Cartel or agents of social conflicts?"
Political parties in contemporary West European Politics
Christoffer Green-Pedersen
Department of Political Science
Aarhus University
Bartholins Allé 7
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
Phone +4589421133
Fax + 4586139839
Email cgp@ps.au.dk
Web: www.agendasetting.dk
Note to the reader: This paper is meant as the beginning of a larger project on political parties and party competition in
Western Europe, so it is probably never going to develop into a paper for a journal
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Research into political parties in Western Europe has for a long time been focused on the
development of party organizations and party membership. The decline of party membership has
been carefully documented (cf. van Biezen et al 2012) and this literature has reached a point where
the question is “if the party is over?” (Whiteley 2011). This development of party organization is
thus seen as a democratic problem. How are parties capable of acting as the central linkage
between citizens and the political system without members?
However, as pointed out by Allern & Pedersen (2007), how one views the democratic
implications of party organizational change depends crucially on the democratic perspective one
applies. The focus on party membership and party organization is often linked with the idea that the
internal democracy of political parties is democratically important. But what if one takes a different
democratic perspective? From a competitive perspective, i.e. focusing on party competition as the
crucial linkage mechanism between citizens and political system, the questions related to party
organization are much less important. There is thus growing recognition that in order to assess the
role of political parties in contemporary democracy, a much broader focus than the traditional focus
on party organizations is needed.
Along these lines, recent research into political parties has started to focus on party
competition as crucial in linking citizens and the political system. The aim of this paper is to present
a critical overview of key studies within this literature. The paper discusses three analyses of party
politics in Western Europe or more broadly which have all moved beyond the focus on party
organizations. The first one is Katz and Mair’s cartel party hypothesis and the debate surrounding it
(1995; 2009). The paper argues that though the cartel thesis is correct in pointing out the integration
of political parties into the state, the implication that parties function as a cartel keeping new parties
and issues away from the state is only partially true. It underestimates the vote and office seeking
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incentives of political parties and thus provides a too pessimistic perspective on party competition
as a linkage between citizens and the state.
The second one is the argument about the emergence of a new globalization cleavage
among both the electorate and political parties. This thesis developed by Kriesi and collaborators
(2008; 2012) assumes that the new cleavage that has emerged among the electorate is automatically
taken into the party system. This is done by radical rights-wing parties which serve as “the agents”
mobilizing the losers of the globalization conflict. This thesis provides an overly positive view of
party competition as a linkage between citizens and the political system. It lacks an understanding
of how the vote and office seeking incentives causes variation in whether or not the issues
belonging to the globalization conflict become part of party competition.
The third and final one is the analysis of Dalton et al. (2011), who argue that political
parties have adapted to new circumstances like the decline in membership and constitute a wellfunctioning linkage between citizens and the political system. However, a central element in this
optimistic analysis is congruence between citizens and political parties on a very general left-right
scale.
This hides considerable variation across issues and countries in terms how the issue
preferences of citizens are broad into the political system. Therefore it offers limited insight into
when party competition does or does not make parties respond to citizens issue preferences.
The three analyses reach different conclusion in terms of how party competition serve
as a linkage between citizens and the political system, but they all lack a theoretical understanding
of party competition and thus a clear understanding of under what conditions party competition
serves as a linkage between citizens and the political system. The paper then outlines how an
agenda-setting analysis of party competition can contribute significantly towards understanding the
functioning of party competition as linkage between citizens and the political system.
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The study of party organizations
The main focus of many studies of political parties has been the development of party organizations
and especially party membership. Such an extensive literature has documented the decline of party
membership throughout the Western World (Van Biezen et al. 2012; Whitely 2011). This has led to
a discussion of what “parties without partisans” look like (Dalton & Wattenberg 2000)? Parties
have become “campaign like organization” (Farrell 2006) which focus on election campaigns, and
how they have become integrated with the state (Whitely 2011, see below). One element in this
literature has also a more or less explicit concern that this development constitutes a democratic
problem (e.g. Dalton & Wattenberg 2000, 261-284). However, the strong focus within the party
literature on party members and organizations and the picture of declining importance which has
grown out of this focus has also been challenged in several related ways.
