2 Contexts of party mobilization HANSPETER KRIESI
According to our assumptions outlined in the previous chapter, the political potentials created by the new cleavage are rather similar from one Western European democracy to the other. All these countries are characterized by increasingly comparable social, economic and cultural context conditions. Defined in most general terms, the relevant societal context characteristics which determine the political potential of the new cleavage in a given country include the relative strength of the country’s traditional cleavages, the overall level of its economic and human devel- opment, its traditional openness to the world markets and its integration into the global community, its current economic difficulties, and its definition of the national community and the perceived threat to this community by processes of denationalization. While insisting on the broadly similar societal contexts of our six countries, we shall also point out some variability with regard to these general context character- istics, variability which mainly depends on the size of the countries. Three of our six countries belong to the small European democracies – Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands in that order – while our three other countries – France, the United Kingdom and Germany – are the three largest European democracies. In this chapter, we shall first consider one by one the societal context characteristics before moving on to a presentation of the more political context conditions.
The broadly similar latent political potentials determined by the set of societal context characteristics define the demand side of the mobiliza- tion by the political parties. They constitute the necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the transformation of the national political space. Compared to the demand side, we expect the supply of mobiliza- tion efforts by the political parties to vary more strongly from one country to the other as a function of a set of more specifically political factors. These include processes of dealignment in the party system, the established structure of the national party system and the electoral system, as well as the strategies of the mainstream parties with respect
23
24 Hanspeter Kriesi
to the mobilization of the new challengers. In discussing the political conditions influencing the mobilization of the latent potentials, we adopt a developmental approach which distinguishes between the determinants of the original electoral breakthrough of the parties con- stituting the driving force for the transformation of the national political space and the subsequent reactions of the mainstream parties which reinforces and stabilizes the transformation of the political space.
As we know from Schattschneider (1960: 2), the outcome of all poli- tical contests is determined by the scope of public involvement in conflicts. We focus here on the political conditions that allow for the expansion of the scope of conflict with regard to the issues linked to the new structural cleavage. An issue does not become an issue, merely because someone says it is. An issue becomes an issue as a result of the mobilization of the political potentials based on structural cleavages. As Schattschneider (1960: 72f.) has formulated it: ‘To understand the nature of party conflict it is necessary to consider the function of the cleavages exploited by the parties in their struggle for supremacy. Since the development of cleavages is a prime instrument of power, the party which is able to make its definition of the issues prevail is likely to take over the government.’ Following up on our argument of the last chapter, in making its definition of the issues prevail, a party not only imposes itself in the struggle for power, but, more fundamentally, also shapes the pattern of political contests and transforms the dimensions of the political space.
The societal context
The relative strength of the traditional cleavages and the new cleavage
The relative strength of the traditional cleavages and the new cleavage determines the openness of the political system for new political conflicts in the broadest sense of the term. The stronger the relative strength of the traditional political divisions, the smaller is the capacity of the new conflict between winners and losers of the opening up of the national borders to destructure the national political landscape (Bartolini and Mair 1990; Kriesi and Duyvendak 1995). To put it simply: in a country, such as Northern Ireland, where entrenched religious conflicts predomi- nate domestic politics, the new division between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ will only play a subsidiary role. In such a situation, the new division will
Contexts of party mobilization 25
be instrumentalized by the opponents of the traditional conflict, but it will hardly be able to restructure the political space. According to this hypothesis, we expect a zero-sum relationship with regard to the strength of the traditional and the new cleavages. For the same reason, we also expect individual-level differences within national contexts: the stronger the integration of citizens in traditional political organizations like par- ties, trade unions, associations, but also in churches and confessional organizations, the more difficult it will be to mobilize them on the basis of the new structural conflict.
Table 2.1 presents indicators for the strength of the two most impor- tant traditional cleavages – the religious and the class cleavage – in our six countries. With respect to the religious cleavage, we report five indicators: the level of church attendance, the share of those who are unaffiliated to any particular denomination, the average religiosity, the membership in religious organizations and the level of militancy of those involved in these organizations. These indicators come from the ESS (European Social Survey). With respect to all five of them, our countries can be compared to the overall average among the twenty-two countries covered by the ESS. According to these indicators, the religious cleavage appears to a large extent pacified in all of Europe, and especially so in our six countries. Austria is the only one among our countries where all five indicators consistently point to an above average intensity of religious involvement, and where, accordingly, we may assume that the religious cleavage is still of some relevance. The Netherlands and Switzerland are next in line, with France being the one country where all our indicators are characterized by particularly low levels.
For the class cleavage, we have three indicators: the number of work- ing days lost due to strikes, trade union membership and the level of militancy of those involved in trade unions. As far as the loss of working days is concerned, there are two measures – one each for the early and late 1990s – and the percentage difference between the two. Again, all indicators point to the pacification of the class cleavage in Europe overall, and in our six countries in particular. France constitutes the exception in this respect. While trade union membership is, and has traditionally been, weak in France, the strike intensity and the small core group of active trade union members is still rather militant. This confirms what has been found in a comparative analysis of the mobilization of social movements in four among our six countries – France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland – during the period
26 Hanspeter Kriesi Table 2.1 Strength of traditional cleavages in the six countries
(a) Religious cleavage
Unaffiliated Church to any
attendance church in Country in %a %b
Membership
in religious Religiosity organizations
meansc in %d 5.2 17.9
5.2 31.7 5.1 26.2 3.8 4.7 4.3 13.5
4.2 18.8 5.0 13.2
3.1 (CZ) 4.7 (FR) 7.7 (GR) 31.7 (AT)
Militancy (means)e
.
2.1 (244) 1.6 (376) 2.4 (60) 2.3 (232)
2.0 (271) 1.9 (2325)
0.4 (GR) 2.6 (SW)
Militancy (means)e
.
2.7 (89) 1.6 (66) 4.1 (48) 2.5 (88)
2.9 (91) 2.3 (1573)
0.3 (HU) 4.1 (FR)
Switzerland 11.3 Austria 19.2 Netherlands 12.2 France 7.7 United 12.6
Kingdom Germany 9.2 Overall 18.0
average Minimum 7.7 Maximum 32.4
37.5
28.6
56.3 51.4 51.3
39.1 35.1
(FR) 2.9 (GR) (I) 70.3 (S)
(b) Class cleavage
Working Working
Difference
Trade union membership in % of adult populationd
10.0 21.5 21.6
9.0
15.6
14.0 21.5
5.2 (PT) 64.5 (DK)
Switzerland 1 Austria 6 Netherlands 33 France 95 United 24
Kingdom Germany 17 Overall 66
average Minimum 1 Maximum 451
(CH)
(ES) 182
91–95 v. 2 100
1 –83
4 –88 68 –28 21 –13
2 –88 52 –21
days lost days lost
91–95f 96–00f 96–00f
1 50 –60
a Source: ESS5.0, question C14: % attending church once a week or more frequently. b Source: ESS5.0, question C9: % not considering themselves as belonging to any particular religion or denomination.
c Source: ESS5.0, question C13: average scale value, 0 (= not religious at all), 10 (= very religious).
