The Europeanisation of Electoral Politics:
An Analysis of Converging Voting Distributions in 30 European Party Systems,
1970–2008
Daniele Caramani
Institute of Political Science
University of St. Gallen
Bodanstrasse 8, CH-9000 St. Gallen
Phone: 0041-71-224 3981
Email: daniele.caramani@unisg.ch
Web: www.ipw.unisg.ch
Abstract
“Nationalisation” theories have been used to explain the integration of electorates and party
systems in democratising and newly-formed national polities. This paper extends these
theories to the “Europeanisation” of politics and to the European Union as an emerging supranational democratic polity. Analysing electoral data for national elections in 30 countries
from 1970 to 2008 the paper looks at the convergence of party systems in Europe. Results
attest for increasingly homogeneous voting distributions for parties of a same family across
national electorates, indicating an incipient party system institutionalisation at the European
level. The paper shows that homogenous patterns are stronger for parties belonging to the
left–right dimension and less so for parties stemming from cultural cleavages. In the light of
the debate on the European Union’s democratic deficit, the structuration of electoral
alignments is interpreted as enhancing the democratic linkage between voters and
representatives, and seen as a prerequisite for responsive and accountable politics in the EU.
2
Introduction
This paper analyses patterns of convergence of voting behaviour and party systems in Europe
from 1970 until the present. How similar are European party systems? Are they becoming
more or less similar? And in what respect are they similar or different? The broader issue
underlying these questions is whether or not there exists something like a “European”
electorate or if Europe is still composed of many different national ones, and whether or not
one can observe a process of “Europeanisation” of electoral politics. To address these
questions, the paper employs concepts and measures from the rich literature on the
“nationalisation” of politics that in the last years has produced major comparative work on the
integration and formation of national electorates and party systems.1
The main question that has intrigued the literature on “nationalisation” is the formation,
integration and structuration of new political spaces, more specifically spaces of electoral and
party competition, either in newly-independent countries or new democracies. Today, we are
confronted with the formation of one major new political space – the European Union (EU).
What is argued in this paper is that concepts and measures used to analyse the formation of
national electorates and party system can be fruitfully employed to analyse the formation of a
European-wide electorate and party system.2 The main goal of the paper is to provide a broad
1
Among the most important comparative contributions see Caramani (2004) on Western
Europe, Chhibber and Kollman (2004) on the U.S., India, Canada and Great Britain. See also
Bochsler (2006) on Central and Eastern Europe, Jones and Mainwaring (2003) on Latin
America, Croissant and Schächter (2008) on South-East Asia. Further research in the
“nationalisation” field is mentioned below.
2
3
An earlier attempt along these lines can be found in Caramani (2006).
picture of the levels of “Europeanisation” of electoral politics since the 1970s. In doing this it
also contributes to fill in a gap in the literature on electoral behaviour by charting out the main
European-wide spatial patterns of similarity and difference, and the main trends over time.
Processes of integration of electorates and party systems entail an important normative
dimension as they have implications for democratic consolidation, as well as for mechanisms
of representation and accountability. Several authors have stressed the destabilising effects on
the quality of democracy of fragmented, segmented and territorially heterogeneous electorates
and party organisations.3 Based on selected indicators measuring the degree of similarity
among national electorates in Europe and their degree of convergence over time,4 the paper
aims to address an important element of the debate on the “democratic deficit” in the EU.
While not claiming that institutionalised party systems equate with democracy, the paper
submits that the structuration of a European-wide electorate and party system based on nonterritorial functional alignments is a prerequisite for the more effective representation of
societal demands, and for better mechanism of accountability and responsiveness that are at
the basis of mass democracy. Even though no European parties exist, this paper argues that
the premises for a truly European party system to emerge are in place.
3
See on these topics Gunther and Diamond (2001), Merkel (1997), Mainwaring (1998),
Reilly (2006). Others have stressed the role of functional alignments for party competition
and accountability and thus for responsive governmental policy making (Caramani, 2003 and
2004; Chhibber and Kollman, 2004; Alemán and Kellam, 2008).
4
Other indicators include uniform swings (the simultaneous shift of votes shares between two
subsequent elections), ideological convergence and the European location of the sources of
voting behaviour (see Caramani, 2004: 32–42 for a review of the dimension of electoral
integration). These other dimensions of the “Europeanisation” of electoral politics are being
analysed in separate papers.
4
The first section of the paper discusses the theoretical approaches of the formation of new
political spaces and the role of institutionalised party systems for democratic quality. The
second section addresses methodological issues. The third section – the main bulk of the
paper – is devoted to the analysis of electoral data for national elections in 30 countries over
roughly 35 years. The convergence of voting behaviour is interpreted through the
juxtaposition of the homogenising left–right dimension and dis-homogenising cultural ones.
The conclusion discusses normative implications and further research.
Toward the Formation of a European Party System?
The acceleration of the process of European integration since the Maastricht Treaty has led an
increasing number of authors to stress parallels between the formation of a new EU political
space and similar processes that took place in the 19th century at the national level. Naturally,
many authors have started transposing theories and models that have proved successful in
explaining national integration to processes of European integration.5 This literature
represents an important turn in research on European integration as it introduces a
“comparative politics” or “historical institutionalism” perspective based on a rich tradition
ranging from Karl Deutsch to Stein Rokkan. Theories of state formation and nation-building,
cleavage structures and centralisation constitute, in this view, promising models for
interpreting European unification. Furthermore, the politisation of social cleavages and the
structuring of electoral alignments in the EU today can be interpreted with reference to
The concepts of “exit–voice”, political structuring and cleavage formation have been
employed to interpret the formation of a EU political space. See in particular the work of Hix
and Lord (1997) Marks (1997), Flora (1999) and Bartolini (2005), Kriesi et al. (2008).
