'Beyond Left and Right': The New Partisan Politics of Welfare

The 'new politics of the welfare state,' the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries' capacities to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and institutions play a prominent role in accounting for cross-national differences in leaders' abilities to diffuse responsibility for divisive initiatives. One important omission from the 'new politics' literature, however, is a discussion of partisan politics. 'Old' conceptualizations of the political right and left are implicitly taken as constants despite radical changes in the governing agenda of many leftist parties over the last decade. Responding to this oversight, Castles (1998) has recently probed the role of parties with respect to aggregate government expenditures, only to concludethat parties do not matter under 'conditions of constraint.' This article contends that parties are relevant to the 'new politics' and that, under specified institutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive. In some notable cases the left has had more effect inbruising the welfare state than the right. One explanation for these cross-cutting tendencies is that parties not only provide a principal source of political agency, they also serve as strategies, thereby conditioning opportunities for political leadership. By extension, they need to be situatedwithin the 'new politics' constellation of blame-avoidance instruments.     

Review Article: Scandinavian Parties in the Internal and External Arena

Party research lived a relatively quiet life during the 1970s and 1980s in the western world, and to some degree also in Scandinavia, although the central role of parties in the Scandinavian democracies made it impossible for political scientists to completely ignore political parties in their research. However, from the end of 1980s, political party research has been revitalized, and the number of publications has increased substantially. The three books reviewed here are part of the upswing during 1997, which, of course, includes other books and publications from that particular year. Why this renewed interest in studying political parties? For a long period after World War II, Scandinavian political parties were characterized as stable mass organizations. In 1973, the established Danish political system suffered an electoral backlash, and the shock waves gave fuel to speculations of party decline in electoral behavior studies. At the same time, similar trends were visible in Finland and Norway. Much later, interest focused on finding the same signs of decline in the internal party arena. The discussion is still alive, and during this process students of political science have gained new knowledge about parties and their organizations in Scandinavia.     

Conserving the Constitution? The Conservative Party and Democratic Renewal

In 2008 David Cameron declared that the Conservative party was 'ready for government' and suggested that 'the change we need is not just from Labour's old policies to our new policies… It's about a change from old politics to new politics'. This 'new politics' narrative is something of a cliché: British constitutional history reveals a regular pattern whereby opposition parties renege upon implementing far-reaching constitutional and democratic reforms once they win power. It is in this context that this article draws upon documentary analysis and a number of interviews to examine the Conservative party's position on constitutional reform and democratic renewal. It concludes that although the Conservative party has spent the last decade decrying the 'destruction' of the constitution it has undertaken little detailed preparatory work in relation to how it might seek to alter the governance of Britain. As a result the research presented in this article provides a number of insights into elite politics, strategic game-playing and executive veto capacities within a context of growing political disengagement from politics and falling levels of trust in politics.     

The Norwegian Communist Party in the Immediate Postwar Period*

The main purpose of this article is to argue the importance of combining several approaches in studies of communist parties: socio-economic structures, competitive relations to other left wing parties, organizational implantation, and the role of political tradition. The present ecological analysis will particularly emphasize the organizational approach and the importance of political tradition. In keeping with Allardt's and Lipset's theories, socio-economic structure seemed to a great extent to be a necessary condition for communist strength in this period. Both significant employment in industry and/or forestry and a strong social democratic party turned out to be necessary conditions for communist strength, but only when we analysed the ‘historical’ and organizational dimensions in more detail were we able to determine more accurately the areas of strong electoral support of the Norwegian Communist Party.     

Electoral trends and the Italian Communist Party in the 1970s

Abstract. During the 1970s the Italian Communist Party had, contrary to the preceding decades, extremely variable electoral results. In this article, trends in the communist vote in the 1970s are studied, through an ecological analysis of electoral results in the Italian provinces. It also takes into account the organizational presence of the party and the socioeconomic characteristics of the electorate. The central thesis is that in the 1970s the Communist vote is different from both previous and subsequent results not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, in as much as it is characterized by different connotations and explanatory factors.     

Green Politics and the New Class: Selfishness or Virtue?

