DONDENA Seminar - Sona Golder

“Party Instability in Parliaments”

SPEAKER: Sona Golder (Pennsylvania State University)

ABSTRACT:

In many contemporary democracies it is common for the members of parliament (MPs) to leave their parliamentary parties to defect to other parties, to create new parties, or to become parliamentary independents. In the Instaparty project (funded by the Norwegian Research Council), we examine party instability in parliaments in eight European democracies. The project has three objectives: to map out diverse forms of instability, to explain why instability occurs, and to understand whether and how instability affects voter support of parties. This presentation focuses mainly on work related to the second objective, briefly discussing the party (re)affiliation strategies of the (surprisingly common) independent MPs before addressing the effect that party support in public opinion polls has on switching. We find that changes in party support in polls affect parliamentary party switching through two channels. First, MPs with a low probability of re-election are more likely to leave their current party group. Second, legislators also switch out of parliamentary parties that are unlikely to enter government after the next election, particularly in the period preceding the next election.

BIO:

Sona N. Golder is a Professor of Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University and holds a Professor II position in the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. Sona’s research focuses on political institutions, with a particular interest in coalition formation and representation. She was part of the “Making Electoral Democracy Work” project funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Research Council and is currently a co-PI on the “Instaparty” project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. She has spent time as a visiting scholar both at the University of Mannheim and New York University - Abu Dhabi. Her work has been published by outlets such as the British Journal of Political Science, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. Her recent books include Multi-level Electoral Politics (OUP 2017) and a new edition of Principles of Comparative Politics (CQ/Sage 2024). Sona studied political science in Chicago and Paris and received a PhD from New York University.