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For thirty years following the end of the Second World War, it was orthodox to regard Britain as having one of the most stable and party‐oriented political systems in the Western world—parties penetrated state and society so significantly that it was virtually impossible to conceive of political life in the country without thinking first and foremost of party political life. However, since the middle of the 1970s, old certainties have been challenged by a continuing and multi‐dimensional debate about the transformation of British party politics. This challenge is predicated on a number of interconnected developments, which include: the apparent growth of electoral volatility; the spread of partisan and class dealignment; the emergence of nationalist cleavages in Scotland and Wales, which have threatened to fragment the national political culture; the erosion of two‐party electoral domination; and the growing chorus of criticism levelled at the damaging iniquities of the electoral system and the adversarial ‘winner‐takes‐all’ political mentality that is closely associated with it. Despite this, the single‐member plurality (SMP) (first‐past‐the‐post) electoral system continues to ensure that single‐party majority governments remain the norm. This chapter looks at what such changes imply for the general status of parties in the country, and is arranged in the same three sections as the other country case studies in the book; these examine the popular legitimacy of British political parties, their organizational strength, and their systemic functionalities (in governance and political recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, political communication, and political participation).

Since the early 1980s, the regime type of the Finnish political system has gradually mutated, because of the complementary processes of de-presidentialization and re-presidentialization. The former entailed the erosion of the formal prerogatives of the President and a switch from a semi-presidential towards a parliamentary type of executive. This process culminated in the coming into force of a totally new constitution in 2000. Re-presidentialization, in turn, consists of the growing power of the Prime Minister within the newly parliamentarized political executive. Most of the causes of the de facto ‘re-presidentialization’ of Finnish politics are structural rather than contingent. The internal activities of political parties have declined as they have transformed themselves into modern electoralist organizations, and the autonomy of the leaders from their parties has increased. Partisan dealignment and ideological convergence between the parties has made space for the personalization of politics. The personalization of politics, in combination with the declining role of party organizations, enhances the autonomy of party leaders within their own parties. In contemporary Finland, the leaders with the strongest presidential capacities contest the premiership rather than the presidency.

This chapter explores the explanatory power of the social cleavage model presented by Lipset and Rokkan in the 1960s. According to most of the dominant literature, the explanatory power of this model has declined over time. This trend is confirmed in this chapter. However, the findings in this chapter also show that social cleavage voting must be seen as the result of an interaction between groups in society on the one hand, and the political parties on the other. Changes in party appeal or party strategies are important factors to consider to understand the evolution of social cleavage voting.

The key questions in the seventh chapter of the book are related to the changes in the social basis of support for the parties in the British political spectrum in the period 1979–1997 and whether these changes can be described as processes of class dealignment or class realignment. The authors conclude that, from 1979–1997 there has been continuity in the Conservatives’ social basis of support and that almost all variations in Conservative support (apart from the regional one) took the form of swings that affected all social groups alike. There was also continuity in the image of the Conservative party in terms of the groups it represented—in 1997, the Conservatives continued to be seen as a highly sectional party concerned with the interests of the social groups that constituted its traditional core. This was not the case with the Labour party—in 1997, New Labour had very substantially reduced its sectional character, was no longer distinctively associated with any particular social group, and it had successfully become a catchall party. There was a change not only in the image of New Labour but also in the character of Labour's voters—under Tony Blair New Labour's moves towards the centre, involved larger than expected electoral gains in the salariat than among Labour's traditional sources of support in the working class. However, despite these changes Heath, Jowell, and Curtice conclude that even under New Labour the usual pattern of party support continued—it was simply muted. This gives support to the thesis of class realignment according to which the changes in the social bases of party support are due to particular groups shifting their support from one party towards a different one and not due to a blurring of class boundaries and a weakening of the social cleavages (class dealignment).

Addresses important theoretical questions that arise from analyses in Chs 3 and 4 documenting that party identification is a powerful predictor of electoral preference. According to sociological models, party identification is a long-term, stable, affective orientation, whereas for models in the individual rationality framework, party identification is a summary, potentially mutable, tally of current and past party performance evaluations. Analyses of individual-level panel data show that, since the early 1960s, there has been considerable individual-level instability in party identification in Britain, and that this instability is not simply an artefact of random measurement error. Analyses of panel data and aggregate-level time series data also reveal that partisan dynamics reflect judgements about party leader performance and economic evaluations–key variables in the valence politics model of party support.

