The emergence of the Swiss Ecological Party: A dynamic model

The study of new political parties causes important problems both on the theoretical and empirical level. First, only little empirical evidence is available for recently formed parties, and secondly, the study of the emergence of new political parties has attracted little attention from political scientists. This fact apparently stems from the essentially static characteristics of major political theories, such as the study of party systems and electoral behaviour. Hence in contradiction to predominant political theory, the present article proposes a dynamic model in order to study the emergence of the Swiss Ecological Party.