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Show 3 rather than as actors in their own right. This is one contribution of my project, adding in agency for niche parties. Additionally, the existing explanations, taken individually, have failed to account for the observed variation in niche party success. Institutions, like electoral systems, are primarily constant; socioeconomic conditions, like the presence of high unemployment, provide an opportunity for certain niches, like anti-immigrant, but not all are able to take advantage of these circumstances. Strategy is the most underdeveloped, with its one-sided focus on how the choices of mainstream parties impact niche party success. All of these factors, including my improvement to the strategic explanation, are necessary to understand niche party success, a collective rather a piecemeal approach. I posit that the answer to the research question is my strategic interaction model-one that looks at the socioeconomic and institutional context in which the strategies of both mainstream and niche parties play out. In sum, the number of niche political parties in Europe is growing, but their electoral fortunes vary. The contributions of this project to the study of niche parties are threefold. First of all, this project expands beyond the study of niche parties in Western Europe to also include the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Secondly, it fills a gap in the strategic explanation literature by adding the strategic choices of niche parties. Finally, I put forth and test my strategic interaction model, one that brings together strategy and context, to gain understanding and explain the variation in the electoral success of niche parties, and as a necessary step in building a more generalizable explanation of niche party success. The remainder of this chapter will introduce the research design and key concepts and questions related to niche parties and electoral fortunes. |
