Anti-System Parties. From Parliamentary Breakthrough to Government

The study of the opposition parties in contemporary democracies has taken on a particular meaning, since Giovanni Sartori proposeded the distinction between competitive and non-competitive party systems. The former are based on the rotation in power between parties with a ‘majoritarian vocation’ and with a significant experience as government incumbents. The latter, on the other hand, are often characterized by the absence of ‘efficient competition’ and by the presence of a party or coalition of parties in a dominant position, which in fact makes the alternation in power hardly possible. In this second context, it is very likely that some opposition parties will become ‘anti-system’. They are in fact not willing to accept the ‘rules of the game’, which they consider unfair, and in various ways they can push their opposition to the extreme limits of delegitimizing the political system. Zulianello’s book offers a first and extensive survey of 64 anti-system parties in 18 Western European countries over the period 1968–2017.