Politics and Society in Europe

1
Politics and Society in Europe

• Alistair Cole

2
Politics and Society in Europe

• European politics are the politics of liberal
  democracy? In a formal sense, it is difficult to
  contest.
• The EU itself acts as a legal order that embeds
  democratic institutions in its member-states
• The new accession states of 2004 and 2007
  countries had each to meet strict criteria the
  Copenhagen criteria to be able to join in the
  European Union.
• European liberal democracies are constitutional
  political regimes i.e. that political processes
  are regularised by reference to respect for duly
  established rules and constitutional norms.

3
Comparative Politics

• The nations considered in this lecture are, by
  and large, the nations comprising the EU. These
  countries are most similar in that they belong
  to broadly the same family of political regimes
  and have intense interaction with each other.
• These countries operate under very similar
  constraints, notably their membership of the
  European Union, which weighs in an increasingly
  important manner on each of them.
• Comparative Politics middle level analysis. Not
  really meta- narratives of power or domination
• Middle level research objects institutions,
  elites, parties, leadership, electorates, policy
  sectors.
• Generic, cross cutting themes such as
  Europeanisation. Operationalising new forms of
  comparative analysis less based on country as
  unit of analysis, more on variables.

4
Politics and Society

• In all European Union countries, the ability of
  national governments to control policy-making has
  diminished, as a result of the growing influence
  of the EU over economic and financial policy, and
  especially, as a result of globalisation of
  international economic and financial exchanges.
• The countries of continental Europe each have
  their own political cultures/state traditions,
  which mediate the impact of globalised exchanges
  and norms. The country unit of analysis retains
  pertinence. Debates about convergence and
  national policy styles remain vitally important.

5
Cleavages Lipset and Rokkan

• Cleavages are social or value-based conflicts.
  The term cleavage structure refers to the main
  lines of political division within a society.
• In their classic work, Lipset and Rokkan identify
  three main sources of division within European
  societies society
• Anticlericalism Republic/Church , from the
  French revolution and subsequent wave of
  anti-clericalism across Europe (eighteenth)
• Centre-Periphery, from the imperfect process of
  state formation across Europe in the nineteenth
  century (19th century)
• Social class, inherited from the industrial
  revolution and the conflict between capital and
  labour, which largely structured 20th century
  politics.
• For Lipset and Rokkan most of the key cleavages
  in place in the 1960s were in place by the late
  nineteenth century their thesis on the frozen
  character of cleavages remains very influential.
  Different countries can be characterised by the
  importance of one, or more than one cleavage
  and this cleavage structure has had a very
  important effect in structuring the party system.

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Cross-cutting cleavages

• These cleavages could stand alone where there is
  only one line of cleavage the normal or
  residual social class one then this acts as the
  fundamentally structuring element.
• But other cleavages might cut across the class
  one, and be more pertinent politically this can
  be the case of religion, for example, where
  religious behaviour is very closely associated
  with a conservative orientation in most
  countries, whatever social class one belongs to.
• On the other hand, lower-level cleavages might be
  nested in higher order cleavages thus, the
  centre-periphery cleavage where minority
  nations resist the construction of a state
  might strengthen divisions based on social class
  especially if members of a minority community are
  also in an unfavourable socio-economic position.
• Thus cleavages can be structuring reinforcing or
  cross-cutting.
• Remains seminal for considering contours of
  European party system

7
Tim Bale

• Bale identifies nine key cleavages that structure
  politics in Europe today in order of their
  appearance, these are
• Land-industry (18th century), representing the
  conflicting interests of the aristocracy and the
  emerging bourgeoisie gradually victory of the
  bourgeoisie and creation of bourgeois parties
• owner-worker, giving rise to the classic
  labour-capital division and to the birth of SD
  parties
• urban-rural cleavages, especially in countries
  such as Norway where the urban middle classes
  were of foreign extraction and the rural areas
  were peopled by poor indigenous peasants
  (agrarian parties, today largely disappeared)
• centre-periphery (regionalist/ minority
  nationalist parties)
• church-state (clericalism/Christian democracay
  against anti-clerical parties)
• Revolution-gradualism ( Social Democracy and
  Communist parties in 1917)
• Democracy-totalitarianism (rise of fascists in
  1930s)
• modernism/post-materialism(environmental and
  quality of life issues, from 1960s onwards
  (Greens)
• multiculturalism/homogeneity (far-right and
  populism)

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Collective Identities

• It is very unusual for individuals to have only
  one set of identities much more usually the case
  for individual identities to be complex sets of
  allegiances, some of which are reinforcing,
  others not. The most powerful social/collective
  identities are nation, race, religion and class.
  Race has been virtually discredited as a means of
  identity. Pseudo-scientific racial studies have
  been discredited. Gene pools have been mixed
  everwhere, depriving racial analysis of any
  legitimacy. Religion is a source of cultural
  and semantic identity that we will consider
  below. Nation is an obvious source of identity,
  as are other forms of imagined community. In the
  French case, traditions of assimilation continue
  to permeate attitudes of decision-makers. This
  can be seen in the case of the Basques and
  Bretons, as it can with ethnic minority
  communities. Class has everywhere been declining
  as a source of identity.

