Multi-Level Voting: A Stabilising Force or a Push towards Increasing Voter Volatility?

Abstract

Germany has witnessed a drastic decline in turnout and, at the same time, a clear increase in voter volatility, late deciding and party switching. These changes affected all layers of the federal system to different degrees and with varying speed. While standard explanations refer to processes of modernisation and value change to explain the decline of stable and loyal partisanship, this article focuses on the role of an – until now – neglected aspect: the significance of multi-level voting in both maintaining voter stability and fostering its decline. After all, party loyalty needs to be re-activated and mobilised across individuals' life-cycles. Electoral campaigns are the prime occasion for parties to revive the link with ‘their’ core clientele. When campaigning is frequent, as in federal systems, mobilising takes place almost constantly. This article argues that multi-level voting contributed considerably to the stability which characterised German party politics for decades after World War II. However, since parties increasingly use campaigns to recruit new voter segments at the expense of mobilising core voters, today, multi-level voting has negative effects on stable party attachments and thus contributes to the increase in fluidity and volatility we witness today.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Sigrid Roßteutscher received her PhD from the European University Institute, Florence. She holds a Chair in Sociology at the Goethe­Universität Frankfurt. She has worked on religion and political behaviour and was a principle investigator of comparative research projects on social capital. She is co-principle investigator of the German Longitudinal Election Study.

Thorsten Faas received his PhD from the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2008. Currently, he is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz. He has worked on economic voting (especially consequences of unemployment for political attitudes and behaviour) as well as campaigns and campaign studies in Germany, at national as well as state level.

Notes

1. See, for example, H. Rattinger, S. Roßteutscher, R. Schmitt-Beck, B. Weßels et al., Zwischen Langeweile und Extremen: Die Bundestagswahl 2009 (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2011) for a summary of trends that culminated in the federal election 2009. See also B. Weßels, H. Rattinger, S. Roßteutscher and R. Schmitt-Beck (eds), Voters on the Move or on the Run? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

2. In the course of 2012, another newcomer, the Piraten, entered the scene and won seats in several regional parliaments. However, their success has been rather short-lived.

3. However, the rise and success of this party happened after the data collection period for this article. Hence, it will not be covered empirically.

4. See T. Poguntke, ‘Ratlose Zwerge: Sind die Volksparteien am Ende?’, in E. Bytzek and S. Roßteutscher (eds), Der unbekannte Wähler? Mythen und Fakten über das Wahlverhalten der Deutschen (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), pp.115–32.

5. See T. Faas, ‘The German Federal Election of 2013: Merkel's Triumph, the Disappearance of the Liberal Party, and Yet Another Grand Coalition’, West European Politics forthcoming, DOI:10.1080/01402382.2014.939568.

6. S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp.1–64; D.W. Rae and M. Taylor, The Analysis of Political Cleavages (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970); S. Bartolini and P. Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates 1885–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

7. R. Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); R.J. Dalton, S. Flanagan and P.A. Beck, Electoral Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); S. Roßteutscher and P. Scherer, ‘Ideologie und Wertorientierungen’, in Rattinger et al., Zwischen Langeweile und Extremen, pp.131–46; S. Roßteutscher and P. Scherer, ‘Links und Rechts im politischen Raum: Eine vergleichende Analyse der ideologischen Entwicklung in Ost- und Westdeutschland’, in B. Weßels, H. Schoen and O.W. Gabriel (eds), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2009 (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013), pp.380–406.

8. T.N. Clark and S.M. Lipset, ‘Are Social Classes Dying?’, International Sociology 6/4 (1991), pp.397–410; T.N. Clark, S.M. Lipset and M. Rempel, ‘The Declining Political Significance of Class', International Sociology 8/3 (1993), pp.293–316; R. Dahrendorf, The Modern Social Conflict: An Essay on the Politics of Liberty (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988).

9. J.H. Goldthorpe, D. Lockwood, F. Bechhofer and J. Platt, The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); J. Myles, ‘States, Labour Markets and Life Cycles', in R. Friedland and A.F. Robertson (eds), Beyond the Marketplace: Rethinking Economy and Society (New York: De Gruyter, 1990), pp.271–98.

10. S. Bartolini and P. Mair, Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates 1885–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.221.

11. See S. Roßteutscher, ‘Die konfessionell-religiöse Konfliktlinie zwischen Säkularisierung und Mobilisierung’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 45/Special Issue (2012), pp.114–16.

