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Why do the outcomes of newly formed party systems vary so much? Some new party systems are either in permanent disequilbria (such as Russia and various African party systems) or face reversal after periods of limited stability (for example, the Weimar Republic, the French IV Republic, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil). Others institutionalize but do so either very slowly (as in Estonia, nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Europe, the Czech Republic) or with surprising speed (like post-war Germany, Hungary or the Czech Republic).1 What systematic factors explain such a wide range of party system formation outcomes? The literature has advanced few systematic theoretical propositions that can help us understand it.2 Institutions, historical legacies, political education and social cleavages have variously been identified in the literature as the key explanatory variables. This line of research has produced important insights, but they have been limited by two factors. First, the literature often looks at these factors independently of each other and therefore neglects their important interaction effects. Secondly, it has done little to integrate systematic, cross-national factors with the historical contingencies and temporal dynamics that are frequently emphasized in more historical studies.
To address these theoretical deficiencies, this article advances a path dependent (PD) explanation. PD explanations have gained currency because they promote the understanding of the reason why small causes occasionally have unexpectedly large consequences over time, and why, as a result, we can observe very different and, often, inefficient equilibria in phenomena like economic markets, social policies or states.3
Empirically, the article explains the rapid formation of the moderate, durable, two-and-half party in post-war Germany. By the standards of most fragmented transitional party systems, the German case is deviant. It challenges existing theories, as well as permitting a preliminary test of alternatives to PD explanations. At first sight, Germany's rapid and linear party-system institutionalization strongly suggests that systematic, large-scale causal factors, like institutions or cleavages (as favoured by most existing explanations) were the primary causal variables. On closer analysis, however, it was various small-scale, unsystematic factors and their interaction with institutions, and to a lesser extent cleavages, which were of primary importance in the German case. The small-scale historical factors include the party licences awarded by a handful of...