Western European Party Systems Research Articles

Party system ideological polarization in Western Europe: data, trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties (1945–2021)

ABSTRACT Unlike other key party system properties (e.g. fragmentation, volatility), polarization lacks a publicly available cross-national and longitudinal dataset that can be used as an established source among the scientific community. This article aims to fill this gap by introducing a novel publicly available dataset of party system ideological polarization in Western European party systems. The dataset relies on multiple expert surveys and provides measures of party system ideological polarization for each parliamentary election and legislature in 20 Western European countries since 1945. The article also presents party system polarization’s comparative longitudinal trends, drivers, and links with other key party system properties. It finds that party system ideological polarization is on the rise in Western Europe, mainly due to a progressive shift in the electoral support from ideologically moderate mainstream parties to more extreme challenger parties. Moreover, in recent years, high party system polarization has recurred in highly fragmented and volatile contexts, thus creating a detrimental context for the working of democracy.

Contagion From Abroad. How Party Entry in Western Europe is Influenced by Party Family Members Abroad, 1961–2016

New parties are a key mechanism behind party system innovation as voters are offered new choices. To explain party entry (i.e. participation in a lower house election for the first time), the state-of-the-art has typically focused on domestic determinants. This, however, assumes that party entry takes place in an international vacuum. Building on the policy diffusion literature, we explore how party family members abroad influence party entry in the focal country. Based on a new dataset on the evolution of each party family in 17 Western European party systems between 1961 and 2016, including 2191 new parties, our mixed-methods approach combining spatial econometric models with pathway case analysis demonstrates that party entry is influenced by the entry and electoral success of their party family abroad. This has important implications for the literature on party entry and the international diffusion of policy platforms.

Book Review: The deinstitutionalization of western european party systems

Book Review: The deinstitutionalization of western european party systems

The conflict between left and right on the policy of immigration

Right-wing populism, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, has had notable impact on politicizing migration and immigration in Western Europe. In contrast to economic concerns about immigration, the far right's ethnocentric, anti-immigration identity politics became more prevalent in the early 2000s. This study investigates the extent to which the far right's exploitation of multiculturalism and ethnocentrism in Western European party systems remains unrelated to economic conflict. In nine Western European nations, party competition is structured by a more recent multiculturalism-ethnocentrism dimension, and we examine how it interacts with the traditional left-right economic dimension. In 1999, the positions of political parties on multiculturalism and economics were largely distinct; however, by 2009, the two dimensions had become highly correlated, and by 2014, the correlation had grown even stronger. Both the de facto adoption of rightist economic policies by the extreme right and the mainstream right's growing ethnocentrism have contributed to this shift. Some claim that the far right is driving this realignment, and the policy implications are discussed.

Explaining the impact of new parties in the Western European party systems

ABSTRACTIn recent years, and particularly following the impact of the “great recession”, Western European party systems have undergone profound change. New parties have emerged and been successful, thus radically changing the structure of inter-party competition. So far, research on new parties has been mainly conducted from party-level and election-centred perspectives. Here, instead, we focus on party system innovation (PSInn), meaning the impact of new parties on Western European party systems, and on the factors that explain such impact, by adopting a systemic perspective and taking into account all the arenas where inter-party competition takes place (i.e. elections, parliaments and governments). For this purpose, this article relies on an original dataset on the performances of new parties in terms of votes, seats, and ministerial posts, covering about 350 elections and 670 governments in 20 countries, over the period 1945–2017. The results of the analysis show a notable increase in PSInn over the last decade, in particular with regard to the electoral and parliamentary arenas. Moreover, data show that PSInn in the electoral and the parliamentary arenas is mainly predicted by turnout change, while in the governmental arena is instead driven by the country’s economic performance.

Does the Iron Curtain Still Exist? The Convergence in Electoral Volatility between Eastern and Western Europe

AbstractThe literature on party system change and electoral volatility in post-communist Europe tends to make a clear-cut distinction between Central and Eastern European (CEE) party systems and Western European (WE) ones. The former are unstable and unpredictable and electoral volatility is driven by the continuous emergence of new political parties. Conversely, electoral stability is the rule in the latter, and volatility is associated with electoral shifts among established parties. This conventional wisdom suffers from three potential sources of bias: case selection, time coverage and method. By correcting these biases, this article investigates whether the traditional division between CEE and WE party systems has been levelled as regards volatility. To do so, it presents evidence based on an original data set of electoral volatility and its internal components covering 31 WE and CEE party systems since 1990. It finds that a process of asymmetric convergence in the levels of electoral volatility is taking place between the two regions, with Western Europe approaching Central and Eastern Europe with increasing electoral instability.