Contexts of party mobilization 27
Notes to Table 2.1 (cont.)
d Source: ESS5.0, questions E1 to E12.
e Source: ESS5.0, questions B15 to B24, summarized to participation scale, 0
(= inactive), 10 (= very active), calculated for those most militant in religious organizations/trade unions (questions E1 to E12). The most militant are defined as those who are involved in at least two out of four possible activities (= being a member, participating in the organization’s activities, donating money, doing voluntary work). f Source: OECD statistics, reported in Joanne Monger (2003). ‘International comparisons of labour disputes in 2000’, Labour Market Trends, January: 19–27. Reported are working days not worked per 1,000 employees in all industries and services.
1975–89 (Kriesi and Duyvendak 1995): the mobilizing capacity of the class cleavage proved to be much greater in France than elsewhere, while the mobilization by new social movements was comparatively weak in France – confirming the general hypothesis of a zero-sum relationship between traditional and new cleavages. From the develop- ment of the working days lost, we note, however, that, even in France, the saliency of the traditional class conflict has been decreasing during the 1990s. Moreover, we also note from Table 2.1 that, compared to a country like Spain, where the number of working days lost is still much higher, by the end of the 1990s, even in France the class conflict has become quite pacified.
From this discussion, we may deduce that, in all six countries, there is considerable political space for the formation of a new political cleavage focusing on the conflict between integration and demarcation. In other words, we may expect that the structural potentials created by the processes of denationalization will be articulated in the national poli- tical space of all six countries. Given the remaining mobilizing capacity of the class conflict in France, we expect that the traditional class-based opposition between (welfare) state expansion and market liberalization (economic liberalism) is likely to reduce the impact of the new conflict on the parties’ mobilization during electoral campaigns and, to the extent that the new conflict is articulated at all, the French public and the French political parties are expected to put a heavier accent on its economic aspects than their counterparts in the other countries. Given the remaining relevance of the religious conflict in Austria, we expect the traditional cultural opposition between cultural liberalism, on the one hand, and the defence of traditional cultural values concerning the
28 Hanspeter Kriesi church, the army and law and order, on the other hand, to be more
resilient than in the other countries.
Economic context conditions
Next, we consider the set of economic context characteristics. The overall level of social and economic development can be expected to play a prominent role with regard to the restructuring of the national political space. In socially and economically highly developed countries, we expect the new cleavage to be particularly strong, not only because the tradi- tional class cleavage tends to be pacified, but also because certain seg- ments of their populations risk losing most in the globalizing competition. The economic opportunities in such countries tend to attract migrants from the less developed parts of the world. This, in turn, increases the ethnic competition inside of these countries and leads to defensive reactions on the part of the native population – especially those who feel both culturally and economically threatened by the immigrants. In addition, the increasing international economic competition challenges the viability of these countries as places for production. The delocaliza- tion of productive capacities risks diminishing the life chances of those whose qualifications exist in abundance in less economically advanced countries. The corresponding fears are expected to be the more pro- nounced, the higher the unemployment rate in a given country. Thirdly, the more highly developed a country and the more privileged its citizens, the more likely it is that any form of supranational regulation will imply the sharing of some of the national economic advantages with less privileged populations. For less economically advanced countries, by contrast, opening up may constitute the opportunity to catch up econom- ically, socially and politically. This is, for example, reflected in the atti- tudes of the populations of the EU member states with regard to the EU integration process. Membership in the EU is typically more favourably evaluated in countries that are among the net receivers of the EU budget than in countries that belong to its net contributors (Nissen 2004: 25–6).
The impact of the level of economic development may be modified by the tradition of economic openness of a national context. In this respect, the small European countries have a long tradition of economic liberalism and integration into world markets (Katzenstein 1985). They have adopted strategies to compensate, at the national level, for the negative conse- quences of this integration. These strategies imply not only an expansion
Contexts of party mobilization 29
of the welfare state, but also measures specifically designed to protect those sectors of the economy which are oriented towards the domestic market. Such measures were especially important in the ‘liberal-conservative’ var- iant of democratic corporatism, which characterizes Switzerland, among others (Mach 2003). With the globalization process, this kind of compen- satory strategy is put under strong pressure, which leads to the creation of a large potential of losers in a country like Switzerland.
Table 2.2 presents six social and economic indicators, in addition to the population size of the six countries. The first two – the human development index and the GNP per capita corrected for purchasing power – are general indicators for their overall level of development. According to these indicators, all six countries are characterized by very high levels of development. They all belong to the richest, most devel- oped countries of the world. The three smaller countries – Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland – reach somewhat higher levels than the three large ones, but the differences are small, indeed. Given their over- all level of development, all of our countries are also net contributors to the EU. France contributes least to the EU budget, less than 0.2% of its GNP; the other EU members contribute between 0.3 and 0.5% of their GNP. Switzerland would be the largest net contributor, if it were to become a member. As expected, the three smaller countries are also characterized by a greater economic openness with respect to the world markets. This is shown by our third indicator, which consists of the combined imports and exports measured as a percentage of a country’s GDP. In this respect, the Netherlands is the most open country. A more encompassing index of a country’s integration into the global community – the ‘globalization index’ – confirms that the three smaller countries are considerably more open to the world than the three larger ones.
Two of the three larger countries – France and Germany, but not the UK – appear to have more difficulties than the smaller countries in coping with the new economic challenges, as is indicated by their much higher unemployment rate. These two countries are also charac- terized by the highest level of social expenditures, which may have something to do with their particular economic difficulties. However, with the exception of the UK, the level of social expenditures of our selection of countries proves to be remarkably similar, as is illustrated by our last indicator. It is the liberal welfare state which sets the UK apart. The other five countries (even Switzerland) all have variants of the more generous continental European welfare state.
