The Study of Party Systems

Abstract

The subfield of party system research examines how the parties of a country are composed as a whole and what relationship they have with each other. It uses quantitative and qualitative criteria to capture the nature of a party system, such as its size, the diversification, ideological distance, or the style of competition among the parties. Such criteria allow party systems of different countries to be compared. By constructing types of party systems based on the defining criteria, country comparisons enable the respective systems to be classified into a typological scheme.

Changes in party systems can also be reconstructed using criteria and their typological configuration. System change can occur up to the transformation and change of party systems. Furthermore, party system research is interested in the backgrounds that lead to the emergence and change of party systems. To illuminate the background of their emergence, Lipset and Rokkan used a sociological-cleavage theoretical approach. According to this, the structure of party systems reflects characteristic socio-economic and cultural fault lines of a country, which are politicized by parties and translated to the party system level. The conflict structure of a country is subject to change, so that since the 1970s a new cultural conflict has arisen, which has led to the rise of newcomer parties and the restructuring of traditional party systems.

8.1 Basics

Party research is not only interested in the organizational structure and functioning of parties from a mesoanalytical perspective, but also examines in a separate branch from a macroanalytical perspective how the parties of a country are constituted as a whole and how they relate to and interact with each other (Niedermayer 1996, 2003, 2013; Ladner 2004; Stöss et al. 2006; Bardi and Mair 2008; Golosov 2011). It is common practice to also determine the dynamics, destabilization, and change of party systems up to system transformation or type change (Niedermayer 2011). Researching parties at the system level means examining them as a whole of a country in their range, composition, and relationship and interaction with each other.

Wiesendahl (1989, p. 666 f.) describes the field of party system analysis as follows:

“Party system analysis deals with the totality of all relevant parties of one or more countries, with the question of their specific manner of coexistence (…), their relation to each other (…) or their regular interaction defining the framework of investigation. Its goal is to develop concepts for the (comparative) description, distinction, and classification of party systems of various forms in terms of their structure and functioning, and to explore the conditions of their genesis, consolidation, transformation, and crisis, as well as the influences and effects they have on politics and society.”

From a methodological point of view, structural analyses, system-environment or context analyses, and functional analyses can be distinguished.

For party system analysis, various questions arise that focus on different aspects of investigation:

• What is meant by a party system?

• By what characteristics can the shape of party systems be captured?

• What is the relationship and interaction between parties in a party system?

• In what respect do party systems differ?

• What societal and political-legal conditions are party systems subject to?

• How have party systems emerged and for what reasons do they change, and what political effects result from the nature of party systems?

As can be seen from the questions, the focus is on the static aspect of the composition, constitution, and relationship structure of a party system. No less important is the analysis of the dynamics, i.e., the genesis and change of party systems, with an interest in how comprehensive and in which direction the change takes place.

Party system research is internationally comparative and uses established survey and comparison sizes. This branch of party research is primarily based on impulses that can be associated with the names of Maurice Duverger (1959), Giovanni Sartori (1976), and Klaus von Beyme (1984). In the German-speaking world, Oskar Niedermayer holds a special position with his contributions to the characteristics and change of party systems. His assessments of the situation and further development of the German party system provide a decisive template for system-related party research.

8.2 Conceptual Characteristics of Party Systems

From a conceptual understanding, a party system is derived from two components according to uncontroversial opinion—once from the totality of the parties supporting it and then from the network of relationships among the parties (Ladner 2004, p. 27).

Referring back to these two components, Niedermayer (2007, p. 197) minimally defines a party system as “the totality of the parties in a political system and their network of relationships.”

Lane and Ersson (1999, p. 134) enrich this definition by defining a party system as a “set of political parties operating within a country in an organized pattern, described by a number of party-system properties.” However, what the operational patterns and system properties include remains vague. Giovanni Sartori (1976, p. 44) provides an influential hint by speaking of a “system of interaction (i. O. italic, E. W.) resulting from inter-party competition.”

