The Influence of New Parties on Old Parties' Platforms: The Cases of the Progress Parties and Conservative Parties of Denmark and Norway

In: Party politics: an international journal for the study of political parties and political organizations, Band 3, Heft 3, S. 315-340

Abstract

This paper focuses upon a hybrid `performance hypothesis' positing that an established party will change its ideological identity in reaction to a successful new party only when the established party itself experiences poor election results which it can attribute to the new party. That hypothesis is addressed with original, longitudinal data on manifesto positions of the far-right Norwegian and Danish Progress parties, their Conservative neighbor-parties and (for control purposes) the Labour parties. Analyses support the authors' conclusion that both new parties have had a significant impact on their respective party systems according to the intentions and strategies of their founders.