Not the Far-Right Only: Which Parties Occupy the Niche of Cultural Protectionism in the EU Countries?

In the 2010s many moderate parties in Europe began to use the agenda of the far-rights, competing with them on the same field. This article is devoted to the problem of inter-party competition in European countries amidst the rise of far-right parties. We also intended to check if the far-right profile is the same for all EU countries. To achieve the goal of the study, we used two databases on party positioning - MARPOR (Comparative Manifesto Project) and CHES (Chapel Hill Expert Survey). The study revealed that the consolidated family of the far-rights exists only in the countries of North-Western Europe, while in the countries of East-Central Europe the agenda of the far-rights is less consolidated and regionally heterogeneous. The mainstream competitors of the far-rights included mostly conservatives in North-Western Europe, and various parties, including the Social Democrats, in East-Central Europe. The study confirmed the hypothesis about the serious influence of the far-rights on mainstream politics. At the same time, it questioned the traditional approach which attributes the far-right profile only to far-right parties and ignores both regional differences and the factor of spatial competition.

The Asymmetrical Effect of Polarization on Support for Independence: The Case of Catalonia

The article analyses the consequences of elite polarization at the mass level in the centre-periphery dimension. We analyse the rapid rise in support for independence in Catalonia, focusing on the role of party competition around the centre-periphery cleavage. We argue that mainstream actors’ adoption of centrifugal party strategies with respect to the national question produced a polarizing dynamic in the party system that eventually caused voters’ attitudes regarding the centre-periphery issue to harden. Indeed, we posit that this increase in mass polarization was a consequence of party agency that subsequently helped to drive attitudes regarding independence. To test this hypothesis, we measure centre-periphery polarization (as perceived by voters) by adopting two different perspectives—inter-party distances (horizontal polarization) and party-voter distances (vertical polarization)—and then run logistic regressions to explain support for independence. The findings show an asymmetrical effect on polarization. While the centrifugal strategy implemented by Catalan regionalist parties paved the way for a radicalization of voters on the Catalan nationalist side, among voters for non-regionalist parties, attitudes towards independence were initially less conditioned by this polarization. The results provide evidence of the political effects of elite polarization.

Inter-Party Competition, Public Electoral Pressure, and Democratic Strength: Refining Political Explanations of Incarceration Trends in the U.S., 1980 – 2010

The purpose of this research is to advance the politics of mass imprisonment literature by testing and specifying the macro-explanations of the state-level incarceration change in the United States (U.S.) between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, I account for mechanisms of inter-party competition and public electoral pressure neglected in prior research. To accomplish this goal, I utilize random coefficient models designed to control for repeated annual measures of state-level data that overwhelm traditional analytic techniques. Findings suggest that violent crime, partisan affiliation of state legislators and governors, probation rates, citizen ideology, marijuana decriminalization, and recidivist-focused laws are associated with incarceration as hypothesized, as well as the African American presence net of crime and socioeconomic disadvantage. Contributing to the theoretical debates on democracy and punishment, this paper demonstrates that inter-party competition and public electoral pressure amplify incarceration in the context of Democratic Party dominance, where no liberalizing effects of competition were found. I conclude that legal and extralegal factors are associated with incarceration and suggest that the public did not oppose criminal justice expansion via democratic feedback mechanisms, so both penal populism (Pratt, 2008) and popular punitivism (Campbell et al., 2017) are valid interpretations of imprisonment politics during the analyzed period.

Issue competition in five countries: snakes in a tunnel

What determines the issue content of party competition? The extant literature is torn between issue ownership theories predicting contrasted partisan profiles and more strategic views of electoral platforms emphasizing parties’ incentives to converge on the priorities with the greatest payoffs. This chapter argues that parties are like snakes in tunnels: this metaphor conceptualizes parties’ incentives to emphasize contrasted issues to stay true to their identity and past priorities (the ‘snake’ component) as well as constraints exerted on those efforts by political opponents and context (the ‘tunnel’). Parties need to accommodate emerging problems and their competitors’ strategies, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. Utilizing analyses of Comparative Agendas Project data on issue attention in party manifestos, plus qualitative observations on single electoral campaigns and how parties ‘steal’ issues from each other, the chapter discusses the potential implications of our observations for the way elections influence policies, a topic at the core of the next chapter.

Do Elections (Still) Matter?

This book sheds new light on this central democratic concern based on an ambitious study of democratic mandates through the lens of agenda-setting in five West European countries since the 1980s. The authors develop and test a new model bridging studies of party competition, pledge fulfilment, and policymaking. The core argument is that electoral priorities are a major factor shaping policy agendas, but mandates should not be mistaken as partisan. Parties are like ‘snakes in tunnels’: they have distinctive priorities but they need to respond to emerging problems and their competitors’ priorities, resulting in considerable cross-partisan overlap. The ‘tunnel of attention’ remains constraining in the policymaking arena, especially when opposition parties have resources to press governing parties to act on the campaign priorities. This key aspect of mandate responsiveness has been neglected so far because in traditional models of mandate representation, party platforms are conceived as a set of distinctive priorities, whose agenda-setting impact ultimately depends on the institutional capacity of the parties in office. Rather differently, this book suggests that counter-majoritarian institutions and windows for opposition parties generate key incentives to stick to the mandate. It shows that these findings hold across five very different democracies: Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. The results contribute to a renewal of mandate theories of representation and lead to question the idea underlying much of the comparative politics literature that majoritarian systems are more responsive than consensual ones.