The predominantly new middle-class social composition of the green movement has become a matter of increasing interest in the wake of the success of green parties and the growth of an international green movement. This paper considers the concept of the 'new class' in relation to two explanations for the social composition of the green movement. The class-interest argument seeks to show that green politics is a means of furthering either middle-class or new-class interests while the 'new childhood' argument claims that the development of the green movement is the result of the spread of post-material values, the main bearers of which are the new class. Against these arguments a more comprehensive explanation is presented, which focuses on the education of the new class and its relative structural autonomy from the production process.     

The rise and decline of new politics and the Greens in Sweden and Germany

Abstract. The failure of the Green parties at recent elections in Sweden and Germany makes it necessary to consider the future of 'new politics' in each country. With reference to modern organisation theory, the goal of this article is to explain the different character of the Green parties in both countries in terms of external political resources. Above all the features of new social movements on the one hand and the different party systems on the other are of particular importance. It is argued that both factors have an impact on the cleavage structure and social change in Sweden and Germany, as well as being important for the organizational survival of Green parties in both countries. The conclusion is that 'new politics' and the Greens have a more promising future in Germany than in Sweden.     

Who Should Govern Political Parties? Organizational Values in Norwegian and Danish Political Parties

The article explores party member attitudes towards internal party democracy and party leadership in Danish and Norwegian parties. The focus is on the relationship between party members' public policy values (measured by means of 'old politics' and 'new politics' value dimensions) and their organizational values (i.e. ideas about internal democracy), but the members' educational and activism levels as well as indicators capturing factors specific to individual parties are also applied to explain party members' organizational values. We find that positions on the two policy value dimensions are related to party members' organizational values. But the relationships are not particularly strong, and their signs are contrary to expectations. One explanation may be that the 'new politics' literature draws a misleading picture of the organizational values of New Left and New Right party members – at least in the Danish and Norwegian cases. We also find that the social democratic parties in both countries differ considerably from the other parties in the sense that the dissatisfaction with the leadership was much stronger in these parties.     

Party Cohesion in the Danish Parliament during the 1970s*

The Danish parliamentary parties have traditionally been known for their high degree of cohesion. Recent social and political changes may, however, justify a hypothesis on a decline of party cohesion. In this paper two conflicting hypotheses on party cohesion in the Danish Parliament during the 1970s are formulated and empirically tested. The application of different operationalizations of party cohesion all give the same result: The hypothesis on a decline of party cohesion is false, whereas the hypothesis on a high degree of party cohesion is true. Party cohesion is as high in the 1970s as in previous decades, and the new parties gaining representation during the 1970s are as cohesive as the old, well established parties.     

Electoral Volatility and Party Decline in Western Democracies: 1970–1995

In 1970, Richard Rose and Derek Urwin published a seminal piece on the stability of party support in Western democracies, 'Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945'. Everywhere they looked, established parties seemed to reflect stability rather than change, lending credence to the notion that party systems were 'frozen'. Numerous subsequent studies, however, have produced mixed results. Part of what seems to be fueling this debate lies in the disparate measures researchers use to gauge stability. In this update of Rose and Urwin's study, I address the issue of comparable results by maintaining the same data source and methods they used to gauge the stability of party support, extending the study to the present. The results indicate that party system instability is on the rise throughout much of the West since 1970, with statistically significant increases seen in Scandinavia and across all regions combined. Furthermore, the parties which seem to be experiencing the most change are not only the newest parties – as the frozen cleavages thesis might predict – but also those parties formed during the interwar period, the large majority of which showed much greater stability in 1970.     