5
5
developments at the national level in earlier periods (see Marks and Steenbergen, 2002;
Marks and Wilson, 2000).
Within this broad field, the formation of a European-wide electorate and party system remains
an under-researched aspect. Most studies in this area address institutional, more specifically
parliamentary, issues. Work on the European Parliament (EP) and European party federations,
for example, does not address directly the integration of party systems from an electoral point
of view but rather from a programmatic and organisational one.6 On the other hand, work
done on elections (most notably, research in the wake of the “second-order election theory”)
has addressed the national character of European elections stressing that national elections are
perceived as more important than European ones, and that the latter are dominated by national
issues, party affiliations, leaders and programmes (Reif and Schmitt, 1980; Van der Eijk and
Franklin et al., 1996). Yet by focussing almost exclusively on explanatory factors accounting
for deviations in behaviour between national and European elections, these studies overlook
the commonalities in behaviour throughout Europe.
This paper’s contribution is to start filling in this gap. It does so by adopting a “comparative
politics” approach to European integration but looks directly at the electorate and electoral
behaviour. As mentioned, the theoretical basis is taken from the literature on the
“nationalisation” of electoral politics. This is the most articulated theory of electoral
integration and has provided the most complete set of concepts, hypotheses and empirical
material. It is directly concerned with the integration of electorates and party systems in
6
6
The most important recent work in this area is certainly Hix, Noury and Roland (2007).
forming systems, and with the formation of cleavage constellations and system-wide attitudes,
issues and organisations. Importantly, such an approach gives insights from a mass-electoral
perspective. This paper thus looks at the “Europeanisation” of electoral politics using as main
indicator the degree to which electoral behaviour in Europe is similar – homogeneous – and
convergent over time. This indicator is very much the same used to measure levels of
“nationalisation” within a specific country by observing similarities and differences in shares
of votes received by one party in different constituencies.7 Such a perspective enables us to
detect patterns towards the structuration of a European electorate and party system along the
lines of what happened at the national level in earlier periods.
In regard to the mentioned normative relevance for democratic development of the EU, to a
given extent the paper uses the degree of homogeneity of electoral alignments across
countries as an indicator of the incipient European-wide structuration and institutionalisation
of party systems in Europe. In democratisation research both the transition and the
modernisation approaches have neglected the role of parties, the nature of electoral cleavages
and systemic institutionalisation. This is also the case in the structural or macro-sociological
7
The literature on nationalisation has grown considerably in recent times, though under
different labels and theoretical perspectives. The term “nationalisation” goes back to
Schattschneider in his classic 1960 book and was followed by others (Claggett, Flanigan and
Zingale, 1984; Caramani, 1996; Jones and Mainwaring, 2003; Kasuya and Moenius, 2008;
Ishiyama, 2002). Others have opted for different terms: convergence (Sundquist, 1973),
homogenisation (Rose and Urwin, 1975), district heterogeneity (Morgenstern and Potthoff,
2005; Morgenstern and Swindle, 2005), party linkage (Cox, 1997 and 1999; Moenius and
Kasuya, 2004), party aggregation (Hicken, 2008; Chhibber and Kollman, 1998 and 2004) and
strategic coordination (Cox, 1997 and 1999). For obvious reasons, applied to the issue of the
formation of a European electorate the term “nationalisation” is not appropriate. The terms
“Europeanisation” is used instead. Similarly, the term “convergence” refers to a temporal
process of increasingly similar shares of votes for a family across countries.
7
approach.8 It is only more recently in the literature on democratic linkage (principally since
Mainwaring and Scully, 1995) that the electoral and partisan conditions for representation are
identified as prerequisites for democratic accountability and congruence between citizens and
representatives.9 It is in this normative perspective that the analysis of the formation of
European-wide cleavages is carried out in what follows.
Methodology
The paper analyses 30 countries in total: the current 27 members of the EU plus Iceland,
Norway and Switzerland. The time period covers all elections since the first election in the
1970s up to the most recent election in either 2008 allowing for time series over almost 40
years.10 This obviously does not apply to those countries that democratised later: Greece,
Portugal and Spain in Southern Europe (1974–77), and the Central and East European
On transition approaches see O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) and Linz and Stepan (1996).
On modernisation theories see the classic text by Lipset (1969) and the recent re-formulation
by Inglehart and Welzel (2005). The structuralism approach can be found in Collier and
Collier (1991) and Rueschemeyer et al. (1992).
8
9
On this points see also Mainwaring and Torcal (2006), Luna and Zechmeister (2005). On the
literature whose concern is in the post-national phase see the essays in Beck (1998),
Habermas (1998), Held and McGrew (2002) and Zürn (1998).
