Hanspeter Kriesi

West European politics in the age of globalization

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 ofWestern European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.

Social movements in a globalizing world

Table of Contents Social Movements in a Globalizing World: an Introduction D.della Porta & H.Kriesi PART I: NATIONAL MOBILIZATION WITHIN A GLOBALIZING WORLD Alternative Types of Cross-national Diffusion in the Social Movement Arena D.A.Snow & R.D.Benford The Gendering of Abortion Discourse: Assessing Global Feminist Influence in the United States and Germany M.Marx Ferree & W.A.Gamson A Comparison of Protests against the Gulf War in Germany, France and the Netherlands R.Koopmans The Diffusion and Adoption of Public Order Management Systems J.D.McCarthy, C.McPhail & J.Crist PART II: MOBILIZATION BEYOND THE NATION-STATE On the Relationship of Political Opportunities to the Form of Collective Action: The Case of the European Union G.Marks & D.McAdam The Europeanization of Movements? Contentions Politics and the European Union, October 1983 - March 1995 D.Imig & S.Tarrow Injustice and Adversarial Frames in a Supranational Political Context: Farmers Protest in the Netherlands and Spain B.Kandermans, M. de Weerd, J-M.Sabucedo & M.Costa Supranational Political Opportunities as a Channel of Globalization of Political Conflicts. The Case of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples F.Passy Global Politics and Transnational Social Movements Strategies: The Transnational Campaign Against International Trade in Toxic Wastes J.Smith International Campaigns in Context: Collective Action Between the Local and the Global C.Lahusen The Transnationalization of Social Movements: Trends, Causes, Problems D.Rucht Bibliography Index

The transformation of cleavage politics The 1997 Stein Rokkan lecture

In this lecture I discuss the development of the social divisions in Western Europe and their translation into politics. I successively take up the three aspects embraced by the notion of ‘cleavages’ – their structural base, the political values of the groups involved, and their political articulation. My main argument is that the decline of traditional cleavages does not necessarily signify the end of structuration of politics by social divisions. There is ample empirical evidence for the existence of a new social division between two segments of the new middle class, which has important consequences for politics. This new social division is shown to be closely linked to the new ‘value cleavage’ although it is not able to fully account for the enormous political implications which contrasting value-orientations have today. Finally, I suggest that the political articulation of both the transformed class structure and the new configuration of values is strongly shaped by the political legacy of traditional cleavages.

The Populist Challenge

Populism has been on the rise for some time in Europe now, and its rise has been one of the key concerns of Peter Mair. He has linked it to the increasing erosion of the representative function of European party systems. The spectre that haunted him was ‘partyless democracy’, a democratic regime where parties had lost their representative function, which opened the door for unmediated populist protest. While largely sharing his interpretation of the overall structural trends giving rise to the populist challenges in Western Europe, the article is critical of the static character of his assessment. It suggests that there are three forms of ‘protest populism’, all of which may eventually end up transforming the West European party systems in the name of the new structuring conflicts that characterise contemporary European societies. In addition, it proposes to extend the scope of Peter’s argument to the less established democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Role of European Integration in National Election Campaigns

This study asks how and to what extent political parties in six West European countries - Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK - have addressed the process of European integration in national election campaigns since the 1970s. Based on a content analysis of newspaper data, the results show that Eurosceptic mobilization in national election campaigns has become most pronounced in countries where the public have always been rather apprehensive about European integration. In line with the ‘new cleavage’ hypothesis, in Switzerland and the UK mobilization around European integration is primarily driven by conservatives and/or the new populist right. In countries where the process of European integration is politically less salient, conservatives and/or the new populist right have been less Eurosceptic and their mobilization efforts have been more limited. While providing mixed support for the ‘new cleavage’ hypothesis, the study provides scant support for the received wisdom that Euroscepticism among political parties is essentially dictated by ‘opposition politics’.

Going Public in the European Union Action Repertoires of Western European Collective Political Actors

As a result of the Europeanization of politics and the increasing role of the public sphere, political actors in Western Europe are currently facing a double strategic challenge. Based on data from seven West European countries and the European Union, the authors analyze how state actors, political parties, interest groups, and social movement organizations cope with this double challenge at both the national and the supranational level. Results indicate that the classic repertoire of inside strategies at the national level is still the most typical for all actors, but media-related strategies are also prominent at the national level. The Europeanization of repertoires is mainly determined by institutional factors and by the actors’ power, whereas the public arena plays an equally important role for all types of actors, in all countries and at both the national and the EU level.

The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe

The 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.

Social Movements in a Globalizing World: an Introduction

Over the last decade, social movement scholars in the United States and in Europe have been paying increasing attention to the political context in which social movements mobilize. In the process, social movement research has not only relied more heavily on political science to complement its original conceptions (mainly furnished by sociology, history and economics), but has also become more comparative, focusing on the impact of the national, regional and local political contexts on mobilization and its outcomes across countries. With cross-national comparison, attention is directed to the effects of the changing international context on national social systems and national polities. In other words, social movement research is slowly becoming aware that the divide between comparative politics and international relations is increasingly anachronistic. Also in social movement studies, the challenge ‘is to combine the insights of both perspectives without losing sight of their unique contributions’ (Garrett and Lange 1995: 654). This is a challenge we try to take seriously in this volume, which focuses on the impact of the increasing interactions between national and international political contexts on social movements in what we refer to as a globalizing world.

Restructuration of Partisan Politics and the Emergence of a New Cleavage Based on Values

The cleavage concept is a very demanding concept that limits the possibilities of finding any new examples of cleavages. And, indeed, many authors, some of whom contributing to the present volume, mainly perceive a decline of cleavages, or at best a stabilization of old cleavages, but hardly anything new. However, new cleavages may be hard to find, because we look in the wrong places for their structural basis: it might just be that their value/normative element is contributing crucially to the structural closure of the groups involved – as it did in the case of religion previously. If we take such a possibility into account, several of the contributions to the present volume provide evidence for the emergence of a new value-based cleavage, which has mainly, albeit not exclusively, been driven by the challengers of the New Left and the new populist right.

Political mobilization and social change : the Dutch case in comparative perspective

Structural bases of political mobilization cultural bases of political mobilization political mobilization by parties political mobilization by unions political mobilization by new social movements mobilization across political arenas.