Traditional Cleavages Research Articles

Divided We Unite: The Nature of Partyism and the Role of Coalition Partnership in Europe

Highlighting the strength of “partyism” in many democracies, recent scholarship pays keen attention to increasing hostility and distrust among citizens across party lines, known as affective polarization. By combining a conjoint analysis with decision-making games such as dictator and trust games, we design a novel survey experiment to systematically estimate and compare the strength of the partisan divide relative to other social divides across 25 European democracies. This design also allows us to investigate how the two components of affective polarization, in-group favoritism and out-group derogation, are moderated by the way parties interact with each other. We first find dominance of the partisan divide compared to other social divides that constitute traditional cleavages such as social class and religion. Second, we show that affective polarization in Europe is not primarily driven by out-group animus. Finally, we demonstrate that coalition partnership lessens affective polarization by reducing both in-group and out-group biases.

Is disloyalty rewarded? The electoral consequences of bloc changes of Scandinavian Centre Parties 1977–2019

AbstractCentre Parties (Agrarians, Christian Democrats and Liberals) used to be an established part of the Scandinavian party systems and have often been pivotal for government formation. With ongoing individualisation, secularisation, decline of traditional cleavages, and the rise of new ones such as immigration, as well as polarisation, these parties face the challenge of losing representation in parliament as already happened to the Danish Centre Democrats and Christian Democrats. To shift a party's bloc affiliation and coalition preferences is a feature of centre parties, and it may itself be a strategic decision to mobilise new voters in a changed political environment to survive. Yet, it may alienate voters. While the strategic decision to change bloc is common among Scandinavian centre parties and theoretically relevant, empirical investigations of the electoral effects of bloc changes have been dim. We provide a systematic analysis of the electoral effects of bloc changes in Scandinavia in the last four decades. We collected data on bloc changes of Scandinavian centre parties and found 24 between 1977 and 2021. Our panel regressions reveal that bloc changes are indeed electorally costly as centre parties on average lose around 2% after a bloc change. Frequent bloc changes in the past do also reduce a party's average electoral performance. The electoral punishment of a bloc change, however, is cushioned by a large membership base as centre parties evade significant losses if they have a strong anchor in the electorate.

Left Behind and United by Populism? Populism’s Multiple Roots in Feelings of Lacking Societal Recognition

A prominent but underspecified explanation for the rise of populism points to individuals’ feelings of being “left behind” by the development of society. At its core lies the claim that support for populism is driven by the feeling of lacking the societal recognition one deserves. Our contribution builds on the insight that individuals can feel they lack recognition in different ways and for different reasons. We argue that—because of this multifaceted character—the common perception of being neglected by society unites otherwise heterogeneous segments of the population in their support for populism. Relying on data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) Pre-Election Cross-Section 2021, our preregistered study investigated the multiple roots of populist attitudes in feelings of lacking societal recognition in two steps. First, our results indicate that, from rural residents to sociocultural conservatives or low-income citizens, seemingly unrelated segments of society harbor feelings of lacking recognition, but for distinct reasons. Second, as anticipated, each of the distinct feelings of lacking recognition are associated with populist attitudes. These findings underscore the relevance of seemingly unpolitical factors that are deeply ingrained in the human psyche for understanding current populist sentiment. Overall, by integrating previously disparate perspectives on the rise of populism, the study offers a novel conceptualization of “feeling left behind” and explains how populism can give rise to unusual alliances that cut across traditional cleavages.

The “New Welfarism,” Good Governance, and Electoral Success in Modi’s India

According to a number of recent reports, India has been successful in reducing multidimensional poverty levels over the past two decades. This trend is evident under the Modi Era due to successful introduction and implementation of various welfare reforms since 2014. Robust economic growth has been a necessary but insufficient condition to explain this observed phenomenon. Rather, over two decades of structural changes and the shifting calculus of electoral politics have transformed the nature of principal-agent relations in Indian democracy. Political elites are now proactively addressing the principals’ concerns on “good governance.” Access to information and greater public awareness of the availability of services seem to have contributed to holding the principal accountable and thereby rewarding the principal during election(s). The shifting of voters’ demand for good governance (a) underscores the erosion of electoral salience of traditional cleavages with voters’ concerns centering on economic issues—growth, delivery of services, and job creation; and (b) provides insights into the quotidian ways in which the state has responded to the demand of those governed—the principal.

