Abstract

Using qualitative comparative analysis, we examine why left-libertarian parties, associated with environmental and other "new social movements," have been relatively successful in some western democracies but not others. We conceptualize the parties as products of new citizen demands on the one hand, and of political opportunity structures, which govern party supply, on the other. We show that supply-side factors, such as a strong left and the existence of proportional representation, tend to work together to facilitate party innovation. A strong left appears more likely to downplay left-libertarian issues and push new-left activists to form separate parties, while proportional representation eases entry into the party system. Demand-side factors play a significant but lesser role. The theoretical and methodological strategies employed here have the potential to help political sociologists explain the variable success of other types of party innovators.

Historically, waves or cycles of protest movements have led to the incorporation of various groups into democratizing regimes and generated changes in the notion of democracy itself (Markoff 1996). A number of scholars have suggested that we are at the beginning of a new redefinition of democracy and of another transformation, or at least realignment, of party systems in modern industrialized democracies (Dalton 1988; Inglehart 1990; Kitschelt 1993; Offe 1985).

New social movements or, more broadly "left-libertarian" groups (Kitschelt 1988), originated in the 1960s and early 1970s and have spawned parties that have upset heretofore stable political cleavages and party systems by garnering support that cuts across traditional lines of cleavage associated with class, religion, and ethnicity. Political uncertainty has only increased with the advent of new rightist parties, such as the National Front in France, which are also attempting to gain a foothold in western electoral systems. In the wake of these political upheavals, scholars are examining the extent of new political realignments and dealignments occurring within western party systems (Dalton & Wattenberg 1993; Franklin et al. 1992).

Our interest lies in the considerable cross-national variation in the capacity of new movements to form successful parties and have a significant impact upon their respective political systems. In spite of the fact that "new" social movements and left-libertarian parties have now been a part of the western political scene for as much as thirty years, explanations of these variations in success remain rather impressionistic, especially concerning new parties. The problems in the literature have been twofold. First, there has been a lack of theoretical development and clarity concerning the conditions behind the variable success of new parties in established democracies. Second, the literature has lacked adequate methodological strategies for comparative analysis.

As a preliminary effort to address these problems, we review and reconceptualize previous theoretical arguments to examine the most important and recent set of party innovators in eighteen established democracies, what Kitschelt (1988) has referred to as left-libertarian parties (hereafter LLPs), and others as new left or new politics parties (Poguntke 1992). At the core of the new challenges of LLPs to political systems is a critique of the statist and...