What Accounts for Party System Stability? Comparing the Dimensions of Party Competition in Postcommunist Europe

Abstract

Why do party systems stabilise quickly in some new democracies while others remain in extended flux? As a core variable of comparative politics, party system stability has led scholars to generate various theoretical explanations, but consensus is still lacking. Given its widely divergent party systems, postcommunist Europe presents an important opportunity to revisit stability's determinants. Applying hypotheses derived from theories about competition in multidimensional policy spaces, I find that they better explain variation in a 14-case sample than contending hypotheses about the electoral system, economic performance, constitutional design, political culture, or previous democratic experience.

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