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Robert Harmel and Lars Svåsand, "The Influence of
New Parties on Old Parties' Platforms: The Cases of the
Progress Parties and Conservative Parties of Denmark and
Norway," Party Politics, 3 (July 1997), 315-340.
First Paragraph:
Over the past few decades, literally hundreds of new parties
have been added to established party systems in western
democracies (see Harmel and Robertson, 1985). While most
have received little attention from media or other political
actors, a few, such as Die Grunen and the Front National,
have gained a high level of notoriety. And while most have
achieved little if any electoral success, some like Lega
Nord in Italy, Vlaamse Blok in Belgium and Scandinavia's
Progress parties, have captured significant numbers of votes
and seats. To those that have won the public's attention
have at times been attributed such important and disparate
impacts as 'destabilizing' and 'reinvigorating' their party
systems (e.g. see Frankland, 1983: 37-9). With such
importance attributed to even a small minority of new
parties, it is indeed surprising that there has been scant
systematic research on new parties' actual impacts. It is
the purpose of this paper to contribute such research by
drawing upon a couple of Scandinavian experiences to address
one key hypothesis related to new party impact.
Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Danish election results, selected parties, 1968-94
(number of seats and percentage of votes).
Table 2: Norwegian election results, selected parties,
1965-93 (number of seats and percentage of votes).
Table 3: Selected issue positions of Danish Conservative
Party, 1970-92.
Table 4: Selected issue positions of Norwegian Conservative
Party, 1973-93.
Figure 1: Danish party positions on individual freedom for
Social Democrats (5), Conservatives (C) and Progress
(P).
Figure 2: Danish party positions on income taxes for Social
Democrats (5), Conservatives (C) and Progress (P).
Figure 3: Danish party positions on total taxes for Social
Democrats (S), Conservatives (C), and Progress (P).
Figure 4: Danish party positions on scope of government for
Social Democrats (S), Conservatives (C) and Progress
(P).
Figure 5: Norwegian party positions of individual freedom
for Labour (L), Conservatives (C) and Progress (P).
Figure 6: Norwegian party positions on income taxes for
Labour (L), Conservatives (C), and Progress (P).
Figure 7: Norwegian party positions on total taxes for
Labour (L), Conservatives (C) and Progress (P).
Figure 8: Norwegian party positions on scope of government
for Labour (L), Conservatives (C) and Progress (P).
Table 5: Selected issue positions of Norwegian Labour Party,
1973-89.
Table 6: Selected issue positions of Danish Social
Democratic Party, 1971-92.
Last Paragraph:
Future development of performance theory should take note,
though, that the influence of the Norwegian Progress Party
was achieved without a decline in the Conservatives'
electoral performance. Instead, that party's incentives for
change may have resulted from calculating how much better
the Conservatives could do in the future if the threat of
Progress were removed. (In other words, rather than reacting
to actual, poor electoral performance, the party may have
been (pro)acting to make its stable [and later,
improving] situation even better.) And so, from our
comparative analyses of the two Conservative parties, it
could reasonably be inferred that the vision of political
parties (even those that are clearly electorally motivated)
is not necessarily myopic, either in space or in time. They
not only can see parties on two sides of them at once, but
they can also presumably look to the future as well as the
recent past.
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