Green Politics: A Norwegian Experience1

Not until 1989 did a Green political party participate in a national election in Norway. The Greens, however, only received 0.4 percent of the votes, and won no seats. Does this indicate that ecology and environmental issues are of no importance in Norway? On the contrary, environmental concern has to a large extent been assimilated into the party platforms and the public. In the 1989 election, environmental issues ranked as the second most important for the voters. The electoral system makes it relatively easy to establish new parties, and also for new parties to win seats. Several new parties emerged after the divisive EC debate in the early 1970s. The Liberal Party, which split on the EC issue in 1973, deliberately tried to rebuild its platform by focusing on green issues. But the Liberal Party has to a large extent remained a one-issue party. Even though environmental issues were more prominent than ever before, the green Liberal Party did not succeed in winning a single seat in 1989. The Socialist Left Party, on the other hand, increased its number of seats from 6 to 17! Our analysis shows that environmental concern was not the decisive factor behind the voters preference for the Socialist Left Party as opposed to the Liberal Party. Left-right ideology was more important than environmental concern for the competition between these two parties. The data applied in this analysis are drawn from a long-standing programme of Electoral Research at the Institute for Social Research. The programme is directed by Henry Valen and Bernt Aardal.     

How unstable? Volatility and the genuinely new parties in Eastern Europe

Abstract.  Measuring of party system stability in Eastern Europe during the first decade of democratic elections presents problems. The traditional quantitative measure – volatility – does not distinguish between the dynamics among incumbent parties and the rise of genuinely new ones. I propose a new additional measure – success of genuinely new parties – and compare it to volatility. The subsequent performance of initially successful genuinely new parties is analysed. While volatility has been remarkably high in East European countries, the genuinely new parties have, in general, not been very successful. Instability of party systems in the region stems rather from the inner dynamics of incumbent actors than from the rise of new contenders.     

Parties and Partisanship: A 40-Year Retrospective

The study of political parties and voter partisanship has come full circle in 4 decades. During the 1960s and 1970s numerous scholars advanced the thesis of party decline, contending that party organizations had disintegrated, party influence in government had plummeted, and voter partisanship had eroded. The 1980s and 1990s saw a turnaround in scholarly judgments, however, as first party organizations, then party in government, and finally voter partisanship appeared to strengthen. This article reviews the evidence for the downs and ups of parties, suggesting that the evidence of party resurgence is more equivocal than often realized. The parties subfield currently lacks the theory and theoretical sensitivity that enables us to interpret ambiguous empirical evidence. This contrasts with the congressional subfield where the issues now confronting the parties subfield were recognized a decade ago.     

Explaining the impact of new parties in the Western European party systems

ABSTRACT

In recent years, and particularly following the impact of the “great recession”, Western European party systems have undergone profound change. New parties have emerged and been successful, thus radically changing the structure of inter-party competition. So far, research on new parties has been mainly conducted from party-level and election-centred perspectives. Here, instead, we focus on party system innovation (PSInn), meaning the impact of new parties on Western European party systems, and on the factors that explain such impact, by adopting a systemic perspective and taking into account all the arenas where inter-party competition takes place (i.e. elections, parliaments and governments). For this purpose, this article relies on an original dataset on the performances of new parties in terms of votes, seats, and ministerial posts, covering about 350 elections and 670 governments in 20 countries, over the period 1945–2017. The results of the analysis show a notable increase in PSInn over the last decade, in particular with regard to the electoral and parliamentary arenas. Moreover, data show that PSInn in the electoral and the parliamentary arenas is mainly predicted by turnout change, while in the governmental arena is instead driven by the country’s economic performance.     

Biomedical Policies in Belgium and Italy: From Regulatory Reluctance to Policy Changes

Belgium and Italy stand out within Western Europe as countries that have shown pronounced reluctance to regulate assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and embryo research in the 1980s and 1990s, while the new millennium brought about major public policy ‘punctuation’. Belgium has changed from a strategy of non-decision to a permissive regulation on embryos and ART practices. Italy has moved from a lack of ART regulation to a relatively restrictive framework. The purpose of this contribution is twofold. First, it aims at explaining Belgium and Italy's reluctance to regulate ART until roughly 2000. The authors rely on three explanatory factors: the deeply divided character of societies, the weight and the divisions of political parties, and the autonomy of physicians. Second, referring in part to the punctuated equilibrium model of Baumgartner and Jones, they explain the policy change in both Belgium and Italy in the first decade of the twenty-first century.     