12. Ibid., p.116.

13. Although the SPD increasingly competes with the Left Party for the votes of workers, see M. Elff and S. Roßteutscher, ‘Stability or Realignment? Class, Religion and the Vote in Germany’, German Politics 20/1 (2011), pp.111–31. See also M. Debus, ‘Sozialstrukturelle und einstellungsbasierte Determinanten des Wahlverhaltens und ihr Einfluss bei Bundestagswahlen im Zeitverlauf: Westdeutschland 1976 bis 2009’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 45/Special Issue (2012), p.57. W. Müller and M. Klein, ‘Die Klassenbasis in der Parteipräferenz des deutschen Wählers: Erosion oder Wandel?’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 45 (special issue) (2012), pp.106–07, however, report a clear erosion of class voting among the youngest generations.

14. R. Schmitt-Beck, ‘New Modes of Campaigning’, in R.J. Dalton and H.-D. Klingemann (eds), Oxford Handbook on Political behavior (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p.745.

15. Ibid., p.747; R. Rohrschneider, ‘Mobilizing versus Chasing: How Do Parties Target Voters in Election Campaigns?’, Electoral Studies 21/3 (2002), p.367.

16. J.E. Lane and S. Ersson, Politics and Society in Western Europe (London: Sage, 1994); Rae and Taylor, The Analysis of Political Cleavages; Z. Enyedi, ‘The Role of Agency in Cleavage Formation’, European Journal of Political Research 44/5 (2005), pp.697–720.

17. Enyedi, ‘The Role of Agency’, p.699.

18. Roßteutscher, ‘Die konfessionell-religiöse Konfliktlinie’, pp.123–24.

19. S. Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982).

20. J.E. Lane and S. Ersson, ‘Parties and Voters: What Creates the Ties?’, Scandinavian Political Studies 20/2 (1997), p.179.

21. Müller and Klein, ‘Die Klassenbasis in der Parteipräferenz’, p.91.

22. This distinction between first- and second-order elections or between low and high stimulus elections is framed by K. Reif and H. Schmitt, ‘Nine Second-Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Results', European Journal of Political Research 8/1 (1989), pp.244–55.

23. For a more detailed discussion, see S. Roßteutscher, I. Bieber and P. Scherer, ‘Voting Complexity in a Multilayered System. Or: How Voting Choices in Second-Order Elections Impact the Stability of Party Identification’, in Weßels et al. (eds), Voters on the Move or on the Run?, pp.88–92.

24. See www.gles.eu.

25. H. Rattinger, S. Roßteutscher, R. Schmitt-Beck and B. Weßels, German Longitudinal Election Study – Multi-Level-Panel, 27.05.–27.09.2009. GESIS, Köln: ZA5303, Version 2.1.0, DOI: 10.4232/1.10363.

26. Schleswig-Holstein is a special case because elections had to take place after parliament was dissolved ahead of schedule which was not clear when the basic design of the study was decided upon. Therefore, voters from Schleswig-Holstein only took part in the last two waves of this three-wave panel.

27. As not all interviews were conducted in time ahead of the European election, a second field period was necessary (16 June to 22 June). In the end, 2206 interviews were realised during the pre-election period, another 244 interviews originate from the period after the European election.

28. See Study Materials 2011/95 under http://www.gesis.org/wahlen/gles/daten-und-dokumente/daten/ for details concerning case selection, recruitment of panelists, quota sample, etc. Although panel studies like this Multi-Level-Panel have certain problematic features (e.g. a rather high level of panel attrition due to the very dense timetable, see Table 1), it is nonetheless a unique and extremely well-suited database for studying intra-individual change or stability of voting behaviour across the diverse levels of the federal political system of Germany.

29. For a fuller account of the election campaign 2009, see I. Bieber and S. Roßteutscher, ‘Große Koalition und Wirtschaftskrise: Zur Ausgangslage der Bundestagswahl 2009’, in Rattinger et al., Zwischen Langeweile und Extremen, pp.17–31; M. Krewel, R. Schmitt-Beck and A. Wolsing, ‘Geringe Polarisierung, unklare Mehrheiten und starke Personalisierung: Parteien und Wähler im Wahlkampf’, in Rattinger et al., Zwischen Langeweile und Extremen, pp.33–57.

30. Frequent campaigning even turns individuals without party attachment to party identifiers, see Roßteutscher et al., ‘Voting Complexity in a Multilayered System’, pp.109–10.

31. Our results concerning the significance of electoral choices at the European Parliament level for first-order voting are confirmed by applying more elaborate multivariate techniques and using two other data sources – a long-term panel conducted face-to-face and a Rolling-Cross-Section with post-election panel conducted by telephone. See Roßteutscher et al., ‘Voting Complexity in a Multilayered System’, pp.105–15.

32. But see Roßteutscher et al., ‘Voting Complexity in a Multilayered System’.