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Show 6 left) or on new dimensions. Those who fall in the former camp like Abedi1 (2002, 2009), Adams et al. (2006), and Ezrow (2010) suggest, "Niche parties refer to those parties that occupy the extreme Left, the extreme Right, or a distinctly noncentrist niche, these parties belong to the Communist, Right-wing Nationalist, and Green party families" (Ezrow 2010, 4). Ezrow goes on to state that "there are smaller parties characterized as neither mainstream nor niche parties. These are the regional, ethnic, and agrarian parties. Several studies have defined these parties as niche parties. Here I do not because I contend that these parties really do not compete on the Left-Right" (2010, 12). In sum, this first group sees niche parties as competing on the same issues as mainstream parties but taking very different, noncentrist, and often radical positions on these issues. This is in direct contrast to others, those of the "new politics or cleavage" camp like Inglehart (1997), Meguid (2005, 2008), and Wagner (2011), who propose that niche parties tend to reject the traditional class-based orientation of politics. This requires excluding the family of Communist parties from being a niche, but opens the door to include, for example, radical right parties, green parties, ethnic and regional parties, women's parties, and peace parties (Meguid 2008, 4; Wagner 2011, 848-849). According to Meguid, "Instead of prioritizing economic demands, these parties politicize sets of issues that were previously outside the dimensions of party competition" (2008, 4). These are what she refers to as "novel and underdiscussed" issues. In addition to the first requirement of novel issues or new cleavages, Meguid, in her 2008 book Party Competition between Unequals, goes on to offer two additional defining characteristics of niche parties. The second characteristic is that "niche parties 1 Abedi calls them antipolitical establishment parties, which is a slightly different conceptualization. However, these challenger parties are assumed to compete on the left-right political scale. |