Worth Restoring? Taking Stock of the Northern Ireland Assembly

The ongoing and almost record‐breaking hiatus in devolved government in Northern Ireland has brought the sustainability of the region's Assembly into sharp focus. As parties in Northern Ireland consider their options for restoring (and possibly reforming) the devolved institutions, this article takes stock of the Northern Ireland Assembly's merits and demerits. It is argued that, amidst the public's understandable exasperation with the current stalemate, it is easy to forget that the Assembly operated for a decade without suspension (2007–2017) and performed some functions reasonably well. This, of course, is not to detract from the institution's serious shortcomings, though it is argued that the worst of these could be mitigated via institutional reform. Crucially, institutional inertia is not an option. Should parties fail to address the need for institutional reform, commentators may well be right to question whether the Assembly is worth restoring.     

Third Ways or New Ways? The Post‐Communist Left in Central Europe

Communist successor parties in central Europe are not a homogeneous group of political actors. Processes of organisational reform undertaken in the immediate post-1989 period placed them on a programmatic trajectory which has since proven difficult to successfully modify. Parties that centralised power around a small group of elite actors have enjoyed more flexibility in their attempts to maximise votes and remain ideologically broad. Parties that radically democratised by empowering their memberships and/or middle-ranking officials have remained much more ideologically conservative and have tend to be neo-communist in orientation. This has strongly affected not just their positions in national party systems, but also their attitudes and behaviour towards foreign actors/institutions. Some communist successor parties therefore remain side-lined on the anti-capitalist far-left while others have developed into confident, outward-looking centre-left actors while one - the Slovak SDL - imploded on account of its own internal contradictions.     

The Cold War culture of the French and communist parties

This study is a comparative essay about the ‘Cold War culture’ of the two main communist parties of Western Europe, the French and the Italian, during the tense period of 1947–53. Both parties had a common Marxist ideology and used similar elements of propaganda: anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, defence of ‘national independence’, defence of the Soviet Union, and the struggle for peace. However, while the French communist ideology was completely focused on the Soviet position, the Italians tried to maintain a limited autonomy for their parliamentary activity and their reactions to national issues. The reception and use of communist ideology and propaganda by some social categories of population, especially among the working classes, is then examined. The essay concludes with a reflexion on the notion of the ‘culture of war’ in France and Italy.     

Social Class, Sector Employment, and Gender as Party Cleavages in the Scandinavian Countries: A Comparative Longitudinal Study, 1970–95

This article studies the changing impact of social class, sector employment, and gender with regard to party choice in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, from the 1970s to the 1990s, using election survey data. Political parties in the three countries are grouped into four party groups: left socialist, social democratic, centrist, and rightist parties.
Class voting has declined in all three countries. The focus on the four party groups shows that differences between the wage-earner classes have declined for the social democratic and rightist party groups. By contrast, 'class voting' has increased for the left socialist parties, which increasingly have concentrated their support among the new middle class.
Sector employment became an important party cleavage in all three countries in the 1990s. The impact of sector was generally largest in Denmark and Norway in the 1980s and 1990s. The sector cleavage also follows the left–right division of parties to a greater degree than previously. Sector differences in voting behaviour are most pronounced with regard to voting for the left socialist and the rightist parties.
Gender differences in voting behaviour have increased and changed character in all three countries. In the 1970s, men supported the socialist parties to a greater extent than women; in the 1990s men supported the rightist parties to a greater extent than women in all three countries, whereas women supported the left socialist parties and (in Sweden) the Green Party to a greater degree than men. The effects of gender are generally reduced when sector employment is introduced into the multivariate analysis, indicating that the different sector employment of men and of women explains part of the gender gap in voting behaviour.     

The West European communist movement in the late twentieth century

This article evaluates the impact of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe on the West European communist movement. The state of the movement before 1989 is examined, followed by an analysis of the different trajectories of the parties after the revolutions and an assessment of their future prospects. It is argued that the momentous changes of 1989 have witnessed the passing of the West European communist tradition and that, while some communist parties live on, it is no longer fruitful to regard them and the ex‐communist parties as one ‘family’ or to study them under a common framework.