Explores several of the factors that significantly affected the transition of New Zealand's political system from a pluralitarian (extreme majoritarian) system famous for its tranquil efficacy to an MMP (mixed‐member proportional) system renowned for its vengeful reformism. These factors include: (1) dealignment; (2) minor party under‐representation; (3) the under‐representation of minority groups in an era of increasing multiculturalism; (4) radical, unpopular economic reform by successive Labour and National party governments; and (5) the parliamentary ‘other side’ of the calculus—the provision of both a Royal Commission, which highlighted representational failings of the Westminster system while legitimating MMP specifically as an alternative electoral system, and indicative and binding referendums, which gave New Zealand's voters the final say in determining the fate of the country's electoral system. The extent to which these issues were important in vote choices of electors in the 1993 referendum is also considered. A last section considers the overall explanations for New Zealand's turn to MMP, and the chapter includes a table that shows a timeline of electoral change in New Zealand since 1985 (the period immediately preceding the reform of 1993) and an appendix giving a sketch of the MMP system in New Zealand.

The first introductory section discusses the evolution of the current party system in New Zealand, from a system dominated by the two parties around which it had aligned in the 1930s, to the consequences for party composition and representation of the change from the first past the post (FPTP) or single‐member plurality (SMP) electoral system, to the new mixed‐member proportional (MMP) system under which the 1996 and 1999 elections were fought. The second introductory section discusses theoretical issues associated with party system dealignment that has resulted. The next three sections cover the same topics as those in the other country case studies in the book, and examine party legitimacy, party organizational strength (party finance, staffing, membership activity, and media), and systemic functionality (governance, interest articulation and aggregation, political recruitment, and political communication and education).

Feelings of party identification are one of the most important concepts in electoral research; such attachments play a key role in guiding citizen behaviour and structuring party competition. This chapter assembles complete timeseries data from nearly 20 national opinion series to document the general erosion of partisanship. In nearly all nations, both the number of partisan identifiers and the strength of party identification are decreasing—generating a pattern of partisan dealignment in most nations. These declines are concentrated among the young, the better educated and the cognitively mobilized, while political performance seems to have little impact on these trends. We conclude that most contemporary democracies are experiencing a pattern of partisan dealignment that separates the public from the political parties.

Assembles cross‐national data to demonstrate the behavioural consequences of partisan dealignment. Without the reinforcement of habitual party ties, more voters are waiting longer to decide for whom they will vote, and in the countries where ticket splitting is possible, more are dividing their party choices. Candidate‐centred politics appears to be on the rise, although this is much more pronounced in presidential than parliamentary systems, and signifying the different style of dealignment politics, participation in campaigns and volunteer work for political parties is decreasing. In short, partisan dealignment is transforming the relationship between some voters and political parties—a relationship that was once seen as an essential element in the process of representative government.

Ideology is a field of power politics involved in analysing the constant battle for interpretation, reinterpretation, ruling, and controlling public discourse. Far from ‘the end of ideology’, the study of ideology provides a critical tool in assessing the contemporary crisis of democratic legitimation and acts as a broker between the ‘separate tables’ of political science—comparative politics and political thought. This chapter analyses the transformations of the four ideological families in liberal democracies and their process of internal ideational refurbishing in view of the move from a dichotomous notion of the public sphere between the private and the public to a threefold reading of the relationship between politics, economics, and civil society. This analysis provides, in turn, a decisive tool in favour of the thesis of the realignment of political parties rather than the prevalent dealignment thesis.

The chapter outlines the main aim of the book — to assess and explain the extent to which political parties across Europe succeed in representing diverse voters. Two important features of the European political landscape complicate the task of assessing party representation. First, in the new democracies in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe representation may not be only differentially achieved compared to the West but may also be attained by different mechanisms. Second, parties in both West and East must now seek to represent voters that are increasingly diverse, specifically between partisan and independent supporters. We refer to the challenges of representation of diverse voters as ‘the strain of representation’. Finally, the chapter presents the evidential basis for the empirical analysis which follows — the expert surveys that were conducted in 24 European countries on party positions that were merged with other available data on voters, party characteristics, and country conditions.

