The Problem
During the 1960s it was a widely held view among
political scientists that European party systems were
inherently stable structures which--with a few
exceptions--reflected the societal cleavage structures of
the past.'[1] This view was even bolstered with
strong empirical evidence pertaining to the party system
at the level of the electorate. Thus Rose and Urwin were
able to conclude that 'the electoral strength of most
parties in Western nations since the war had changed very
little from election to election, from decade to decade,
or within the lifespan of a generation.'[2]
Recent European political history has produced some
rather unexpected events which make it somewhat difficult
to reconcile this theoretical view with the political
realities. Thus the number of competing parties has
increased considerably in some of the Northern European
countries over the last few years, and the distribution
of electoral strength in several countries has changed in
unpredictable ways. The relationship between voters and
parties has apparently undergone an alteration, in some
countries detectable as a tendency towards decreasing
party identification; in some as a tendency towards an
increased frequency of unconventional political
behaviour; and in a few cases as an outright defection of
large portions of the electorate from older parties to
new parties which are either classifiable as traditional
mass parties, nor as 'catch-all' parties in the sense of
the late 0. Kirchheimer.[3]
These are developments which are by now clearly
visible. They seem to indicate that even if party systems
may still reflect he traditional cleavage structure in
the society, the significant exceptions that Rokkan and
Lipset were talking about are no longer few, but
constitute a larger and growing part of all European
party systems.
We want to know if these phenomena of change which are
visible primarily, but not solely, in the Northern
European countries represent fundamental transformations
of the party systems, or if they are better interpreted
as mere fluctuations, temporary deviations from an
otherwise stable pattern? Do they fit into a pattern, or
are they just some atypical events with no connection
with the past history of these societies or with the
development going on in other countries in Europe? Are
party systems in Europe converging, becoming more
uniform, or are they diverging through the 1970s? Is it
possible to speak about distinct periods of stability and
change, and, if so, are these periods country-specific,
or do they apply to larger parts of the European
polities? Are fluctuations randomly distributed across
time and countries, or do they make up trends of
increasing and decreasing rates of change?
Phrased this way we are dealing with a very broad
problem with a great many facets. When we want to map and
understand the extent and the direction of party system
change in Europe, the first problem we encounter is one
of delimitation of the problem, the narrowing down of a
broad question to a manageable problem. This delimitation
goes as follows.
The concept of party system change is not a simple and
straightforward one. We may learn that a party system is
a 'system of interaction resulting from inter-party
competition.[4] But such interaction and
competition can be observed at different levels, or--to
put it in other terms--this system can itself be
interpreted as consisting of various subsystems. A
concise mapping of party system change would have to
cover the levels of parliament and government, the level
of the party as an organization, and the level of the
electorate. Party system change can be defined as
the total set of changes in patterns of interaction
and competition at these three levels as well as between
them.
It is not possible to encompass all these dimensions
at this stage. I have deliberately chosen to concentrate
attention on the level of the electorate. This analysis
is thus based upon the assumption that 'election results
are important to politicians and to political
scientists'. One may also say that even if elections are
far from always being decisive events, they are still the
best available vantage point for a study of change,
because change will either be a result of elections, or
elections will register any change which may occur in the
party system.
At the electoral level, as well as on other levels,
the party system may be described in terms of various
theoretical concepts. Party systems differ with regard to
polarization, fragmentation, institutionalization
etc.
As long as a party system can be considered a system
of 'parts', we may, however, from time to time find it
useful to return to the simplest definition of party
system format. The format of the electoral party
system can be described in terms of the number of parties
contesting the elections, and the distribution of
electoral strength among these parties.
