Abstract

This open access book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social democratic parties face competition on multiple fronts for their core electorate – and not only from radical right parties. Starting from a reflection on ‘working-class parties' and using a sophisticated class schema, the book paints a nuanced and diversified picture of the trajectory of social democracy that goes beyond a simple shift from working-class to middle-class parties. Following a detailed description, the book reviews possible explanations of workers' new voting patterns and emphasizes the crucial changes in parties' ideologies. It closes with a discussion on the role of the working class in social democracy's future electoral strategies.

Highlights

  • Against the backdrop of renewed attention to the working-class vote in both the scientific community and the political sphere, the ambition of this book is to provide a careful examination of the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate

  • The analysis finds a strong working-class basis of social democracy in this period, and an intermediate level of support among various classes

  • This suggests that changes in the political supply are critical to understand the new relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate

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Summary

Introduction

Abstract Against the backdrop of renewed attention to the working-class vote in both the scientific community and the political sphere, the ambition of this book is to provide a careful examination of the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate. The introduction first presents the context and the goals of the study It explains the conditions required for a detailed and precise analysis of the class basis of social democracy and outlines the approach used throughout the book. It reminds the reader of the origins of social democracy and the broad transformation and crisis in this party family. It presents the choice of the six social democratic/labour/socialist parties at the centre of this research.

RENNWALD
INTRODUCTION
Findings
A Note: A ‘Working-Class Party’ Is
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