Katz and Mair (1995) argue that this focus is tight to one particular understanding of
political parties namely that of the mass party. Instead, Katz & Mair (1995, 2009) emphasize the
integration of political parties into the state through for instance state financing. Political parties
with mass membership and a strong focus on their internal democratic structure is but one historical
form of political parties. The challenge is to understand the implications of the greater integration of
political parties into the state. This is where Katz & Mair launched their idea of the “cartel party,
see below.
Authors like Allern and Pedersen (2007) and Webb, Farrell & Holiday (2007) have
further challenged the often negative implications for democracy which are drawn from changes in
party organization, especially the decline in party membership. Which democratic implications to
draw from changes in party organization depend on the model of democracy that is taken as point of
departure. The literature on party organization has tended to see internal party democracy as an
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important aspect of democracy more broadly. However, if one for instance builds one a competitive
model of democracy, one could argue that fewer members make parties more flexible and thus
better able to respond to public preferences (cf. Allern & Pedersen 2007, 73-76). However, the
empirical knowledge about whether party competition actually works to secure responsiveness is
limited
In sum, the literature on political parties has increasingly recognized that unraveling
the implications of party organizational changes – which also involves the greater integration
between political parties and the state – requires a much broader perspective on political parties
than the traditional focus on party organization. With the decline in membership, the prime
connection between voters and parties is electoral and this makes a better understanding of how
party competition links citizens and political system essential for discussing the role of political
parties in contemporary democracies.
Partly as a reaction to this recognition within the party literature and partly unrelated
to this, a number of analyses of party politics in Western Europe has emerged which all have a
much broader focus than party organizations. The question is if these analyses provide a satisfactory
analysis of how party competition links citizens and the political system today?
The cartel party hypothesis
The first analysis is the one offered by Katz and Mair (1995; 2009) in the cartel party hypothesis
mentioned above. According to Katz & Mair, parties have increasingly become part of the state.
This is visible in for instance the increasing importance of state financing of political parties and in
state/party control over modern mass media. Further, existing political parties function as a cartel,
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which tries to keep competitors, particularly new political parties, away from the benefits of the
state. Thus, collution is a central aspect of the cartel party thesis. Parties are not really interested in
competing, especially not with new competitors, rather they focus on sharing and dividing the
benefits which they enjoy from being part of the state. Often challenges to the party cartel come
from outside the party system in the form of interest groups.
The cartel party hypothesis has been subject to an intense debate (cf. Katz & Mair
2009, for an overview), but rather limited empirical research. The empirical research which has
taken place has focused on the question of the entrance of new parties into the party systems and
often challenging the cartel thesis. For instance, Scarrow (2006) does not find support for the idea
that increasing state funding keeps new parties away (cf. also Kitshcelt 2000).
In terms of understanding contemporary party competition as the link between citizens
and the state, the question, however, is why focus should be so strongly on the entrance of new
parties. Even if the existing parties are able to keep new parties away from party competition –
perhaps because the electoral systems makes parliamentary representation of them difficult, this
does far from necessarily imply that existing parties will work as a cartel. Existing parties are still
vote and especially office seeking and this is likely to make them compete for instance by
introducing new political issues. Thus, though new parties are important for understanding party
competition, the question of whether political parties function as a cartel limiting party competition
cannot be reduced to the question of the emergence of new political parties. It also needs to involve
the vote and office seeking incentives of existing parties, especially the major parties which have
traditionally dominated West European governments (Green-Pedersen 2012b).
In sum, the cartel hypothesis offers an important point of reference for the discussion
of party competition as the mechanism linking citizens and the political system. When taken to its
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extreme, the cartel party hypothesis implies party competition does not work as such a linking
mechanism. Existing parties are not really competing, but are focused on colluding and keeping
new competitors away from the benefits of the state.
Globalization as a new cleavage in West European politics
A very different perspective on the function of West European party politics is provided by
Hanspeter Kreisi and collaborators in their idea of the emergence of a new globalization conflict in
West European countries. This thesis does not have its roots in party research, but rather in the
cleavage tradition which has typically been focused on the electorate (Mair 2006).
