The changing political landscape in Europe (original) (raw)

2020, The EU through Multiple Crises

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The paper explores the shifting political landscape in Europe, focusing on the conflicts surrounding immigration and European integration. It juxtaposes two theories—destructuration theory and cleavage theory—to analyze voter behavior and preferences in light of changes in traditional political party alignments. The findings, based on extensive data from the European Social Survey, indicate that social divides related to socio-cultural issues currently structure political conflict more than traditional class cleavages, suggesting an evolution in voter dynamics.

The Social and Attitudinal Basis of Political Parties: Cleavage Politics Revisited

As a result of various political and non-political developments, the socio-culturally anchored and well structured character of European party systems has come under strain. This article assesses the overall social embeddedness of modern party politics and identifies newly emerging conflict-lines. It draws attention to phenomena that do not fit into the trend of dealignment, and discusses the relationship between group-based politics and democratic representation.

On the History and Future of the Theory of Social Cleavages

21st Dutch-Belgian Political Science Conference (Politicologenetmaal), 2022

This paper is centred around “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction” by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) with several novel approaches. First, the foundations of this publication are traced back to Thomas Hobbes, and by following the development of modernisation theory writers like Locke, Rousseau, Condorcet, and Weber are placed in a systematic overview. After Weber the work of Weber-translator and -interpreter Talcott Parsons is treated. It is shown that Parsons collaborated with Rokkan on an early and similar version in German of the first part of the publication by Lipset and Rokkan. Critiques and alternatives to modernisation theory and Lipset and Rokkan’s work are discussed via Norbert Elias up to recent authors like Ronald Inglehart, Peter Mair, Ashley Jardina, Catherine de Vries, Ruth Dassonneville, David Graeber and David Wengrow. It is shown that Parsons’ interpretation of amongst others Max Weber led to an approach which we would today describe as social profiling, which does not take into account enough local and time-bound differences in behaviour. The Parsonsian model and social profiling are linear approaches, which are problematic. It is suggested that a solution can be found in chaos theory. Finally, eight constraints are formulated that limit the possible outcomes of the chaotic model.

Dealignment Meets Cleavage Theory

The rise of a new transnational divide on immigration and Europe raises fundamental questions about the character of party competition and the causal bases of voting. Using ESS data and panel data for the Netherlands and Switzerland, we find that those who vote for political parties established on the new cleavage—green and radical TAN parties—have more structured partisan preferences than supporters of mainstream political parties.

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Alejandro Moreno. Political Cleavages: Issues, Parties, and the Consolidation of Democracy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999. Tables, figures, acronyms, appendixes, bibliography, index, 205 pp.; hardcover $65

Latin American Politics and Society, 2001