Content uploaded by Liesbet Hooghe
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Liesbet Hooghe on Apr 24, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjpp20
Journal of European Public Policy
ISSN: 1350-1763 (Print) 1466-4429 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjpp20
Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset,
Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage
Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks
To cite this article: Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks (2018) Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises:
Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage, Journal of European Public Policy, 25:1, 109-135,
DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2017.1310279
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2017.1310279
View supplementary material
Published online: 28 Apr 2017.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 2840
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Citing articles: 15 View citing articles
Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset,
Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage
Liesbet Hooghe
a,b
and Gary Marks
a,b
a
Political Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA;
b
Robert Schuman Centre,
European University Institute, Florence, Italy
ABSTRACT
This article argues that the perforation of national states by immigration,
integration and trade may signify a critical juncture in the political
development of Europe no less consequential for political parties and party
systems than the previous junctures that Lipset and Rokkan detect in their
classic article. We present evidence suggesting that (1) party systems are
determined in episodic breaks from the past; (2) political parties are
programmatically inflexible; and, (3) as a consequence, party system change
comes in the form of rising parties.
KEYWORDS Political parties; cleavage; European integration; euro crisis; elections; immigration
Have the euro crisis and the migration crisis congealed a distinctive structure
of conflict in Europe?
1
In this article we use the building blocks of a cleavage
theory of party competition to argue that Europe has been transformed by a
new divide. Cleavage theory claims that the issues that divide voters are con-
nected in durable dimensions, that political parties make programmatic com-
mitments on these issue dimensions, and that as a result of issue coherence
and programmatic stickiness, change in party systems is a punctuated process
that arises from shocks external to the party system.
Summarizing an extensive literature over the past decade, we describe the
emergence of a transnational cleavage, which has as its core a political reac-
tion against European integration and immigration. The perforation of
national states by immigration, integration and trade may signify a critical
juncture in the political development of Europe no less decisive for parties
and party systems than the previous junctures that Lipset and Rokkan
(1967) detect in their classic article. For challenging parties on the radical
right these issues relate to the defense of national community against trans-
national shocks. The European Union (EU) is itself such a shock, because it
introduces rule by those who are regarded as foreigners, diminishes the
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
CONTACT Gary Marks marks@unc.edu
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2017.1310279.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY, 2018
VOL. 25, NO. 1, 109–135
https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2017.1310279
authority exercised by national states over their own populations, produces
economic insecurity among those who lack mobile assets, and facilitates
immigration. Immigration is perceived as a particular threat by those who
resent cultural intermixing and the erosion of national values, by those who
must compete with immigrants for housing and jobs, and, more generally,
by those who seek cultural or economic shelter in the rights of citizenship.
We term this cleavage a transnational cleavage because it has as its focal
point the defense of national political, social and economic ways of life
against external actors who penetrate the state by migrating, exchanging
goods or exerting rule. This conception has much in common with prior con-
ceptions, but because we wish to outline its character, sources and conse-
quences in ways with which other scholars might disagree, we adopt a
distinctive label.
The emergence of a new cleavage reveals the causal power of social forces
in the face of established institutions. Perhaps the most stunning conse-
quences of the crises are the breakthrough of a radical right party in a
country, Germany, that was perceived to be practically immune, and the rejec-
tion of EU membership in a British referendum. On both counts, the crises can
be considered to have ushered in a new era. However, virtually every country
contains its own surprises, and were we to follow them we would be lost in
fascinating detail.
Our focus in this contribution is on the general character of conflicts that
have arisen, their relation to the existing structure of party competition, and
how they have reshaped party systems. The crises are critical junctures that
reveal, in the open air, so to speak, the pressures that have built up over
the past two decades. They suggest that party systems are subject to discon-
tinuities rather than to incremental change, and that the response of a party
system to exogenous change comes from voters rather than parties.
In the next section, we explain why we think cleavage theory can help us
understand what has happened. We have no hesitation in dropping the pre-
sumption that political parties are expressions of already formed, densely
organized and socially closed groups, while building on three fundamental
claims of cleavage theory: party systems are determined in episodic breaks
from the past by exogenous social forces; political parties are programmati-
cally inflexible; and, in consequence, party system change comes in the
form of rising parties.
The remainder of this contribution provides evidence that this has indeed
happened. The following section conceives the rise of a transnational clea-
vage as a reaction to reforms that have weakened national sovereignty, pro-
moted international economic exchange, increased immigration and
exacerbated cultural and economic insecurity. We examine the effect of the
economic and migration crises in raising the salience of Europe and immigra-
tion, and then show that the modal response of mainstream political parties
110 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
was to stay put on these issues. Voters changed, but mainstream parties did
not.
We then present evidence that competition on European integration and
immigration is structured on the new cleavage. The TAN pole of this cleavage
is staked out by the radical right.
2
Radical right parties take more extreme pos-
itions on these issues, place more salience on them, and exhibit greater
internal unity than mainstream parties. By virtue of their commitment to
GAL values, green parties are located at the alter-pole. Just as the religious
cleavage and the class cleavage were raised by Catholic and socialist parties
on one side of the divide, so the transnational cleavage is mobilized by
radical right parties at one extreme. As the transnational divide has become
salient, mainstream parties have been compelled to compete on issues that
lie far from their programmatic core.
Cleavage theory –then and now
Cleavage theory, originating in Lipset and Rokkan (1967), conceives a national
party system as the expression of underlying social conflicts. Revealingly,
Lipset and Rokkan (1967) ignore strategic interaction among parties in
explaining the structure of contestation. Instead, they focus on the basic clea-
vages that undergird party support over the medium or long term: the
national revolution that produced a cleavage between the central state and
peripheral communities and between the central state and a supranational
church; and the industrial revolution that produced an urban/rural cleavage,
and later a worker/employer cleavage. In each case, the political parties that
were eventually formed were instruments of self-conscious, socially closed
groups. Conflicts between workers and employers, between those living in
peripheral communities and central state builders, and between secularists
and defenders of the Church were rooted in collective identities, grassroots
movements and hierarchical organizations. The solidarity that existed in
these groups was much more than an expression of the social or occupational
location of any set of individuals. It was experiential, the outcome of repeated
conflict which defined and solidified the composition of in-groups and out-
groups (Bartolini 2000; Bartolini and Mair 1990; Marks 1989).
3
Before we go any further, it is worth noting that the existence and sub-
sequent decline of social closure are not all or nothing. Social closure was
far from complete even in the immediate post-World War II decades. Recall
that around one in three British manual workers voted Liberal or Conservative
in the 1950s and 1960s (Stephens 1979: 404). A classic investigation of clea-
vage voting in its golden age finds that, for 15 advanced democracies, occu-
pation explains just 4.9 per cent of the variance in party choice in the median
country, France under the Fourth Republic, and religion explains just 8.0 per
cent in the median country, Canada (Rose 1974: 17). Franklin (1992: 386)
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 111
provides extensive data suggesting that the median variance in left voting
explained by social structure in 14 countries declined from around 20 per
cent in the 1960s to around 12 per cent in the 1980s. Recent literature finds
that around 10 per cent of the variance in radical right and green voting is
associated with education, occupation, rural/urban location, sex and age
(Bornschier and Kriesi 2012; Dolezal 2010; Norris 2005; Oesch 2008).
Lipset and Rokkan (1967) show little interest in the factors that bind indi-
viduals into collectivities (Bornschier 2009: 2). What matters in their theory
is that fundamental divisions in a society give rise to durable cleavages that
structure party competition. The questions they put under the spotlight are:
(1) What are the fundamental divisions in a society? (2) Which distinctions
among a population become the bases for cleavages? (3) How do these clea-
vages interact to shape voter preferences? (4) How are voter preferences
expressed in party formation and competition? (5) How are cleavages
mediated by the rules of the game and by party strategies?
In coming to grips with these questions, we draw on cleavage theory to
make the following moves:
.The strategic flexibility of a political party on major conflict dimensions is
constrained to the extent it has a durable constituency of voters, a decen-
tralized decision-making structure, a self-selected cadre of activists, a self-
replicating leadership and a distinct programmatic reputation (Schuma-
cher et al.2013). Political parties can be flexible on particular issues, but
efforts to shift position at the level of a conflict dimension are rare. That
is to say, political parties are induced to seek local maxima in competing
for votes (Laver and Sergenti 2012).