10
For Cyprus complete results for 1970 and 1976 are missing and have been excludedas well
as the seats of the Turkish community which are vacant (24 out of 80). In Slovenia the 1990
election to the Sociopolitical Chamber has not been considered, as the 1992 election because
of unreliable sources. For the Czech Republic and Slovakia before separation, elections to the
respective National Councils have been taken (rather than those to the Federal Assembly) for
1990 and 1992. Overseas seats for Denmark (Greenland and Faroe Islands), France, the
Netherlands, Portugal have not been considered while for Italy (2006 and 2008) they are
included. In Germany Zweitstimmen have been used. Similarly in Hungary, Italy (1994, 1996
and 2001) and Lithuania votes for the PR-list distribution of seats have been taken. In France
and Hungary votes cast in the first ballot have been considered. In Ireland and Malta
computations were carried out on first preferences.
8
countries that democratised in the early 1990s. All national legislative elections to the lower
houses (when there is more than one house) have been considered. All parties scoring at least
1% nationally at one specific election have been included in the analysis. Smaller parties have
been grouped in an “other parties” category. In total 264 elections have been analysed.
To what extent do parties of a same family, say all socialist parties, receive similar shares of
votes across members states? And to what extent does this homogeneity increase over time
attesting to a process of convergence? This apparently simple indicator faces three
methodological difficulties: (1) choosing a measure of homogeneity (operationalisation), (2)
classifying parties into European party families and (3) choosing an appropriate time unit.
Operationalisation
The basic indicator to assess the convergence of voting behaviour among European party
systems is the level of similarity of shares of votes, measured over time, among parties of a
same family across countries. There are many ways in which it is possible to measure the
spread. A first simple rough indicator is “presence”: in how many units (countries) does a
party exist as a percentage of the total number of countries scrutinised? For example, a family
that is present in 20 out of 30 countries has a score of 66.6%.11 This measure is called
territorial coverage or spread. The remaining measures are indices of diffusion and
homogeneity of support for parties across countries.
11
9
To say that a party “exists” means it has received at least 1% of the votes nationally.
Several of the early measures employed have been criticised for being artificially affected by
the number of territorial units (normally districts) on which they are computed. This is
relevant also at the European level as we are going to compare periods of time with different
number of countries, namely before and after democratisation in Central and Eastern
Europe.12 For some, therefore, the Gini coefficient provides a more convincing measure.
Jones and Mainwaring (2003) develop the Party Nationalisation Score (PNS) or inverted Gini
coefficient. Also measures developed later are based on the Gini coefficient (Bochsler, 2006).
The paper mainly relies on the Gini coefficient and the standard deviation.13
One of the main problems of homogenisation measures is to pass from party values to system
values. At the national level the main issue is to have measures that weight party scores of
homogeneity by their size in terms of votes, so to have large parties weighting more than
small ones. At the European level, the equivalent to a party is the family and the equivalent to
a systemic measure is all families aggregated. The standard deviation is a measure which is
well suited in this respect as it takes larger values for larger parties. Similarly, the Party
System Nationalisation Score (PSNS) is computed by multiplying party scores by their mean
size (in the present case the mean European-wide share of votes for a family) and then added
up for all families. Both measures are presented below.
12
Such critiques concern in particular simple descriptive statistics measures such as the Mean
Absolute Deviation (MAD), the Mean Squared Deviation (MSD), the Variance (S2) and the
Standard Deviation (S), but also the Variation Coefficient and the Cumulative Regional
Inequality Index (CV and CRII, Rose and Urwin, 1975: 24). Other indices rarely used include
the “index of party aggregation” or “party inflation” (Cox, 1997).
13
This paper excludes measures based on the rate of change between two or more elections,
such as correlations between subsequent elections, uniform swings and variance components
analysis. For such measures see Katz (1973), Claggett, Flanigan and Zingale (1984),
Caramani (2004: 58–59) Alemán and Kellam (2008).
10
European Party Families
Analysing whether or not party families exist everywhere and measuring the extent to which
they are distributed homogeneously across Europe presupposes a classification of single
parties into party families. This paper relies on a detailed classification of parties in a number
of families larger than those of other studies. The coding of single parties has been carried out
through an analysis of their ideological and programmatic content. Appendix 1 lists the 25
families (plus “others”). Contrary to most other comparative projects all parties with at least
1% of national votes have been coded and classified into families.14
One related problem is that party ideologies change over time, namely in processes of deradicalisation. This is the case of several communist parties which became social democrats
or social liberals as well as nationalist and post-fascist parties becoming main-stream
conservative. Furthermore, we have cases of transformation of agrarian parties into green
ones and of Catholic/Protestant parties into inter-confessional people’s parties. To be able to
draw a picture of the European party systems at specific points in time, each party has been
given a code (party family) at each election.15
14
The ideological analysis of the parties is based on the definition parties give themselves of
their position as collected in a new database on party families. These data have been crosschecked with other classifications such as those from the Comparative Manifestos Project
(CMP, see Budge et al., 2001; Klingemann et al., 2006) and available data from various
expert surveys such as the Chapel Hill project (Marks et al., 2006; Ray, 2006; Steenbergen
and Marks, 2007) and the Benoit, Hunt and Laver project (Laver and Hunt, 1992; Benoit and
Laver, 2006). The CMP and expert surveys do not classify all parties but only the major ones.
15
Even in case of change of ideology the party code is left unchanged to allow for
longitudinal analysis.
11
Time Units
Measures of homogenisation are calculated for each family across countries. Yet countries
hold elections in different years, so that the “election year” cannot be used as a time unit.
Periods of time of five years have been used instead as this is the maximum time of a
legislature (some countries vote every three or four years, but none every six years or more).