Given the central role of elections in the process of
party system change, it is relevant--and we hope not
over-ambitious--to examine the evolving patterns of
format change in Europe, i.e. changes in the number of
parties, and in the relative distribution of electoral
strength among the competing parties. The phenomenon
which we are singling out for analysis is electoral
volatility, by which will be meant the net change
within the electoral part y system resulting from
individual vote transfers.[ 6 ]
Even a concept as simple as this is not without its
problems. Traditionally political scientists have been
very much preoccupied with the number of parties, because
this number was considered important for the mechanics of
the party system. Since the late ig6os it has become
customary to describe the format in terms of number of
parties as well as distribution of party strength. Many
attempts have been made to provide single number
quantitative indices of format which would make it
possible to compare party systems and to describe
intra-system changes. These measures like Rae's index of
fractionalization[7] have mostly been locational
or static measures for which reason alone they are not
optimal for a study of the dynamic properties of party
systems.[8]
If we want to concentrate attention on ongoing format
change, we therefore have to devise measures of change
that will discriminate among systems; which will reflect
similarities and differences between diachronic patterns;
and which are fairly easy to interpret in a theoretically
meaningful way. These requirements can be met by using
one or another kind of summary measure of rate of change
in the party system. Several such measures have been
proposed and applied recently.[9] In this paper
we will use a measure of electoral volatility which is
derived in the following manner.
Let pi,tstand for the percentage of
the vote, which was obtained by party i at
election t. Then the change in the strength of
i since the previous election will be:
�pi,t =
pi,t - pi,t-
1
and if we do not consider sign differences we have the
following relation for the party system:
where n stands for the total number of parties
competing in the two elections.
Remembering that the net gains for winning parties
numerically are equal to the net losses of the parties
that were defeated in the election, one may also wish to
use another indicator which is slightly easier to
calculate and to interpret, namely:
Volatility
(Vt) = 1/2 x TNCt
Vt is simply the cumulated gains for
all winning parties in the party system, or--if the
symmetrical interpretation is preferred--the numerical
value of the cumulated losses for all losing parties. Its
range of variation has a straightforward explanation, and
it can be expressed in terms of percentage.
A description of the European systems in terms of
volatility will at least give a partial answer to the
broader questions about change and stability in European
party systems. It may thus lead to an identification of
what are the typical and what are the deviant patterns of
development.
2. National Patterns of
Volatility
The measure of volatility tells to what extent party
strength is being reallocated from one election to the
next between losing and winning parties. An examination
of national patterns will thus indicate, if the relative
positions of parties are fairly constant, or if they
fluctuate in ways which may eventually reflect basic
electoral realignments. The extent of volatility may
differ across countries as well as over time; differences
may be of a random character or they may be subject to
to certain political regularities. The first task for any supplement analysis in the form of generic cialis is to search for such patterns in use and patient care.
If the measure of volatility is applied to data from
the thirteen countries, a picture is obtained which in
the light of earlier analyses contains expected as well
as not so familiar features (see Fig. 13-1),
That France comes out as the country in which average
electoral volatility is the highest will probably not
surprise many; nor will the fact that the post-war
politics of Austria and Switzerland have been
characterized by negligible volatility. All those who are
familiar with the long-term trend in the German
electorate since 1949, will not be surprised to find that
the average net gains/losses in the German system amount
to approximately to per cent per election. On the other
hand it was probably not expected by many that the Nordic
countries differ widely in this respect, nor that Denmark
scores second-highest among the thirteen nations, nor
that the European party systems on the whole differ
considerably with regard to volatility.
Such observations may conceal a lot. An average may
not be typical for the diachronic pattern, but may for
instance reflect the occurrence of one or a few highly
atypical elections. In order to pass judgements on
volatility, we will therefore as a natural next step
examine the dispersion of observations around their
respective national means. In Fig. 13.2 this has been
done by means of a plot of the relationship between means
and their corresponding standard deviations. This plot
affirms that Austria, Switzerland, and also Sweden are
nations in which the relative strength of parties has
hardly changed from one election to the next. It further
identifies a group of six other nations, United Kingdom,
Finland, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands,
with a somewhat higher average volatility and a uniform
pattern of dispersion.
One intriguing finding appears in the plot next. The
two big nations, Germany and France, and the two smaller
nations, Denmark and Norway, apparently come out as
fairly alike in their statistical patterns: a relatively
high average volatility is combined with a high degree of
fluctuation around that mean.
The interpretation of these findings is far from
simple. A great many diachronic patterns of volatility
might produce such means and standard deviations. But
Fig. 13.2 provides a clue for further examination,
because it shows in clear statistical terms that at least
two 'families' of party systems exist, viz. a group of
party systems with a relatively stable distribution of
party strength, and a group of systems in which
volatility has been changing considerably over time.
