Marriages of Convenience: Explaining Party Mergers in Europe

Abstract

While party mergers can have important implications for the development of party systems, their causes have not been studied in a large-n comparative study. Using a new data set that covers 24 European democracies in the postwar period, this study shows that parties merge to overcome electoral thresholds or to form one of the two or three largest parties with an important role in the formation of government coalitions. However, mergers are not motivated by the goal to establish a majority, strongly dominant or largest party. The costs of mergers include ideological differences and various transaction costs related to reaching and implementing merger agreements. These transaction costs are lower if parties previously cooperated and if the partisanship of their voters is low.

Political Party Mortality in Established Party Systems: A Hierarchical Competing Risks Approach

“…In contrast to dissolution death, understood as a response to resource shortages undermining party maintenance, merger death is conceptualized as a proactive, strategic decision made by elites to improve their parties' ability to achieve goals that they cannot attain by themselves -goals transcending the mere maintenance of basic party activities, assuring basic resource access and the ability to pay off party elites. Elites' strategic considerations can be expected to centre around: whether a merger is likely to generate sufficient benefits in relation to the likely costs or not; and whether competing as a separate player remains an attractive alternative, evaluated based on the party's situation in the context of the party system it currently operates in (Bolleyer, Ibenskas, & Keith, 2016;Ibenskas, 2016).…”

“…One way of building trust is through pre-electoral coalitions before the merger. Pre-electoral coalitions constitute a mechanism that familiarizes constituent parties with each other prior to the negotiation process and thereby helps to establish common grounds between them during negotiations (Bolleyer et al, 2016;Ibenskas, 2016;Lees et al, 2010). 6 This leads to the following hypothesis:…”

Party survival in parliament: Explaining party durability in lower‐house parliaments

“…While mergers and splits can be a strategic choice by a party elite (Bolleyer ; Bolleyer et al. , ; Ibenskas ), I do not limit the analysis to a specific reason for party failure. Modelling party survival in this simple and straightforward way allows for a broad understanding of parties’ ability to survive as independent institutions within the lower house legislature.…”

“…Parties may disappear from parliament for various reasons, including merging with another party, splitting into two or more parties or simply lacking the votes in the next election to win seats in parliament. While mergers and splits can be a strategic choice by a party elite (Bolleyer 2013;Bolleyer et al 2016Bolleyer et al , 2018Ibenskas 2016), I do not limit the analysis to a specific reason for party failure. Modelling party survival in this simple and straightforward way allows for a broad understanding of parties' ability to survive as independent institutions within the lower house legislature.…”

The Formation of the Queensland Liberal National Party: Origins, Prospects and Implications for Australian Political Systems

“…looked at sixty-eight cases from twenty-one European democracies and Raimondas Ibenskas found ninety-four cases in twenty-four European countries 15. The formation of government and coalitions by the Liberal and National parties in five Australian…”