One more time? Parties’ repeated electoral entry in younger democracies

Why and how parties continue contesting elections (“repeated entry”) is an underresearched question despite its essence for party survival and party-system stability. We study repeated entry in three decades of elections in 10 Central and Eastern European countries using a new dataset that records almost 1,000 entry decisions. Our findings underline the importance of separating between first- and second-league parties based on whether in the previous election a party could obtain representation alone. First-league parties (those that could gain representation alone) almost always contest the next election. Second-league parties (those that could not win representation alone) exit electoral competition quite frequently and adopt more diverse repeated-entry strategies. We find that second-league parties’ repeated entry depends on their closeness to the representation threshold, access to resources, and the number of competitors in their niche, but not on institutional constraints or voter dissatisfaction.