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New Political Parties: What are They and How to Study Them?

Publication date: 15.11.2024

Teoria Polityki, 2024, Nr 10/Special Issue, pp. 127-149

https://doi.org/10.4467/25440845TP.24.006.20598

Authors

Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł
Jagiellonian University in Kraków
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3555-2828 Orcid
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Titles

New Political Parties: What are They and How to Study Them?

Abstract

Economic, social and political crises cause mainstream parties to lose their electoral support, paving the way for new parties and political movements. However, new parties are not always genuinely new, sometimes they are merger or split parties or for other reasons may be considered a continuation of previously existing parties. The question is therefore what constitutes a new party? Is it a new name, structure, election participation for the first time or merely competing on new issue? Newness is usually not a dichotomous variable, parties are not just new or old, they are new to some extent or in some areas, hence multi-dimensional analyses are required in order to assess party novelty. Shlomit Barnea and Gideon Rahat (2011) have pointed out that newness can occur in three key areas: party in the electorate, party as organisation and party in government. However, in each area it is still deemed as a dichotomous variable. We know the area in which a party is new, but not to what extent. In turn, the concept of Allan Sikk and Philipp Koker (2019) introduces the interval scale of party novelty that enables one to assess the level of newness, however, they have limited their framework to some areas of party activity omitting, for example, party programmatic stances. This paper constitutes an overview and is of a conceptual nature. After a brief outline of current ideas, a new analytical framework will be discussed that draws from the existing concepts but aims both to cover three areas of party activity and to assess the level of party newness in each of them.

References

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Information

Information: Teoria Polityki, 2024, Nr 10/Special Issue, pp. 127-149

Article type: Original article

Authors

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3555-2828

Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł
Jagiellonian University in Kraków
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3555-2828 Orcid
All publications →

Jagiellonian University in Kraków

Published at: 15.11.2024

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY  licence icon

Article financing:

The article is the result of the research project: Does the novelty bring changes? New parties in the Polish party system funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, grant no. 2019/33/B/HS5/01757 for the years 2020–2025. The preliminary version of this article was discussed during the ECPR conference in 2020. Thanks to the participants of the panel: ‘Party Systems in Hard Times II. Changes and Adaptation’ and two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which helped to improve the article.

Percentage share of authors:

Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł (Author) - 100%

Information about author:

Beata Kosowska-Gąstoł – Associate Professor at Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Jagiellonian University. Her research interests focus on comparative politics, party politics, party structures, new political parties, Polish parties, parties in the EU. E-mail:
beata.kosowska-gastol@uj.edu.pl.

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Publication languages:

English