ABSTRACT
Changes in electoral behaviour have an immediate impact on party fortunes, and ultimately these changes will have consequences for the party system. West European electorates have been changing in their behaviour towards — and their relationships with — parties over several decades. But have party systems altered commensurately? The Lipset and Rokkan formulation of ‘frozen’ party systems looked backwards from the 1960s; looking forward it was reasonable to speak of an ‘unfreezing’ process. What such a process might imply is admittedly vague, but at least one would expect both substantial and continual change to be the hallmarks of the contemporary era.
