THE CRISIS OF PARTIES AND THE RISE OF NEW POLITICAL-PARTIES

This paper has a twofold aim: to disentangle the question of party dec line, analysing the current meanings and the empirical evidence offere d by the literature; to highlight the different and even opposite outc omes of such decline. As far as the party crisis is concerned, contrar y to a shared knowledge it is difficult to give a final word. It is su ggested that the crisis concerns more a type of party rather than the party per se. Second, the challenges to the party are analysed. In the last decade a convergent attack against the traditional parties has b een carried on: on one side, by the new social movements and their par tisan representatives, the left-libertarian or New Politics parties; o n the other side, by the newly emerged extreme right parties. This pap er tries to demonstrate that both types of party are the by-products o f the same structural conditions and both provide a (different) answer to the crisis of the party's expressive function.