Table 2.2 Social and economic indicators Human
Import and export as % of GDP (2002/3)c
Social expenditures as % of GDP (1995)f
Switzerland Austria Netherlands France
United Kingdom Germany Overall average
7.3
0.947 0.936 0.943 0.938 0.939 0.930 0.892 (OECD)
32,700 30,800 30,400 28,300 30,100 27,600 23,300 (OECD- Europe) 54,000 (LUX) 18,800 (PT)
81.1 102.0 119.7
3 9 5
3.6 5.2 6.6 9.9 4.7
25.5
27.1
28.0
30.1
22.8
29.6
24.7 (OECD-18)
Maximum Minimum
0.963 (NO) 0.904 (PT)
161.8 (BE) 23.4 (USA)
1 (Singapore)13.5 (BE) 29 (GR) 3.6 (CH)
33.4 (S) 15.7 (AUS)
Population size (millions) (2000)
development index (2003)a
GNP/capita, PPP, US$ (2003)b
Globalization Index, rank (2005)d
Unemployment rate (2005)e
8.1 15.9 58.9 59.5 82.8
50.4 53.2 67.8 42.2
18
12
21
31 (Poland)
11.7
8.6 (Euro Area)
a Source: http://hdr.undp.org.
b Source: OECD.
c Import and export of goods and services as % of GDP. Source: World Bank.
d Source: www.atkearney.com. This index incorporates measures such as trade and investment flows, movement of people across borders, volumes of international telephone traffic, internet usage and participation in international organizations.
e Source: The Economist, 29 October 2005: Economic and financial indicators.
f Source: Scharpf and Schmidt (2000: 365, Table A.27a) (including private mandatory benefits).
(OECD-18)
Contexts of party mobilization 31
According to their generally very high level of development, the poli- tical potentials for the new cleavage are likely to be large in all six countries. This is especially true for the larger ones among them, which do not have such a pronounced tradition of economic openness as the three small open economies. However, the respective differences are not as pronounced as we might have expected. Even the three larger countries are characterized by a high degree of integration into the world economy and into the global community. What really distinguishes France and Germany (but not the UK) from the smaller countries is their greater level of unemployment, which points to more serious difficulties concerning their adaptation to the new realities of an increasingly integrated world economy. Ceteris paribus, these difficulties lead us to expect that the citizens in France and Germany feel more threatened by the international economic competition and that, in these two countries, economic appeals to the losers of the processes related to globalization will fall on particu- larly fertile grounds. Given that, as we have just seen, the class conflict in France has still a considerable mobilizing capacity, this economic appeal should be most pronounced in France.
Cultural context conditions
The impact of the economic context may be modified by the country- specific cultural heritage. In our context, this concerns above all the definition of the national community and the perceived threat to this community by processes of denationalization. Thus, the way Europeans view the European integration process cannot only be explained by the relative economic benefits and costs accruing to a country from its membership in the EU. As Diez Medrano (2003) has observed, the country-specific images of the EU and of the European integration pro- cess have deep cultural roots. They are filtered by national or subnational cultures. The Europeans’ attitudes and opinions with respect to the EU are shaped by cultural repertoires which, in turn, are rooted in their national histories and their collective experience. The studies of Hooghe and Marks (2004) and Kriesi (2002) support this analysis by showing the key importance of national identities for Eurosceptic attitudes among the general public. For different reasons, the populations in three of our countries – Germany, France and the Netherlands – have generally viewed the European integration process quite favourably. They all belong to the core of the six original members. Austria is a latecomer to
32 Hanspeter Kriesi
the EU – its permanent neutrality was the main reason for its delayed application. When they had to express themselves about EU membership in the 1994 referendum, the Austrians embraced it with a two-thirds majority. However, more recently, with the exception of the Germans, the citizens of all these countries have become more Eurosceptical – as the French and Dutch ‘no’ to the EU Constitution in 2005, and the Austrian reactions to the transit traffic across the Alps and to the Haider affair in 2000 illustrate. The Swiss and the British have always been even more Eurosceptical. The British view EU membership at best as a necessary evil (Haller, 1999). Above all, however, they perceive EU membership as a threat to their national sovereignty (Diez Medrano 2003). Similarly, if the Swiss have not joined the Union so far, it is not so much for economic reasons. The main reasons for their Euroscepticism are cultural and political: the Swiss perceive the EU as a threat to their cherished political institutions – neutrality, federalism and direct democracy, which consti- tute the core of their national identity. Just as the British, the Swiss are afraid to lose their national identity when joining the EU.
Similarly, the presence of immigrants poses not only an economic, but also a cultural, threat to the national community, especially if they come from a culturally very distant background (Golder 2003; Lubbers et al. 2002; Perrineau 1997; Quillian 1995). Thus, on the basis of Eurobarometer data, Quillian (1995) has shown that racial prejudice against minority groups increases with perceived threats to dominant national groups. Perceived threat, in turn, is a function of both eco- nomic conditions and the size of the minorities. Accordingly, prejudice against immigrants and racial minorities increases with economic reces- sion and with the size of these groups. But the impact of the presence of immigrants is also likely to be filtered by the cultural heritage, which, in this respect, consists above all in the conceptualization of a country’s political community, nationhood and citizenship.
Following Koopmans et al. (2005) and Koopmans and Kriesi (1997), we can distinguish between two dimensions of citizenship. The first dimension refers to the extent to which immigrants and their descendants as individuals have access to a treatment fully equal to that accorded to individuals belonging to the indigenous population. At stake here is the extent to which access to citizenship rights is ‘colour blind’ in the sense that every legal resident has access to equal citizenship rights. On this dimension, an ethnic position contrasts with a civic-territorial position. The second dimension refers to the extent to which assimilation of the
Contexts of party mobilization 33
immigrants to the dominant culture is required or not. Here, an assimila- tionist position requiring the prospective citizen to adapt to the dominant culture (cultural monism) opposes a multicultural position helping mino- rities to preserve their language, culture and religion (cultural pluralism). There are at least three models of citizenship and nationhood: the ‘differ- entialist’ or ‘ethnic’ model, which is both ethnic and assimilationist, the ‘universalistic’ or ‘republican’ model, which combines civic-territorial and assimilationist characteristics, and the ‘multicultural’ model, which com- bines a civic-territorial position with multiculturalism. The three models differ sharply from one another with respect to their openness and inte- grative capacity (Koopmans and Kriesi 1997). We may expect them to have diverging implications for the development of the new cleavage. The ethnic and the republican models, which emphasize the cultural differ- ences between the natives and the immigrants, are more likely than the multicultural model to contribute to a reinforcement of the new conflict.
