Party Strength of Regionalist Parties of United Kingdom: Conceptualisation and Measuring

Abstract

The article conceptualizes the concept of party strength and the measurement of its two quantitative elements (electoral and institutional) by example of four United Kingdom regionalist parties: Scottish National Party, Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru. Based on the analysis of the main theoretical approaches to party strength, the article proposes a method for its measurement, which can be used to measure and evaluate regionalism through the strength of regionalist parties in different political and institutional contexts. Comparing the levels of electoral and institutional party strength allows to highlight several tendencies: growth in electoral strength of UK regionalist parties during 2010s is noted, with stabilization of the institutional party strength; and the gap in the levels of institutional strength of the regionalist parties does not reflect the difference in the level of electoral strength. At the same time, the article mentions the challenges to assessing the strength of regionalist parties, namely, the need for detailed conceptualization of the qualitative characteristics of the party strength and the lack of analysis of the communicative and organizational elements of party strength.

Keywords

• party strength
• regionalism
• regionalist parties
• united kingdom
• electoral party strength
• institutional party strength