New parties and the crisis of representation: between indicator and solution

The party literature largely agrees on the fact that electoral democracy is not in a
good shape Traditional parties have changed and adapted themselves to become
very much parties of government And because their focus is on government,
where for many policies the choices are now limited by past decisions and by
the demands of other agents like – in particular – the European Union, traditional
parties fail in their role as representatives This is the gap in which new
political parties have developed, very much claiming that they do understand
and represent their electorate better than the old parties Among new parties
though the mortality rate is very high And the research on new parties so far
does not reveal important transformations in the way in which they govern
New political parties are therefore more like the canaries in a coalmine They
are very good at signalling the danger New political parties are good indicators
of the malaise with democratic governance, but so far not the remedy

ISBN:978-3-658-17445-3

Keywords:Parties, Government