Cleavages, Institutions and Competition: Understanding Vote Nationalisation in Western Europe (1965-2015) by Vincenzo Emanuele

Author:Vincenzo Emanuele [Emanuele, Vincenzo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786613080
Google: ne_uwgEACAAJ
Publisher: ECPR Press
Published: 2019-04-15T03:42:57+00:00

Chapter 8

Vote (de)nationalisation in Western Europe: Main findings and implications

This book has provided a comprehensive understanding and explanation of the territorial structuring of party support in Western Europe over the past fifty years. The object of this study has been vote nationalisation, conceived as the level of territorial homogeneity of party support and measured through the standardised party system nationalisation score (sPSNS). As emphasised in the Preface, the level of vote nationalisation in a given country has implications that go beyond the mere electoral point of view, involving the representative process, the scope of public policies, the stability of the democratic regime and the unity of the nation-state.

The book has moved from two main research questions. The first investigates the evolution of the vote nationalisation process during the past fifty years. I have tested two rival assumptions: the first derives from Caramani (2004) who assumes that Western European countries have been characterised by a continuing homogenising process of electoral behaviour; the opposite hypothesis, advocated by other scholars (Broughton and Donovan 1999; Hopkin 2003), suggests the idea of a reverse of this historical trend of nationalisation and the resurgence of some territorial distinctiveness leading to the opening of a denationalisation process.

The second research question is connected to an overall explanation of the phenomenon under study. In other words, I have tried to detect the macro-constellation of factors that gives account of the territorial structuring of party support in Western Europe, as well as of its national and temporal variations.

In order to answer the two main research questions, I have carried out a comparative study focusing on the 230 general elections occurred in sixteen Western European countries during the 1965–2015 period. Following a ‘macro’ perspective, the book has focused on the structural features of the political systems, in the belief that the systemic level of analysis is the best viewpoint to understand structural changes like those related to the territorial configurations of party support.

Empirical evidence has shown that the territorial structuring of party support in Western Europe has been characterised by an enduring stability through time. A steady trend over time is detectable if one considers the entire universe of elections and even dividing them into two meaningful periods (1965–1990; 1991–2015) or five ten-year periods. This finding addresses the first research question, concerning the kind of pattern over time followed by vote nationalisation. Curiously, the two patterns of evolution hypothesised before have not taken place: in the aggregate, neither the pattern of increasing homogeneity nor a reversal trend towards a denationalisation process have occurred.

Yet, this long-lasting stability over time hides a lot of variability in the levels of vote nationalisation both among countries and within them. As far as the first aspect is concerned, some countries show a very high level of vote nationalisation (Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Austria), while some others display markedly regionalised territorial configurations (Switzerland, Germany, Spain and Finland), or even a territorially disintegrated system (Belgium). As regards the national trends over time, some countries, notably Norway, Portugal and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.