4
In addition to shifting its issue pos-
ition, a political party may seek to subsume an issue into the dominant
dimension, blur its response, or ignore the issue (Lacewell 2015; Rovny
2015: 913). The problem for established parties is that a status quo
response is more effective for a single issue than for a set of strongly
related issues.
.Hence, the source of dynamism in party systems in response to major shifts
in voter preferences is the growth of new political parties. The basic pre-
mises of cleavage theory are that exogenous forces shape democratic
party systems; that change comes from voters, not established parties;
that political parties are programmatically inflexible; and that, as a conse-
quence, the response of a party system to a serious exogenous shock
takes the form of challenging, rather than reformed, political parties.
.By the time mass political parties came on the scene, cleavages were
already institutionalized. Now the sequence is reversed. Competitive
party systems exist prior to the onset of any new cleavage. Hence, it
makes no sense to believe that challenging political parties will be
rooted in pre-existing, socially closed, groups. The connection between
112 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
rising parties and voters has changed because political parties are now
formed alongside a new cleavage, rather than decades or centuries after.
Political parties are actors, not subjects, in the formation of social divisions.
.Cleavage theory is about the interaction of cleavages rather than the repla-
cement of one alignment by another. So instead of conceiving party
system change as a process of realignment in which a new dimension of
conflict comes to supersede a prior dimension, cleavage theory asks how
the continued existence of one division affects the party-political
expression of a subsequent one. In party systems that load the dice
against new parties, a new cleavage can be expected to produce intense
frictions within parties. In low-barrier multiparty systems, by contrast, a
new cleavage can be expected to produce new challenging parties that
exist alongside, without replacing, parties formed on prior cleavages.
.Lipset and Rokkan (1967) were alert to social changes that were corroding
class conflict, but they had no idea that the containers –national states –
were going to be transformed in the decades around the turn of the
twenty-first century. Territorial identity as a motive for conflict was
thought to be a thing of the past. Nationalism was viewed as the dead-
end result of inter-war fascism, never to be repeated. Ethnic nationalism
within states was considered an inert remnant of long-past peripheral
resistance to nation building. In the absence of territorial identity –
perhaps the most powerful source of mass political mobilization –domestic
conflict was compressed to a left–right conflict about who gets what. When
the political gorilla of nationalism left the room after World War II, domestic
debate was narrowed to economic issues, i.e., the role of the state, taxes
and welfare spending. Lipset and Rokkan (1967: 13) recognized that ‘Func-
tional oppositions can only develop after some initial consolidation of the
national territory,’but they were unable to see that national territory might
be deconsolidated in authoritative redesign.
A transnational cleavage
The institutional point of departure for a post-Lipset and Rokkan (1967) clea-
vage is a series of major reforms in the early 1990s that diminished the cost of
international trade and migration while diffusing authority from central states
to bodies within and among them. The Maastricht Treaty (1993) extended EU
authority over wide ranges of public life, made it much easier for people to
work in another EU country, created a common currency, and turned
nationals into EU citizens. The dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1989
released more than one hundred million people to trade and circulate
within the EU. The World Trade Organization (1994) was negotiated in the
early 1990s, as were regional trade organizations, now totaling 35 in
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 113
number (Hooghe et al.forthcoming). The 1990s were the cusp of a rapid
increase in international trade, international migration, and economic inequal-
ity that have their ideological roots in the Thatcher–Reagan years. However,
the consensus on transnationalism encompassed the mainstream left as
well the mainstream right.
The intellectual basis for transnationalism is broad and deep. The lower the
transaction costs of international economic exchange, the greater the scope
for specialization and economies of scale. A core premise of neoclassical econ-
omics is that introducing common standards and diminishing barriers to trade
and investment increases economic growth. From a public goods perspective,
national states are both too small and too large. Many of the most intractable
problems that confront humanity –including global warming, failed states,
species loss and environmental degradation –require ongoing co-operation
among states and their populations. National sovereignty and its political
expression, the national veto, are obstacles to problem-solving, which is
why many international organizations pool authority among their member
states in quasi-majoritarian decision-making. Functional efficiency in the pro-
vision of public goods calls for multilevel governance, both below and above
the central state (Hooghe and Marks 2009,2015).
However, transnationalism proved to be highly contentious, particularly in
Europe, where increased trade and intermingling of peoples went hand-in-
hand with the creation of a supranational polity (Hurrelmann et al.2015:
55–6). European integration raised fundamental issues of rule and belonging
for those who wished to ‘defend national culture, language, community and
national sovereignty against the influx of immigrants, against competing
sources of identity within the state, and against external pressures from
other countries and international organizations’(Marks and Wilson [2000]:
455; Prosser [2016]: 748–9). Beginning in 1999, the Chapel Hill Expert
Survey (CHES) tapped the positions of political parties on a GAL versus TAN
dimension which proved to be strongly associated with support for Europe.
Transnationalism also has transparent distributional consequences, biasing
the gains from trade to those who have mobile assets. Losers who feel they
are slipping with no prospect of upward mobility resent the dilution of the
rights and protection of citizenship by a global élite that views national
states and their laws as constraints to be finessed or arbitraged. As Wolf
(2016) wrote in the Financial Times:‘[t]he share of immigrants in populations
has jumped sharply. It is hard to argue that this has brought large economic,
social and cultural benefits to the mass of the population. But it has unques-
tionably benefited those at the top, including business.’Resentment can be
sharp among those who value national citizenship because they have few
alternative sources of self-worth. Nationalism has long been the refuge of
those who are insecure, who sense they are losing status, and who seek stand-
ing by identifying with the group. The promise of transnationalism has been
114 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
gains for all, but the experience of the past two decades is that it hurts many.
Hence, opposition to transnationalism is for many a populist reaction against
élites who have little sympathy for national borders (Inglehart and Norris
2016; van Kessel 2015).
The social basis
From the late 1990s, several writers began to consider European integration
from a cleavage perspective.
5
Explaining the rise of the vote for the radical
right in Switzerland, Kriesi (1998: 180) pointed to ‘the emergence of yet
another new cleavage –the cleavage opposing the new middle-class
winners of the transformation of Western European societies to the group
of losers of the very same process’. In these years, a flow of publications
suggested that conflict over Europe cut across the left–right divide, that
Europe was part of a larger cultural conflict, and that this conflict was socially
structured. In a chapter titled, ‘Europe: A New Electoral Cleavage?’Evans
(1999: 220) made the case that Europe had ‘the potential to cross-cut and
restructure partisan divisions in the British electorate’. Marks and Wilson
(2000: 433) suggested that European integration amounts to a ‘constitutional
revolution’, which they analyze from a cleavage perspective. Hooghe et al.
(2002: 979) went on to argue that ‘nationalism, anti-immigration, and tradi-
tionalism go hand in hand’and constitute a distinct dimension of conflict
driven by radical right parties. And in his influential book, Bartolini (2005:
395, 404) asserted that European integration was a process of fundamental
territorial re-articulation that could produce a new cleavage ‘rooted in …life
chances and material opportunities’that would ‘cut heavily across, reshuffle,
and reshape’national political parties. Kriesi et al.(2006,2012) have explored
how European integration and immigration have structured preferences and
political conflict in Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and
Austria by pitting the winners of globalization who favor transnational inte-
gration against losers who seek demarcation. ‘[T]wo of the most important
groups on the winners’side, highly educated people and socio-cultural
specialists, are far more supportive of opening borders than are those with
lower levels of education and those who are unskilled workers’(Kriesi et al.
2012: 73).
At its nationalist pole, this cleavage connects the defense of national
culture to national sovereignty, opposition to immigration and trade skepti-
cism. These are reinforcing issues for those who feel they have suffered trans-
nationalism –the down and out, the culturally insecure, the unskilled, the de-
skilled, i.e., those who lack the education needed to compete in a mobile
world. Education emerges as a powerful structuring factor with a double
effect. Education is necessary for those who rely on their own talents to live
an economically secure life in a world with low barriers to trade. Just as
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 115
importantly, education shapes the way a person looks at the world and their
fellow humans. Education allows a person to see things from the other side, a
key to empathy for those who have a different way of life (Bornschier and
Kriesi 2012; Kuhn et al.2016: 38).