Beclouding Party Position as an Electoral Strategy: Voter Polarization, Issue Priority and Position Blurring

Why do political parties present vague positions? We suggest that voter polarization provides them incentives to present either clear or vague positions, and the choice between these two is determined by the priority of an issue for the parties. We find that facing voter polarization, Western European political parties present clearer positions on an issue when it is a prime issue for them, but blur their positions when it is a secondary issue. Then, position blurring gives different implications to party systems with different degrees of issue dimensionality (such as American vs Western European party systems). The results also imply that political parties will respond to ongoing voter polarization on economic and immigration issues differently in the clarity of their position.

Towards turbulent times: measuring and explaining party system (de-)institutionalization in Western Europe (1945–2015)

Over the last decades, Western European party systems have experienced growing levels of electoral volatility and the recurring emergence of successful new parties. This evidence calls into question the issue of party system institutionalization (PSI), a topic taken for granted so far in Western Europe, following the conventional wisdom that party systems are highly institutionalized in this region. This article tackles this issue and provides some contributions: it offers a theoretical clarification of PSI and develops an index allowing for cross-country and cross-time comparability; it looks for an explanation, by testing the impact of various potential determinants and their changes over time. Covering 324 elections in 19 countries since 1945, the analysis shows that, since the 1970s, a process of de-institutionalization is going on and that PSI is mainly a function of the cleavage structure and the number of parties, with economic performance becoming relevant only in the last period.

The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe

AbstractThe electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long‐term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non‐mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further.

VOLATILITY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS: TWO NEW APPROACHES

The sharp rise in electoral volatility in the last two decades calls for a new explanation of Western European party systems. The established party system theory—Lipset and Rokkan’s “freezing hypothesis”—is not confirmed by today’s data. But what framework should replace Lipset and Rokkan’s? One option is to focus on values in postmodern society, as French sociologist Alain Touraine does, by emphasizing how individualism trumps social cohesion formed by social cleavages. The rational-choice approach, combined with a principal-agent model perspective, offers another lens for exploring electoral volatility in Western Europe. In this paper, gross and net volatility are analysed with both Touraine’s sociological approach and with a new principal-agent model of political election, underlying dynamics.

Support for radical left parties in Western Europe: social background, ideology and political orientations

Radical left parties (RLP) have been significant actors in many Western European party systems since the expansion of mass democracy. In some cases, they have been very relevant forces in terms of popular support. Despite this fact, they have not received a great deal of attention in past decades from a comparative perspective. Through examination of the role of an important set of factors, this article provides, for the first time, a cross-national empirical account of the variation in voting for RLPs across Western Europe, based on individual-level data. It evaluates the effect of key socio-demographic and attitudinal individual-level variables on the RLP vote. The findings point to the continuing relevance of some social and political factors traditionally associated with votes for RLPs, and to the relevance of attitudinal variables.

Institutions and the stabilization of party systems in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe

Most explanations of party system stability focus on the strength of mass-elite linkages. We highlight the role of institutions, focusing on how electoral rules and elected institutions, especially the presidency, impact elites' incentives to coordinate on a stable set of parties or to form new parties, thus affecting electoral volatility. Using Central and Eastern European elections data, we find that directly elected presidents increase volatility and that presidential power magnifies this effect. Absent a directly elected president, high district magnitude is associated with increased volatility, but district magnitude dampens the impact of an elected president on volatility; hence, our findings underscore the interactive impact of institutions on party systems. We also find evidence that bicameralism and concurrence of presidential and parliamentary elections decrease electoral volatility. Our model not only explains persistently high electoral volatility in Eastern Europe, but the extreme stability of Western European party systems.

Where do radical right parties stand? Position blurring in multidimensional competition

This article questions the utility of assessing radical right party placement on economic issues, which has been extensively analyzed in academic literature. Starting from the premise that political parties have varying strategic stakes in different political issues, the article considers political competition in multiple issue dimensions. It suggests that political competition is not simply a matter of taking positions on political issues, but rather centers on manipulating the dimensional structure of politics. The core argument is that certain political parties, such as those of the radical right, seek to compete on neglected, secondary issues while simultaneously blurring their positions on established issues in order to attract broader support. Deliberate position blurring – considered costly by the literature – may thus be an effective strategy in multidimensional competition. The article combines quantitative analyses of electoral manifestos, expert placement of political parties, and voter preferences, by studying seventeen radical right parties in nine Western European party systems.

Design challenges in cross-national VAAs: the case of the EU Profiler

This paper analyses the design of the EU Profiler, the first truly cross–national VAA. We assess the convergent validity and scaling reliability of the low–dimensional models that are used to represent differences between parties and users. Convergent validity of the party positions in the EU Profiler is moderate to high, but scaling reliability is low for most of the issue dimensions included. We examine whether these problems are related to the EU Profiler's cross–national nature. The EU Profiler integrates the positions of parties from all over Europe into one pan–European model, even though students of European politics emphasise that there are structural differences between party competition in Central and Eastern Europe and Western Europe. We find that the EU Profiler performs better in terms of scaling reliability in Western European party systems than in Central and Eastern European party systems. In addition, there are substantive differences between individual countries.

