The Three Waves of Party System Institutionalisation Studies: A Multi- or Uni-Dimensional Concept?

Abstract

Since Mainwaring and Scully’s resurrection of the concept in 1995, party system institutionalisation has become something of a buzzword to which many refer without a proper definition. Indeed, most scholars simply assume that its meaning is clear and unproblematic, focusing all subsequent efforts on developing operational indicators, but without really concerning themselves with its conceptual refinement. However, an in-depth literature review of all major works dealing with the concept reveals that in reality there is very little agreement on what party system institutionalisation actually is or how it should be measured. In fact, since Huntington introduced the notion of institutionalisation some 50 years ago, party system institutionalisation has been characterised as a multi-dimensional (mostly four, but also three and two) as well as a uni-dimensional (around stability) concept. Now that half a century has passed, the time has come to look back and, with the benefit of hindsight, take stock of the way party system institutionalisation has been conceptualised and operationalised, trying to distinguish both commonalities and discordances, while looking at what still needs to be done. In order to do so, we will distinguish three different (both discrete and thematic) waves of party system institutionalisation studies.