Is Democracy in Crisis? The Future of Political Parties and Representative Democracy

Abstract

Traditional political parties from the Western European countries have obtained less electoral support in recent general elections. Since the Great Recession, new parties have entered into consolidated party systems and parties that until now have occupied a secondary place in political life - most of them with an anti-establishment discourse – have obtained outstanding electoral results. This process of electoral dealignment has been evident through several indicators, such as the low levels of electoral turnout, the fall in party identification and party membership, as well as the decrease in confidence in parties and other representative institutions. Thus, the political scenario is fragmented and the electorates are increasingly unpredictable. This work has two main objectives. On the one hand, describe the evolution of different indicators (turnout, electoral volatility, party membership, electoral fragmentation and the percentage of votes for new and populist parties) that are a good sign for the party system dynamics and, on the other hand, evaluate if representative democracy is coming to the end and it is necessary to think into another kind of political model or, on the contrary, the end of the current model is still far from taking place.