Education is strongly associated with attitudes on trade, immigration and
globalization (Bechtel et al.2014; Hainmueller and Hiscox 2006,2007; Hain-
mueller and Hopkins 2014).
6
This became evident when political economists
investigating the economic undergirding of trade attitudes found a power-
ful and unexpected educational effect that could not be reduced to econ-
omic interest (Mayda and Rodrik 2005;O’Rourke and Sinnott 2002).
Individuals with limited education are much more likely to have an exclu-
sive national identity which predisposes them to Euroskepticism (Polyakova
and Fligstein 2016: Table 5; Hakhverdian et al.2013: 534). Panel data
suggest that a powerful selection effect may be at work (Kuhn et al.
2017; Lancee and Sarrasin 2015). Individuals who go to university are pre-
disposed to having cosmopolitan attitudes.
The euro crisis and the migration crisis
Just as the Bolshevik revolution was a critical juncture in the expression of the
class cleavage, so the euro crisis and the migration crisis can be considered as
critical for the emergence of a transnational cleavage. These crises have raised
the salience of Europe and immigration in public debate, intensified divisions
within mainstream parties, and have led to an upsurge of rejectionist political
parties (Hobolt and de Vries 2016; Hobolt and Tilley 2016). At the very least, it
is ‘tempting’–to adopt a word that Lipset and Rokkan (1967: 47) use in a
similar context –to say that something fundamental is taking place, namely
the generation of a distinct, rooted and durable conflict that will overlay
and disrupt the existing structure of party competition.
The crises themselves provide some clues regarding their larger signifi-
cance. The first, economic, crisis transmuted into a distinctly European crisis
when Chancellor Merkel declared soon after the Lehman Brothers collapse
that every country must act separately to defend its financial institutions.
Under intense pressure from German public opinion, which was vehemently
opposed to eurozone bailouts, Merkel committed her government to preser-
ving Article 125 of the Maastricht Treaty, the anti-bailout clause prohibiting
shared liabilities or financial assistance. Eurozone governments were
trapped in a postfunctionalist dilemma. On the one side they were impelled
by an unrelenting functional logic toward fiscal union. On the other they
were unnerved by tenacious domestic resistance.
The result was a series of incremental reforms that staved off disaster while
prolonging the agony of austerity. Fearing open debate, parliamentary votes
and popular participation, national governments reverted to conventional
116 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
diplomacy which had the intended effect of empowering national executives
and, at least temporarily, bypassing EU institutions (Jones et al.2016).
7
The
European Stability Mechanism was based on a treaty modification which,
ingeniously, avoided referendums by requiring only a two-line amendment
to the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. Since 2012, the European
Central Bank, a technocratic institution insulated from popular pressures,
has been instrumental in providing much needed liquidity. Piecemeal
reforms, alongside banking union and upgraded financial surveillance, did
just enough to save the eurozone and avert the default of heavily indebted
countries. National governments have taken the path of least political resist-
ance, keeping the euro afloat with regulatory measures, while avoiding popu-
list pressures that would arise in major treaty reform (cf. Börzel and Risse
2017).
The outcome was a North–South rift between creditor and debtor nations
(Laffan 2016; Tsoukalis 2014). Discursive analysis reveals that this rift has sharp
national edges and feeds on simplistic national stereotypes (Mylonas 2012).
The net result was to raise the salience of European integration in domestic
debate, particularly among groups and parties taking extreme positions
(Hutter et al.2016; Risse 2014).
Expert estimates summarized in Figure 1(a) show that the salience of
European integration has increased markedly since 2006, from a mean of
4.60 in that year to 5.93 in 2014, a difference that is highly significant
(p= .000). Figure 1(a) also reveals that salience is skewed to Euroskeptic
parties,whichiswhatonemightexpectonanissuethathasbecome
polarized. Northern imposition of ordo-liberalism and fiscal austerity
backed by a system of sanctions prolonged the euro crisis while it failed
to contain the rise of nationalist political parties. Ironically, radical right
parties gained in the very countries where national interest shaped govern-
ment policy. In the South, by contrast, austerity and currency inflexibility
produced economic misery and resentment which was mobilized chiefly
by the radical left.
Figure 1(b) reveals that the salience accorded to immigration is similar to
that for European integration. Political parties taking extreme positions on
immigration tend to emphasize the issue more than those taking moderate
positions. And, similar to party salience on Europe, the U-curve is tilted up
for parties that take strong rejectionist positions. Party salience on immigra-
tion in 2010 (Figure 1(b)) is considerably higher in North-western and
Southern Europe than in Central/Eastern Europe (6.63, 6.23 and 4.09 respect-
ively, on a 0 to 10 scale). Whereas countries in the North-west and South were
recipients in the flow of population within Europe, those in the East were
donors. A regional breakdown of the salience data suggests that even
before the migration crisis of 2015, immigration was perceived to be a
major issue in the North-west and South.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 117
The party salience question on immigration was asked to experts only in
2010, so we cannot assess change. However, mass surveys suggest that the
migration crisis, which became acute from August 2015, ratcheted up
public concern. In spring 2014, prior to the crisis, 15 per cent of those sur-
veyed by Eurobarometer selected immigration as ‘one of the two most
important issues facing [our country] at the moment’. In no Eastern
country was immigration flagged as important by 10 per cent of the respon-
dents, while nine Northern or Southern countries registered double-digit
figures. In spring 2016, the overall figure had increased to 28 per cent, a
level of concern second only to unemployment (33 per cent) and greater
than for the economic situation (19 per cent), health (16 per cent), or terror-
ism (16 per cent). Central and Eastern European countries were no longer
insulated. Immigration was a top-two issue in all Eastern countries except
Romania.
Sticky political parties
Cleavage theory is a theory of discontinuity in the response of party systems
to serious exogenous shocks. Change comes chiefly in the form of new politi-
cal parties that challenge existing parties on a new cleavage (Rovny 2012;de
Vries and Hobolt 2012). The positional maneuverability of political parties
Figure 1. (a) Salience of European integration. (b) Salience of immigration. Source: 2010
data from the CHES trend file. (b) Salience is estimated on an 11-point scale ranging from
‘not important at all’(0) to ‘extremely important’(10). N= 157. Source: 2010 data from
the CHES trend file.
Note: (a) Salience is estimated on an 11-point scale ranging from ‘no important at all’(0) to ‘extremely
important’(10). The continuous line is the fit line for 2014 (N= 208); the dashed line is the fit line for
2006 (N= 158).
118 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
established on prior cleavages is constrained by self-selected activists, self-
replicating leaders and embedded reputations. Political parties can be con-
sidered to be satisficers with ‘their own “bounded rationality”that shapes
the way in which [they] come to terms with new challenges and uncertainties’
(Dalton and McAllister 2015; Kitschelt et al.1999; Marks and de Vries 2012;
Marks and Wilson 2000: 434). Complex organizations, in general, adapt well
to gradual change, but are challenged to respond to major change in their
environment (Aldrich 2007).
The evidence is in line with this. Political parties in Europe appear to be
sticky, as a cleavage perspective would lead one to expect. Party systems
have responded to concerns about European integration and immigration,
but this has not happened because political parties have shifted position.
Figure 2 displays kernel density estimations (KDE) on party positioning on
European integration for 215 national political parties in 24 European
countries (Bakker et al.2015). Each curve represents the probability distri-
bution for a change in party positioning across two consecutive waves of
the CHES survey. Negative numbers on the X-axis denote a decline in
Figure 2. Kernel density curve for change in party position on European integration,
1999–2014. Source: 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014 data from the CHES trend file.
Note: Change in support for European integration on a seven-point scale from 1 (strongly opposed) to 7
(strongly in favor) over two waves (N= 566); three waves (N= 388); four waves (N= 230); and five waves
(N= 98).
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 119
support on a seven-point scale, and positive numbers an increase in support.
