Lost in Translation? Class Cleavage Roots and Left Electoral Mobilization in Western Europe

Vincenzo Emanuele

doi:10.1017/s1537592721000943

Abstract

I investigate whether the strength of the class cleavage in Western Europe still “translates” into the electoral mobilization of the left. This research question is addressed through comparative longitudinal analysis in nineteen Western European countries after World War II. In particular, the impact of class cleavage is investigated by disentangling its socio-structural (working-class features) and organizational (corporate and partisan) components, thus accounting for its multidimensional nature. Data show that both components have a significant impact in Western Europe after 1945. However, while the socio-structural element is still nowadays a substantial predictor of left electoral mobilization, the impact of the organizational element has decreased over time and has become irrelevant in the last twenty-five years. Therefore, the class cleavage is not entirely lost in translation, but left electoral mobilization is no longer dependent upon the organizational features of trade unions and political parties that originally emerged to represent working-class interests.

Highlights

I investigate whether the strength of the class cleavage in Western Europe still “translates” into the electoral mobilization of the left
After several decades where the class cleavage was considered as the basis of politics and electoral competition and all else was instead “embellishment and detail” (Pulzer 1967), since the 1980s a large body of literature working on micro-level data has emphasized the decline of the class cleavage (Flanagan and Dalton 1984; Franklin, Mackie, and Valen 1992; Nieuwbeerta and Ultee 1999; Dalton 2002; Knutsen 2018)
We have carefully considered all parties belonging to the communist, socialist, and social democratic party families in the ParlGov database (Döring and Manow 2019) and in the communist and socialist party families in the Comparative Manifesto Project Database (CMP) (Volkens et al 2019)

Summary

Introduction

I investigate whether the strength of the class cleavage in Western Europe still “translates” into the electoral mobilization of the left. The class cleavage is not entirely lost in translation, but left electoral mobilization is no longer dependent upon the organizational features of trade unions and political parties that originally emerged to represent working-class interests.

Results

Conclusion