Koopmans et al. (2005) have studied the development of the concep- tions of citizenship in five of our six countries from 1980 to 2002. They note some convergence on the first dimension, but increased divergence with regard to the second one. On the first dimension, the range of variation is considerably smaller in 2002 than in 1980, because the ethnic model of citizenship in Switzerland and especially Germany has lost much of its original sharpness. Both countries have come to terms with the fact that the former guestworkers are there to stay. On the second dimension, Britain and especially the Netherlands have embarked on the path of multiculturalism (with Germany, led by the red-green alliance, trailing behind them), while Switzerland and France have stubbornly continued to refuse concessions to immigrants in the cultural sphere. As a result, the distinction between culturally pluralist and monist approaches to migrant integration has become much more pronounced by 2002 than it was in the early 1980s. Britain remains different from the Netherlands, because of its weaker version of multi- culturalism, France remains different from Switzerland, because its republican regime grants citizenship rights much more easily. Austria, the country not studied by Koopmans et al. (2005), is likely to resemble its two German-speaking neighbours in this respect. Combining the cultural preconditions with regard to European integration (conception of national sovereignty) and with regard to immigration (conception of citizenship), we arrive at the four-fold classification of our six countries presented in Table 2.3.
34 Hanspeter Kriesi
Table 2.3 Classification of cultural context conditions Conception of citizenship
Afraid to lose national sovereignty in EU
Yes No
Cultural pluralism (multiculturalism)
UK NL
Cultural monism (assimilation)
CH
A, D, F
The combined cultural conditions predict a particularly large potential for the new cleavage between winners and losers of denationalization in the Swiss case, where the two exacerbating conditions cumulate, and the smallest potential in the Netherlands, where both of these conditions are largely absent. The other four countries are intermediate cases, with British conditions favouring Euroscepticism and Austrian, German and French conditions favouring opposition to immigration. The combina- tion of economic openness with a tradition of cultural closure and a cumulated cultural threat as in the Swiss case is likely to constitute a particularly explosive mixture which creates tensions that are difficult to resolve. A similar case would be the Flanders region in Belgium.
As we have observed, the perceived threat also depends on the num- ber and kind of immigrants. Table 2.4 presents some key figures con- cerning the foreign population in our six countries. Concerning the shares of the foreign population, two of the smaller countries stick out – Switzerland and the Netherlands – which both have a particularly large share of roughly one-fifth of residents with foreign origins. The differ- ence between the two is that, in the Swiss case, these foreigners are non- naturalized residents, while a large part of the residents with foreign origins in the Netherlands have become Dutch citizens. The Dutch not only have a much higher naturalization rate than the Swiss, they also have residents from former colonies with citizenship rights (e.g. the Surinamese). France, the Netherlands and the UK are all former colonial powers, which implies that their foreign populations have a large non-Western component. The German-speaking countries, Austria, Germany and, to some extent, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, by contrast, have large shares of immigrants from the Balkan and from Turkey – two regions with a culture quite distinct from their own indigenous traditions. Although Switzerland has by far
Table 2.4 Foreign population Total population,
Foreign (born) population, in %b
Naturalization rates as % of foreign populationc
% non-Western (European)b
Main origin of non-
Western Europeansb Year
Country
in millionsa 7.3
Switzerland Austria Netherlands
22.3 8.8 19.0
–
28 63 54
Ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey 2004 Ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey 2001 Turkey, Maghreb, 2004
France United
58.5 59.6
5.6 8.3
4.6 3.6
66 48
Suriname
Maghreb, Turkey 1999 India, Pakistan, 2002
Kingdom Germany
82.5
8.8
2.5
41
Caribbean
Turkey, Ex-Yugoslavia 2004
8.0 16.3
2.0 7.1
a Source: Eurostat, Austria: www.statistik.at.
b Source: Eurostat, Austria: www.statistik.at; Netherlands: Allochtonen in Nederland 2004, Den Haag: CBS; France: www.ined.fr. For the Netherlands, the figure is from the Dutch SCP and presumably indicates the share of the population with foreign origin, whether naturalized or not.
c Source: Koopmans et al. (forthcoming), for year 2000.
36 Hanspeter Kriesi
the largest share of non-naturalized foreign residents, its foreign popu- lation is, overall, culturally least distinct from the natives.
There is one category of foreigners that has become especially visible over the past decade – political refugees who seek asylum in Western Europe. The visibility of this particular group is largely a result of their construction as a social and political problem, as Koopmans (1996, 1999) has shown. It is, therefore, important to consider the influx of political refugees over the last decade. Figure 2.1 presents the respective flows for the period 1995 to 2003 as a percentage of the resident population. As this figure shows, the German-speaking countries and the Netherlands were faced with a first wave of refugees in the early 1990s – mainly a result of the catastrophic political events in former Yugoslavia. The Swiss and German figures are most impressive. Given the cultural heritage just described, it is not surprising that the question of the refugees became the most important problem in these two coun- tries in the course of the 1990s. With the exception of Germany, these countries were hit by a second wave of refugees under the impact of the Kosovo crisis at the end of the 1990s. France and the UK are much less concerned by the refugee problem.
What does this all amount to in terms of the expected potential for the new cleavage? Summarized most simply, immigration creates a consid- erable potential for the mobilization of the new cleavage in all six countries. In every one of them, the share of the foreign population is sufficiently large, and, even where it is relatively small, part of it is culturally sufficiently distinct to become highly visible and potentially threatening. Given the cultural heritage, the large share of foreign residents and the strong influx of political refugees seem to create a particularly large potential in Switzerland. But, even in the multicultural and traditionally pro-European Netherlands, where the foreigners are most easily naturalized, the fact that a large share of immigrants comes from a culturally quite different background constitutes a latent poten- tial that is easily exploitable by political entrepreneurs bent on mobiliz- ing those on the losers’ side of the new cleavage.
The political context
As indicated at the outset of this chapter, the form and outcome of the political articulation of the new cleavage and the consequent restructur- ing of the national political landscape depend, of course, on the political
Contexts of party mobilization 37
Figure 2.1 Number of new asylum-seekers per year and country Source: Eurostat, Switzerland: Bundesamt für Statistik
context conditions. Given that we assume the populist right to be the driving force of the expansion of conflict with respect to the new cleavage, we focus here on those political factors which have an immedi- ate impact on its mobilization. Van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie (2005)
38 Hanspeter Kriesi
have shown that such a focus is very promising for the explanation of country-specific differences in the success rate of new right-wing popu- list parties. For our purposes, the explanation of the success rate of a new challenger from the populist right or its functional equivalent among mainstream parties is the key to the understanding of the larger question concerning the transformation of the national party systems as a whole, since we expect the breakthrough of a challenger from the populist right to be the driving force for the transformation of the national political space. We distinguish between three key aspects of the political context: processes of dealignment and the established structure of the national party system, which set the general framework; the electoral system in particular, which defines the institutional poli- tical opportunity structure for the breakthrough of new challengers; and the strategies of the mainstream parties which specify the interac- tion context between the major partisan protagonists and the dynamics of adjustment once a new challenger has broken through.