In tables and figures, therefore, the date 1970 refers to 1970–74, 1975 to 1975–79, and so on.
Evidence and Analysis
Empirical evidence is presented in two steps. The first step is to analyse the spread of party
families across national party systems. Are there more “Europeanised” party families than
others in that they exist in all or most countries? And how similar is the vote for parties of a
same family across national systems? The more similar support, the more “Europeanised” a
party family. The second step is to analyse the composition of national party systems. The
focus of the first sub-section is party families. The focus of the second is party systems.
Mapping Party Families
1. The Spread of Party Families Across Countries
This sub-section addresses first the simple but fundamental question of which party families
exist where. While there are some families that exist in all countries, and thus account for a
12
basic similarity in Europe, a number of families exist only in some countries or areas and thus
account for dissimilarity in Europe. Table 1 indicates the number of countries in which a party
family is present in absolute figures and as a percentage of the total number of countries in a
given five-year period. A number of caveats are necessary to interpret the table correctly.
First, the number of overall countries varies over time.16 Second, there may be more than one
party of the same family in the same election (say, two or more green parties). In each country
and for each election, the votes for parties of a same family have been aggregated. What is
compared across countries, therefore, are party families rather than single parties. Third, the
cross-country comparison requires similar time points. Insofar as elections take place in
different years in the various countries, five-year averages have been calculated for elections
in a country taking place in the same five-year period (for example, in the UK in 1970 and
twice in 1974).
[Table 1 about here]
The first observation about Table 1 is that there is only one party family that is always present
in all countries (100%): this is the socialist family (which includes social democrats and
labour parties as well). No other party family is present in all countries at any point during the
period since 1970. What is also particular about socialists is that in all countries they are
present with a major party, and not just with sporadic formations changing from one election
16
The first five-year period (1970–74) includes 17 West European countries (Greece votes in
1974). This number increases to 19 with democratisation of Portugal and Spain for the period
1975–79). With Cyprus we have 20 countries from 1980 to 1989. After 1990 with 10 Central
and East European countries the total number increases to 30. However, for 1990–94 data for
Slovenia are unreliable and therefore this country has been excluded.
13
to the next. This represents an important element of the institutionalisation of left politics
European-wide. From Table 1 we see that there are other party families that exist in most of
Europe: the liberals (present between 66% and 80% of the countries depending on the period),
the conservatives (between 60% and 80%), the communists (between 48% and 71%), the
greens (between 0%, no country, and 62%) and the extreme right-wing parties (between 24%
and 62%).
[Figure 1 about here]
The two latter party families (greens and extreme right-wing parties) are also the families that
are characterised by a spread over time in a growing number of countries. Figure 1 depicts the
trends in spread for the major party families. Greens and extreme right-wing parties increase
their presence in Europe steadily. Another case of increased spread is that of ethnic parties.
This is due to Central and Eastern Europe since 1990. The number of countries in which these
parties exist passes from 1 to 6 in 1990 and to 7 in 2000.17 On the contrary, for agrarians there
is in initial increase in 1990 when Central and Eastern European countries democratise and a
decline afterwards. The temporal pattern for the large families that exist in most countries
(socialists, liberals and conservatives) is stable over time. To these families one should add
the religious parties. In Table 1 and Figure 1 religious parties are divided into interconfessionals (the German Christian Democratic Union and the Dutch Christian Democratic
17
There is no such increase, on the contrary, in the number of countries in which regionalists
are present. In this paper regionalists and ethnic parties are distinguished, the first to
characterise claims for regional autonomy (for example, the Moravian party in the Czech
Republic) and the second to characterised claims in favour of an ethnic group (for example,
Russians in Estonia).
14
Appeal), people’s parties (mostly in Catholic countries), Catholic parties (in mixed countries)
and Protestant parties. If taken together, religious parties exist in roughly 80% of the countries
contributing to a general homogeneity in Europe.
On the other hand, a number of party families exist in just a few countries. Leaving aside tiny
groupings such as the animalists (for the defence of animal rights), beer parties and
pensioners lists, the main families that differentiate European party systems are ethnic parties,
agrarians and regionalists. These parties exist in approximately one fourth of the 30 countries
considered here. Insofar as they exist only in some countries these families have a “dishomogenising” effect on the European constellation. However, their electoral support is in
most cases very modest (in comparison to socialists, liberals and conservatives, as well as
extreme right-wing parties and even greens) and thus they do not represent major deviations
from the overall European electoral alignment.
[Figure 2 about here]
The first conclusion from Table 1 and Figure 1 is that the party families that exist in more
than half of European countries are the party families of the left–right dimension: socialists,
conservatives, liberals and communists all display curves above the 50% threshold. To these
families one can add more recently the greens and the extreme right-wing parties. The second
conclusion is that overall we do not see a trend either towards more coverage or more
retrenchment. As Figure 2 shows, the average number of countries in which families are
present (as a percentage of the total number of countries) remains stable since 1970.
15
2. Convergence and Homogenisation of Voting Distributions
The fact that a party family exists in most or even all countries does not imply that its support
is distributed homogeneously across countries. Similarly, the fact that a party family exists in
an increasing number of countries does not imply that its support converges over time. This
sub-section therefore comes to the main question of the paper, namely whether or not, from
1970 to the present there has been a process of convergence or homogenisation of support
across countries. In other words: are differences in support for parties of a same family indeed
decreasing over time, attesting to a general convergence and homogenisation, thus
Europeanisation? In addition, this sub-section provides an answer to the question of which
families are more Europeanised and which are less.
