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Throughout much of contemporary Europe and North America, anti-party rhetoric has become a Leitmotif for those proclaiming discontent with current politics. It has emerged (or re-emerged) as a powerful tool for populist politicians who proclaim that they are outside of, and therefore untainted by, the existing parties. From the success of Ross Perot in the USA to the collapse of the Italian party system, anti-party attacks and discontent with the established political elites have reasserted their significance as potent weapons of change. Further to the east in Europe, voters and political elites in new parliamentary democracies are shaping political institutions in environments where prolonged one-party rule has fostered an underlying distrust of all party-like structures.

Perhaps because of the pro-party bias among students of parliamentary (and presidential) democracy, systematic research focussing specifically on the origins and consequences of anti-party politics has lagged behind the contemporary salience of the phenomenon. This is even more surprising if we consider the fact that the Danish Progress Party, for example, had its biggest success as early as 1973, or that the revived German debate about the difficult relationship between citizens and parties dates back at least to the early 1980s (see, for instance, Raschke 1982). In the 1990s events in several countries have forced scholars to pay closer attention to the origins of popular hostility towards parties and other political institutions (see, for instance, Daalder 1992). Yet studies of anti-party politics are clearly still in their early stages.