The general framework: processes of dealignment and the established structure of the party systems
The decline of traditional cleavages leads to processes of structural dealignment in the party system, i.e. to a weakening of the voters’ attachments to the established parties. These processes are expected to be further enhanced by three additional factors of change (Dalton et al. 1984; Lachat 2004, Chapter 1), which all contribute to functional dealignment, i.e. a greater detachment of the voters from the parties in general: the ‘cognitive mobilization’ of the electorate, i.e. its greater political sophistication; the parties’ increasing difficulties in fulfilling their traditional functions; and the modernization of electoral cam- paigns, which also undermines the role of political parties more gener- ally. While the dealignment based on the dissolution of traditional cleavages is expected to be temporary and may give rise to a realignment under the impact of the articulation of the new structural cleavage, the functional dealignment linked to the three additional factors predicts a generally declining structuring capacity of parties. Whatever their ori- gin, the processes of dealignment are expected to lead to an increasing level of volatility and instability in the party systems, which facilitates the rise of new challengers and the transformation of established com- petitors. The indicators presented in Table 2.5 – party membership,
Contexts of party mobilization 39 Table 2.5 Indicators of dealignment: volatility, party identification and
party membership
Country
Switzerland Netherlands Austria Germany France United
Kingdom
Party membership change in % (1980–2000)a
–29 –32 –30
–9 –65 –50
Party identification (all identifiers) trend 1975–92b
–
0.09
–
–0.52 –0.86 –0.81
Party identification (all identifiers) trend 1970–96c
–
–0.33 –1.12 –0.57 –0.67 –1.89
Electoral volatility, per annum change 1950–90d
0.16 0.22 0.05 0.21
–0.17 0.01
a Mair and van Biezen (2001: Table 2, p. 12).
b Schmitt and Holmberg (1995: Table 4.1, p. 107): unstandardized linear regression coefficients for time trend.
c Dalton (2000: Table 2.1, p. 25): unstandardized regression coefficients for time trend. d Dalton, McAllister and Wattenberg (2000: Table 3.1, p. 41).
party identification, and electoral volatility – generally confirm this expectation for all of our six countries. Apart from Germany, where the extension of the party system to the East during reunification temporarily increased membership in established parties, party mem- bership has been decreasing everywhere and shows no sign of recover- ing. Party identification also tends to decrease in all six countries, while the available data indicate that – with the exception of France – electoral volatility is on the rise.
If all national party systems are confronted with the same type of dealignment processes, i.e. with the same kind of challenge, they still differ with regard to their established structure, i.e. with regard to the immediate context for the adjustment by the mainstream parties to the new challenge. Following Sartori (1976; 1997: Chapter 3), the estab- lished structure of the party system may be described by the effective number of parties, which defines its ‘format’ and the degree of polariza- tion (or ‘ideological distance’) between the parties, which defines its ‘mechanics’. The number of relevant parties is essentially a function of
40 Hanspeter Kriesi
three parameters – the number of traditional cleavages, the electoral system and the degree to which party systems are ‘nationalized’. Countries with a large number of cleavages and countries with propor- tional electoral systems tend to have multiparty systems, while countries with few social cleavages and majoritarian electoral systems tend to have party systems dominated by few, possibly two, major parties. Moreover, in any kind of system, the lack of national standardization of the party system tends to increase the number of parties. We also notice this to be true in our six countries (see Table 2.6). Among our set of countries, Switzerland has traditionally been characterized by the largest number of cleavages, it has a rather proportional electoral system and the least nationalized party system (Caramani 2004). Accordingly, it also has had the largest effective number of parties in the post-war period (1945–96). The effective number of parties in the Netherlands has been almost as large, given the extreme proportionality
Table 2.6 Indicators of the party system: number of parties, type of democracy and ideological distance
Country
Switzerland Netherlands Austria Germany Francef United
Kingdom
Number of cleavages (1945–80)a
3 2 2 2 2 1
Effective Dispro- number of
portionality parties (1945–96)b (1945–96)c
2.5 5.2 1.3 4.7 2.5 2.5 2.5 2.9
21.1 3.4 10.3 2.1
Consensus/ Ideological majoritarian
distanced democracye 39 1.77
31 1.23 38 .33 26 .67 52 –1.00 46 –1.21
Number of parties
a Lijphart (1984: 130): number of issue-dimensions (only the four ‘Rokkanean’ cleavages: cultural–ethnic, religious, urban–rural, socio-economic (= class), 1945–80). b Lijphart (1999: 162): average electoral disproportionality, 1945–96.
c Lijphart (1999: 76f.): mean effective number of parties, 1945–96.
d Budge et al. (2001: 54–6): distance between mean left–right party policy positions 1949–98 of most distant mainstream parties; own calculations for Switzerland.
e Lijphart (1999: 312): factor score on the first, executives-parties dimension 1945–96. f For columns 1–4: Fifth Republic.
Contexts of party mobilization 41
of the Dutch electoral system. Austria and Germany have had moder- ately pluralist party systems with three relevant parties throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the British system has traditionally been dominated by two parties. In France, the number of parties is larger than we would expect on the basis of the extreme disproportionality of its electoral system. This unexpected result can be explained by the fact that France has a majoritarian runoff system for national elections, which allows smaller parties to survive in the first ballot, and it has adopted variants of PR for European, regional and local elections.
