Integrating ‘New Politics’ into ‘Old Politics’: The Swiss Party Elite

This article offers a new approach to the important question of ‘New Politics’. After discussing various interpretations of the phenomenon, it proposes a conceptualisation on the basis of empirical data drawn from a study of the Swiss party elite. These data show that a New Politics dimension can effectively be measured, and that the ‘left–right’ axis can be considered to represent an almost perfect synthesis between ‘Old' and ‘New’ politics.