8
The probability distribution is strongly peaked: 90.1 per cent of the political
parties surveyed move less than one point in either direction across consecu-
tive surveys. There is a bit more movement across longer time spans, but not
much. Just 17.2 per cent of the parties shift more than one point over three
CHES waves, and 20.0 per cent shift more than one point over four CHES
waves. This is consistent with Rohrschneider and Whitefield’s(2016: 145)
finding, based on their expert survey, that parties ‘do not change their inte-
gration stance to any great degree’.
Expert evaluations of party positioning on immigration go back to 2006.
Over the period 2006 to 2014 we detect similar stability (see Table 1). Of
140 parties that we track over the period, only three shift more than two
points in any one direction on immigration. The average absolute change
over this period is 0.59 on immigration and 0.55 on European integration,
both on a seven-point scale.
9
Parties tend to switch back and forth over
time. The average raw change over this eight-year period is just −0.02
points on immigration and +0.05 points on European integration.
Before we move on, we need to assess the validity of this finding. Party
manifestos, in general, reveal greater change than expert judgments
(Dalton and McAllister 2015: 767ff). There are several possible reasons for
this. One is that coding of party manifestos at the level of an individual
issue might produce greater change than expert evaluation at a more
general dimensional level. This would be the case if political parties were
able to maneuver on specific issues, but were more constrained on bundles
of issues. A second possibility is that experts think along cleavage lines in
‘recording the longstanding core principled positions of parties’, which
might lead them to downgrade efforts by parties to shift their positions
(Marks et al.2007; McDonald et al.2007). This would happen if manifestos
Table 1. Change in party positioning on immigration and European integration, 2006 to
2014.
Absolute change Directional change
Change over three
waves Immigration
European
integration Immigration European integration
Mean value 0.59 0.55 −0.02 0.05
Median value 0.49 0.35 0.05 0.07
Min; max change 0; 2.30 0; 2.79 −2.30; +1.80 −2.79; +2.41
# parties moving ±2
points
3 6 3 more
restrictive
3 more oppositional, 3 more
supportive
Standard Deviation 0.50 0.53 0.78 0.76
Number of parties 140 143 140 143
Source: Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al.2015).
Notes: European integration is scaled from strongly opposed (1) to strongly in favor (7). For comparability
we rescale the original 11-point scale for immigration to a seven-point scale ranging from restrictive (1)
to liberal (7).
120 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
record attempts by parties to shape how they are perceived, while experts
evaluate how political parties are actually perceived. If so, one would expect
experts to use manifestos as one source among others to estimate party posi-
tioning. Experts can plausibly be regarded as Bayesians who use party mani-
festos alongside other indicators, such as speeches made by party leaders, to
update their judgments (Steenbergen and Marks 2007).
One might expect voters to be Bayesians too. Given the time and cognitive
constraints on their political attention, voters tend to rely on generalized con-
ceptions of party identity (Green et al.2002). These tend to be stable over
time. The European Election Survey (EES) asks voters to place political
parties on European integration, and the results are similar to those using
CHES data (Adams et al.2016; Online Appendix). Dalton and McAllister
(2015: 768) find striking consistency across time for the left–right positioning
of parties, with associations from election to election around 0.96. Remarkably,
the consistency in party positioning appears to decay little across three or
even four elections. On this evidence, one must look beyond party positioning
to explain how party systems respond to exogenous shocks.
This is a scenario for disruption. If existing parties cannot radically shift their
issue positions, one would anticipate: (1) sharp tensions within mainstream
parties on a new dimension, particularly in high barrier systems; and (2) the
growth of challenging parties, particularly in low barrier systems. The evi-
dence we have is in line with this. Figure 3 reveals that serious internal
dissent is highest among political parties that take a middling position on
European integration in 2014. In response to a new cleavage, moderation
does not produce consensus. Dissent is lower among parties that take polar
positions.
Conservative parties may be particularly prone to internal dissent
because they combine neoliberal support for transnationalism and nation-
alist defense of sovereignty (Marks and Wilson 2000). Four of the six parties
with a dissent score higher than 5.5 in 2014 are conservative: the British
Conservative Party (dissent = 7.3); Lithuania’s Order and Justice (6.0);
Italy’s Forza Italia (5.9); and France’s UMP (5.8). Institutional rules play a
role here. Britain and France, the European democracies with the highest
barriers to party entry, have had exceptional levels of intra-party dissent
in 2014 and over the 1999 to 2014 period as a whole (Adam et al.2017:
11). The British Conservative party has been more deeply riven than any
other party, and in the wake of the Brexit referendum is more bitterly
divided than ever (Hobolt 2016;Tzelgov2014).
The rise of parties on the transnational cleavage
Moderate political parties based in the cleavages described by Lipset and
Rokkan (1967) have declined across Europe. On average, the vote share for
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 121
social democratic, Christian democratic, conservativ, and liberal parties fell
from 75 per cent in the first national election after 2000 to 64 per cent in
the national election prior to January 2017. With few exceptions, these
parties have continued to support European integration at a time of increas-
ing skepticism. In 2014, just 7 of 112 mainstream parties took a position on the
negative side of our European integration scale.
Consensus on Europe among mainstream parties did not matter much
when the issue was marginal. Mainstream parties sought to de-emphasize
the issue to ‘retain the current dimensional competition’(de Vries and
Hobolt 2012: 263; Green-Pedersen 2012: 126–7). Prior to the euro crisis,
Peter Mair (2007: 12) could write that the famed European giant described
by Franklin and van der Eijk (1995)‘is not only sleeping, but has been delib-
erately sedated, so that Jack –in the shape of the mainstream parties –can
run up and down the European beanstalk at will’. No longer. The giant has
Figure 3. Dissent on European integration.
Note: N= 208 political parties. Dissent is estimated on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (party was com-
pletely united) to 10 (party was extremely divided) in response to ‘What about conflict or dissent within
parties over European integration over the course of 2014?’Source: Data for 2014 from the CHES trend file.
122 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
awakened in an era of constraining dissensus when attitudes over Europe are
expressed in national elections, European elections and national referendum
campaigns which escape mainstream party control (Grande and Hutter 2016:
40; Hooghe and Marks 2009; Treib 2014).
In much of Europe the crises have reinforced a new transnational cleavage
that has at its core a cultural conflict pitting libertarian, universalistic values
against the defense of nationalism and particularism (Bornschier and Kriesi
2012; Golder 2016: 488; Höglinger 2016). Recent literature has spawned a
variety of concepts to describe this: demarcation vs integration (Kriesi et al.
2006,2012); libertarian-universalistic vs traditionalist-communitarian
(Bornschier 2010); universalism vs particularism (Beramendi et al.2015; Häu-
sermann and Kriesi 2015); cosmopolitan vs communitarian (Teney et al.
2014); and GAL vs TAN (Hooghe et al.2002).
Europe and immigration –issues that have risen sharply in salience as a
result of the crises –are flashpoints in the generation of this cleavage. What
matters from a cleavage perspective is how issues that might otherwise be
unconnected form a coherent program, how political parties gain a reputation
around such programs, how those programs are differentiated from those of
existing parties on prior cleavages, and how parties on a new cleavage are
polarized in response to those issues.
Europe and immigration are perceived from diametrically opposing stand-
points by TAN and GAL political parties. Whereas social democratic, Christian
democratic, conservative and liberal parties are similarly positioned on these
issues, TAN parties and GAL parties take distinct positions that place them at
the polar extremes. The coefficient for variation among TAN and GAL parties is
0.53 on European integration and 0.96 on immigration. For mainstream
parties it is 0.19 and 0.38 respectively in 2014 (Polk et al.2017).
Whereas political parties formed on prior cleavages conceive of Europe and
immigration as weakly linked, TAN and GAL parties conceive them as inti-
mately connected (March and Rommerskirchen 2015). The association
between the positions that mainstream parties take on Europe and immigra-
tion is 0.33; for radical right and green parties it is 0.82 in 2014. Transnation-
alism in the form of support for European co-operation and free movement is
strongly consistent with the social libertarian, cosmopolitan and universalist
values of green parties. Equally, but in the opposite camp, rejection of Euro-
pean integration and immigration lie at the core of TAN defense of the
nation against external forces (Tillman 2013). TAN and GAL parties take
more extreme positions on Europe and immigration than mainstream political
parties; they tie these issues into a tightly coherent worldview; they consider
them as intrinsic to their programs; and, correspondingly, they give these
issues great salience.