As can also been seen from Table 2.6, over the post-war period as a
whole the ideological distance between the most polarized mainstream
parties has been rather low in Germany and in the three small coun-
1
tries.
mechanics of a party system are first of all a function of the strength of the traditional cleavages. Countries with profound traditional cleavages are likely to have had more polarized party systems than countries with largely pacified cleavages. This partially accounts for the case of France. Secondly, with respect to the mechanics, the electoral system is only indirectly relevant – insofar as it determines the number of parties in the system: the larger the number of parties, the greater the chance of polarization between some parties. As we have just observed, in propor- tional representation (PR) systems, the number of parties tends to be larger than in majoritarian systems. Accordingly, polarization is always possible in countries with PR systems. In Sartori’s (1976) terms, they can tend towards ‘polarized’ or ‘moderate’ pluralism. But, what Sartori seems to have overlooked, the number of parties is also relevant for the possibility of polarization in majoritarian systems. Note that the two most polarized countries in our group have majoritarian electoral sys- tems. Based on Down’s (1957) seminal model, we would have expected the main competitors in majoritarian systems to converge towards the median voter. However, as Powell (2000: 198) has observed, ‘the search for a voter plurality does not necessarily mean moving to the centre. In some circumstances it may and in others it may not.’ Whether the
By contrast, the UK and France have been more polarized. The
1 The mainstream parties most distant from each other for the respective countries are the following: SP and FDP (Switzerland); PvdA and VVD (Netherlands); SPÖ and ÖVP (Austria); SPD and CDU (Germany); PCF and RPR (France); and Labour and Conservatives (UK). The distance is measured on the left–right scale and for each party the mean is taken over the whole period in question (see Budge et al. 2001: 54–6).
42 Hanspeter Kriesi
parties in a majoritarian system converge or polarize depends on the number of the parties. The mechanics of Downs’ theory presume a two- party system. In practice, even in majoritarian systems, the number of candidates is usually larger than two. There is only one consistent two- party system (the US) and, even there, third-party candidates often participate in the presidential elections. Majoritarian systems face per- sistent ‘coordination failures’ in that the anticipation of defeat does not sufficiently encourage third-party candidates and voters to join forces with one of the two larger parties. The series of electoral victories scored by the British Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher illustrates this point: they benefited from the split in the opposition and won in spite of their rather radical programme.
In fact, ceteris paribus, polarization is more likely in majoritarian systems, because PR systems are part and parcel of a model of democracy – Lijphart’s (1999) ‘consensus democracy’ – that imposes institutional constraints on the degree of polarization. By dividing political power in such a way that no single actor can impose its preferences, ‘consensus’ democracies require parties to cooperate. By contrast, the concentration of power in the model of ‘majoritarian democracies’ allows the winner to take all and to impose his policies. As a result, the mechanics of majoritarian democracies are more competitive, while those of consensus democracies are rather character- ized by perpetual negotiations between all major parties. The first dimension in Lijphart’s (1999) empirical analysis – the executives- parties dimension – quite nicely summarizes the institutional constraints of consensus democracies for the mechanics of the party systems. As the last column in Table 2.6 shows, according to this indicator, our six countries fall into three quite distinct categories: the pure majoritarian democracies (France and the UK), the pure consensus democracies (Switzerland and the Netherlands), and the two intermediary cases (Austria and Germany), where the number of parties is limited in spite of the PR-dominated electoral systems.
Institutional opportunity structures: the electoral system and its consequences
The extent of the challenge faced by the established parties depends on the institutional access for new political parties. In this respect, there exists a big difference between majoritarian and consensus democracies.
Contexts of party mobilization 43
In majoritarian systems, the access for newcomers is much less open than
in consensus democracies. The key institution for the electoral break-
through of a new challenger is, of course, the electoral system. Thus, the
British majoritarian first-past-the-post electoral system goes a long way
to explaining the failure of the radical or populist right in Great Britain
(Ignazi 2003: 186). Generally, PR systems greatly facilitate the rise of new
challengers. To the extent, however, that the electoral threshold is high,
as is the case in Greece, Spain, Sweden or Germany, new challengers may
also find it difficult to establish themselves in PR systems. Golder (2003)
provides strong evidence that the success of the new populist right
depends on electoral institutions: these challengers clearly fare better
when the district magnitude is large and when there are more upper tier
2
actors in yet another way. As we have seen, proportional electoral systems are a key characteristic of consensus-democracies (Lijphart 1999). In such democracies (Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland), new populist challengers from the right not only benefit from easy access to institutions (e.g. because of proportional represen- tation or multilevel governments), but also from the collusive arrange- ments that often exist among the established parties and the social partners in such countries. Grand coalition governments as we often find them in consensus democracies are conducive to the mobilization of new challengers from the right as well as from the left (Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Kitschelt 2002). Thus, the early success of the German neo-fascist NPD in the late 1960s was in large measure a reaction to the grand coalition formed by the CDU and the SPD. Once competitive party politics were re-established between the CDU and the SPD, the NPD disappeared from the national scene.
Of course, the electoral breakthrough of a new challenger from the radical right not only depends on the institutional opportunity struc- ture, but also on its own resources. Thus, Bornschier (2005) argues that the electoral breakthrough of the radical right has a lot to do with its strategic flexibility, which allows it to capture the issues other parties have neglected. He attributes this flexibility to the hierarchical internal
2 There is also some evidence to the contrary – that proportional representation does not per se help to explain the variable success of the populist right (Carter 2002; van der Brug, Fennema and Tillie 2005).
seats.
Proportional systems facilitate the rise of new right-wing populist
44 Hanspeter Kriesi
structure of these parties, which sets them apart from the more open
character of the mainstream parties. He notes that, where a mainstream
conservative party was transformed programmatically, it also under-
went an organizational change building up hierarchical structures
allowing a charismatic leader to dominate the party. However, not all
parties of the populist right are well organized and have a charismatic
leader. Husbands (1998) maintains that such parties only gain electoral
support when they have the required organizational capacity and lea-
dership. The comparative analysis of Lubbers et al. (2002) confirms this
hypothesis. Remarkably, in their study, the characteristics of the right-
wing populist parties turn out to be more important for the electoral
success of these parties than any other political factor in their study.
According to this study, two of our six countries (Austria and France)
have well-organized parties of the new populist right, while three have
poorly organized parties of this type (Germany, the Netherlands and the
UK). Switzerland was not part of their study, but there can be no doubt
that, in the 1990s, the peripheral parties of the new populist right were
badly organized and led, while the restructured mainstream Swiss
People’s Party was exceptionally well organized, funded and led
3
gers, they provide strong incentives for the transformation of main- stream parties. For two reasons, we expect the restructuring of existing parties to be much more likely in majoritarian systems than in proportional ones. First, the number of mainstream parties is more limited in majoritarian systems and, as a consequence, their internal composition is likely to be more heterogeneous than in proportional ones. This is conducive to an increasing intensity of competition between factions within the mainstream parties, which opens up the possibility for major shifts in their internal power relations and, conse- quently, in their overall political orientation. Given that the new struc- tural cleavage cuts across traditional political conflict lines, we have additional reason to believe that the mainstream parties in majoritarian systems will be under particular strain. Secondly, in majoritarian
3 These results are not as straightforward as they might seem at first sight. As van der Brug (2003) observes, the usefulness of the concept ‘charisma’ is questionable for empirical studies: unless we define very strictly what is meant by ‘charisma’, the reasoning risks becoming circular, since successful politicians are easily called charismatic, while unsuccessful politicians never will become charismatic.
