What Has Happened to Party Politics in Western Europe?

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
The Times ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Issue Content ◽  
West European

Party politics in Western Europe has changed profoundly over the last decades. Long gone are the times when class-based political parties with extensive membership dominated politics. Instead, party politics has become issue-based. Surprisingly few studies have focused on how the issue content of West European party politics has developed over the past decades. This book therefore offers a comprehensive analysis of the issue content of West European party politics. To do so, the book develops a new theoretical model labelled the ‘issue incentive model’ of party system attention. The aim of the model is to explain how much attention issues get throughout the party system, which is labelled ‘the party system agenda’. To explain the development of the party system agenda, one needs to focus on the incentives that individual policy issues offer to large, mainstream parties, i.e. the typical Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, or Conservative/Liberal parties that have dominated West European governments for decades. The core idea of the model is that the incentives that individual policy issues offer to these vote- and office-seeking parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. The issue incentive model builds on and develops a top-down perspective according to which the issue content of party politics is determined by the strategic considerations of political parties and their competition with each other.

The Reshaping of West European Party Politics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Issue Content ◽  
West European

Long gone are the times when class-based political parties with extensive membership dominated politics. Instead, party politics has become issue-based. Surprisingly few studies have focused on how the issue content of West European party politics has developed over the past decades. Empirically, this books studies party politics in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK from 1980 and onwards. The book highlights the more complex party system agenda with the decline, but not disappearance, of macroeconomic issues as well as the rise in ‘new politics’ issues together with education and health care. Moreover, various ‘new politics’ issues such as immigration, the environment, and European integration have seen very different trajectories. To explain the development of the individual issues, the book develops a new theoretical model labelled the ‘issue incentive model’ of party system attention. The aim of the model is to explain how much attention issues get throughout the party system, which is labelled ‘the party system agenda’. To explain the development of the party system agenda, one needs to focus on the incentives that individual policy issues offer to large, mainstream parties, i.e. the typical Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, or Conservative/Liberal parties that have dominated West European governments for decades. The core idea of the model is that the incentives that individual policy issues offer to these vote- and office-seeking parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. The issue incentive model builds on and develops a top-down perspective on which the issue content of party politics is determined by the strategic considerations of political parties and their competition with each other.

The Issue Content of West European Party Politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Theoretical Argument ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Niche Parties ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
West European

This chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and discusses its implications. The theoretical argument of the book presented in the issue incentive model is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties are the key to explaining how policy issues rise and decline on the party system agenda. Furthermore, the argument is that the vote and office incentives of large, mainstream parties depend on three factors, namely issue characteristics, issue ownership, and coalition considerations. Empirically, the book highlights the more complex party system agenda with the decline, but not disappearance, of macroeconomic issues as well as the rise in ‘new politics’ issues together with education and health care. Moreover, various ‘new politics’ issues have seen very different trajectories. Finally, the chapter lays out the implications of these findings for two larger debates within the study of West European party politics. One debate is about the role of niche parties and the consequences of their growth for the West European party system. The second debate is about the linkage between voters and political parties in contemporary Western societies. Discussing these implications also sheds light on the implication of more recent developments within West European party systems, namely the electoral decline of large, mainstream parties.

Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-23
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Strategic Competition ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Strategic Approach ◽  
Issue Content ◽  
West European

This chapter presents an overview of the literature that deals with the issue content of West European party politics. As argued by de Vries and Marks (2012), there are basically two theoretical approaches to the struggle for the content of party politics. First, a bottom-up approach that sees the issue content of party politics as a reflection of social conflicts. Second, a top-down or strategic approach in which the issue content of party politics reflects the strategic competition among political parties. The presentation of the bottom-up approach focuses on presenting the most recent, prominent examples of such an approach, namely the works by Kriesi et al. (2008, 2012) and Hooghe and Marks (2018). The presentation of the top-down approach is more fragmented as the literature within this approach mainly consists of journal articles in which different elements of this approach have been developed.

scholarly journals A hot topic? Immigration on the agenda in Western Europe

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen ◽  
Simon Otjes
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
General Increase ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Party Manifestos ◽  
West European Politics ◽  
West European

The party politics of immigration is one of the fastest growing bodies of research within the study of West European politics. Within this literature, an underlying assumption is that immigration has become one of the most salient issues. However, this is rarely documented, let alone explained. Drawing on a new coding of party manifestos in seven West European countries, this article shows that party attention to immigration has grown in all countries since 1980 but only in Denmark has the issue become one of the most salient issues of party politics. We find that the general increase in attention reflects the rising number of immigrants and rise of radical right-wing parties. In terms of the issue becoming a top issue of party politics, a comparative analysis of the politicization of immigration in Denmark and the Netherlands shows that the interest of mainstream right-wing parties and coalition dynamics are the crucial factors.

Party Politics Triumph over Substantive Scrutiny and Principled Policy: Examining Czech MPs’ Voting Behaviour in Regard to EU Affairs

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Martin Kuta
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
The European Union ◽  
National Parliaments ◽  
European Dimension ◽  
The Eu

The paper deals with the European dimension of the competition and contention between Czech political parties and argues that domestic party interests undermine the formal oversight of EU politics by the Czech national parliament. Within the current institutional arrangements, national political parties assume stances – which are expressed through voting – towards the European Union (and European integration as such) as they act in the arena of national parliaments that are supposed to make the EU more accountable in its activities. Based on an analysis of roll-calls, the paper focuses on the ways the political parties assume their stances towards the EU and how the parties check this act by voting on EU affairs. The paper examines factors that should shape parties’ behaviour (programmes, positions in the party system, and public importance of EU/European integration issues). It also focuses on party expertise in EU/European issues and asserts that EU/European integration issues are of greater importance in extra-parliamentary party competition than inside the parliament, suggesting a democratic disconnect between voters and parliamentary behaviour. The study's empirical analysis of the voting behaviour of Czech MPs also shows that the parliamentary scrutiny introduced by the Lisbon Treaty is undermined by party interests within the system.

