New governing parties: failure or success?

Programme Group Challenges to Democratic Representation

This NWO funded research project will analyze the performance of newly governing parties and will answer the question what explains the differential success of parties that govern for the first time?

NWO, 2011-2014

The past decades many parties have made the transition from opposition to government. Although a highly relevant phenomenon in the eyes of politicians and political scientists, especially in light of the much talked about crisis of representative democracy, little is known about newly governing parties. A lack of systematic cross-national research hampers our understanding of the role these parties fulfil in West European democracies.

The project will assess the performance of newly governing parties on two dimensions (their success in obtaining cabinet portfolios and influencing policy) and explain why some newly governing parties are more successful than others.

The project will analyse the performance of parties that have entered government for the first time between 1980 and 2010, covering 36 newly governing parties in 17 West European democracies. Using a mixed-methods design, the project seeks to explain how different party characteristics contribute to the success of parties that govern for the first time.

Utilizing various types of data and methods, the project will test five key hypotheses, formulated on the basis of an extensive study of the literature on both coalition politics and party politics.

The project is theoretically innovative, as it integrates different types of existing theories. It is empirically innovative, as it will collect a unique and encompassing data set on newly governing parties, and as such, moves beyond single case studies. Consequently, it carries important substantive and empirical implications for current debates among scholars, politicians, journalists and practitioners about the emergence and success of newly governing parties, changes in West European democracies, and the associated crisis of representative democracy.

Published by  AISSR

3 December 2014