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There are good reasons for re‐examining existing classifications of parties and seeing if others can be developed. However, reworking categories is a complex process, requiring further research and interaction between theory and data. This chapter is a preliminary effort, and focuses primarily on parties in established liberal democracies. The first half examines the adequacy of existing party categories in light of the literature in sections entitled: Categories and concepts in the comparative literature; Cadre versus mass parties; and Parties of mass integration, catch‐all parties, and beyond’ (to the cartel party). The second half considers ways in which contemporary parties might be compared in sections entitled: New bases for classification? Vote‐seeking, office‐seeking, and policy‐seeking parties; and Patterns of change in Western European parties.

The most important variable facilitating the Swedish parties' consensus on state funding was the constitutional reform of 1970. The constitutional reform strengthened the position of the bourgeois parties since it rendered minority governments (during which the centre-right opposition parties enjoyed more influence both in parliamentary committees and commissions of enquiry) more likely. Furthermore, the constitutional reform was an incentive for the bourgeois parties to cooperate more closely. Put differently, they could adopt an office-seeking strategy, which in turn facilitated a consensus on state funding to political parties. Prior to 1970, the Social Democrats electorally and organizationally dominated to an extent that allowed them to marginalize its competitors in questions of party funding. Exploiting the coordinative discourse on political corruption, the Social Democrats were able to discredit business donations to the bourgeois parties, leaving these no other choice than to agree to state funding.

The pursuit of an absolute majority ruling is characterized by resistance against a ruling class more commonly referred to as populism which displays a sense of popular and militant nationalism as well as electoral opportunism. Its contradicting features make it difficult to advance as a unified force as it is articulated by new politicians to conduct offensive campaigns and radical change in order to hold office. There is a distinction between authoritarian and democratic populism as drawn out by political theorists. This chapter discusses the contemporary revival of populist aspect when it comes to leadership in Western democracies as prominent politicians focused on seeking and holding office to become national government leaders. It looks at populist leadership by examining its prevalence in unexpected venues such as that of Western countries.

This chapter examines the long-run relationship between public opinion, party politics, and the welfare state. It argues that when large parties receive a clear signal concerning the median voter’s position on the welfare state, vote-seeking motivations dominate and the large parties in the party system converge on the position of the median voter. When the position of the median voter is more difficult to discern, however, policy-seeking motivations dominate, and party positions diverge. This argument implies that the effects of government partisanship on welfare state policy are more ambiguous than generally understood. The countries covered in the chapter are Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom (going back to the 1960s). The number of observations is (necessarily) limited, but the diverse cases illustrate a common electoral dynamic centered around the position of the median voter.

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and discusses its implications. The theoretical argument of the book presented in the issue incentive model is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties are the key to explaining how policy issues rise and decline on the party system agenda. Furthermore, the argument is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. Empirically, the book highlights the more complex party system agenda with the decline, but not disappearance, of macroeconomic issues as well as the rise in ‘new politics’ issues together with education and health care. Moreover, various ‘new politics’ issues have seen very different trajectories. Finally, the chapter lays out the implications of these findings for two larger debates within the study of West European party politics. One debate is about the role of niche parties and the consequences of their growth for the West European party system. The second debate is about the linkage between voters and political parties in contemporary Western societies. Discussing these implications also sheds light on the implication of more recent developments within West European party systems, namely the electoral decline of large, mainstream parties.

Since re-emerging as an independent state in 1991, Estonia has had to build up an entirely new constitutional and political system. This has meant that following an initial period of fluidity amongst parties and voters, patterns of politics have slowly begun to consolidate along more predictable lines. In particular, Estonia’s coalition politics have been dominated by centre-right constellations, mainly because of the strong role played as of the mid-1990s by the market-liberal Reform Party. The party has been a pivotal, if not leading force, in all of Estonia’s government coalitions between 1999 and 2016. This has allowed it also to influence greatly patterns of consolidation in coalition governance, namely the professionalization of coalition agreements, the development of coordination mechanisms between coalition partners, and mechanisms of mutual oversight in coalitions. While governments have not succeeded in lasting a full parliamentary term, the re-organizations that have taken place between elections have not generated prolonged crises of governing. The main blockage or weakness in the system was the continued side-lining of the left-leaning Centre Party from playing a direct role in coalition politics. Although the party regularly obtained up to a quarter of the national vote and filled an important place in the party landscape by representing the bulk of minority-Russian voters, it was never considered as a government formateur because of the overbearing style of its founding leader (Edgar Savisaar). It seems that only after he is replaced will a major re-shuffling of Estonia’s coalition landscape be possible.

Since early 1990s, the electoral campaigns in Lithuania take place within the framework of long-term parliamentary party agreements on Euro-Atlantic integration (more specifically, in the context of fear of pernicious geo-political interference from Russia) and free market reforms (or, in other words, eagerness to integrate into the European market and to be part of the euro-zone). The overall distance between parties on the socioeconomic scale is fairly small and, among political elites, the pro-Western consensus is apparent. There are no real outcast parties in Lithuania. The Lithuanian society itself is not ravaged by deep socio-political cleavages and its ethnic, religious, or corporate divides are not sharp. Yet, electoral volatility is high and political parties are numerous. However, governments in Lithuania are relatively stable. The ministerial government model entrenches itself in Lithuania. Since 2000 the increasingly unstable multi-party system necessitates that the coalition governments are based on inter-party bargaining. The tendency is towards ‘oversized’ cabinets and surplus coalitions. As a rule, publicly available coalition agreements resemble rather memorandums of understanding than seriously thought-through documents of partnership for a particular policy agenda. Coalitions in Lithuania accommodate office-seeking parties and politicians. Commitment of the parties to the coalition in question is routinely maintained via the distribution of ministerial portfolios. The coalition management machinery produces personified accommodations, dubious compromises, delays, and postponements as typical modes of conflict resolution. These deficiencies in turn lead to erosion of political accountability, which further breeds frustration and political protest.

This chapter discusses nuclear energy policy in Austria since the 1950s. It stresses that political parties were the main actors and decision-making on energy policy was strongly influenced by them. Building on the work of Strøm (1990) and Müller and Strøm (1999) it is argued that several position changes regarding nuclear energy were made by Austrian parties in response to public opinion, trading policy against votes or office. The Austrian case resembled other Western European countries until the 1970s, when a nuclear power plant was built but never made operational because of a negative referendum. After a decade of struggling with attempts at policy reversal, an anti-nuclear consensus was reached after Chernobyl. Soon parties did engage in a new form of competition on the nuclear issue—over their competence in fighting nuclear energy in other countries, in particular, plants close to the Austrian border.

The history of nuclear energy policy in Italy is characterized by major shifts. After being a world leader in nuclear energy production in the 1960s, the country stopped its programme in the 1980s. An attempt at rejuvenating and expanding nuclear energy in the early 2000s came to an end after the Fukushima disaster. In both instances a referendum was held. Party competition, coalition politics, changes in government, and Italy’s institutional features, in particular the provisions for holding referendums, are the main factors explaining these policy reversals. The chapter concludes that a relaunch of the nuclear energy programme does not seem impossible, but is unlikely for the foreseeable future.