Myths of electoral change and the survival of traditional parties

Stein Rokkan's contribution to the contemporary understanding of European politics and political development remains unparalleled. In many ways, and particularly for my generation, which first learned political science in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it has been Rokkan's interpretation which has done most to frame our long-term understanding of how our political environment has been shaped. Moreover, despite the burgeoning of the literature on comparative European politics in recent years, his is an interpretation which has also remained largely unchallenged. Few, if any, would seek to redraw the contours which he established in his geopolitical map of Europe, for example, and few, if any, would seek to question the importance of the cleavage structures which he identified as crucial to the development and consolidation of mass politics and party systems.