Every country in Europe has been deeply affected by the political fallout of
the crises, but the way in which party systems have responded varies widely.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 123
Cleavage theory suggests that this reflects the party-political expression of
prior cleavages and the character of the crises (Casal Bértoa 2014). Figure 4
reveals some territorial patterns. TAN and GAL parties have grown alongside
radical left parties in Northern Europe. The ellipse at the center of Figure 4
encompasses eight countries with a pronounced transnational cleavage,
mobilized chiefly by the radical right, alongside radical left parties which con-
ceive transnationalism as an extension of economic left–right distributional
conflict (Brigevich and Edwards 2016; van Elsas et al.2016; Hobolt and de
Vries 2016: 7). Radical left parties reject European integration on the ground
that it hurts those who cannot take advantage of transnational mobility,
but they retain a commitment to working-class internationalism and do not
take a strong position against immigration.
In Eastern European countries located within the tall ellipse in Figure 4, the
predominant response to the crises has been the growth of radical right
parties. Radical left parties are weak or absent. In these countries, leftist distri-
butional concerns have been absorbed by radical right parties in their nation-
alist/traditionalist agenda. Historically, communist rule combined economic
Figure 4. Green, radical right, and radical left vote.
Note: Vote totals for green/radical right and radical left party families in the national election prior to
January 2017. See Online Appendix for details.
124 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
left ideology and TAN values, and this generated subsequent opposition from
right-GAL parties campaigning for market reform, liberal democracy, and EU
membership (Coman 2015: 3; Marks et al.2006; Vachudova and Hooghe
2009: 188).
10
The political fallout from the crises came later to Eastern Europe than to
other parts of Europe. All but Slovenia and Slovakia were outside the euro-
zone, and were shielded from the bitter distributional conflicts that took
place in Southern Europe.
11
Moreover, Eastern Europe supplied, rather
than received, EU migrants (Allen 2015:8–10; Bustikova and Kitschelt
2009;Koev2015; Rovny 2014b). Immigration became a hot issue only
from May 2015 following the European Commission’s distribution
scheme.
12
The United Kingdom (UK) is located among the countries of Eastern
Europe in Figure 4 with a radical TAN party and no radical left party. The
UK’s plurality electoral system raises the barrier to party entry in response
to a new cleavage and exacerbates conflict within the major parties. The
transnational cleavage has been expressed outside the party system in
the Brexit referendum and by the flash rise of the UK Independence
Party. The Conservative party is riven by conflict between its nationalist
and neoliberal factions, and in the absence of a radical left party, the
Labour party has shifted to the left.
Southern European countries have seen the rise of radical left parties in
response to the crises. Largely as a consequence of austerity, the euro crisis
reinforced rather than challenged economic left–right conflict centered on
distribution and welfare. This has sharpened the economic case against Euro-
pean integration (Otjes and Katsanidou 2016). Whereas TAN parties in the
North strive for the ethnic homogeneity of the nation, radical left parties, pre-
dominant in the South, emphasize civic nationalism and territorial control
(Halikiopoulou et al.2012). The distributional framing of the euro crisis also
explains why, in the South, radical right parties have so far not been the
chief beneficiaries of mainstream disaffection. In Portugal, Spain and
Ireland, conservative parties have long had a strong TAN inclination (Alonso
and Kaltwasser 2015). The same is true in Slovenia, where experts estimate
the mainstream conservative party, the Slovenian Democratic party, in 2014
as 8.4 on the 10-point TAN scale. Slovenia, which joined the eurozone in
2007, is the only former communist country where the radical left gains
more electoral support than the radical right.
13
Only in Italy and Greece did
radical right parties have more than 2 per cent of the vote prior to the crisis
(Ignazi 2003). In Italy, radical TAN support has remained just above 10 per
cent, while in Greece it increased from 3.7 per cent in 2007 to 10.7 per cent
in the 2015 national election (Ellinas 2015; Lamprianou and Ellinas 2016).
However, in both countries, the radical left has won the major share of the dis-
contented vote.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 125
Conclusion
The experience of the past 10 years following the economic crisis and
migration crisis leads us to reconsider the research program initiated by
Lipset and Rokkan (1967). The reasons for the rejection of the program
from the 1980s are several, and they remain persuasive. Party systems have
unfrozen as new political parties have risen and old parties have declined.
More fundamentally, the organizations that tied voters to parties –including
churches for confessional parties and unions for socialist parties –encompass
a smaller share of the population and have less influence on those they do
encompass. Finally, the life-long attributes that structured political preference
–chiefly social class and religion –have lost some predictive power.
However, we believe that these developments do not exhaust cleavage
theory. Cleavage theory hypothesizes that the response of a political party
to a new social division is constrained by its location on a prior social division.
Just as it was difficult for a party based on religious conflict to subsume class
conflict, so it is difficult for a political party based on class conflict to subsume
conflict over transnationalism. Hence, cleavage theory explains party system
change as a disruptive process rather than an incremental process. Extant pol-
itical parties are in constant motion as they seek to adapt their positions to the
preferences of voters. However, their efforts are constrained by the policy
commitments of self-selected activists and leaders, by brand reputations
embedded in the expectations of voters, and by the interests and values of
their social base.
Hence, the dynamics of long-term and short-term change appear to be
different. Up close, one can detect almost continuous adjustment by political
parties to the preferences of voters. Over longer reaches of time, they appear
to be moving in quicksand. The crises reveal this starkly, and provoke a theor-
etical challenge: how can one put short-term strategic response and long-
term cleavage constraints on the same page?
Cleavage theory implies that party system change is discontinuous. It is
characterized by periods of relative stability as political parties jostle to gain
support and by periods of abrupt change when new political parties rise up
in response to a critical juncture. The evidence presented here suggests
that the crises of the past decade may be such a critical juncture for
Europe. In a Downsian model of issue competition, one would expect existing
political parties to respond to voter preferences by supplying appropriate pol-
icies. However, as cleavage theory predicts, the positional flexibility of political
parties is heavily constrained. Change has come not because mainstream
parties have shifted in response to voter preferences, but because voters
have turned to parties with distinctive profiles on the new cleavage. These
parties raise issues related to Europe and immigration that mainstream
parties would rather ignore. Radical TAN parties set the frame of competition
126 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
on these transnational issues, and green parties take diametrically opposite
positions. Both parties give these issues much greater salience in their
appeals to voters than mainstream parties, and they are less handicapped
by internal divisions.
The result, according to cleavage theory is not realignment, but accre-
tion. The shaping power of prior cleavages diminishes over time, but few
die completely. The territorial cleavage, the religious cleavage, and the
class cleavage have each lost bite, but none has been extinguished.
Cleavage theory conceives layers of partisan attachment rather than the
replacement of one dimension of contestation by another. The party
system of a country reflects its history of prior struggles as well as its
current divides.
Because the expression of a cleavage depends on the institutionaliza-
tion of prior conflicts, a uniform response to a new cleavage is unusual.
The one exception in Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) account is the class clea-
vage, rooted in the industrial revolution, which produced major socialist
parties across the board.
14
The transnational cleavage has had distinctly
different expressions across Europe. This reflects the contrasting effects
and differential timing of the economic and migration crisis in the differ-
ent regions of Europe which play out in the context of prior cleavages. The
outcome, in broad terms, is that the South has seen radical left parties
mobilize on the class divide. In most former communist countries, by con-
trast, the radical right has catalyzed the transnational cleavage and the
radical left is weak or absent. Most Central and Northern countries have
seen radical right parties mobilize on the transnational cleavage, with
green parties at the opposite pole and radical left parties pressing distribu-
tional issues.