9
National Identity?

• National Identity? The question of identity is
  most frequently posed at the level of the
  nation-state Political Culture theorists in the
  1960s sought to link attitudes distributed
  throughout the population with the overarching
  features of political systems. These attempts at
  linkage were not very successful
• Nations are imagined communities each nation
  has historic symbols that sometimes are reflected
  in the state but not always, notably in the
  case of divided societies such as Belgium, or
  countries where there are strong regional
  distinctions as in Spain. National identity is
  constructed in rather different manners across
  the key states in the EU.
• National identity a set of myths, symbols,
  rituals.but these are difficult to generalize,
  as they vary in the context of each nation-state

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Problems with national identity

• Some key problems with national identities where
  are the boundaries of the nation? Is it based on
  blood ties or on adhesion to a common set of
  values? Does the nation coincide with the
  boundaries of the state? Is the nation
  inclusive, or, as in the case of Nazism,
  exclusive? Does national identity signify
  constitutionalism nationalism? Or triumph of one
  core group over another

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Social class and politics

• In Wales, studies of identity have concluded that
  it is not focused principally around locality, or
  language, or symbols such as flags but around
  the perception that people in Wales are working
  class. Here a strong sense of class identity is
  more salient than anything else. Social class was
  long considered - and to some extent still is -
  to represent the core source of political
  IDENTITY within older European nations,
  especially in the UK, Germany and the Scandiavian
  countries. These nations are countries with
  relatively developed social classes, and with,
  historically speaking, a high degree of class
  consciousness. Although in no one country have
  political divisions been reduced to those of
  class, class identities have generally been to
  some extent predictive of political loyalties -
  to a greater or lesser extent according to the
  existence of other significant sources of
  division.

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Class as the main cleavage

• The model of residual class-based politics has
  traditionally been given as that of Britain this
  does not necessarily mean that class politics are
  more intense in Britain than elsewhere, but it
  does signify that class has usually been regarded
  as the most significant indicator pointing to
  political choice.
• According to the findings of Butler and Stokes
  in the 1960s, at the height of the two party
  system, social class corresponded closely with
  political choice, with industrial workers largely
  favouring Labour over Conservatives (65/35), and
  non-manual strata overwhelmingly favouring the
  Conservatives (75-25). Indeed, class voting was
  taken for granted, so much so that all else was
  embellishment and detail.
• Partisan and class dealignment... But class has
  been perceived to be important in British
  politics because there has been no other major
  source of division, such as religion or
  linguistic conflict (except in specific
  territories)

13
Class and intensity

• The British model- class as the only significant
  source of identity/conflict - can be seen as the
  European exception. All other countries had
  rather more complicated cleavage structures
  based notably on religion, on the rural/urban
  dichotomy, on regional identities, on the
  divisive role of language. But, even where other
  sources of political division exist, social class
  has usually - historically - performed an
  important role as well, with class differences
  often reinforcing other divisions, such as those
  seperating catholics and anti-clericals.
• The impact of social class must also be assessed
  in terms on the intensity with which class
  sentiments are held and the degree of class
  conflict within a society. For example, whereas
  industrial workers constituted a majority of the
  population in Britain, they were never more than
  a geographically concentrated and resentful
  minority in France, with the result that
  industrial workers came to form a strong
  inward-looking sub-culture isolated from the
  mainstream of French society, which for several
  generations saw its salvation in the
  revolutionary appeal of the Communist party.
  Thus, to understand identity we need to observe
  issues of intensity.

14
Religion

• The church-State cleavage and the role of
  religion
• Opinion surveys throughout Western Europe have
  repeatedly shown that religion can have a
  significant impact upon how an individual
  perceives of political issues, and his or her
  role within the political system. Moreover,
  religion often - but not always collides with
  social class to reinforce loyalties adopted by
  particular individuals. In Italy, for example,
  the industrial working class was traditionally
  been both anti-clerical (on account of the
  support of the Catholic Church for the existing
  social hierarchies) and left-wing (on account of
  the close connection of the Church with the
  former DCI).

