After the more unstable 1990s, the 2000s can generally be seen as a period of consolidation of the Estonian party system with some outstanding elements of cartelisation (Sikk 2003, 2006). The fragmentation of the system has dropped from 5.8 in 1992 to 3.8 in the 2011 elections, the platforms of individual parties have stabilised over time and platform differences across parties have decreased (Mölder 2012). Likewise, volatility had by 2011 arguably decreased to 11.6% (Solvak 2012). On the other hand, however, there are signs in voting behaviour on the individual level that indicate instability in the relationship between voters and parties and a high willingness to change votes. An example of this is the 2009 EP elections, where an independent single candidate unexpectedly gained as many votes as the winning party (Ehin and Solvak 2012). Furthermore, individual voter loyalty in the case of three of the four parliamentary parties between the 2007 and 2011 elections was less than 60% (Solvak 2012). In order to shed light on these contrasting tendencies, the paper aims to trace the development of the Estonian party system to date on three levels – parties as organizations (births, deaths splits and mergers), parties as carriers of policy (policy change and continuity, inter-party policy relations), and parties as electoral organizations (relationships between voters and parties).