15
Lipset and Rokkan would not be surprised to find that a period of transfor-
mative transnationalism has given rise to an intense political reaction. Viewed
from the present, the cleavage structure of Europe begins with one sweeping
jurisdictional reform, the rise of the national state, and finishes with another,
the internationalization of economic exchange, migration and political auth-
ority. The cleavage arising from national state formation is still very much in
evidence in minority communities that continue to resist national assimilation
(Hooghe and Marks 2016). The cleavage arising from transnationalism may
also endure. It is grounded in educational opportunities that have persistent
effects over a person’s life and which are conveyed to offspring. However, the
functional pressures that have given rise to transnationalism are perhaps even
more durable. Transnational exchange and supranational governance reflect
the benefits of scale in human affairs. Even if the EU were to fail, immigration
stop and trade decline, the forces that have led to transnationalism are likely
to persist.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 127
Notes
1. We would like to thank David Attewell for research assistance. Earlier drafts were
presented at a workshop, Theory Meets Crisis, organized by the authors at the
Schuman Centre, European University Institute, 30 June–1 July 2016, at the
American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 1–3 September 2016, at a
conference, ‘Stein Rokkan’s Heritage to Contemporary Political Science: Under-
standing Representational and Policy-Making Challenges in Multi-Jurisdictional
Polities,’University of Bergen, 20–21 September 2016, the 26th PhD Summer
School of the ECPR Standing Group on Political Parties at the University of Not-
tingham, 23 September 2016, and the Comparative Working Group at University
of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 18 October 2016. We thank participants at these
events, and especially Jan Rovny and Frank Schimmelfennig, for comments
and suggestions. This research was co-funded by the EUENGAGE HORIZON
grant #649281 and by the Center for European Studies at the University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill. We also thank the Robert Schuman Centre, European
University Institute, for hosting us as Fellows in June–July 2016 and for financing
and hosting the conference ‘Theory Meets Crisis’in June 2016, where a first draft
of this paper was presented.
2. TAN refers to the tradition/authority/national pole of a cultural dimension with
GAL (green/alternative/libertarian) at the opposite pole.
3. This has affinities with Marxism. Karl Marx regarded class consciousness as the
outcome of collective struggle in which individuals would come to see their
fate as bound to that of their class. Objective class location had to be activated
in conflict before one could speak of class as a political category.
4. It is simply not possible, on strictly logical grounds, to identify a vote maximizing
strategy for any party in a populated two-dimensional space (Laver and Sergenti
2012: 43).
5. Inglehart (1971: 992) detected a post-industrial cleavage in which a young, edu-
cated section of the middle class would realign on libertarian values and workers
would be potential recruits for conservative parties. In his early formulation,
Inglehart made the connection with internationalism:
[t]he libertarian position seems linked with internationalism. This follows
from the fact that, according to our analysis, the post-bourgeois groups
have attained security in regard to both the safety and sustenance
needs; insofar as the nation-state is seen as a bulwark protecting the indi-
vidual against foreign threats, it is less important to post-bourgeois
respondents (1971: 997).
6. Access to higher education shapes a person’s life-long attitudes (Triventi 2013:
499). Controlling for socioeconomic status and attitudinal variables, Coffé and
Voorposte (2010: 442) find that ‘young people whose parents vote for the SVP
[Swiss People’s Party] are significantly more likely to support the SVP’. Longitudi-
nal survey research suggests that attitudes underpinning right-wing extremism
are rooted in early childhood, persist over a person’s life, and are transmitted
inter-generationally. Analyzing 19 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel
(SOEP), Avdeenko and Siedler (2015) find that a male whose parents express affi-
nity toward a right-wing party is 13 per cent more likely to support a radical right
party, controlling for income, education and unemployment.
128 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
7. In June 2010, these governments set up a limited liability company under Lux-
embourg law with 17 national shareholders to provide emergency loans to
Greece, Ireland and Portugal. In September 2012, they set up an intergovern-
mental organization, the European Stability Mechanism, again in Luxembourg,
this time under international law, to provide a financial firewall for distressed
countries. As Schimmelfennig (2015: 179) notes, ‘asymmetrical interdependence
resulted in a burden-sharing and institutional design that reflected German pre-
ferences and its allies predominantly’.
8. Kernel density estimation is a non-parametric method in which the data are
treated as a randomized sample and the distribution is smoothened. We use
Stata’s default, the Epanechnikov estimator, which selects a smoothing band-
width of 0.123 for the two-wave kernel function and a bandwidth of 0.171 for
the three-wave function.
9. Positioning on immigration is estimated on an 11-point scale ranging from
‘strongly opposes tough policy on immigration’(0) to ‘strongly favors tough
policy on immigration’(10). For comparability, we rescale the variable 0 to 7,
and reverse the scale so that a higher value indicates a pro-immigration stance.
10. This pattern is less pronounced in the communist periphery (the Baltic countries,
Croatia and Slovenia), where the communist federation had protected ethnic
minorities. As a result, the successor parties to the communist parties tend to
be more open to multiculturalism and GAL values, while the nationalist
agenda has been captured by mainstream right-wing parties (Rovny 2014a,
2014b).
11. Rohrschneider and Whitefield (2016: 142) note that in Central and Eastern
Europe ‘party reputations are less strongly embedded in the electorate’. Cross-
national variation in the ideological space is also greater (Rovny and Polk
2016; Savage 2014) and there is a larger role for non-ideological issues concern-
ing corruption, good governance and populism. This has produced political
parties combining moderate agendas on economic and sociocultural issues
with a radical anti-establishment rhetoric (e.g., Res Publica in Estonia, New Era
in Latvia, SMER in Slovakia and TOP09 in the Czech Republic). The phenomenon
is described as ‘centrist populism’(Pop-Eleches 2010) and ‘mainstream refor-
mism’(Hanley and Sikk 2016: 523).
12. In 2010, the salience of immigration for radical right parties in Eastern Europe is
6.56 on a 0 to 10 scale, compared to 9.40 in Western Europe.
13. The United Left was founded in 2014 by a group of activists inspired by Occupy
Wall Street.
14. Though not in the United States for reasons explored in Lipset and Marks (2000).
15. These general patterns require refinement in comparative national and subna-
tional analysis.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank David Attewell for research assistance. Earlier drafts were pre-
sented at a workshop, Theory Meets Crisis, organized by the authors at the Schuman
Centre, European University Institute, 30 June–1 July 2016, at the American Political
Science Association, Philadelphia, 1–3 September 2016, at a conference, ‘Stein
Rokkan’s Heritage to Contemporary Political Science: Understanding Representational
and Policy-Making Challenges in Multi-Jurisdictional Polities,’University of Bergen, 20–
21 September 2016, the 26th PhD Summer School of the ECPR Standing Group on
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 129
Political Parties at the University of Nottingham, 23 September 2016, and the Compara-
tive Working Group at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 18 October 2016. We
thank participants at these events, and especially Jan Rovny and Frank Schimmelfen-
nig, for comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This research was co-funded by the EUENGAGE HORIZON grant #649281 and by the
Center for European Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. We also
thank the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, for hosting us as
Fellows in June–July 2016 and for financing and hosting the conference ‘Theory
Meets Crisis’in June 2016, where a first draft of this article was presented.
Notes on contributors
Liesbet Hooghe is W.R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Robert Schuman Fellow, European University
Institute, Florence.
Gary Marks is Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Robert Schuman Fellow, European University
Institute, Florence.
References
Adam, S. et al.(2017)‘Strategies of pro-European parties in the face of a Eurosceptic
challenge’,European Union Politics,doi:10.1177/1465116516661248
Adams, J., Ezrow, L. and Wlezien, C. (2016)‘The company you keep: how voters infer
party positions on European integration from governing coalition arrangements’,
American Journal of Political Science 60(4): 811–23.
Aldrich, H.E. (2007)Organizations and Environments, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Allen, T.J. (2015)‘All in the party family? Comparing far right voters in Western and
post-communist Europe’,Party Politics.doi:10.1177/1354068815593457
Alonso, S. and Kaltwasser, C.R. (2015)‘Spain: no country for the populist radical right?’,
South European Society and Politics 20(1): 21–45.
Avdeenko, A. and Siedler, T. (2015)‘Intergenerational correlations of extreme right-
wing party preferences and attitudes toward immigration’,IZA Discussion Paper
No. 9356, Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor.
Bakker, R., et al. (2015)‘Measuring party positions in Europe: the Chapel Hill expert
survey trend file, 1999–2010’,Party Politics 21(1): 143–53.