The idea of Kriesi and collaborators is that a new cleavage has appeared among the
electorate between looser and winners of globalization. Globalization - economically, politically,
and culturally - benefits certain groups, especially the well-educated, on the expense of others. This
leads to a conflict about demarcation and integration. The argument is that this conflict among the
electorate is taken into the party by radical right-wing parties which mobilize the losers of
globalization. In the party system, the cultural conflict line, which already emerged in the 1970s as
the second conflict line in addition to the left-right conflict, is now transformed by radical rightwing parties into a globalization conflict centered on issue like immigration and European
integration.
Kreisi and collaborators (2008; 2012) find considerable support for the emergence of a
new globalization conflict, though the evidence is typically stronger at the level of the electorate
than at the party level. At the party level, Kriesi and collaborators themselves point to considerable
findings contradicting their argument (cf. Kriesi et al. 2012, 96-126). For instance, a key issue like
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European integration has been politicized in far from all countries and in some countries radical
right-wing parties still play a minor role in the party system.
These empirical findings raise a number of more theoretical questions about the
globalization conflict and the model of party competition underlying it. First, the globalization
conflict is a very broad hat which includes a number of issues like law and order and morality issues
which do not necessarily display identical patterns of party competition. Immigration has for
instance gained a more prominent place in West European party politics than European integration,
but again also with substantial cross-national variation. From the cleavage perspective, various
issues may perhaps be considered “functional equivalence”, but in terms of understanding the
linkage between citizens and the political system, it is far from unimportant if certain issues like
European integration are systematically kept away from party politics in many countries.
Understanding why provides exactly an understanding of how party competition functions as a
linkage.
More generally, the problem with the globalization argument – and actually with the
cleavage perspective on which it builds - is that it lacks a theory of party competition. Though the
founders of the cleavage tradition, Lipset and Rokkan, (1967), emphasized elite driven mobilization
of issues, the tradition has typically worked from a bottom up perspective where conflicts among
the electorate are taken into the party system more or less automatically. At least no theory is
provided about the conditions where this should or should not take place (Deegan-Krause &
Enyedi,2010). Kriesi et al. provides a more elaborated account by presenting radical right-wing
parties as the “agents” which take conflicts founds among the electorate into the party systems.
Still, there is limited theory of what causes variation in this across issues and countries. One of the
reasons for this is probably the very general focus on a globalization conflict rather than the more
specific issues on which parties actually compete (cf. Green-Pedersen 2011).
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Like the cartel party hypothesis, the globalization thesis lacks a theoretical
understanding of party competition. However, the implicit conclusion about party competition as a
linkage between citizens and political system is very different from the cartel hypothesis. When
they exist, radical right-wing parties seem to be able to take the issues belonging to the
globalization conflict into party competition. Thus, the transmission of new issues from society into
the political systems seems to happen relatively smoothly. At least there is nothing in the theory that
would explain when this does not happen.
Thus, the theoretical model is essential the same as in the original cleavage literature,
which focused on explaining how West European party systems where formed around certain
societal cleavage which have then been able to survive also after the weakening or even
disappearance of these original social conflicts. New societal conflicts replace original ones. This,
however, raises two types of questions. First, party systems today are not “empty” as they were
when they were created about a century ago. A central point in the cleavage literature is exactly the
“freezing” or institutionalization of party systems and the survival of historical conflict lines. Thus
what is the connection between existing and new conflict lines? Second, politics has changed in
many fundamental ways compared to a century ago. How does the mediaticization of politics and
changes in electoral behavior affect how societal conflicts become part of politics? Especially, the
changes in electoral behavior away from socio-structural voting seem to challenge the automatic
transmission of societal conflicts into party politics.
In sum, the globalization thesis has a very different theoretical starting point compared
to the cartel party hypothesis and also implies a very different view of party competition as a
linkage between citizens and the political system. Where the cartel party hypothesis sees the party
system as closed towards public demands, the globalization thesis implies a very open system
where societal conflicts are almost automatically taken into the party system by radical right-wing
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parties. These implications of both analyses are taken to the extreme, but both lack a theory of party
competition explaining under which conditions party systems do and do not function as linkages
between voters and the state.
