Abstract

When it comes to party institutionalisation – at least for entrepreneurial right-wing protest parties -- leadership matters! That is the primary takeaway from this book.

Of the hundreds of new parties that have formed since the 1970s, many have fallen by the wayside, but others have gone on to reach institution-hood. And some of the latter have then met with decay and de-institutionalisation.

The experiences of the Progress Parties of Denmark and Norway – both of which institutionalised and one of which then de-institutionalised – shed important light on both topics.

While focusing particularly on those two cases, the authors develop conceptual and theoretical frameworks that are broadly applicable, as demonstrated in the final chapter and in an elaborate appendix.
In a period when traditional political parties face their worst crisis ever and entrepreneurial protest parties, both on the right (e.g. UKIP, ANEL) and on the left (e.g. Podemos, M5S), spring up like mushrooms across Europe, this excellent study on the causes of party de-institutionalization could have not been more timely. Conceptually sophisticated and methodologically sound, this book has everything to become a classic.
Fernando Casal Bertoa, Assistant Professor in Comparative Politics, University of Nottingham
Party institutionalization continues to capture the research curiosity of party scholars but this excellent book pushes the boundaries further by also examining the much less-studied twin concept of deinstitutionalization. This book is a careful and methodical study of these twin concepts and appropriately applied to shed light on the development of the Progress Parties of Norway and Denmark.
Alex Tan, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
This is a fascinating study of how parties form, institutionalise and potentially de-institutionalise, which focuses on two key examples of new protest parties that (forming in the 1970s) were (rather unfortunately) trailblazers for others to follow.
David Farrell, Head of the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin
Robert Harmel is Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Lars Svåsand has been Professor at the Department of Politics, University of Bergen, Norway, and is currently Professor Emeritus at that institution.

Hilmar Mjelde is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies at the University of Bergen.
An impressive example of conceptual advancement applied to interesting cases. The authors use a detailed study of the Danish and Norwegian Progress Parties to shed new light on party institutionalization and party failure. They show that leadership matters when we want to understand why some parties succeed while others vanish.
Thomas Poguntke, Chair of Comparative Politics and Director of the Düsseldorf Party Research Institute (PRuF), Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf