The weight of evidence from both established and new democracies suggests that longer-term democratic consolidation - i.e. the extent to which a democratic regime is insulated from domestic challenges to the stability of the political order - requires the growth and maintenance of strong and effective parties. Thus the electoral system should encourage this tendency rather than entrench or promote party fragmentation. Similarly, most experts agree that the system should encourage the development of parties that are based on broad political values and ideologies as well as specific policy programmes, rather than narrow ethnic, racial, or regional concerns. As well as lessening the threat of inter-societal conflict, parties based on these broad 'cross-cutting cleavages' are more likely to reflect national opinion than those based predominantly on sectarian or regional concerns.