Parties as a linkage
Recently, Dalton et al (2011) have provided an analysis of parties as linkages which comes out of
the recognition of party research to go beyond the focus on party organization. It looks at how
parties perform in terms of five aspects of linkage (cf. Lawson 1980), namely campaigns (candidate
selection, structure of debate) participatory (mobilization) ideological, representative and policy.
The three last ones are all about how parties link the preferences of citizens to the political system.
The conclusion of the study is generally one of party adaptation rather than decline. Parties have
through for instance institutional or organizational adaptation been able to main the different
linkages and thus fulfill their role in the political system.
A central element of this argument about party adaptation is the continuing successful
ideological linkage between parties and voters. Dalton et al. (op. cit) thus shows how voters locate
themselves on a left-right scale, are able to place parties on a left-right scale and use this as the basis
for voting. Thus there is strong congruence between voters and parties when one looks at a very
general left-right scale (op. cit. 153-155). Further, the study shows how this selection of political
parties leads to governments which are generally in agreement with the median voter and that
politics matters. Voters are through their choices of the parties that form governments able to
influence public policy.
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This in many very positive view of party adaptation also raises a series of questions.
This is clear with regard to the analysis of the ideological linkage, which is a key element as both
the representative and the policy linkage rest upon it. As the authors themselves recognize (154155), a central caveat is that congruence of left-right orientation is very general. Left and right, as
the study shows (94-97), means different things in different contexts and the very general
congruence may hide a lot of incongruence on central issues. Economic issues play a central role,
but so do more cultural issues. Further, it is unclear what the mechanism is that provides this
congruence. Parties do not compete by placing themselves on a 0 to 10 scale, but by expressing
their views on various policy issues. Thus, parties’ ability to respond to new issues must be a central
component of party adaptation, but it is unclear when and how parties respond.
In sum, the analysis provided by Dalton et al (2011) is important as it moves party
research beyond just focusing on party organization into how political parties actually connect
citizens and the political system in terms of issue preference. The argument about party adaptation –
not least based on the left-right congruence between citizens and parties – share the same optimistic
view as Kriesi et al, see above. However, like Kriesi et al. the argument is not grounded on any
developed theory of party competition which can provide an explanation for variation across issues
and countries which must likely lies behind the very general left-right congruence.
What is needed?
The three analysis of West European politics presented above all provide important analyses of how
party competition work as a linkage between citizens and the political system, though with very
different conclusions. However, they all share a lack of a genuine theory of party competition which
can explain the conditions under which this linkage works. The findings of both Kriesi and
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collaborators and Dalton et al. indicate that party competition on a very general level works as a
linkage between citizens and the political system thus contradicting the cartel party hypothesis.
However, this does not preclude that the on some – important - issues established parties do work as
a cartel, which by avoiding attention to certain issues keep new parties out of the party system.
Thus to move the debate about the role of political parties, especially party
competition, as a linkage between citizens and the political system further, an analysis which
compares party competition across a number of countries on a number of issues is needed. We need
to understand how much variation across issues and countries exist and what causes it in order to
understand how party competition works as a linkage.
Further, the analysis needs to focus on both the question of attention and preferences.
If party competition is to work as a linkage between citizens and the political system, it needs to
work in both respects. The political system needs to prioritize the issues that citizens find important.
If the political system neglects issues that citizens find important this is a negative sign in terms of
how party competition links citizens and the political system. Attention is, however, not enough.
The policies that the political system implements also need to follow citizens’ preferences otherwise
it is hard to argue that party competition links citizens and the political system. Therefore, the
studies of particular issues will be based on an issue competition perspective which also includes
how parties position themselves on issues (e.g. Green-Pedersen 2012a; Green-Pedersen &
Krogstrup 2008).
Focus will be on two issues which have emerged in West European politics over the
past decades, namely European Integration and immigration. The reason for focusing on these two
issues is that these are issues that electorate has found important. Thus, an understanding of the
extent to which these two issues have been taken up by West European party systems and the extent
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to which policies have followed citizens preferences will provide considerable value added in terms
of how party competition works as a linkage between citizens and the political system.
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