizes parties as societal organizations that serve representational functions valued in themselves by elites and members alike. This conception stresses the importance of roots in society or ideological novelty. Using survival analysis, we test our hypotheses in 17 advanced democracies based on a new data set covering 144 new parties from birth until their (potential) death. Arguments derived from both conceptions have significant support stressing the complexity of the drivers underpinning parties’ very existence.

In the wake of the 2008 Great Recession, new and challenger parties have enjoyed electoral gains in some European countries. Political and economic disaffection have been pointed out as the main drivers of their electoral support. This article proposes voter’s stealth democracy attitudes, as defined by Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, as an additional driving force to account for this electoral change. We examine the case of Spain with a survey conducted after the far-reaching transformation of the party system, which has led to the emergence of two new parties: Ciudadanos (on the center-right) and Podemos (on the radical-left). We find that stealth democracy attitudes are positively related to the support for the former and negatively related to the support for the latter. Additionally, we provide evidence of this relationship being conditional on voters’ ideology. The study illustrates how an unexplored attitudinal dimension contributes to party system change, and how the relevance of these attitudes might go beyond the temporary political discontent caused by the economic crisis.

The factors explaining the emergence and electoral success of new parties have been investigated extensively on a cross-national basis, but little is known about why their vote shares differ within a specific country at any given time. This article is an attempt to fill this gap by examining the determinants of electoral support of Podemos and Movimento 5 Stelle across Spanish and Italian municipalities. Using empirical evidence from the 2014 European Parliament elections, we show that a bad economic situation at the local level increases the vote shares of these parties. We also demonstrate that these parties perform better in towns where abstention rates have previously increased, and the population is comparatively younger, and the possible existence of interaction effects between all these factors.

Government formation in multi-party democracies is notoriously ridden with information uncertainty. Uncertainty is aggravated when new parties enter parliament, which generally suggests a ‘newcomer handicap’ in government formation. However, relegating newcomers to the opposition comes with uncertainty in its own right, which suggests immediate cabinet participation as new leaders seize the opportunity and established parties pursue containment. We explore elite responses to this strategic problem in the postcommunist democracies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) where new parties often gain parliamentary representation. Even in CEE, a newcomer handicap in government formation is apparent, controlling for other detrimental party attributes. However, this applies to small newcomers only. For larger parties the handicap turns into a bonus, an effect only qualified once the newcomer outnumbers its competitors. Either way, newness-induced uncertainty thus intensifies the strategic rationale of government formation. As party systems become more volatile, these findings are relevant beyond CEE.

Broader structural developments in Japan in the past two decades—decline of clientelist practices, partisan de-alignment, and decentralization—have dissolved traditionally close ties between national and local party systems, creating an environment conducive to the emergence of local parties. In this context, popular chief executives in four regions launched new parties. I trace how these parties emerged and how national parties reacted to them, from the appearance of the new-party leaders to the 2011 local elections. In comparing the four cases, two factors appear to shape their trajectories: the urbanness of their electoral environments and the responses of the two national parties at the local and the national level. In dealing with the new challengers, both the Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party of Japan experienced considerable intraparty conflict and defections, indicating a process of delinking between national and local party systems.