A New Divide? The Impact of Globalisation on National Party Systems

Abstract

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion concerning the impact of globalisation and European integration on the structure of ideological space in Western Europe. The empirical investigation is based on an examination of Euromanifestos data from four European countries – Germany, United Kingdom, Greece and Portugal – for a time frame of up to 30 years. The findings largely support the hypothesis of a transformation of the content of the standard cultural axis due to the emergence of conflicts over the desirability for regional and/or global integration. However, this transformation occurs in different ways and by different actors across national contexts. Whereas in the United Kingdom and Germany objections against ongoing integration processes have been mainly articulated by political parties of the conservative and populist right, in Greece and Portugal left-wing political parties emerge as the main representatives of the anti-integration camp.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Ioannis Andreadis and Hermann Schmitt for their invaluable help and constructive suggestions. We also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Obviously, any remaining errors and shortcomings are ours alone.

Notes

1. Globalisation can be broadly defined as the accelerated movement of goods, services, capital, technologies, people and ideas across national borders. The notion of Europeanisation has been conceptualised in several different ways in the literature (see Quaglia et al. 2007: 406–8); it primarily – but not exclusively – refers to the domestic impacts of European-level institutions and norms. However, the effects of these processes on the domestic politics of European member states are not always uniform and, in certain policy areas, it can be said that they are not even unidirectional, as Europeanisation can function as a buffer against certain aspects of globalisation. Nevertheless, it is often very hard to disentangle the effects of globalisation from the effects of Europeanisation. The latter, like globalisation, accelerates economic, social and cultural integration and homogenisation, profoundly redefines the limits of national sovereignty, affects democratic accountability and legitimacy, and creates similar anxieties related to questions of citizenship and cultural identity (Jabko and Meunier 2003: 3).

2. The roots of the EMP go back to the flagship study of party manifestos for national elections, the cross-national ‘Manifesto Research Group’ (MRG)/Comparative Manifestos Project’ (CMP). The Euromanifesto Project started in 2000, when Professor Hermann Schmitt (MZES) started to apply the MRG/CMP approach of analysing party manifesto content of European Parliament elections (for more details see Wüst and Volkens 2003; Braun et al. 2006).

3. A ‘quasi-sentence’ is the coding unit in a given party programme, defined as an argument. An argument is the verbal expression of one political idea or issue. In its simplest form, a sentence is the basic unit of meaning. Therefore, punctuation can be used as a guideline for identifying arguments (Braun et al. 2006: 40). After breaking down a paragraph into separate quasi-sentences, the coders identify the domain and then the category (and subcategory if available) that definitely captures the sense of the identified quasi-sentence. They repeat this procedure for every quasi-sentence in the paragraph, proceed then to the next paragraph and repeat the same steps (Braun et al. 2010: 21).

4. The original Euromanifesto Coding Scheme (EMCS) includes a range of policy domains: external relations, freedom and democracy, political system, economy, welfare and quality of life, fabric of society and social groups. They are further divided into several content categories and sub-categories.

5. The particular issues that form the components of each of the nine ideological categories: a) environmentalism – environmental protection, anti-growth politics, steady state economy, ecologism, ‘green politics’, minus any opposite mentions; b) Euroscepticism – hostile references to Europe or the EU, no ‘deepening of Europe’ necessary, a more integrated Europe and the transfer of power to the EU is rejected, hostile reference to the European Parliament and its MEPs, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and other EU institutions, required unanimity in the European Council, minus all opposite mentions; c) cultural liberalism – opposition to traditional moral values, support for divorce, abortion etc., favourable mentions, support or assistance for homosexuals and women, minus any favourable references to traditional moral values, prohibition, censorship and suppression of immorality, stability of family, negative references to homosexuals and women; d) economic integration – favourable references to or support for the Single European Market and the European Monetary Union, favourable reference to labour migration and support for the concept of free trade, support or accept national contributions to finance the EU or its policies, maintain or extend EU funds for structurally underdeveloped areas, minus any opposite references; e) economic liberalism – favourable references to free enterprise, need for wage and tax policies to induce enterprise, privatisation* (*: only for 2004 and 2009); negative references to corporatism, direct government control of economy, social ownership,* public-owned industry,* socialist property,* nationalisation, market regulation, Marxist analysis, minus any opposite references; f) fiscal conservatism – need for traditional economic orthodoxy (e.g. reduction of budget deficits), support for strong currency, positive references to the European Central Bank, minus positive references to Keynesian demand management and any negative references to economic orthodoxy and the European Central Bank; g) nativism – enforcement or encouragement of cultural integration, any appeals to patriotism and/or nationalism, need to reduce immigration, negative references to or no support for immigrants and foreigners, minus any opposite references; h) socio-political authoritarianism – enforcement of all laws, actions against crime, support and resources for police, fight against terrorism,* need to maintain or increase military expenditure, negative references to the importance of human and civil rights, minus opposite references; i) welfare state economy – need to introduce, maintain or expand any social service or social security scheme, the concept of equality, fair treatment of all people and special protection for underprivileged, references to labour groups, specific measures for supporting the expansion of the welfare state (pensions, health care and nursing service, social housing, child care), minus opposite mentions.

6. Each ideological category assumes a positive or negative score for each party, based on the subtraction of negative quasi-sentences from positive quasi-sentences. Based on these scores, all ideological categories for each party included in the analysis are ranked from 1 to 9, which indicate maximum ‘similarity’ (for a score of 1) to maximum ‘dissimilarity’ (for a score of 9). The distances are then further adjusted based on weights added to the analysis, which represent the frequency of the entire set of quasi-sentences used per ideological category per each political party.

7. Concerning the movement of parties across time, the SPD maintains throughout the 30-year period mostly economically leftist and culturally libertarian positions but since the entry of PDS/Die Linke into the political system, it tends to move closer to the centre of the economic axis. However, the most impressive transformation is probably the shift towards economic liberalism and the abandonment of pro-welfare positions for CDU after the 1989 EP election; until then, the positions of the party on the economic axis had been close or even to the left of the SPD. In this regard, the 2009 election signal a significant reorientation of the CDU/CSU coalition via its distancing from economically liberal positions, perhaps due to the onset of the global economic crisis only a year before.

8. The observed movement of the other parties conforms to the widespread views about the changes in the orientations of the Labour and Conservative parties, especially in regard to issues related to Europe (see Rosamond 2003). Like many leftist parties, the Labour party initially adopted Eurosceptic anti-integration positions, only to become a pro-integration political force along with the Liberal party. In contrast, the Conservatives, traditionally containing both pro-European and Eurosceptic factions within the party, initially adopted more pro-European stances, only to begin shifting to Euroscepticism in the post-Thatcherite period (cf. Spiering 2004: 131).

9. After peaking in the late 1990s (in all four countries, just under or over 50 per cent of references in 1999 correspond to the three ‘globalisation’ categories), there is declining trend for globalisation-related references in 2004 and 2009 to pre-1999 levels, with the exception of Germany, where the proportion continues to hover around 40 per cent throughout the post-1980s period.