The seminal work of Lipset and Rokkan continues to be the starting point for understanding the formation of voter alignments and party systems in Western Europe and beyond, both in the past and the present. Yet it is rather vague about the ways that the context of state-building, in which West European party systems formed, shaped political conflicts and voter alignments. In this paper, I provide an empirical application of Lipset and Rokkan's work in the historical context in which European party systems emerged. Drawing on evidence from the near-simultaneous formation of party systems in 25 Swiss cantons, I show that the conflict between state-builders and their opposition predicted the formation of the first cleavages, but that the later cleavages developed according to cantonal political conflicts. I also challenge Lipset and Rokkan's assertion that conflicts related to the national revolution shaped voter alignments before the start of multi-party competition or shortly thereafter. Drawing on examples from Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the UK, I show that new center-periphery and state-church cleavages emerged long after countries had allowed opposition parties to compete in elections. As these conflicts unfolded and interacted, they structured these countries’ party systems. In sum, research on the formation of party systems and voter alignments should pay close attention to the context and the timing in which cleavage structures and party systems form and develop.