New Parties & Movements
How new parties like Podemos, the Five Star Movement, and En Marche disrupted established party systems.
The Disruption Wave
The 2010s saw an unprecedented wave of new parties disrupting established systems across democracies. Spain's Podemos, born from the indignados protest movement in 2014, became the third-largest party within a year. Italy's Five Star Movement won the most seats in 2018, just nine years after its founding. France's En Marche won the presidency and a parliamentary majority in 2017, a year after its creation. Germany's AfD entered the Bundestag in 2017 as the first new party to do so since reunification.
These disruptions share common features: deep public disillusionment with established parties, a charismatic or anti-establishment leader, effective use of social media and digital organizing, and the existence of an ideological space unoccupied by established parties. They represent a rebuke to the 'cartel party' thesis: when established parties collude to exclude challengers, the demand for alternatives eventually breaks through.