“Stop Giving Us the Negatives of the Other Side’s Aims”: The EU Referendum Through Letters to the Editor

ABSTRACT The referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU gave citizens the final say on one of the most controversial political issues in modern Britain, crossing social classes, traditional political cleavages, and political parties. In an attempt to examine how the public made sense of Brexit and its potential consequences, we analyse all letters to the editor discussing Brexit or the campaign published in British daily national newspapers in the two months before the referendum. Through a content analysis of 1419 letters, we examine the main themes, capturing the key concerns, criticisms, and political aspirations expressed by citizens. Leave messages largely dominated in Leave newspapers, whereas a wider range of voices were represented in Remain titles. Leave voices, therefore, resonated more strongly throughout the letters. Our analysis points to changing forms of public debate: in a debate dominated by negativity, readers mainly argued against leaving or remaining in the EU, as opposed to arguing in favour of these options, to the extent that some readers expressed frustration with the negativity of the campaigns, and of media coverage. Ultimately, this study tentatively explores whether these fora constituted arenas for debate, or off-line echo-chambers.

“Refugees” as a Misnomer: The Parochial Politics and Official Discourse of the Visegrad Four

Attitudes towards migrants and refugees are created and reflected at the level of public policies, as well as in local communities which cultivate traditional approaches and a specific worldview. The refugee crisis in Europe in the mid-2010s showed how public opinion translated into voting behaviour and became a source of strength for nationalist anti-immigrant movements and parties across the continent. East-Central Europe was no exception, regardless of the absence of a long-term, massive inflow of refugees. Nevertheless, the migration crisis created a new political narrative which exploited deeply rooted resentments, complexes, and fears. This article aims to analyse the official policy responses to the refugee crisis in the four East-Central European countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, which together constitute the so-called Visegrad Four. It puts the emphasis on the discriminatory practice of misnaming the refugees, which became deeply anchored in the political discourse of these countries. Based on a qualitative content analysis supplemented by the findings of public opinion polls, the argument developed in the article is that reluctant and defensive attitudes towards the refugees have been determined by the revival of parochialism as a radical reaction to the challenges of global trends and supra-local processes. The theoretical framing of the refugee problem is built on politicization, in connection with the concept of parochialism, seen from political and social perspectives, and the meaning of the use of the misnomer as a policy instrument. The article concludes that the migration crisis petrified traditional cleavages at the supra-local level, reinforcing simultaneously the sense of parochial altruism and hostility towards “the other.”

The Populist Response to the Pandemic: Perspectives from Brazil and Mexico

Some governing officials and segments of populations have shown an unwillingness to treat the virus as a serious health risk at all. Rather than a standard case of politicization dividing the left and right, judgments of the threat posed by the coronavirus do not clearly align with traditional cleavages, as both left- and right-wing leaders have disregarded bad news about the pandemic. This paper examines the responses of the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and the left-wing Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, both of whom trivialized and often dismissed the pandemic. These leaders share a populist style of politics which posits a struggle between a wholesome people on the one handand a class of parasitic elites on the other. This totalizing struggle in which the people must prevail mandates an agenticand oppositional posture toward national problems. Thus, populists spend more time attacking their perceived enemies than they do underlying conditions - like a virus - that can have no malevolent intentions. Populist movements therefore upend the capacity for recognizing material threats to public well-being, calling into question the capacity of populist governments to meet challenges likely to emerge in a post-COVID environment.

The Neo‐populist Surge in Italy between Territorial and Traditional Cleavages*

AbstractThe rise of neo‐populist parties in Western countries is a current issue in social sciences. Over the past two decades, and with increasing emphasis in recent years, a notable body of research has been preoccupied with explaining the complex relationship between populism and places. This paper fits in this literature and is aimed at verifying the role played by territorial inequalities and the urban‐rural divide on voting preferences in Italy. Through a detailed statistical analysis carried out at the municipal scale, we hereby compare recent trends in national (2013, 2018) and European (2019) Elections with socioeconomic and demographic data to shed light on the drivers of political change. In particular, we focus on the two main Italian parties labeled as populist: the Lega and the Movimento 5 Stelle. Analyses show that support for such parties is only partially related to rural areas, territorial inequalities, and place peripherality, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive explanation of the neo‐populist surge. Accordingly, we argue that besides demand‐side factors, other supply‐side ones should be considered, especially in Italy, where electoral behaviors are embedded in diverse local geopolitical histories that still play an important role in orienting voting.

