Overview

How challenger parties, acting as political entrepreneurs, are changing European democraciesChallenger parties are on the rise in Europe, exemplified by the likes of Podemos in Spain, the National Rally in France, the Alternative for Germany, or the Brexit Party in Great Britain. Like disruptive entrepreneurs, these parties offer new policies and defy the dominance of established party brands. In the face of these challenges and a more volatile electorate, mainstream parties are losing their grip on power. In this book, Catherine De Vries and Sara Hobolt explore why some challenger parties are so successful and what mainstream parties can do to confront these political entrepreneurs.Drawing analogies with how firms compete, De Vries and Hobolt demonstrate that political change is as much about the ability of challenger parties to innovate as it is about the inability of dominant parties to respond. Challenger parties employ two types of innovation to break established party dominance: they mobilize new issues, such as immigration, the environment, and Euroscepticism, and they employ antiestablishment rhetoric to undermine mainstream party appeal. Unencumbered by government experience, challenger parties adapt more quickly to shifting voter tastes and harness voter disenchantment. Delving into strategies of dominance versus innovation, the authors explain why European party systems have remained stable for decades, but also why they are now increasingly under strain.As challenger parties continue to seek to disrupt the existing order, Political Entrepreneurs shows that their ascendency fundamentally alters government stability and democratic politics.

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9780691254128

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The book is without any doubt a must-read for all party scholars. De Vries and Hobolt demonstrate that by focusing too much on the peculiarity of our times and trying to understand the novelty of a phenomenon we sometimes overlook that some patterns remain the same. ---Sarah Engler, Party Politics A smart and accessible book which relies on a wealth of empirical evidence to make its case - and it shines bright as an example of great academic writing, because it does so with a clarity that looks effortless but is so hard to attain. ---Felix Simon, Medium Covering and utilising an impressive bibliography in their research, they [De Vries and Hobolt] offer readers an innovative approach to the theory of political parties. Attempting to capture a broad audience while simultaneously attracting political experts, political scientists and entrepreneurs, the book offers us a timely approach to the way our politics are constructed. Moreover, it suggests that our world has to be seen as a more complex field. With Political Entrepreneurs, De Vries and Hobolt have successfully refreshed the literature on political parties, making the field more appealing to new researchers ---George Kordas, LSE Review of Books Catherine de Vries and Sara Hobolt are arguably among the most influential scholars working on party competition in Europe. . . . Their book presents an exceptional contribution to research on European party competition that will unquestionably be a focal point of reference for any future research in this field. ---Julia Schulte-Cloos, Acta Politica

Author Information

Catherine E. De Vries is professor of political science at Bocconi University in Milan. She is the author of Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration. Twitter @CatherineDVries Sara B. Hobolt is professor and the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Europe in Question, coauthor of Blaming Europe?, and coeditor of Democratic Politics in a European Union under Stress. Twitter @sarahobolt

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