(Kriesi et al. 2005).
While majoritarian systems discourage the formation of new challen-
Contexts of party mobilization 45
systems, elections are zero-sum games, with the winner taking the prize. The lot of the opposition is particularly hard in such a system – especially when the same party loses a series of elections in a row. This combination of factors suggests that, in majoritarian systems, oppositional parties in general, but especially conservative parties in the opposition (such as the British Conservatives) are particularly likely to expand the scope of conflict on issues linked to the new cleavage, i.e. to adopt a more radical stance with regard to such issues.
Under PR systems, the situation for the transformation of main- stream conservative parties is also rather favourable in federalist states, where the parties are characterized by a high degree of regional sectionalism – such as in Austria and Switzerland, but to a lesser extent in Germany (with the exception of Bavaria). In such territorially frag- mented party systems, there is room for experimentation with the mobilization on new issues. One of the regional sections of a conserva- tive party may be captured by new challengers, who may then proceed to transform the entire party according to their own designs – provided they are sufficiently successful at the regional level.
The interaction context and the dynamics of adjustment: strategies of mainstream parties
A widely accepted hypothesis explains the success of new challengers of
the populist right by the preceding strategies of the mainstream parties:
according to this hypothesis, the rise of a new challenger in general, and
a new party from the populist right in particular, is greatly facilitated
when the mainstream parties have converged programmatically – as
they tend to do in consensus democracies. Variations of this hypothesis
have been formulated by Abedi (2002), Hainsworth (1992), Kitschelt
and McGann (1995), Kriesi (1999), Mair (1995), Rydgren (2005),
Sauger (2004a) and van der Brug et al. (2005). The empirical record
tends to support the convergence hypothesis, although at least one
4
study (Lubbers et al. 2002: 264) cannot confirm it.
our countries differ with regard to their degree of polarization. This is to suggest that the two more polarized countries – France and the UK – and the more competitive party system in Germany offer less favourable
4 The main discordant voice is Ignazi (2003).
As we have seen,
46 Hanspeter Kriesi
conditions for the breakthrough of new challengers than the less polar- ized and to some extent collusive systems of the consensus democracies. By focusing on the initial size of the niche, however, this hypothesis only deals with the preconditions of the electoral breakthrough of the new challengers. In her study of the success of ‘niche parties’, Meguid (2005) attempts to explain their subsequent electoral success by the strategic reactions of the mainstream competitors once the challengers have made their first entry into the electoral competition. According to her conception of strategies, parties compete by altering both policy positions and the salience and ownership of issue dimensions. This is very much in line with our own approach which, as we shall show in the next chapter, relies on both the parties’ issue-specific positioning and the salience they attribute to the various issues. Meguid distinguishes between three possible strategic options of mainstream parties with regard to the new issue raised by a niche party challenger: dismissive, accommodative and adversarial strategies. First, a mainstream party may decide to ignore the new issue. By adopting a dismissive strategy, it signals to the voters that the issue lacks merit. Although such a strategy does not call into question the distinctiveness or ownership of the challenger’s issue position, its salience-reducing effect will undermine the challenger’s electoral success. The ‘issue ownership theory’ predicts that mainstream parties will opt for such a strategy. According to this theory, parties try to draw attention to issues on which they believe they have an advantage over their competitors (Budge and Farlie 1983a; Robertson 1976). Moreover, it assumes that parties cannot easily enter into direct issue-specific competition, since they have an identity to defend which is rooted in social cleavages and associated with specific issues, all packaged by an ideology with references to the party’s history and to specific group interests: ‘Parties are historical beings. They stand for something. Each party is expected to stand for something that
separates it from competition’ (Klingemann et al. 1994: 24).
Secondly, a mainstream party may decide to compete with the chal- lenger by positioning itself close to the challenger’s position on the new issue. By adopting such an accommodative strategy, the mainstream party tries to close the niche for the new party. Kitschelt (1994) has called this the ‘oligopolistic strategy’. As Meguid points out, such a strategy undermines the challenger’s issue ownership and, a fortiori, its electoral success as the mainstream party tries to become the rightful owner of the issue. In this process the mainstream party is aided by its
Contexts of party mobilization 47
legislative experience and governmental effectiveness as well as its greater access to the voters. Thirdly, the mainstream party may declare its opposition to the challenger’s issue position. This reaction calls attention to the challenger and its issue dimension, leaving voters primed to cast their ballots on the basis of this new issue. The adversar- ial strategy also reinforces the challenger’s issue ownership by defining the mainstream party’s issue position in juxtaposition to that of the new party. As a result, this strategy is likely to reinforce the challenger’s electoral support. While the first two strategies are likely options for neighbouring parties from the same camp as the challenger, an adver- sarial strategy is most likely to pay off for a competitor from the opposite camp. As is stressed by Meguid, once we take into account that strategies may be used to alter issue salience and ownership, the standard conception of spatial models that parties can only affect the electoral support of neighbouring parties is no longer valid. The salience-altering aspects of adversarial tactics may allow mainstream parties who are not directly threatened by the challenger to use it as a weapon against their mainstream party opponents, along the lines of the old adage ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’.
We should add one more twist to the strategic toolkit of mainstream parties with regard to new challengers: we should distinguish the treat- ment of the issue-specific challenge from the strategic reaction with regard to the challenger as organization. With respect to organizational matters, the key issue is recognition of the challenger as a viable partner (Gamson 1975) and the choice is between stigmatization and coopera- tion/cooptation. Stigmatization is the strategy of the cordon sanitaire which openly attacks the new challengers and their style of doing politics and avoids any cooperation with them, while cooperation includes the mutual support of candidates and the acceptance of the new challenger as coalition partner. Concerning the effect of such strategies on the success of the new challengers, there are two competing hypotheses. On the one hand, cooperation is expected to contribute to the success of the populist right (or its national conservative alterna- tives): by cooperating with these new competitors, mainstream parties confer upon them the quality of respectable political actors, which is likely to contribute to their success. Ignazi’s (2003) argument is a variant of this type of reasoning. The rise of the German National Socialists to power is the classic illustration of this hypothesis and the experience of the first breakthrough of the Front National in France is
48 Hanspeter Kriesi
also frequently cited in its support (Mayer and Perrineau 1989: 345; Schain 1987: 239f.; Ignazi 2003). On the other hand, this hypothesis is put into question by the Austrian experience of the coalition govern- ment between the ÖVP and the FPÖ (since 2000), which suggests that ‘a strategy of “cooptation and castration” by the bourgeois parties might well be the best way to fight right-wing populism’ (Luther 2003: 150). According to this hypothesis, their populism suits the parties from the populist right very well as long as they stay in the opposition, but it becomes a handicap for them once they join the government (Henisch 2003).