Figure 3 depicts the longitudinal trend for the average of all party families. To produce the
graph a number of minor party families have been excluded.18 Furthermore, it is important to
know that measures of homogeneity such as the standard deviation and the Gini coefficient
have been computed using all countries in which democratic elections took place within a
five-year period. In countries in which a party family does not exist has been considered as
0% of support for that family. Finally, as for systemic levels of nationalisation at the national
level, the computation of a systemic level of Europeanisation at the European level the
homogeneity scores for party families must be weighted by their size, that is the means of the
votes a given family receives. As discussed elsewhere (Caramani, 2004: 82–84) the standard
18
The following families have been excluded from this average: animalists, anti-Europeans,
pro-Europeans, feminists, Orthodox, pensioners, personal and pro-alcohol parties and others
(that is, all parties with less than 1% of the votes nation-wide).
16
deviation does take into account the size of units by assuming larger values for larger units.
The Gini coefficient, however, needs to be weighted (see Morgenstern and Swindle, 2005).
The dashed curve in Figure 3 depicts this measure following the formula of the Party System
Nationalisation Score (PSNS) applied to European party families.
[Figure 3 about here]
What can be observed for both indicators is a slightly converging pattern, that is
homogenisation, of the support for party families across European party systems from 1970 to
2008. This is an important result attesting to a process towards the Europeanisation of
electorates and party systems in Europe in the last four decades. Overall, national party
systems increasingly resemble one another. The fact that both the standard deviation and Gini
support this finding strengthens it. More importantly, perhaps, the inclusion of Central and
East European countries since 1990 does not affect this trend. There is no significant
divergence appearing since 1990 even though the five-year period 1990–94 is characterised
by a “bump” caused by a distinct electoral behaviour in Central and Eastern Europe. Also in
the two decades since the democratisation of Central and Eastern Europe the stable pattern is
not modified.
In Figure 4 the same information – how homogeneous is the level of support for a family
across Europe – is presented for each party family rather than for all as an average. Again,
minor party families have been excluded. Furthermore, families in the legend have been
17
ordered as in Figure 1 (and as in the figures below) following a rough left–right ordering with
the exception of the two top families (regionalists and ethnic parties).19
[Figure 4 about here]
The most important result from this figure supports results of the previous section. It is the
party families of the left–right dimension whose support is distributed more homogeneously
across European party systems: socialists above all with a Gini coefficient constantly around
.25, conservatives and liberals (with coefficients around .50 and a converging pattern for the
former and a slightly diverging one for the latter). What we also see is that the level of
homogeneity for green parties increases from 1975 to 1990 and then stabilises at a level of
approximately .65. The support for extreme right-wing parties, too, becomes more uniform
across national party systems. This is a more progressive but uninterrupted tendency. On the
other hand, for one main party family we can observe an opposite trend. The electoral support
for communist parties diverges. This means that the levels of support for these parties are
increasingly different between countries.
For all other party families Gini coefficients are above .75 indicating a very heterogeneous
support across national party systems. This points to diversity in Europe. Apart from small
party families such as new left parties and social liberals, the families that account for
19
This graph is based on the Gini coefficient which controls for the size of party families, so
that it is possible to compare large families with small ones. Similar results to those presented
in Figure 4 have been obtained with other indices, namely the IPR (Caramani, 2004: 62). For
reasons of space it is not presented in this paper. As for previous evidence, figures represent
averages for five-year periods in order to have comparable time points across countries.
18
difference between national party systems are the various religious, ethno-linguistic,
regionalist and agrarian ones. The level of homogeneity for ethnic and regionalist parties is
depicted with thick solid lines. In Figure 1 it appeared that these parties exist in roughly one
or two out of five countries (between 10% and 25% depending on the period). Importantly,
the level of presence of ethnic parties increases with democratisation in Central and Eastern
Europe in which many parties of ethnic minorities exist such as those in Romania, the Baltic
states, Slovenia, etc. In Western Europe the only case of an ethnic party is the Swedish
People’s Party in Finland. The most important regionalist parties exist in Belgium, Italy,
Spain and the UK.20 Yet it is a phenomenon that is confined to few countries. Furthermore, in
these countries it is a marginal phenomenon in most cases.21
The conclusion from this set of evidence is that the “Europeanised” party families are those of
the left–right dimension: socialists, liberals and conservatives in the first place. These are the
families that make up for Europe’s similarity. On the contrary, the families that differentiate
European electorates are the religious, agrarian and ethno-regionalist ones.
20
Belgian Catholics, Socialists, Liberals, Greens and Communists (each of which is divided
into two linguistic wings) have not been coded as ethnic or regionalists, but rather according
to their ideology. The regionalists are the Volksunie and the Vlaams Belang. Considering
them separately would affect negatively the homogeneity of socialists, liberals and Catholics
(but not very significantly in the overall European average). It would not affect the degree of
spread in Figure 1.
21
The level of homogeneity of the vote for religious parties is represented by thin solid lines.
No clear trend can be observed. It is however clear that as for regionalists and agrarians,
confession is, first, a factor that does not appear in most countries, second, that it is a factor
divided in itself (different denominations or combinations) and, third, that it is a factor that
strongly varies between countries where it exists.
