West European Politics in the Age of Globalization

by Hanspeter Kriesi , Edgar Grande , Romain Lachat , Martin Dolezal , Simon Bornschier , Timotheos Frey

• ISBN13: 9780521895576
• ISBN10: 052189557X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Over the past three decades the effects of globalization and denationalization have created a division between 'winners' and 'losers' in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns. The authors argue that, as a result of structural transformations and the strategic repositioning of political parties, Europe has observed the emergence of a tripolar configuration of political power, comprising the left, the moderate right, and the new populist right. They suggest that, through an emphasis on cultural issues such as mass immigration and resistance to European integration, the traditional focus of political debate - the economy - has been downplayed or reinterpreted in terms of this new political cleavage. This new analysis of Western European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.

Author Biography

Hanspeter Kriesi is Professor for Comparative Politics in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Edgar Grande is Professor for Comparative Politics in the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich. Romain Lachat is a visiting scholar at the Department of Politics of New York University. Martin Dolezal is a researcher in the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute for Political Science at the University of Munich. Simon Bornschier is a researcher in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich. Timotheos Frey is a researcher in the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. xi
List of tables	p. xiii
Preface and acknowledgments	p. xvii
Theory and methods	p. 1
Globalization and its impact on national spaces of competition	p. 3
A new structural conflict between 'winners' and 'losers' of globalization	p. 4
The impact of the new structural conflict on the structure of the political space	p. 9
The positioning of the parties within the transformed space	p. 14
An overview of the volume	p. 20
Contexts of party mobilization	p. 23
The societal context	p. 24
The relative strength of the traditional cleavages and the new cleavage	p. 24
Economic context conditions	p. 28
Cultural context conditions	p. 31
The political context	p. 36
The general framework: processes of dealignment and the established structure of the party systems	p. 38
Institutional opportunity structures: the electoral system and its consequences	p. 42
The interaction context and the dynamics of adjustment: strategies of mainstream parties	p. 45
Conclusion	p. 49
The design of the study: the distinguishing characteristics of our approach	p. 53
Selection of countries and elections	p. 54
Two sides of party competition: data collection and analysis	p. 57
Twelve issue categories	p. 58
Analysis of the demand side	p. 60
Analysis of the supply side	p. 65
Conclusion	p. 73
Country studies	p. 75
France: the model case of party system transformation	p. 77
Introduction	p. 77
Context conditions	p. 79
Traditional cleavages and dealignment in the party system	p. 79
Economic context conditions	p. 82
Cultural context conditions	p. 85
Political context conditions	p. 87
Analysis of the demand side: voters' political potentials	p. 90
Analysis of the supply side: structures of competition in the party system	p. 98
Conclusion	p. 102
Austria: transformation driven by an established party	p. 105
Introduction	p. 105
Social-economic and political context conditions	p. 106
Relative strength of traditional cleavages	p. 106
Economic context conditions	p. 108
Cultural context conditions	p. 109
Political context conditions	p. 112
Analysis of the demand side: voters' attitudes and issue-priorities	p. 116
Analysis of the supply side: the parties' programmatic offer	p. 123
Conclusion	p. 128
Switzerland: another case of transformation driven by an established party	p. 130
Introduction	p. 130
Traditional cleavages	p. 131
Economic context conditions	p. 134
Cultural context conditions	p. 136
The political context	p. 138
Analysis of the demand side: the electoral potential for a new cleavage	p. 143
Analysis of the supply side: the articulation of the integration-demarcation cleavage	p. 148
Conclusion	p. 152
The Netherlands: a challenge that was slow in coming	p. 154
Introduction	p. 154
Social and economic context conditions	p. 155
The relative strength of traditional cleavages	p. 155
Economic context conditions	p. 156
Cultural context conditions	p. 160
Political context conditions	p. 161
The new right-wing populist challenge	p. 163
Analysis of the demand side: the voters' political potentials	p. 165
Analysis of the supply side: the parties' programmatic offer	p. 172
Conclusion	p. 181
The United Kingdom: moving parties in a stable configuration	p. 183
Introduction	p. 183
Social and economic context conditions	p. 185
The relative strength of traditional cleavages	p. 185
Economic context conditions	p. 187
Cultural context conditions	p. 189
Political context conditions	p. 191
Dealignment and realignment	p. 191
Difficulties for new challengers	p. 193
Transformation of major parties	p. 194
Analysis of the demand side: the voters' political potentials	p. 197
Analysis of the supply side: the parties' programmatic offer	p. 202
Conclusion	p. 206
Germany: the dog that didn't bark	p. 208
Introduction	p. 208
Social-economic and cultural context conditions	p. 209
Relative strength of traditional cleavages	p. 209
Economic context conditions	p. 211
Cultural context conditions	p. 212
Political context conditions	p. 214
Dealignment	p. 214
Institutional structure	p. 216
Organizational capacity and leadership quality of the new challengers	p. 217
Strategies of mainstream parties	p. 218
Analysis of the demand side: voters' attitudes and issue priorities	p. 220
Analysis of the supply side: the parties' programmatic offer	p. 226
Conclusion	p. 232
Comparative analyses	p. 235
Demand side: dealignment and realignment of the structural political potentials	p. 237
Introduction	p. 237
The structure of voters' attitudes	p. 238
The relationship between economic and cultural issues	p. 240
Winners and losers of globalization	p. 243
The configuration of partisan groups	p. 251
The structural basis of the new divide	p. 257
Conclusion	p. 264
Supply side: the positioning of the political parties in a restructuring space	p. 267
Introduction	p. 267
The structure of the political space	p. 269
The degree of integration of the two dimensions	p. 271
The configuration of party positions	p. 274
'Tripolarity'	p. 274
Party families	p. 278
Comparing national party configurations	p. 282
The determinants of parties' issue-positions	p. 285
Economic issues	p. 286
European integration and immigration	p. 288
Cultural liberalism and law and order	p. 290
Conclusion	p. 294
The electoral consequences of the integration-demarcation cleavage	p. 296
Introduction	p. 296
The issue basis of voting choices	p. 297
Strategy of analysis	p. 300
France	p. 301
Austria	p. 305
Switzerland	p. 308
The Netherlands	p. 311
United Kingdom	p. 314
Germany	p. 316
Conclusion	p. 317
Globalizing West European politics: the change of cleavage structures, parties and party systems in comparative perspective	p. 320
Globalizing West European politics: dimensions of comparative analysis	p. 320
The transformation of cleavage structures and political spaces	p. 322
The rise of new parties and party families in Western Europe	p. 328
The fragmentation and polarization of party systems in Western Europe	p. 335
Fragmentation	p. 336
Polarization	p. 338
Still the age of moderate pluralism?	p. 341
Conclusion	p. 343
Technical appendix	p. 345
Introduction	p. 345
Analysis of the supply side of electoral competition: data collection	p. 345
Analysis of the demand side: list of datasets used	p. 348
Operationalization of social-structural variables	p. 349
Social class	p. 349
Education	p. 353
Religion and religiosity	p. 353
Measuring voters' issue-positions	p. 353
Statistical methods	p. 359
Multidimensional scaling	p. 359
Measuring the degree of integration of two axes in and MDS configuration	p. 362
Polarization measure	p. 364
Weighted Euclidian distance between parties in a multidimensional issue space	p. 364
Detailed statistical results	p. 366
References	p. 388
Index	p. 424
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