Party system change: Testing a model of new party entry

I argue that the costs of entry, benefits of office and the probability of receiving electoral support, i.e. the strategic entry calculation by new party elites, determine new party emergence. The model is tested using pooled time-series cross-sectional data from 22 OECD countries for elections held between 1960 and 2002. The results show that new parties are more frequent when the institutional structures are permissive (the cost of entry is low), the corporatist arrangements are weak or non-existent (the benefit of entry is high) and the electoral histories of the incumbents are short (the probability of attracting votes is high). The last two factors interact in their relationship with the number of new parries, as presumed by the theory.