19
Mapping Party Systems
The result from the previous sub-section is that left–right party families are “Europeanised”
(both in terms of coverage and homogeneity) while cultural party families such as regionalist,
ethno-linguistic, agrarian and religious families exist in a limited number of countries. The
former account for homogeneity in Europe, the latter for heterogeneity. This, however, does
not allow us yet to say that, overall, there is a Europeanised party system. Figures 2 and 3 do
show us the overall levels of coverage and homogeneity. Yet with what can we compare
them? On their own they do not tell us much.
A first possibility is to compare the levels of Europeanisation with the levels of
nationalisation in Europe during the same period. Indeed, the indication that comes from this
comparison is that the levels of homogeneity displayed in Figure 3 is similar to the levels of
nationalisation in nationalised party systems.22 A second possibility, in the absence of samelevel cross-sectional variation, is to consider the trend over time. While Figure 3 displays a
slight trend towards Europeanisation, Figure 2 does not. The period since 1970 simply does
not offer enough temporal variation. A third possibility is to look for variation across party
families and consider the impact on the entire system of the most important ones in terms of
size. If the most important party families are Europeanised, then one can say that most of the
party system is Europeanised and that diversity is confined to marginal party families.
22
For the period since World War II the levels of nationalisation are for 17 West European
countries around 6.5 average standard deviation (Caramani, 2004: 79). The mean standard
deviation applied to European party families in 30 countries since 1970 is 7.1, not much
higher. According to this comparison we would therefore tend to speak of a “Europeanised”
European party system rather than of a fragmented European party system.
20
[Figure 5 about here]
Figure 5 displays the evolution of the European party system since 1970 by showing the
strength (in percentages) of the main party families as an average for all countries. The graph
displays stability, even though there are changes (such as the decline of religious parties or the
increase of nationalists and right-wing parties) in correspondence with the democratisation of
Central and Eastern Europe. What is more important for the argument of this paper is that the
families that the previous sub-section has identified as “Europeanised” are also the largest
families, that is, the families that dominate the European party system: these are mostly
parties of the left–right dimension such as socialists, conservatives and liberals. Combined,
these three families make up more than half the votes in Europe (60%). To this one can add
the extremes of this dimension with extreme right-wing parties and communists making up
another 10%. Together with another increasingly homogeneous family, the greens, the total
votes for “Europeanised” families is above 70%.23 As one can see from Figure 6 the picture
does not change radically if Western Europe on the one hand and Central-Eastern Europe on
the other are disaggregated. Also in Central and Eastern Europe the party systems are
dominated by families of the left–right dimension that turn out to be homogeneously
distributed across Europe. The main differences that we see in Central and Eastern Europe in
comparison to Western Europe is a stronger presence of nationalist and right-wing parties,
23
On average socialists receive 30.0% of the votes since 1970, Conservatives 18.3%, Liberals
12.1%, Communists 6.3%, nationalists and extreme right-wing parties combined 4.3% and
Greens 2.2%.
21
regionalists and ethnic parties, and a weaker share of votes for religious and communist
parties. On the contrary, liberals and conservatives are gaining strength since 1990.24
[Figure 6 about here]
One can therefore conclude that most of the European party system is aligned along the left–
right dimension and that it is Europeanised. On the contrary, the families that diverge and are
at the origin of fragmentation in Europe are marginal in this landscape. Agrarians and
regionalists combined make up for 4.8% of the votes in Europe. More problematic is religion.
As seen above religious families vary a great deal in Europe, therefore representing a source
of fragmentation. At the same time, this is mainly an effect of classification. If taken together
the picture looks much more homogeneous. For example, the percentage of countries in
which there is at least one religious party is between 94% in 1970 and 73% in 2005. In this
sense, religiosity is not as strongly a factor of diversity in Europe as if the various types of
religions are taken separately. It is certainly the cultural alignment that is most homogeneous.
However, there is an important question in regard of the spatial positioning of these parties, as
in many countries they are economically located at the centre of the left–right scale with
elements of state intervention and social welfare.
24
There is a strong negative correlation between size of families (measured in terms of mean
votes across countries for each five-year period) and heterogeneity: the larger a family, the
smaller the coefficients of variation (in other words, the more Europeanised), with r = –.92, p
< .01 between mean and Gini, r = –.75, p < .01 between mean and standard deviation and r =
–.90, p < .01 between mean and IPR.
22
Having seen which party families are How similar do national party systems look? That is to
say, to what extent do single countries deviate from the overall picture presented in Figure 5?
And does the composition of national party systems look more similar today than 40 years
ago? This last part aims to depict the composition (in terms of party families) of national party
systems. It does that with two series of graphs (Figures 7 and 8). The goal is to get a more
precise picture of which countries stand out (outliers) with respect to the main pattern of
similarity, and to identify areas of similarities.25
[Figure 7 about here]
From Figure 7 we can see that there is a convergence from 1970 to 2005 towards the
European-wide composition seen in Figure 5 in the following countries: France with the
weakening of communists and extreme right; Iceland and Sweden with the weakening of
agrarians; Italy with the transformation of extreme right and communists in main stream
conservatives and socialists; Portugal with the weakening of communists; Spain with the
weakening of communists and regionalists, as well as with the simplification of the right
camp. To these one must add countries that were already close to the general pattern: Greece,
Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, the UK. The countries that stand out are: Austria and
Norway with the recent increase of extreme right parties; Belgium with strong regionalism;
Finland with strong agrarianism; Ireland with weak socialists; the Netherland with a
25
Bars add up to 100%. The following families have been excluded: animalists, antiEuropeans, pro-Europeans, feminists, Orthodox, pensioners, personal and pro-alcohol parties
and others (all parties with less than 1% of national votes). The total for these families make
up for the white bits on top of the bars.
