ABSTRACT
In Chapter 7, we established the loss of the dominant status of the four established parties in Iceland and that party fragmentation has increased since the Great Recession. The increase in the number of parties alone does not tell us about the depth of the change. In this chapter, we focus our attention on the new post-crisis parties and compare them both with former new parties prior to the crisis and the established parties. One of the main differences between new parties before and after the crisis is that pre-crisis new parties were almost always short-lived splinter parties from one of the established parties, while most of the new post-crisis parties have roots outside of the established party system. Analysing the profile of both the voters and the candidates of the post-crisis parties, we find that, in both groups, the new parties differ among themselves when it comes to support for the political system and their issue profiles. This has also had consequences for a government bargaining process where three or more parties are needed to form a majority government coalition, whereas two parties were usually needed before. We conclude that the new post-crisis parties can be taken as one symptom of a party-system change, but their survival will depend on several factors, such as how effective they are in organising their infrastructure and whether they will successfully take part in governments in the future.
