Why do citizens at the ballot box prefer new political parties over established political parties?
Scholars mainly studied the formation of political parties on the macro-level. Because party establishment is by definition tied to electoral accomplishments, macro-level studies on successful party establishment explicitly, or implicitly, presuppose assumptions about the behaviour of individual citizens whose votes are necessary for electoral success. Against that backdrop, I argue that to explain the conditions of successful party establishment we need to understand the motivational underpinnings of voting for a new party on the individual level.
Using cross-national voter surveys and long-term panel data from Germany (2005-2013) and the Netherlands (1998-2002), the study contrasts the implicit assumptions about voter behaviour of two macro-level theories on party emergence: the equilibrium- and the protest-based approaches on party emergence. The empirical analysis shows that there are merits to both approaches, but in many cases, the individual-level assumptions of both models do not square with the observed voting behaviour.
Although proximity to a new party matters, the findings do not support the equilibrium perspective’s tenet that new parties gain votes from citizens whose views were not represented in the preceding election. Moreover, political discontent was found a fertile soil for new parties to gain electoral support, but the relationship between discontent and voting is more complex than theoretically suggested. These findings on individual voter behaviour may inform further theoretical work on the successful establishment of new political parties.