15
Declining religosity

• Religious identities come in all shapes and
  sizes. In the context of European politics, the
  religious/anti-clerical division has a central
  place. There has been a decline in religiosity
  and also a declining capacity for the Church to
  intervene in politics. Gordon Smith two levels
  of religious disengagement 1). The Church no
  longer intervenes directly in politics, or, when
  it does so, it is defeated (e.g. divorce
  referendums in Italy in 1970s)2). Relationships
  between religious affiliations and voting choice
  begin to weaken. If the first level of religious
  disengagement is general, the religious
  identification is still the best indicator of
  voting behaviour anti-clerical stance is
  correlated with atheism and a left-wing vote,
  while religious behaviour is linked to a
  rightwing vote.
• New religious fervour?

16
The Staying Power of religion

• the Church resists and remains active Ireland,
  Italy in particular. In Poland, the Church has a
  vital symbolic role, symbolising resistance to
  subjugation by the atheistic Soviet Union
• Role of militant Islam
• Issues of integration and community e.g.
  religious headscarves and the lay State

17
Urban-Rural divide

• The post-war period has witnessed a remarkably
  similar demographic movement in all European
  nations a massive move away from the land to the
  towns and cities. In most WE nations, under 5 of
  the population now works in agriculture (a figure
  which declines to under 1 in Britain, but which
  is slightly higher in new members such as
  Poland).
• This inexorable movement - responding to the
  logic of industrialised and post-industrial
  capitalism - has provoked serious political
  crises in a number of WE countries.
• Survival of rural identities in many countries,
  sometimes taking a euro-sceptical form

18
Language and linguistic identity

• The process of state building in Western Europe
  takes as its great reference point the French
  revolution of the late eighteenth century and the
  national unification movements of the nineteenth
  century. The process has continued in the
  twentieth century.
• The role of language is important in several
  respects. There has generally been a coincidence
  of national state boundaries, and linguistic
  entities. In certain countries - such as France
  - the emergence of a strong central state was
  accompanied by a gradual suppression of all
  linguistic and regional identities in this
  instance, the idea of nation was largely
  synonymous with that of the state itself.
• In Germany, by contrast, the process of
  unification brought together German speakers
  previously dispersed through a wide range of
  separate states the Federal character of German
  postwar Republic recognises the cultural and
  regional diversity of the German people.

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Belgium linguistic fracture

• The case of Belgium is the most eloquent in terms
  of demonstrating the centrifugal effects of
  linguistic divisions
• .
• Belgium was created as an independent state in
  1830 domination of the French-speaking Walloons
  in the south.. at the expense of the Dutch
  speaking Flemish, mainly in the north. In the
  course of the mid 20th century, the economic and
  linguistic balance began to shift so that the
  downtrodden Flemish now became the majority of
  the population and the more dynamic economic
  community.
• The only solution discovered to prevent the
  complete dissolution of the Belgian state the
  policy of separate language communities (from
  1963), to deal with issues of education and
  culture, for the different communities.
• The language issue has had a profound impact in
  Belgium, to the extent of changing the party
  system and replacing Belgian-wide parties - e.g.
  Socialists, with specific parties for each
  community. Here language has had the effect of a
  cleavage

20
Communitarianism and minorities

• The problem of immigrants can, in some senses, be
  seen as related to that of cultural minorities
  in Germany, France, the UK notably, we might
  argue that first and second generation immigrants
  possess many of the same characteristics as more
  established cultural minorities there is a
  tendency in these countries for immigrants to
  form a sub-culture which is defensive of its own
  members, and which can, in certain circumstances,
  become a target for a certain type of right-wing
  political appeal based on the dangers of
  immigration, and the preservation of national
  identity.
• New evidence of resistance to Islam and diffusion
  of Islamic values in western societies the case
  of Pym Fortyn in Netherlands a case in point.

21
Centre-periphery cleavages

• The rise of minority nationalism has been one of
  the major developments in western European
  countries in the past twenty years
• In Spain, in particular, there has been a move
  to a form of asymmetrical federalism, where the
  three nations Catalonia, Basque Country and
  Galicia are recognised as historic
  nationalities in the 1978 constitution and given
  extended devolved powers.
• In the UK, the minority nationalist question has
  been nested in a broader class cleavage in both
  Scotland and Wales, national identity came as
  a result of a specific feeling of class identity
  and of being different from the rest of the UK.
• If there are fashions, this is one. In Italy, a
  move to regional evolution has accompanied more
  assertive regional claims, such as that of
  Padania in the north.
• But much less so in central and eastern Europe