The «Italia di Mezzo» between Territorial and Traditional Cleavages. Crisis, continuity and political change in the former red zone

The «Italia di Mezzo» between Territorial and Traditional Cleavages. Crisis, continuity and political change in the former red zone

Exit, Voice and Loyalty:

The paper examines the evolution of Eastern and Central European party systems to the emergent division between pro-EU and Eurosceptic forces and puts forward a revised view of the traditional centre-periphery cleavage in six countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. The first part discusses the Rokkan spatial approach, the second develops a revised view of centre-periphery cleavage in relation to space at the regional level, and the third analyzes party competition in terms of Europeism and Euroscepticism in Eastern and Central European party systems

Crashing the Party? Elites, Outsiders, and Elections

AbstractWe consider an election between two parties that nominate candidates for office. The parties are polarized along a traditional cleavage, but they are also internally divided along a second issue dimension. We introduce a threat of entry from Outsider candidates, who have the prominence and resources to bypass party elites. We consider when voters will turn to Outsiders, and identify the conditions under which Outsiders will enter the election through an established party's nomination process, as opposed to circumventing established parties via a third‐party challenge. We further explore when the elites will fail to respond to the threat of Outsider candidates. Our framework highlights how established parties will be especially vulnerable to Outsider primary entry in periods of intense ideological polarization between the parties, and that this vulnerability is especially heightened for the majority party.

Re-shaping the political space: continuity and alignment of parties in the Italian parliament

ABSTRACT This article adopts an inductive approach to the study of party positions in the Italian Parliament during the centre-left governments of Enrico Letta (2013–2014) and Matteo Renzi (2014–2016), as they emerge from the investiture vote. This is a unique moment in the relationship between Parliament and Government because the parliamentary groups debate the Government’s programme before delivering their first confidence vote. The research aim is to assess the alignment of the Italian parties in Parliament following the decline of the traditional left-right cleavage and the rise of populism. A content analysis of the texts of the speeches delivered during the parliamentary debate before the confidence votes confirming the investiture of the Letta and Renzi governments provides a survey of the political themes addressed by the latter and by the main Italian parliamentary groups. The findings highlight the multidimensional character of the competition space and show how party alignment is affected by the interplay between the supranational dimension (European integration) and the state’s capacity to provide services and guarantee citizens’ rights. It is argued that the emergence of new parties has favoured the re-establishment of a multi-polar pattern of competition, but without clear ideological connotations, in contrast with the situation of the earlier post-war period.

Nose li parlamentarni izbori 2015. i 2016. godine promjenu političkih rascjepa u Hrvatskoj?

Studies of voting behaviour in Croatia established the existence of deep divisions within the electorate over symbolic and identity issues. These divisions based on attitudes toward religion, tradition, and history, shaped the patterns of electoral behaviour after gaining independence and finally led to the consolidation of a bipolar pattern of political competition. However, in the elections held in 2015 and 2016 new political actors emerged with messages that cannot be placed within the traditional pattern of political divisions. Using electoral surveys fielded immediately after the 2015 and 2016 elections, this paper analyses whether electoral support for new political actors in these elections is a result of voters, especially younger voters, moving away from the traditional structure of political cleavages, and their mobilisation by other political issues. Analysis shows that support for new parties is largely due to sizable segments of voters moving away from traditional cleavages, and to a lesser extent, their mobilisation on new political issues.

Voices from a hidden people: Precarious lives and discrimination in Turkish sugar industry

The aim of this study is to reveal the connections between precarious work and discrimination patterns in Turkey, drawing particular attention to the increasing use of subcontracting in the public sector. Subcontracting has been suggested as a liberal solution to labour effectiveness that is substantially concretised in further surplus value accumulation. This suggestion has been inextricably associated with disposing of labour features hereto valid such as a settled income, a guarantee of minimum standards, protection against unfair dismissal, promotion opportunities, a regular working day and working week, collective bargaining, and the provision of social services. This alteration has inevitably exposed labour to further exploitative competition on the one hand and fragmented the labour source by expanding it to further fragile categories on the other. Thus, subcontracting has immediate consequences not only for precarisation of work, but also for discriminatory practices in workplaces. The study’s results indicate that subcontracting in Turkey essentially meant a return to traditional cleavages between gender roles, local people and internal migrants, and permanent workers and precarious ones, even in the state-owned enterprises.

The phantom revolution. The presidential and parliamentary elections of 2017

The 2017 Presidential elections in France brought victory for President Emmanuel Macron, founder of a new party declaring itself above left and right, La République en Marche. The Parliamentary elections confirmed this success and brought an absolute majority of députés in support of the new president. Macron appointed a prime minister from the centre right, and ministers from both the centre left and centre right, alongside others who were non-aligned. But this attempt to go beyond traditional cleavages is not in fact the departure it has been described as by Macron and his allies, and it has much in common with the general orientation of many governments over the past few decades, of both left and right. In particular, it is highly neo-liberal, pro-business and at the same time socially liberal. Moreover, just as important as the governmental consequences of the elections are other aspects of the results, which may be of great long-term significance; these include the strong support for the Front national and Marine Le Pen, substantial support for alternative left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise, record-high levels of spoiled ballots and abstentions, not to mention the historic defeat of the Parti socialiste and its consequent disarray.