Meguid is right to stress the strategies of mainstream parties with regard to new challengers. But stressing the importance of strategies is in no way incompatible with underlining the relevance of contextual structures: we would like to suggest that the type of strategy chosen by the mainstream parties as well as its effect depend on the format and mechanics of the established party system. With respect to the issue- specific challenge, our expectation is that dismissive strategies are most likely adopted in majoritarian democracies which are characterized by majoritarian electoral systems and tend towards two-party systems. In such settings, new challengers are less threatening to the established parties. By contrast, we expect accommodative or adversarial strategies to be more likely in consensus democracies, which are characterized by proportional electoral systems and multiple parties. In such systems, access for challengers is easier. Once they break through, the most proximate competitor is likely to gain from an oligopolistic strategy. Similarly, in a multiparty setting, the mainstream parties from the opposite camp are likely to adopt an adversarial strategy, since it allows them to weaken their mainstream competitors in the new challenger’s camp.
With respect to organizational matters, stigmatization strategies are expected to be privileged by mainstream parties in majoritarian democ- racies, while cooperative strategies are expected to be preferred by established competitors in consensus democracies. In majoritarian democracies, mainstream parties tend to pursue ‘catch-all’ or ‘bonding’ (Norris 2004) strategies which allow them to win a majority/plurality of the votes. They are interested in enforcing an ‘anti-populist norm’ (Hansen and Koehler 2005) – especially when they are in government, but also to some extent when they find themselves in the opposition –, since they have to moderate their discourse in order to appeal to the
Contexts of party mobilization 49
median voter. By contrast, in consensus democracies, not only is coop- eration the predominant strategy, mainstream parties may also be forced to cooperate with new challengers in order to be able to form a government coalition.
To summarize, ‘accommodate and co-opt’ is the expected combina- tion of strategic reactions by direct mainstream competitors in consen- sus democracies, while ‘dismiss and stigmatize’ constitutes their most likely reaction in majoritarian democracies. The reaction of mainstream parties from the opposite camp is likely to be similar to that of direct competitors in majoritarian democracies, but not in consensus democ- racies, where we expect it to be adversarial and stigmatizing. Although a mainstream party’s initial strategy is contingent on a challenger’s degree of electoral threat, after his first breakthrough, the empirical record shows that most mainstream parties implement a cautious, low-cost, dismissive tactic in the first electoral encounter. Only later on, they tend to take more differentiated measures.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have reviewed the varying context conditions for the transformation of the national political space in our six countries. Table 2.7 presents a rough summary of the key hypotheses we have formu- lated based on these context conditions. First, given the far-reaching pacification of the traditional cleavages of class and religion, the high level of economic development, the large number of culturally distinct immigrants, and the generally increasing level of volatility and instabil- ity in the party systems, we expect the structural potential for a trans- formation under the impact of the new cleavage to be rather high in all six countries. In two of them – France and Germany – we expect the transformation to be framed in more economic terms, as a result of the serious economic problems faced by these two countries (reflected in comparatively high unemployment rates), of the lingering class conflicts (in France) and of the problems linked to reunification (in Germany). By contrast, in the UK and Switzerland, we expect this transformation to be above all framed in cultural terms, as a result of the intense threats to national sovereignty and to national cultural traditions experienced by the populations in these two countries. Although less typical in this respect, Austria and the Netherlands are more likely to resemble Switzerland and the UK than Germany and France.
Table 2.7 Summary of hypotheses concerning national contexts of party mobilization
Conditions for initial breakthrough
Conditions for restructuring of mainstream party on the right
Political Electoral Grand Country potential system Convergence coalitions
Federalism/regional Consensus Opposition in sectionalism democracy majoritariansystem
Austria + + + + + –/+ – Germany + –/+ + –/+ – –/+ – Netherlands+ + + + – + – Switzerland+ + + + + + – France + – – – – – – UK + – – – – – +
Contexts of party mobilization 51
According to our main hypothesis, the driving force of this transfor- mation is likely to be a new populist challenger from the right and/or a mainstream liberal or conservative party. As to the political context conditions for the mobilization of the given political potentials by these two political forces, we have argued that the initial electoral success and the breakthrough of a new challenger depend on the institutional access provided by the electoral thresholds, the degree of convergence and collusion among the mainstream parties, as well as on its own organiza- tional capacity and the personal attributes of its leaders. From this perspective, the conditions for the breakthrough of a new challenger from the populist right should have been particularly favourable in the consensus democracies (the Netherlands and Switzerland) and in the intermediary cases (Austria and Germany), but quite unfavourable in the UK and (at first sight) France. We have also argued that the condi- tions for the restructuring of an established liberal or conservative party are particularly favourable in a majoritarian democracy, where the main party of the established right has been in opposition for a series of elections (the case of the UK), or in a consensus democracy, where a PR system combines with federalism and regional sectionalism in the party system (such as in the cases of Austria and Switzerland). The PR setting generally induces the mainstream party to adopt an ‘accommodate-and-coopt’ strategy, and the regional sectionalism increases the likelihood that a regional branch of such a party will make an attempt to implement this kind of strategy.
In other words, based on this reasoning, in Austria and Switzerland, and to a lesser extent in Germany, too, conditions have been favourable both for the emergence of new challengers and for the transformation of some party of the established right. In the Netherlands, conditions have been favourable for the emergence of a new challenger, whereas in the UK, they have been conducive for the transformation of an established party. Surprisingly, according to this reasoning, conditions have gen- erally been less propitious for the emergence of a new challenger or for the transformation of a mainstream party of the established right in France.
The country chapters in the second part of this study will show how well these hypotheses hold up in each of the six cases. It is, of course, already apparent now, that they do not square with the developments in France and in Germany. As we have observed in the previous chapter, France constitutes the model case, where the party system has been
52 Hanspeter Kriesi
successfully challenged by a powerful new party from the populist right. And Germany is the obvious example of the ‘dog that did not bark in the night’. This suggests that our rough summary hypotheses are not detailed enough, that they miss important aspects of the respective national political contexts, and that they imply too rigid a structural determination of the strategic reactions.