This chapter develops the theoretical basis of our party representation model and our expectations about representational strain. The chapter argues that the way parties represent citizens cannot be divorced from the way they compete for voters. The chapter outlines three criteria for assessing the party representation model which structure the empirical presentation in later chapters: (i) that parties should offer policy choices; (ii) that parties should offer structured programs; and (iii) that parties should have policies that are congruent with voters' preferences. The chapter argues that representational strain is likely to emerge when parties must appeal simultaneously to partisan and to independent voters. In these circumstances, parties may be less inclined to offer policy choices, or to package policies in to programs, or to achieve policy congruence with some or all of their diverse voters.

This chapter focuses on the second representational criterion — the extent to which parties produce coherent programs. The empirical focus is on differences between West and East. While there is programmatic structure in both regions, important regional differences emerge — issues are more tightly packaged in the East on one dimension, while ‘new politics’ emerges as a distinct dimension in the West. Issues of European integration complicate programmatic structure further, especially in the West. The findings, therefore, contradict some expectations about convergence in programmatic structure across the regions as markets and democracy become embedded in post-Communist states. Finally, there is evidence that programmatic structures tend to be weaker where partisan identification is lower and where economic development is higher, which points again towards greater representational strain for parties, who deal with diverse voters by offering less clearly defined and more complicated programs to the electorate.

This chapter examines the ideological congruence between parties and independent, partisan, and median independent voters. The chapter shows that partisans are more polarized ideologically than are independents. Moreover, the connections between ideology and specific issue positions are stronger among partisans than independents. Three overarching patterns emerged when we examine the absolute distance of parties to partisans and independents. First, systematic differences in how far away parties are to each voter group show how important this partisan/independent distinction is to assessing the quality of representation. Second, parties are considerably more distant to their own independent voters than their partisan voters, attesting to their difficulty to be simultaneously close to different voter groups. Third, there are few differences between West and East in party-voter distance, setting up an important ‘meta-question’ of this study: why is congruence so similar given the myriad of contextual differences? The chapter addresses this question in the conclusion.

This chapter analyses the party-level sources of party-voter agreement by focusing on the relevance of mass organizations, which have historically been the functional linchpin of the party representation model. Surprisingly, however, the research literature contains hardly any analysis of their capacity to bring about party-voter agreement. The results show that mass organizations are vital in bringing about congruence to diverse voter groups in Western Europe. In Central-Eastern Europe, in contrast, they do not have any effect at all on party-voter distances, not even between parties and their own partisan voters. The results of this chapter show that the mechanisms of representation are very different across the region, despite overall similar levels of congruence.

This chapter addresses the party decline and analyzes the national variation in dealignment of political parties. It examines whether party decline is peculiarly American or a tendency common to all rich democracies and attempts to explain national variation in both the presence or absence of system erosion and the rate of change. It suggests that both tax-welfare backlash and party dealignment are indicators of a weakened capacity to govern, an erosion of political legitimacy.

This chapter addresses party and party system changes in relation to the future development of women’s representation in politics. What is the effect on women’s representation of the crisis of representative democracy (albeit disputed) and of the decline of parties? It argues that the effects of the ongoing dealignment process in politics, such as personalization, the strong focus on leadership, the mediatization as well as the fragmentation of the party system, and especially the electoral success of populist parties, have a profound impact on the recruitment of women. Some effects are positive, some are negative, but all in all they contribute positively to a future gender balance in politics. The chapter pays specific attention to two types of parties, the greens and the populist, xenophobic parties, identifying the first type as often feminist and the latter type as often disruptive to women’s political representation.

This chapter presents the first dedicated study of party attachment in Ireland in the wake of the economic crisis. Previous research shows that party identification has historically been an important factor in Irish voting behaviour, though – much like in other democracies – it began to decline from the 1980s onwards. This chapter examines how party attachment has evolved in recent elections. The core question it seeks to answer is whether the electoral turbulence in 2011 and 2016 was simply a symptom of a fundamentally dealigned electorate, or whether we are witnessing a realignment in Irish politics. In other words, has the number of floating voters increased in the wake of the crisis, or have people begun to form new party attachments that are likely to shape elections in the future? The analysis shows that while party attachments were ruptured in 2011 (most notably so in the case of Fianna Fáil), in 2016, by contrast, partisanship increased, and there were some interesting trends among young voters in particular, with many of them beginning to form new allegiances.