Populism, Voters and Cleavages in Bulgarian Politics

The growing success of populist parties from across the political spectrum in Europe calls for an examination of the link between populist parties and voters and the new (if new indeed) cleavages that such parties exploit. Scholars have pointed to the erosion of traditional cleavages as one reason for the success of populist parties. Such analysis fits well with the established democracies of Europe but has little application in the East European context. Traditional cleavages have taken root in few places in Eastern Europe before communist takeover and became even less relevant following four and a half decades of communist rule. With the fall of communist regimes across Eastern Europe, the only meaningful division within society was that of anti-communists and supporters of the old regime. Similarly, concepts of Left and Right had (and to a great extend continue to have) little relevance in the East European context where the Left came to be dominated by former communist parties and the Right engulfed an ideologically incoherent opposition. The stronger the former communists were (such as in Bulgaria and Romania) the more fragmented the Right was, as it was the only available space for political competition. The present paper aims to examine voter support for populist parties in Bulgaria and analyze on the cleavages that those parties exploit or create. Thus, the paper examines the impact of populist parties on the political landscape in terms of the changes that those parties result in in voter behavior and cleavage formation. The paper utilizes exit-poll surveys, focusing on voter demographic profiles and the mobility of the vote. The findings indicate that populist parties are most successful in mobilizing non-voters when they first appear, but that their support quickly wanes afterwards. At the same time, there is voter mobility from one populist party to a newer populist party, which makes for a prolong trend of populist politics.

Trends in migrant and ethnic minority voting in Australia: findings from the Australian election study

ABSTRACTA review of the research literature on migrant voting in Australia shows that the “ethnic vote” has almost disappeared now that migrants tend to vote in a similar way to the rest of the population according to traditional class cleavages. In addition, it is argued that migrants in Australia predominantly reside in safe Labor seats that are represented by cabinet or shadow cabinet ministers. As such their group-based interests are often neglected by the major parties. Using findings from the ABS census and the 1993–2013 AES, this article re-examines whether there is a migrant vote, and if so, the extent to which migrant voting patterns have changed since the 1990s when the migrant and ethnic vote reached its peak. This study reveals patterns of migrant voting among certain birthplace subgroups that are more volatile than in previous decades but at the same time distinctive.

Cleavage Structures and Dimensions of Ideology in English Politics: Evidence From Voting Advice Application Data

The Left–Right dimension is the most common way of conceptualizing ideological difference. It is based on the traditional cleavage in society between capital and labor. But in an ever more globalized world, are the concepts of Left and Right as relevant today as they were half a century ago? Following Kriesi et al. (2006) this article argues that the cleavage that exists in many European societies between “winners” and “losers” of globalization has engendered a new ideological dimension that pits “cosmopolitans” against “communitarians” and that draws on cultural issues relating to identity, rather than economic issues. This argument is tested by identifying latent dimensions from opinion data generated by two Voting Advice Applications deployed in England in 2014 and 2015 and by mapping the positions of party supporters with respect to these dimensions. It is found that in England the political space is defined by two main ideological dimensions: an economic Left–Right dimension and a cultural communitarian–cosmopolitan dimension. Finally, supporters of the newly formed United Kingdom Independence Party are found to be located near the communitarian pole of the cultural dimension.

States, Countries and Peoples: Who Should the Second Chamber Speak For?

States, Countries and Peoples: Who Should the Second Chamber Speak For?

The political meaning of dining out: testing the link between lifestyle and political choice in Italy

The debate that has arisen around the weakening of the traditional cleavages’ heuristic power in explaining vote suggests considering the role of lifestyles in designing politically meaningful social aggregates. We investigated the relationship between lifestyle and voting behavior, establishing the degree to which this relationship traces the effect of the socio-structural categories (e.g. social class) or is, at least in part, independent of them. Through a k-means clustering, we individuated a typology of four Italian lifestyles; we showed its relation to socio-demographic features and its ability to discriminate participants’ political attitudes. The subscription to each lifestyle was significantly associated with voting behavior, net of the variance accounted for by the traditional cleavages. The theoretical implication and further direction of research are discussed.