23
recrudescence of extreme right and extreme left. What one can also see in Figure 7 is that
people’s and inter-confessional parties on the one hand and conservatives on the other are
complementary. They rarely appear in the same country (Switzerland but only since the SVP
can no longer be considered an agrarian party, Ireland where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are
usually classified as people’s party and conservative respectively and Norway to some
extent). If these two families are considered together homogeneity would look must higher.
[Figure 8 about here]
Figure 8 presents the same information for Central and Eastern Europe on a shorter time
frame. The picture is much more heterogeneous with respect to Western Europe, meaning that
there is room for convergence towards the left–right structure in the future. We can observe a
trend in this direction for Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania (in spite of a
small socialist family and a large extreme right-wing one), Slovakia (in spite of strong ethnic
parties) and Slovenia. Countries that distinctively deviate from the left–right pattern are
Estonia (with a very small left), Latvia and Poland (both with a weak left and strong agrarian
and conservative families), as well as Romania (with strong regionalism and a very large
social liberal party). Latvia, in addition, has also very large ethnic parties.
Conclusion
The two most important results that emerge from the previous data exploration are the
following:
24
 First, there is a slight overall convergence of national party systems in Europe that
shows in increasingly similar levels of support for parties of a same family across
countries. This is an important results attesting to an incipient “Europeanisation” of
electoral politics comparable to nationalisation processes in the 19th century.
 Second, there is a clear difference between party families stemming from the left–right
dimension that are the most Europeanised ones (socialists, conservatives and liberals;
with the more recent addition of greens and extreme right-wing parties) and parties
that originated from other cleavages, namely the ethno-linguistic, rural–urban and
religious cleavages (all pre-industrial cleavages). These families are the less
Europeanised ones in that they differentiate countries and are the cause of deviations
from the general European-wide pattern. This difference between industrial and preindustrial factors appears in both the spread of such parties (in how many countries do
they exist) and the homogeneity of support for such parties across countries.
The homogenisation of the European party system takes place along the left–right dimension.
It is this dimension that is present everywhere in Europe and is predominant in most national
systems. These are quite robust results considering that the addition of 10 newly democratised
countries in Central and Eastern Europe have not modified the overall left–right pattern that
can be observed in most West European countries since 1970.
Are these surprising conclusions? Yes if one refers to work in recent years stressing the
increasing role of ethnicity, religion and regionalism in a number of countries, or work
stressing patterns of fundamental de-alignment. To some extent they are also surprising if one
25
refers to work stressing the increasing relevance of the pro/anti-European dimension in
European party systems. This dimension does not seem to play a very large role in most party
systems in Europe.26 Yet, on the one hand, data presented in this paper does not really allow
to make this claim, insofar as it is not based on ideologies.27 And, on the other hand, there is
indeed the strengthening of extreme right-wing and nationalist families that stress precisely
such a pro/anti-European cleavage in a growing number of countries. The conclusions
summarised above, however, are much less surprising if compared to processes of electoral
integration that took place at the national level in the 19th and early 20th century: during
processes of nationalisation of electoral politics the left–right dimension became dominant in
most, if not all, European party systems, overwhelming and eventually wiping out cultural
factors that, as seen above, are the main causes of deviations in Europe. It is therefore
processes of nationalisation that created the fundamental homogeneity that we can observe
today in Europe. Of course, not all distortive factors disappeared. However, most were
discarded through the nationalisation of politics produced by industrialisation and
democratisation (for a fuller account, see Caramani, 2004). As a result, the homogenising left–
right dimension that emerged from class and mass politics has weakened the dishomogenising cultural dimensions. Today, as 100 year ago does the left–right play an
integration role in Europe.
26
Ideologically party families have converged towards the support of the process of European
integration, especially in the case of the left with both communist and socialist parties
expressing strong criticism towards what was then regarded as a liberal project committed to
market economy and privatisations, with little role left to national governments to steer the
economy. A pattern in the opposed direction has been that of regionalist parties which
initially saw opportunities to establish identity and institutional autonomy but then started
criticising a centralist and bureaucratic project (in this joined by extreme right-wing parties).
27
See Caramani, Nuotio and Strijbis (2009) for such an analysis.
26
All parties in Europe are national and there is no such thing as European party organisations
beyond the lose federations in the EP. What this study shows, however, is that electorally the
European electorates and party systems are very similar and that there are the premises or
preconditions for an organisational integration of parties. The converging patterns described
above since 1970 are, in fact, likely to be part of a much longer historical process. This goes
beyond the aims of this paper. The aim of this paper, rather, was to stress changes in the
levels of similarity since 1970. The answer is that a slight convergence takes place and that
the resulting fundamental homogeneity is due to the large parties of the left–right dimension
that dominates European politics since the momentous change towards mass and class politics
at the end of the 19th century.