Bartolini, S. (2000)The Class Cleavage: The Electoral Mobilisation of the European Left
1860–1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bartolini, S. (2005)Restructuring Europe: Centre Formation, System Building, and Political
Structuring Between the Nation State and the European Union, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
130 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
Bartolini, S. and Mair, P. (1990)Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The
Stabilisation of European Electorates, 1885–1985, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Bechtel, M., Hainmueller, J. and Margalit, Y. (2014)‘Preferences for international redis-
tribution: the divide over the Eurozone bailouts’,American Journal of Political Science
58(4): 835–56.
Beramendi, P., Häusermann, S., Kitschelt, H. and Kriesi, H. (eds.) (2015)The Politics of
Advanced Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bornschier, S. (2009)‘Cleavage politics in old and new democracies’,Living Review in
Democracy 1(1): 1–13.
Bornschier, S. (2010)Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right: The New Cultural Conflict in
Western Europe, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bornschier, S. and Kriesi, H. (2012)‘The populist right, the working class, and the chan-
ging face of class politics’, in J. Rydgren (ed.), Class Politics and the Radical Right,
London: Routledge, pp. 10–30.
Börzel, T.A. and Risse, T. (2017)‘From the Euro to the Schengen crisis: European inte-
gration and changing identity politics’,Journal of European Public Policy.
[PUBLISHER TO UPDATE DETAILS AT PROOF].
Brigevich, A. and Edwards, E. (2016)‘Making sense of the radical left voter: attitudes
towards globalization, integration, and immigration in a time of economic crisis’,
Paper presented at the International Conference of Europeanists, Council for
European Studies, Philadelphia, 14–16, April.
Bustikova, L. and Kitschelt, H. (2009)‘The radical right in post-communist Europe: com-
parative perspectives on legacies and party competition’,Communist and Post-
Communist Studies 42(4): 459–83.
Casal Bértoa, F. 2014.‘Party systems and cleavage structures revisited: a sociological
explanation of party system institutionalization in East-Central Europe’,Party
Politics 20(1): 16–36.
Coffé, H. and Voorpostel, M. (2010)‘Young people, parents and radical right voting: the
case of the Swiss people’s party’,Electoral Studies 29(3): 435–43.
Coman, E. (2015)‘Dimensions of political conflict in west and east: an application of
vote scaling to 22 European Parliaments’,Party Politics,doi:10.1177/
1354068815593454
Dalton, R.J. and McAllister, I. (2015)‘Random walk or planned excursion? Continuity and
change in the left–right positions of political parties’,Comparative Political Studies 48
(6): 759–87.
Dolezal, M. (2010)‘Exploring the stabilization of a political force: the social and attitu-
dinal basis of green parties in the age of globalization’,West European Politics 33(3):
534–52.
Ellinas, A.A. (2015)‘Neo-Nazism in an established democracy: the persistence of golden
Dawn in Greece’,South European Society and Politics 20(1): 1–20.
van Elsas, E.J., Hakhverdian, A. and van der Brug, W. (2016)‘United against a common
foe? The nature and origins of Euroscepticism among left-wing and right-wing citi-
zens’,West European Politics 39(6): 1181–204.
Evans, G. (1999)‘Europe: a new cleavage?’, in G. Evans and P. Norris (eds.), Critical
Elections: British Parties and Voters in Long-Term Perspective, London: Sage, pp.
207–22.
Franklin, M. (1992)‘The decline of cleavage politics’,in M. Franklin, T.T. Mackie, and H.
Valen (eds.), Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures
in Western Countries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 381–402.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 131
Franklin, M., and van der Eijk, C. (1995) Choosing Europe? The European Electorate and
National Politics in the Face of Union, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Golder, M. (2016)‘Far right parties in Europe’,Annual Review of Political Science 19: 477–
97.
Grande, E. and Hutter, S. (2016)‘Beyond authority transfer: explaining the politicization
of Europe’,West European Politics 39(1): 23–43.
Green, D.P., Palmquist, B. and Schickler, E. (2002)Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political
Parties and the Social Identities of Voters, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Green-Pedersen, C. (2012)‘A giant fast asleep? Party incentives and the politicisation of
European integration’,Political Studies 60(1): 115–30.
Hainmueller, J. and Hiscox, M.J. (2006)‘Learning to love globalization: education and
individual attitudes toward international trade’,International Organization 60(2):
469–98.
Hainmueller, J. and Hiscox, M.J. (2007)‘Educated preferences: explaining attitudes
toward immigration in Europe’,International Organization 61(2): 399–442.
Hainmueller, J. and Hopkins, D.J. (2014)‘Public attitudes toward immigration’,Annual
Review of Political Science 17(1): 225–49.
Hakhverdian, A., van Elsas, E., van der Brug, W. and Kuhn, T. (2013)‘Euroscepticism and
education: a longitudinal study of 12 EU member states, 1973–2010’,European
Union Politics 14(4): 522–41.
Halikiopoulou, D., Nanou, K. and Vasilopoulou, S. (2012)‘The paradox of nationalism:
the common denominator of radical right and radical left Euroscepticism’,
European Journal of Political Research 51(4): 504–39.
Hanley, S. and Sikk, A. (2016)‘Economy, corruption or floating voters? Explaining the
breakthroughs of anti-establishment reform parties in Eastern Europe’,Party
Politics 22(4): 522–33.
Häusermann, S. and Kriesi, H. (2015)‘What do voters want? Dimensions and configur-
ations in individual-level preferences and party choice’, in P. Beramendi, S.
Häusermann, H. Kitschelt, and H. Kriesi (eds.), The Politics of Advanced Capitalism,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 202–30.
Hobolt, S.B. (2016)‘The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent’,Journal of
European Public Policy 23(9): 1259–77.
Hobolt, S.B. and de Vries, C. (2016)‘Turning against the Union? The impact of the crisis
on the Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European Parliament elections’,Electoral Studies
44: 504–14.
Hobolt, S.B. and Tilley, J. (2016)‘Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the
aftermath of the Euro crisis’,West European Politics 39(5): 971–91.
Höglinger, D. (2016)Politicizing European Integration: Struggling with the Awakening
Giant, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Hooghe, L., Lenz, T. and Marks, G. (Forthcoming)Community, Scale, and the Design of
International Organization: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Vol. IV, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. (2009)‘A postfunctionalist theory of European integration:
from permissive consensus to constraining dissensus’,British Journal of Political
Science 39(1): 1–23.
Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. (2015)‘Delegation and pooling in international organizations’,
The Review of International Organizations 10(3): 305–28.
Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. (2016)Community, Scale, and Regional Governance: A
Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
132 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
Hooghe, L., Marks, G. and Wilson, C.J. (2002)‘Does left/right structure party positions on
European integration?’,Comparative Political Studies 35(8): 965–89.
Hurrelmann, A., Gora, A. and Wagner, A. (2015)‘The politicization of European inte-
gration: more than an élite affair?’,Political Studies 63(1): 43–59.
Hutter, S., Grande, E. and Kriesi, H. (eds.) (2016)Politicising Europe: Integration and Mass
Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ignazi, P. (2003)Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Inglehart, R. (1971)‘The silent revolution in Europe: intergenerational change in post-
industrial societies’,American Political Science Review 65(4): 991–1017.
Inglehart, R. and Norris, P. (2016)‘Trump, brexit, and the rise of populism: economic
have-nots and cultural backlash’, Paper presented at the American Political
Science Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 1–4, September.
Jones, E., Kelemen, R.D. and Meunier, S. (2016)‘Failing forward? The Euro crisis and the
incomplete nature of European integration’,Comparative Political Studies 49(7):
1010–34.
van Kessel, S. (2015)Political Parties in Europe. Agents of Discontent?, New York: Palgrave
MacMillan.
Kitschelt, H., Lange, P., Marks, G. and Stephens, J. (eds.) (1999)Continuity and Change in
Contemporary Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Koev, D. (2015)‘Interactive party effects on electoral performance: how ethnic minority
parties aid the populist right in Central and Eastern Europe’,Party Politics 21(4): 649–59.
Kriesi, H. (1998)‘The transformation of cleavage politics: the 1997 Stein Rokkan lecture’,
European Journal of Political Research 33(2): 165–85.
Kriesi, H. et al.(2006)‘Globalization and the transformation of The National political
space: six European countries compared’,European Journal of Political Research 45
(6): 921–56.