Radical Party Politics and Mobilization Against It in the Slovak Parliamentary Elections 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-352
Author(s):  
Oľga Gyárfášová ◽  
Peter Učeň
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
Main Research ◽  
The People ◽  
Election Results

This article reviews certain trends in popular support for political parties – especially new ones – as they manifested themselves prior to and during the 2020 parliamentary elections. It summarizes the ways in which demand for change was expressed before and during the election through the election results and the data on party supporters. It concludes that the thesis on the radicalization of new generations of party-political challenges in the Slovak polity did not hold true in 2020. The main research question regards the possibility of conceptualizing the rise of two new moderate political parties, PS/Together and For the People, as a counter-mobilization against the previous emergence of radical anti-establishment and anti-systemic challengers within the party system.

scholarly journals Political Parties and the War

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
Party Control ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Wide Scale ◽  
Political Conditions

The pathology of political parties is illustrated under especially illuminating circumstances during time of war. The internal political conditions of every important nation are influenced to some extent by its external relations. War on a world-wide scale is the external relation which has the most profound influence upon the internal political conditions of every participating nation. This influence varies in different cases, depending upon the proximity of the particular nation to the scene of the conflict, the extent of its participation, the relative danger of invasion by its enemies, the character of the internal governmental organization, the length of the conflict, and other factors. In normal times, it has been found by experience in nations operating under the two-party system that oscillations in the fortunes of the two principal parties occur with a surprising degree of regularity. This see-saw of party politics may have an injurious effect upon the continuity and constructiveness of the nation's foreign policy even in normal times; its continuation in time of war when the nation's fate may be hanging in the balance would be a serious, if not intolerable, danger. One effect of war upon the party system, therefore, is to bring about, at least for a time, a relatively greater stability of party control, if not complete quiescence of partisanship, either through coalition or through cessation of party opposition, or both.

Validating and Improving Voting Advice Applications: Estimating Party Positions Using Candidate Surveys

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioannis Andreadis ◽  
Heiko Giebler
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Additional Source ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Voting Advice Applications

AbstractLocating political parties correctly regarding different policy issues is not just crucial for research on parties, party competition, and many similar fields but also for the electorate. For the latter, it has become more and more important as the relevance of voting advice applications (VAA) has increased and as their main usage is to compare citizens’ policy preferences to the offer of political parties. However, if party positions are not adequately assigned, citizens are provided with suboptimal information which decreases the citizens’ capacities to make rational electoral decision. VAA designers follow different approaches to determining party positions. In this paper, we look beyond most common sources like electoral manifestos and expert judgments by using surveys of electoral candidates to validate and improve VAAs. We argue that by using positions derived from candidate surveys we get the information by the source itself, but at the same time we overcome most of the disadvantages of the other methods. Using data for the 2014 European Parliament election both in Greece and Germany, we show that while positions taken from the VAAs and from the candidate surveys do match more often than not, we also find substantive differences and even opposing positions. Moreover, these occasional differences have already rather severe consequences looking at calculated overlaps between citizens and parties as well as representations of the political competition space and party system polarization. These differences seem to be more pronounced in Greece. We conclude that candidate surveys are indeed a valid additional source to validate and improve VAAs.

None past the post

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Election Outcome ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
Unexpected Outcome ◽  
Political Economic

This book tells the story of the unexpected 2017 British general election and its equally unexpected outcome: the Conservatives’ loss of their parliamentary majority and Theresa May’s return at the head of a minority government. As with previous volumes in the Britain at the polls series, it provides readers with a series of interpretations of the election and expert accounts of the major political parties, including their responses to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Again in keeping with previous volumes, the book does not seek to provide a blow-by-blow account of the 2017 election campaign, nor does it seek to provide a detailed survey-based account of voting behaviour. Instead, it offers readers a broad analysis of recent political, economic and social developments and assesses their impact on the election outcome. It also addresses questions about the state of the political parties and the party system in the wake of the election, and reflects on the future of British electoral and party politics.

Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Comment on the Study of the Canadian Party System

1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-145
Author(s):  
Henry J. Jacek
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Electoral Volatility ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
High Level ◽  
In The Beginning

I should like to comment on the fine article, “Party Loyalty and Electoral Volatility: A Study of the Canadian Party System,” by Paul M. Sniderman, H.D. Forbes, and Ian Melzer in the June 1974 (vii, no. 2) issue of this journal. This article should be a major corrective in the study of Canadian political parties. In addition, the authors provide a number of useful insights which should fruitfully guide future research on parties.In the beginning of their article they point out that there is a “consensus among students of Canadian politics on the functions of parties and the nature of voting in Canada,” which consensus they call “the textbook theory of party politics.” Among the elements of this theory, according to the authors, is the interpretation that both major, old-line Canadian parties, the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives, are brokerage parties, and are, therefore, indistinguishable. Although the authors present evidence that calls into serious question other aspects of the “textbook theory,” such as the supposed lack of validity of the concept of party identification in Canada and the purported high level of electoral volatility of the Canadian voter compared to the British and American voter, the authors at the end of their article still accept important elements of the “textbook theory.” Thus, on page 286 they incorporate into their conclusion the idea that “it is surely true… that the major parties advance very similar platforms and share the same overall economic ideology.”

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