From Communitarian Protest towards Institutionalization

Abstract

Lawson and Merkl have identified four alternative organizations that emerge when major parties fail to provide linkage with electorates. They include communitarian parties, which target their appeals to demographic subgroups, and supplementary parties, which champion general issues that have been ignored by established parties. Italy's Lega Nord and the Canadian Reform Party are two parties that have distanced themselves from their `communitarian' roots in efforts to attract a broader cross-section of voters. Through a combination of strategic positioning and major party failure, they have transformed themselves from parties with a very limited support base into supplementary parties with `catch-all' appeal. Nevertheless, both the Lega and Reform have failed to bridge crucial regional or linguistic cleavages. Their ability to expand is also threatened by internal dissension and revitalized major parties.