Three roads to institutionalisation:
Vote-, Office- and Policy-seeking explanations of party switching in Poland.
McMenamin, Iain and Gwiazda, Anna
(2011)
Three roads to institutionalisation:
Vote-, Office- and Policy-seeking explanations of party switching in Poland.
European Journal Of Political Research, 50
(6).
pp. 838-866.
ISSN 1475-6765
Party institutionalisation is a central problem in political science. The literature tends to understand it as a syndrome, and therefore has difficulty explaining variations in institutionalisation. We suggest a new approach based on the transaction between a legislative party and its deputies, the failure of which is observable in party switching. We identify three routes to institutionalisation by appealing to the vote-seeking, office-seeking or policy-seeking motivations of deputies. Poland has had a large volume of party switching, along with wide variation in the incentives facing differently-motivated deputies. Our survival analyses of switching in four Polish parliaments find that vote-seeking is the most likely route to institutionalisation for Polish parties. Moreover, we establish a concrete hypothesis for comparative testing: legislative parties can survive as long as their popular support exceeds forty per cent of their share in the previous election.
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
party politics; institutionalisation; legislatures; Poland; democracy