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Appendix
Party families
Family
Left–right parties
Communists
New left
Socialists
Greens
Social liberals
Liberals
Conservatives
Agrarians
Nationalists
Extreme right
Parties
Communists, maoists, trotzkysts and other radical left
New left parties, close to social movements
Socialists, social-democrats, labour and workers’ parties
Greens, ecologist and environmentalist parties
Socially but not economically liberal/permissive parties
Liberals, radicals and republicans
Conservatives, including Gaullists and Fianna Fáil
Agrarians, peasants, smallholders and centre parties
Nationalist parties, independence movements
Radical right, neo-populists and anti-immigrants parties
Ethno-regionalist parties
Ethnic parties
Ethnic minorities parties
Regionalists
Parties for regional autonomy
Religious parties
People’s parties
Catholics
Protestants
Inter-confessionals
Christian democrats and people’s parties
Catholic parties in religiously mixed countries
Protestant parties
Inter-confessional parties in religiously mixed countries
Other parties
Animalists
Feminists
Pro-alcohol
Anti-alcohol
Pensioners
Personal
Orthodox
Anti-Europe
Europeans
Others
Parties for the defense of animal rights
Women’s lists
Beer parties
Teetotalists
Pensioners’ and seniority issues parties
Personal parties, no specific ideology
Orthodox parties
Anti-European, anti-EU integration, anti-NATO parties
Alliances and parties specific to EP elections
Other parties and independent candidates with less than 1% of votes
34
Table 1. Number of countries in which party families are present (absolute numbers and as percentage of total countries, 1970–2008)
Party family
Agrarians
Animalists
Anti-Europeans
Catholics
Communists
Conservatives
Ethnic parties
Europeans
Extreme right
Feminists
Greens
Inter-confessionals
Liberals
Nationalists
New left
Orthodox
Pensioners
People's parties
Personal
Pro-alcohol
Protestants
Regionalists
Social liberals
Socialists
Number of countries
1970
N
5
0
1
3
12
11
1
0
4
0
0
1
13
0
3
0
0
6
0
0
6
2
5
17
17
%
29
0
6
18
71
65
6
0
24
0
0
6
76
0
18
0
0
35
0
0
35
12
29
100
1975
N
4
0
1
2
15
12
1
0
7
0
1
2
15
0
4
0
0
7
0
0
6
3
6
19
19
%
21
0
5
11
79
63
5
0
37
0
5
11
79
0
21
0
0
37
0
0
32
16
32
100
1980
N
4
0
1
2
14
12
1
1
5
1
7
2
14
0
5
0
1
7
2
0
6
3
5
20
20
%
20
0
5
10
70
60
5
5
25
5
35
10
70
0
25
0
5
35
10
0
30
15
25
100
1985
N
4
0
0
2
13
13
1
0
8
1
10
2
16
0
4
0
2
6
0
0
5
3
6
20
20
%
20
0
0
10
65
65
5
0
40
5
50
10
80
0
20
0
10
30
0
0
25
15
30
100
1990
N
12
0
0
3
19
19
6
0
17
1
17
2
23
5
5
0
4
11
3
1
6
6
9
29
29
%
41
0
0
10
66
66
21
0
59
3
59
7
79
17
17
0
14
38
10
3
21
21
31
100
1995
N
9
0
3
4
18
21
6
2
15
2
13
2
22
3
7
0
5
11
3
0
6
4
9
30
30
%
30
0
10
13
60
70
20
7
50
7
43
7
73
10
23
0
17
38
10
0
20
13
30
100
2000
N
8
0
2
2
14
22
7
2
15
0
15
4
21
2
5
0
2
11
3
0
6
4
7
30
30
%
27
0
7
7
47
73
23
7
50
0
50
13
70
7
17
0
7
37
10
0
20
13
23
100
2005
N
10
1
3
2
14
23
7
2
18
0
18
4
19
1
5
1
1
9
5
0
6
4
9
29
29
Note: In the period since 2005 the number of countries is 29 as Luxembourg had not yet voted when the paper was prepared.
%
34
3
10
7
48
80
24
7
62
0
62
14
66
3
17
3
3
31
17
0
21
14
31
100
Figure 1. Number of countries in which a party family is present as a percentage of the total
number of countries, 1970–2008 (five-year periods averages)
Figure 2. Number of countries in which party families are present as a percentage of the total
number of countries: average for all party families in Europe, 1970–2008 (five-year periods
averages)
37
Figure 3. The homogeneity of the vote for families across countries: average for all party
families in Europe, 1970–2008 (five-year periods averages)
Note: Curves are based on figures computing the differences in the vote level for party
families across all countries. For families that do not exist in a specific country (e.g., agrarians
in Spain) the vote is 0%. Countries in which no democratic elections took place (e.g. Spain
before 1977) are excluded from the average.
38
Figure 4. The homogeneity of the vote for families across countries, 1970–2008 (five-year
periods averages)
39
Figure 5. Overall European percentages of votes for families, 1970–2008 (five-year periods
averages)
40
Figure 6. Percentage of votes for families in Western Europe (1970–2008) and Central-Eastern Europe (1990–2008): five-year
periods averages
Figure 7. Percentage of votes for families by countries in Western Europe, 1975–2005 (fiveyear periods averages)
Note: For space reasons 1970–74, 1980–84, 1990–94 and 2000–04 are not depicted.
Figure 8. Percentage of votes for families by countries in Central and Eastern Europe, 1990–
2005 (five-year periods averages)
43