In passing it is tempting to mention that these two
clusters of party systems do not have any affinity with
the way in which students of party systems and democratic
political systems traditionally classify European
countries. The two clusters transcend the classifications
of Almond (immobilist versus working multiparty systems);
of Duverger and Neumann (classification according to
number of parties); of Lijphart (centrifugal,
centripetal, consociational and depoliticized democracy);
and of Sartori (moderate versus polarized plural-isru
etc.). Such a discrepancy may be of no theoretical
import-ance; it may, however, also imply that the
usefulness of these classifications is restricted and
even decreasing over time.
A step towards further clarification can be taken by
introducing the time variable, i.e. by changing the
perspective from an examination of the range of
fluctuations to an examination of the diachronic patterns
of volatility. In Table 13.1 the two groups of party
systems have been sorted by means of a crude
periodization.
|
TABLE 13-1 The Volatility of European
Party Systems 1948-77:
|
|
Average Net Gains Compared Across
Time and Countries
|
|
Country
|
Period
|
National average
|
No. of election periods
|
|
|
1948-59
|
1960-69
|
1970-77
|
|
|
|
Switzerland
|
1.9
|
3.7
|
6.4
|
4
|
6
|
|
Austria
|
4.1
|
3.9
|
3.1
|
3.7
|
8
|
|
United Kingdom
|
4.4
|
5.2
|
7.9
|
5.9
|
8
|
|
Finland
|
4.4
|
6.9
|
9.1
|
6.8
|
8
|
|
Sweden
|
4.8
|
4.3
|
6.6
|
5.2
|
9
|
|
Netherlands
|
6.3
|
7.9
|
12.7
|
9.1
|
8
|
|
Belgium
|
7.9
|
10.3
|
5.5
|
7.9
|
9
|
|
Italy
|
10.3
|
8
|
6.8
|
8.4
|
6
|
|
Ireland
|
10.9
|
6.8
|
5
|
7.9
|
8
|
|
Norway
|
3.4
|
5.2
|
17.1
|
8.1
|
7
|
|
Denmark
|
5.5
|
8.9
|
18.7
|
11
|
12
|
|
Germany
|
15.2
|
9.5
|
4.9
|
9.8
|
7
|
|
France
|
21.8
|
11.9
|
10.6
|
16.8
|
7
|
|
Period average
|
7.8
|
7.3
|
9.2
|
8.1
|
|
|
No. of election periods
|
36
|
34
|
33
|
|
103
|
At once a clear pattern of change and stability
emerges from the data. The group of party systems with a
high level of volatility and high standard deviations
clearly falls into two distinct subgroups: the German and
the French party system, in which volatility has
decreased over time considerably, especially at the
beginning of the period, and the Norwegian and the Danish
party system, in which exactly the opposite trend is
visible, i.e. where volatility has tended to increase,
especially in the last part of the period. But it is also
important to note that the party systems in the other
group also tend to fall into two subgroups: in Austria,
Belgium, Ireland, and Italy volatility has tended to
diminish over time, while it has increased in
Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, and the
Netherlands.
This finding suggests a new way of classifying
European party systems according to their trends of
volatility: the data apparently falls into three, or
maybe even four, fairly distinct groups or 'families' of
party systems.
This idea can be pursued further by adding a new
dimension to the search for order. If it holds true that
the thirteen party systems differ with regard to their
secular trends, then an obvious next step in the mapping
operation consists in examining the data for trends and
for statistical linearity. The question becomes then if
volatility tends to increase or decrease in a linear way,
or if the apparently orderly picture in Table 13.1
reflects more complicated developmental patterns, e.g.
patterns in which decades or other temporal sequences
play an ordering role. Table 13.2 gives the answer.
This set of regression equations and correlation
coefficients tells a clear story. Party systems in Europe
do indeed differ with regard to the level of volatility,
and with regard to the direction of change in volatility.
The overall tendency towards a relatively stable pattern
which comes out if data from all nations are artificially
aggregated, disappears and is replaced by an array of
widely differing trend lines. The data suggests a
classification with three classes, differentiated from
each other by means of the rate of change, i.e. the slope
of the regression line.
The two small Scandinavian countries, Norway and
Denmark, evidently stand distinctively apart from most
other European countries in terms of volatility patterns,
and so do the two major nations, France and Germany. In
both cases the regression analysis also supports the
impression which could be had from a visual inspection of
period averages (Table 13.1), namely that the trends for
these four countries fit very well with a linear
model.
