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This paper examines why some party systems collapse, while similar systems confronting what seem to be equally insurmountable obstacles survive. I argue that when party systems neglect their central task of linking society and the state, they lose their reason for existence and fail. Parties may provide linkage through any combination of three major strategies: programmatic representation, group-based incorporation, and clientelism. But if the major parties in the system are unable to satisfy mounting or changing demands for linkage and therefore fail to capture voter support, the party system collapses. When new demands challenge the core representational profile of a party system and the system's context undermines appropriate adaptation, linkage deteriorates and the party system fails. Using Boolean algebra and comparative historical analysis of eight cases of party system collapse and survival in Latin America, Europe and Asia, I detail how linkage disintegrates, account for party system failure in some contexts, and explain how other threatened systems have endured. I find that programmatic representation deteriorates when economic crisis occurs in a context of international policy constraints and inter-party agreements, that group-based incorporation decays when the structure or type of politically salient social cleavages transform and threaten powerful, entrenched interests, and that clientelism suffers when political reforms increase demand at the same time that parties face economic crisis and reforms cut that them off from benefits to distribute. When all types of linkage deteriorate, the entire system collapses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]