Religion, class coalitions, and welfare states

1. Religion and the Western welfare state: the theoretical context Philip Manow and Kees van Kersbergen 2. Western European party systems and the religious cleavage Thomas Ertman 3. The religious foundations of work-family policies in Western Europe Kimberly J. Morgan 4. Italy: a Christian democratic or clientist welfare state? Julia Lynch 5. Religion and the welfare state in the Netherlands Kees van Kersbergen 6. A conservative welfare state regime without Christian Democracy? The French Etat-providence, 1880-1960 Philip Manow and Bruno Palier 7. Religion and the consolidation of the Swiss welfare state, 1848-1945 Herbert Obinger 8. The church as nation? The role of religion in the development of the Swedish welfare state Karen M. Anderson 9. The religious factor in US welfare state politics Jill Quadagno and Deanna Rohlinger 10. Religious social doctrines and poor relief: a different causal pathway Sigrun Kahl.

Ethnic Identity and Party Competition. An Analysis of the Electoral Performance of Ethnoregionalist Parties in Western Europe

The study of ethnoregionalist parties, therefore, allows us to explore an aspect of the Western European party systems that is of primary importance but to which so far the academic literature has not paid due attention. Specifically, as it will be illustrated more thoroughly over the next few pages, the image that these parties are bound exclusively to their function as representatives of a peripheral ethnic minority is utterly inadequate, whichever way one defines it. A closer look at their recent evolution and programmes will show instead that ethnoregionalist parties are much more dynamic and ready, on many occasions, to review their collocation in the political space as well as objectives, short and long-term strategies. This results in frequent raids on political territories normally under the control of major parties and in the taking away of a portion of disaffected or disappointed voters, with varying degrees of success. In other words, we will show that ethnoregionalist parties act (at least in specific cases, at specific moments) as protest or challenging parties as they provide an alternative to the traditional established ones.

Russian parties and the political internet

Russian parties and the political internet

‘Small Steps’ or ‘Great Leaps’: How the Swedish Greens Are Learning the Lessons of Government Participation

As Green parties have solidified their positions within the Western European party systems, they have increasingly faced opportunities and pressures to participate in government at varying levels. This has raised significant questions regarding both how the Greens should progress strategically in relation to other longstanding political parties and also whether participation in government represents a process of ‘institutionalisation’ and a loss of the Greens’‘new politics’ credentials. This paper examines the strategic changes and developments within the Swedish Green Party (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) as it has come to terms with opportunities to participate in government. It argues that the decisions within the party have reflected not only internal ideological debates, but also external pressures and opportunities. It also demonstrates that the experiences of the party at local and municipal levels have played a major role in encouraging the national party to consider negotiating with other parties. The paper attempts to draw lessons from the experiences of the Swedish Greens which may prove useful in trying to comprehend the future challenges and pressures facing the continued development of Europe’s Green parties.

A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems

Abstract. With the recent acceleration of the integration process of the European Union there has been a rise in political parties expressing either scepticism or outright criticism of the nature of the integration process. Using a four–fold differentiation between single issue, protest, established parties and factions within parties, the first part of the article presents an overview of Euroscepticism within EU member states and Norway. This reveals the diversity of sources of Euroscepticism both in ideology and in the types of parties that are Eurosceptical but with a preponderance of protest parties taking Eurosceptical positions. The second part of the article is an attempt to map Euroscepticism in West European party systems through a consideration of ideology and party position in the party system. The conclusions are that Euroscepticism is mainly limited to parties on the periphery of their party system and is often there used as an issue that differentiates those parties from the more established parties which are only likely to express Euroscepticism through factions. Party based Euroscepticism is therefore both largely dependent on domestic contextual factors and a useful issue to map emergent domestic political constellations.

Understanding Developing European Party Systems: A Case Study of Czechoslovakia

This study focuses on an underdeveloped area in the analysis of post-Communist East-Central Europe: democratizing party systems. The transformation of party systems in this part of the world from one party-dominated to multiparty, democratic systems now impels political scientists to reorient their theoretical and conceptual approaches to reflect the winds of change. Because the Czechoslovak party system of 1990-1992 was a multiparty, segmented one with a number of destabilizing elements, Sartorrs "polarized pluralism" typology (1976) can be applied to analyze the nature of that party system and what the future may hold for the new Czech and Slovak systems. As the groundwork is laid in the analyses of Central and Eastern European party systems, further investigation using Western European party systems literature may help us focus and conceptualize the competing forces that shape the democratization process in these party systems.