Snakes in a tunnel? Parties, mandates, and agendas

This chapter presents a general theoretical framework to analyse party competition and its effects on policymaking. There are two perspectives: that parties still matter for policymaking despite signs of decline and that parties are driven by instrumental considerations and will do what it takes to get elected. This chapter adopts an intermediary perspective, arguing that campaign priorities not only reflect partisan preferences, but also respond to rival parties’ campaigns. This leads to an important common ground across different parties regarding their issue emphasis, i.e. the ‘tunnel’ of attention. Moving away from the heart of the tunnel is possible, but potentially costly. Post election, the victorious party will deliver on its programme priorities not least because of the pressure of junior coalition partners and the opposition. The tunnel of attention thus constrains party competition, but triggers mandate implementation.

If not party mandates, then what? The determinants of legislative agendas

What determines changes in the focus of laws over time? Before turning to the impact of democratic mandates, this chapter examines alternative explanations focusing on globalization, the rise of regulatory politics and its effects on redistribution; social change and the emergence of post-materialism; friction and cognitive constraints resulting in punctuated equilibrium patterns of attention; and the hypothesis of a broadening of policy agendas leading governments to deal with a growing number of issues. Panel negative binomial regressions of data collected by the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP) on legislative priorities in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, confirm that further explanations are needed. Among the different explanations that we explore, only globalization seems to have some impact on legislative agendas in terms of the relative weight of regulatory and redistributive policies. These first tests set the landscape and provide guidance as to potential covariates to take into account when analysing the role of parties and party competition in the subsequent chapters.

Conclusions

This chapter summarizes the book’s main findings, in particular the existence of “tunnels of attention” constraining campaign agendas and their implications with regard to mandate responsiveness and its institutional determinants. Coalition partners, as well as opposition parties, emerge as key forces incentivizing governments to stick to their progamme. Majoritarian systems provide governments with unique powers to shape policy, but excessive majoritarianism seems to limit their incentives to respect their mandate. In contrast, counter-majoritarian institutions generate hurdles on executive capacity, but also incentives to respond to ‘tunnel’ incentives. These conclusions have important implications for party competition, democratic representation, public policy and comparative institutions. They point to multiple intriguing directions for future research.

Negative Shocks and Political Parties’ Territorial Demands: The Institutional Roots of Party Competition

Why do political parties set an extreme or a more moderate position on the territorial dimension? Despite previous works have paid recent interest on the dynamics of the political competition on the territorial dimension, we know much less about the factors that lead to a centrifugal or a centripetal party competition on the same dimension. In this article, we offer a new way of understanding it: we argue that parties’ policy position on the decentralization continuum not only depends on the level of territorial decentralization, but also on the credibility of the institutional agreement established through the country’s constitutional rigidity. If the original territorial pact does not guarantee that the majority group will have its “hands tied” so that it does not reverse the territorial agreement, political parties will have incentives to adopt more extreme positions on the territorial dimension. We test this argument with a dataset covering around 460 political parties clustered in 28 European countries from 1999 to 2019 and by exploiting the fact that the 2008 economic crisis unleashed a shock on the territorial design. Our results confirm our expectations. We show that both the federal deal and the credibility of the institutional arrangement through constitutional rigidity are necessary conditions to appease parties’ demands on the territorial dimension. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how institutions shape political competition along the territorial dimension.

“Mass,” “Movement,” “Personal,” or “Cartel” Party? Fidesz’s Hybrid Organisational Strategy

In the last decade, Fidesz has dominated the Hungarian political landscape, becoming the most extensive Hungarian party organisation in terms of party members, structuration, resources, and influence. The party’s organisational development has been determined by a constant strategic adaptation to new circumstances of political reality and new demands of the electorate. The article argues that in three phases of its development, Fidesz adopted different party organisation guidelines. As a result, a hybrid party architecture was formed involving various characteristics and strategies of mass parties (e.g., relatively large membership and ideological communication), movement parties (i.e., top-down generation of mass rallies and protest activities), personal parties (i.e., personalisation, centralisation of party leadership), and cartel parties (i.e., use of state resources, control over party competition). Instead of switching from one strategy to another, the party often used these strategies simultaneously. This flexible party organisation can balance among the different needs of effective governance, constant mobilisation, and popular sovereignty. The article aims to dissect these building blocks of Fidesz to gain insight into the emergence of the hybrid party model.