3. A Classification of European
Elections
From what was said in the previous section it follows
that high-volatility elections as well as low volatility
elections are not randomly scattered across time and
nations. It may be useful to identify various types of
elections across Europe. By means of such a mapping we
get not only a picture of the occurrence of these events
which are often dramatic, but also a more simple, and yet
informative summary of the national patterns.
The 103 elections which were held between 1948 and
1977, are not normally distributed around the European
mean of 8.1 per cent volatility. Fig. 13.3 shows that the
distribution is highly skewed, with 64 elections below
the mean and 39 elections above. A few elections stand
out because of their extraordinary degree of volatility.
This is true of the1973 election in Denmark, when the
number of parties in the system doubled; of some of the
French elections in the1950s; and of the German election
in 1953 when the CDU won its biggest victory in the
post-war period.
The very shape of the distribution leads us to draw
some distinctions, based upon pure statistical reasoning.
Thus the elections in what is approximately the lowest
quartile stand somewhat apart from those in the two
middle quartiles, and these again form a cluster distinct
from that formed by the elections in the highest
quartile.
The map of European elections that can be drawn by
means of this tripartite classification is presented in
Fig. 13.4. This figure recapitulates some of the findings
which were reported in the previous section, but it also
adds some new features. Thus we see, first, that some
countries, viz. Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria, have
never in the post-war period experienced high-volatility
elections. Second, one notes that some countries on the
contrary never experienced low-volatility elections. This
holds true not only for France, but for Italy, Belgium,
and the Netherlands as well. Third, we note that the
European countries differ considerably in the sense that
in some of them high-volatility elections are to a
considerable extent a thing of the past--of the 1950s
while such elections are very much a 1970s phenomenon in
some other countries. Finally, a comparison of decades
indicates a general European trend towards relatively
more high-volatility elections and relatively fewer low
volatility elections, with the ig6os being the decade in
which these two types ofelections were relatively
limited.
As late as 1970 it was possible and also valid to
argue that 'the first priority of social scientists
concerned with the development of parties and party
systems since 1945 is to explain the absence of change in
a far from static period in political
history'.[10] In the light of the preceding pages
we are entitled to, and even forced to, qualify this
statement. At the end of the1970s the first priority is
to understand why some party systems still appear to be
stable while other systems either have been undergoing a
transformation or have gone through a period of
considerable instability. Even if electoral volatility is
only one among several possible indicators of
persistence/change, it is a sufficiently important
indicator to warrant this statement.
1. S.M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, 'Cleavage Structures,
Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction', in
Lipset and Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter
Alignments (New York: Free Press, 196 7), 50-
2. Richard Rose and Derek Urwin, 'Persistence and
Change in Western Party Systems since 1945', Political
Studies, 18/3 (1970), 295-
3. Otto Kirchheimer, 'The Transformation of the
Western European Party Systems', in Joseph LaPalombara
and Myron Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political
Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1966), 17 7-200.ELECTORAL VOLATILITY IN WESTERN
EUROPE
4. Giovanni Sartori , or Ana,5sisPart,es and Party
Systems: A Framework f (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1976), 1- 44.
5. Rose and Urwin, 'Persistence and Change in Western
Party Systems since 1945', P. 288.
6 W. Ascher and S. Tarrow, 'The Stability of Communist
Electorates: Evidence from a Longitudinal Analysis of
French and Italian Aggregate Data', American Journal of
Political Science, 19/3 (1975), 48o-i.
7. Douglas Rae, The Political Consequences ofelectoral
Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
8. Mogcns N. Pedersen, 'La Misurazione del Mutamento
nei Sistemi Partitici: Una critica', Rivista Italiana di
Scienza Politica, 8/2 (1978), 243-61 [English version
in Comparative Political Studies, 12/4 (1980), 387-4031
9. Rose and Urwin, 'Persistence and Change in Western
Party Systems since 1945'; Adam Przeworski,
'Institutionalization of Voting Patterns, or Is
Mobilization the Source of Decay?', American Political
Science Review, 69/1 (1975), 49-67; Ascher and Tarrow,
'Stability of Communist Electorates'.
10. Rose and Urwin, 'Persistence and Change in Western
Party Systems since 1945', P. 295; italics in the
original.