ABSTRACT
The erosion of traditional cleavages in European party systems-in their different dimensions: party organisations, party identification and electoral alignments-has provided a new political space for the mobilisation of new conflicts. Over the past two decades scholars have studied the rise of new cleavages in European party systems. Systemic change is explained as a function of changing public opinion and new attitudes and values. The rise of new politics in the form of Green parties and left-libertarian politics marked the 1980s (Kitschelt, 1989). The emergence of the new radical or populist right marked the rise of a new family of parties in the 1990s (Kitschelt, 1995; Betz, 1994).
