The fortunes of political parties wax and wane with the number of candidates they can attract to their label and get elected in national contests. On one hand, successful parties are those that can attract a growing number of candidates, or at a minimum, maintain a stable number of competitive candidates to ensure an ongoing level of representation for their supporters. On the other hand there are parties that are unsuccessful in that erstwhile members decide to abandon the party label and seek office with the assistance of another party organization, leading to a decline of that party’s ability to represent its supporters in the electorate. There are times when the exit of members occurs gradually over rather long periods of time, but there are also case where the exit of members ensues rapidly. The SDPJ of Japan and the DC of Italy are interesting cases of the latter and their experience raises interesting questions about what explains the decisions of members to abandon the ‘voice’ option and ‘exit’ their respective organizations. This paper will look at the decision to exit a political party, in an attempt to determine whether the opportunity cost of remaining with a party plays a significant roll in determining when a member will exit the organization, and defect to an alternative party. It is believed that as the fortune of a party decline, and the affluence of a rival party (which holds a similar ideological platform as the previous party) increases, that members of the waning party will leave the organization and join the waxing party. This paper will build upon the work of Kato, which examined the effect of the organizational structures of the parties in question, and how these relate to members choosing the ‘exit’ option. Specifically, this paper maintains that a better picture of exit can be depicted if one looks not only at the party in which those faced with the choice of using their ‘exit’ option belong, but also at the fortunes of the alternative parties in the system. Using the cases of the SDPJ in Japan and the DC in Italy, this paper will show that the choice to ‘exit’ a party is due to the existence of an alternative party which offers office seekers a viable alternative to pursue office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]