Managing incoherence. Social democratic parties and transnational issues in Europe

ABSTRACT

Do political parties keep their promises? The coherence between parties’ ideology and policy output have always attracted scholarly interest. Moreover, the importance of political parties’ accountability has dramatically increased also because of the rise of populist parties. This paper aims at contributing to the current debate by investigating different phases: the electoral manifestoes, the framing on issues in parliament, the votes, and the ways through which the manifestoes for the following elections change. What are the patterns parties can adopt to address a possible dissonance between electoral platforms, votes, and frames? Are there recurrent patterns of party behaviour between manifestoes, rhetoric, and policy outputs? To answer these research questions, the manuscript builds on a cross-country and cross-time (2007–2017) empirical analysis of three West European social democratic parties and their attitudes towards transnational issues, such as migration, terrorism, military operations and the financial crisis. The paper, which is based on content analysis of debates and manifestoes, identifies several patterns parties can follow for managing these crises. This paves the way for further variable-testing research.

KEYWORDS:

• Political parties
• ideology
• content analysis
• Italy
• Germany
• France

Notes

1 Traditional and mainstream parties are here employed as synonymous for identifying all those parties that are confronted by the so-called challenger parties (Hobolt & Tilley, 2016). On mainstream parties see, among others: Kriesi et al. (2006) and Carvalho and Ruedin (2018).

2 Other scholars found still “a remarkable level of coherence” among left wing parties on those controversial issues, as migration (Carvalho & Ruedin, 2018). Therefore, detailed analysis on parties, ideology and foreign policy is needed.

3 We adopted the software AntConc (Version 3.2.4), available from www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html. The frequency derives from the sum of all the words of the category found in a text, out of the overall word-token of the document.

4 See: https://eeas.europa.eu/csdp-missions-operations/eunavfor-med/36/about-eunavfor-med-operation-sophia_en.

5 “Wie lange hält die SPD-Troika?”, Cicero-online edition, https://cicero.de/innenpolitik/wie-lange-haelt-die-spd-troika/48837.

6 “SPD will Fiskalpakt zustimmen”, die Zeit-online edition, 16 June 2012, https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2012-06/spd-fiskalpakt-parteikonvent-2?cid=1838711.

7 Deutscher Bundestag, 17. Wahlperiod, 188. Sitzung, 29 June 2012, p. 22704.

8 Ibid., 127. Sitzung, October 1, 2015, p. 12335.

9 Deutscher Bundestag, 17. Wahlperiod, 97. Sitzung, 18 Marz 2012, p. 11141.

10 Deutscher Bundestag, 18 Wahlperiod, 83. Sitzung, 30 January 2015, p. 7949.

11 Assemblée Nationale, 3 October 2012.

12 Assemblée Nationale, 12 July 2011.

13 Assemblée Nationale, 9 March 2016.

14 Assemblée Nationale, 9 March 2016.

15 Assemblée Nationale, 15 September 2014.

16 “The EU has guaranteed more the interests of the banks and financial markets rather than those of the European citizens” (L’Europa Cambia Verso, PD Electoral Programme – 2014).

17 As stated by Vannucci (Chamber of Deputies, 5 March 2012): “This is the time of responsibility!”. According to Ceccandi (PD – Senate 11 April 2012): “We should assume the responsibility of the reforms”.

18 See, for instance: Morando (PD – Senate, 11 April 2012).

19 For instance, the 2018 platform (Più forte, più giusta. L’Italia) emphasizes the need to contrast the securitarian approaches.

20 The “ius soli” law, which aims at granting Italian citizenship to foreign babies born on Italian soil, has always been at the centre of the PD platforms, since 2008 onwards.

21 The 2008 electoral programme (L’Italia nel Mondo che cambia) stresses the “social and linguistic integration of the immigrant”.

22 See Tonini (PD - Senate, 22 July 2015).

23 In the 2018 manifesto the two frames obtain almost the same percentage.

24 The MP Vernetti (PD – Chamber of Deputies, 16 March 2011) adopted explicitly the term “humanitarian ingerence”. See: “Berlusconi: colpiremo solo obiettivi militari”, La Repubblica, 26 April 2011.

25 Livi Bacci (PD – Senate, 23 March 2011).

26 Tonini (PD – Senate, 23 March 2011). Also Pinotti (PD – Senate, 23 March 2011) stated that the Italian Constitution and the UN Charter authorize the use of force for avoiding “humanitarian tragedies”.