Kriesi, H. et al. (2012)Political Conflict in Western Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kuhn, T., Lancee, T. and Sarrasin, O. (2017)‘Educational differences in euroscepticism: uti-
litarianism, values acquired at school or parental socialization?’Unpublished paper.
Kuhn, T., van Elsas, E., Hakhverdian, A. and van der Brug, W. (2016)‘An ever wider gap in
an ever closer union: rising inequalities and euroscepticism in 12 west european
democracies, 1975–2009’,Socio-Economic Review 14(1): 27–45.
Lacewell, O.P. (2015)‘Beyond policy positions: how party type conditions programma-
tic responses to globalization pressures’,Party Politics,doi:10.1177/
1354068815603241
Laffan, B. (2016)‘Core-periphery dynamics in the Euro area: from conflict to cleavage?’,
in J.M. Magone, B. Laffan, and C. Schweiger (eds.), Power and Conflict in a Dualist
Economy, London: Routledge, pp. 19–35.
Lamprianou, I. and Ellinas, A.A. (2016)‘Institutional grievances and right-wing extre-
mism: voting for golden Dawn in Greece’,South European Society and Politics,
doi:10.1080/13608746.2016.1207302
Lancee, B. and Sarrasin, O. (2015)‘Educated preferences or selection effects? A longi-
tudinal analysis of the impact of educational attainment on attitudes towards immi-
grants’,European Sociological Review 31(4): 490–501.
Laver, M. and Sergenti, E. (2012)Party Competition: An Agent-Based Model, Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (1967)‘Cleavage structures, party systems, and voter align-
ments: an introduction’, in S.M. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter
Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, Toronto: The Free Press, pp. 1–64.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 133
Lipset, S.M. and Marks, G. (2000)It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the
United States, New York: W.W. Norton.
Mair, P. (2007)‘Political opposition and the European Union’,Government and
Opposition 42(1): 1–17.
March, L. and Rommerskirchen, C. (2015)‘Out of left field? Explaining the variable elec-
toral success of European radical left parties’,Party Politics 21(1): 40–53.
Marks, G. (1989)Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany, and the United States in the
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Marks, G. and de Vries, C. (2012)‘The struggle over dimensionality: a note on theory
and empirics’,European Union Politics 13(2): 185–93.
Marks, G., Hooghe, L., Nelson, M. and Edwards, E. (2006)‘Party competition and
European integration in the East and West. Different structure, same causality’,
Comparative Political Studies 39(2): 155–75.
Marks, G., Hooghe, L., Steenbergen, M. and Bakker, R. (2007)‘Cross-validating data on
party positioning on European integration’,Electoral Studies 26(1): 23–38.
Marks, G. and Wilson, C. (2000)‘The past in the present: a cleavage theory of party
response to European Integration’,British Journal of Political Science 30(3): 433–59.
Mayda, A.M. and Rodrik, D. (2005)‘Why are some people (and countries) more protec-
tionist than others?’,European Economic Review 49(6): 1393–430.
McDonald, M.M., Mendes, S.M. and Kim, M. (2007)‘Cross-temporal and cross-national
comparisons of party left-right positions’,Electoral Studies 26(1): 62–75.
Mylonas, Y. (2012)‘Media and the economic crisis of the EU: the ‘culturalization’of a
systemic crisis and Bild-Zeitung’s framing of Greece’,Triple C: Cognition,
Communication, Co-Operation: Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
10(2): 646–71.
Norris, P. (2005)Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Oesch, D. (2008)‘Explaining workers’support for right-wing populist parties in Western
Europe: evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland’,
International Political Science Review 29(3): 349–73.
O’Rourke, K. and Sinnott, R. (2002)‘The determinants of individual trade policy prefer-
ences: international survey evidence’, in S.M. Collins and D. Rodrik (eds.), Brookings
Trade Forum, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, pp. 157–96.
Otjes, S. and Katsanidou, A. (2016)‘Beyond Kriesiland: EU integration as a super issue
after the euro crisis’,European Journal of Political Research,doi:10.1111/1475-6765.
12177
Polk, J. et al.(2017)‘Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corrup-
tion for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data’,
Research & Politics 4 (1): 1–9.
Polyakova, A. and Fligstein, N. (2016)‘Is European integration causing Europe to
become more nationalist? Evidence from the 2007–9 financial crisis’,Journal of
European Public Policy 23(1): 60–83.
Pop-Eleches, G. (2010)‘Throwing out the bums: protest voting and unorthodox parties
after Communism’,World Politics 62(2): 221–60.
Prosser, C. (2016)‘Dimensionality, ideology and party positions towards European inte-
gration’,West European Politics 39(4): 731–54.
Risse, T. (2014)‘No demos? Identities and public spheres in the Euro crisis’,JCMS:
Journal of Common Market Studies 52(6): 1207–15.
Rohrschneider, R. and Whitefield, S. (2016)‘Responding to growing European Union-
skepticism? The stances of political parties toward European integration in
134 L. HOOGHE AND G. MARKS
Western and Eastern Europe following the financial crisis’,European Union Politics 17
(1): 138–61.
Rose, R. (ed.) (1974)Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, New York: the Free Press.
Rovny, J. (2012)‘Who emphasizes and who blurs? Party strategies in multidimensional
competition’,European Union Politics 13(1): 269–92.
Rovny, J. (2014a)‘Communism, federalism, and ethnic minorities: explaining party
competition patterns in Eastern Europe’,World Politics 66(4): 669–708.
Rovny, J. (2014b)‘The other ‘other’: party responses to immigration in Eastern Europe’,
Comparative European Politics 12(6): 637–62.
Rovny, J. (2015)‘Riker and Rokkan: remarks on the strategy and structure of party com-
petition’,Party Politics 21(6): 912–18.
Rovny, J. and Polk, J. (2016)‘Stepping in the same river twice: stability amidst change in
Eastern European party competition’,European Journal of Political Research,doi:10.
1111/1475-6765.12163
Savage, L.M. (2014)‘Who gets in? Ideology and government membership in Central
and Eastern Europe’,Party Politics 20(4): 547–62.
Schimmelfennig, F. 2015.‘Liberal intergovernmentalism and the Euro area crisis’,
Journal of European Public Policy 22(2): 177–95.
Schumacher, G., de Vries, C. and Vis, B. (2013)‘Why do parties change position? Party
organization and environmental incentives’,The Journal of Politics 75(2): 464–77.
Steenbergen, M.R. and Marks, G. (2007)‘Evaluating expert judgments’,European
Journal of Political Research 46(3): 347–66.
Stephens, J. (1979)‘Class formation and class consciousness: a theoretical and empiri-
cal analysis with reference to britain and Sweden’,The British Journal of Sociology 30
(4): 389–414.
Teney, C., Lacewell, O.P. and de Wilde, P. (2014)‘Winners and losers of globalization in
Europe: attitudes and ideologies’,European Political Science Review 6(4): 575–95.
Tillman, E.R. (2013)‘Authoritarianism and citizen attitudes towards European inte-
gration’,European Union Politics 14(4): 566–89.
Treib, O. (2014)‘The voter says no, but nobody listens: causes and consequences of the
Eurosceptic vote in the 2014 European elections’,Journal of European Public Policy 21
(10): 1541–54.
Triventi, M. (2013)‘Stratification in higher education and Its relationship with social
inequality: a comparative study of 11 European Countries’,European Sociological
Review 29(3): 489–502.
Tsoukalis, L. (2014)The Unhappy State of the Union: Europe Needs a New Grand Bargain,
London: Policy Network.
Tzelgov, E. (2014)‘Cross-cutting issues, intraparty dissent and party strategy: the issue of
European integration in the House of Commons’,European Union Politics 15(1): 3–23.
Vachudova, M. and Hooghe, L. (2009)‘Postcommunist politics in a magnetic field: how
transition and EU accession structure party competition on European integration’,
Comparative European Politics 7(2): 179–212.
de Vries, C. and Hobolt, S.B. (2012)‘When dimensions collide: the electoral success of
issue entrepreneurs’,European Union Politics 13(2): 246–68.
Wolf, M. (2016)‘The economic losers are in revolt against the elites’,Financial Times,26
January.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 135