Steven Wolinetz (2006, p. 52 f.) picks up on the constitutive aspect of competition and differentiates it more strongly in its significance for party systems. For him, party systems have:

“a number of distinct features which arise from electoral competition and parties’ relation to each other. These include the number of parties contesting elections and winning legislative seats, their relative size and strength, the number of dimensions on which they compete, the distance which separates them on key issues, and their willingness to work with each other in government formation and the process of governing.”

8.3 Property Components of Party Systems

The starting point of party system analysis is the question of which characteristics or determining components can be used to capture party systems in their anatomy by means of feature description. The descriptive basic work is necessary to determine the respective manifestations of system characteristics. This not only allows the characteristic of a party system to be captured, but also provides the prerequisite for distinguishing and classifying the various forms of party systems typologically based on the composition of characteristics. Moreover, looking at the change of individual system characteristics allows us to examine to what extent party systems partially change or even undergo a system transformation.

Party literature provides a wealth of characteristic features by which party systems can be characterized and distinguished (Ladner 2004, p. 45 ff.). In the search for characteristic determinants of party systems, older research was interested in quantitative-numerical properties, while newer research from the 1960s onwards focused more on qualitative relationship characteristics between the parties. Since the 1980s, there has been a rise in quantitative party system analysis. Both approaches, when combined, enable systematic country comparisons and the analysis of transformation processes of party systems.

The most extensive list of characteristic features of party systems has been compiled by quantitative system research, which in principle relies on the construction of operable quantitative measurement variables for capturing system characteristics. Ladner (2004, pp. 67 ff., p. 199) has comprehensively presented the quantitative indicators commonly used in party research and provided instructions for their calculation.

From the efforts of this strand of research, a canon of quantitative system characteristics has emerged (Niedermayer 1992, p. 146 ff.), which is composed of the effective number of parties, the format, the fragmentation, the asymmetry, and the volatility of party systems.

Format

The format captures the number of parties that constitute a party system. From a parliamentary perspective, the format can easily be calculated based on the number of parties represented in parliament with at least one seat. But what about counting such parties that have participated in parliamentary elections with a one or two percent share of the vote? Sartori (1976, p. 121 ff.) circumvented this numerical inclusion problem by introducing a qualitative selection criterion: the relevance of a party. For him, this results on the one hand from its “coalition potential.” If a party is fundamentally ruled out as a participant or majority provider for a government coalition, it is no longer counted. The same applies if it does not have “blackmail potential,” i.e., it does not influence the competitive operations of the parties.

Fragmentation

Counting system-relevant parties is an essential first step for determining the size of a party system, but according to Ware (1996, p. 163) it does not reveal much in terms of substantial statement value. The format certainly allows for the determination of the fragmentation of a party system introduced by Sartori, which puts into terms its degree of party concentration or fragmentation. The “fractionalization index” by Rae (1967) and the “effective number of parties” by Laakso and Taagepera (1979) have established themselves as measurement variables of this characteristic in research. The fractionalization index is calculated by summing the square of the vote shares of the parties, subtracted from the number 1. The range of fragmentation varies between 0, i.e., a one-party system, and 1, i.e., a system with as many parties as there are eligible voters.

The fragmentation can be more clearly calculated using the “effective” number of parties that make up a party system (Laakso and Taagepera 1979 p. 4). A party system would therefore be effectively split up if all parties were represented with the same share of the vote. The greater the disparity between unequally strong parties, the more the index tends towards 1.

Asymmetry

Another characteristic of interest is the distribution of power between competing parties and party blocs, as it can indicate the extent to which opportunities for government takeover are equally or unequally distributed. The asymmetry of power can be calculated based on the number of parliamentary seats and government positions, and to what extent there are corresponding shifts in power after elections. The balance of power between the two largest parties is taken into account and is calculated from the difference in their share of the vote.

The gradient between two rival parties provides information about the different strategic potential for government formation, with the weaker party being at a disadvantage. In the case of a grand coalition, the gradient determines the division of senior or junior partnership between the two governing parties.

For the Federal Republic of Germany, Niedermayer has repeatedly pointed out the structural asymmetry between the CDU/CSU and SPD. The electoral predominance of the CDU/CSU has given it the role of a natural governing and chancellor party.

The abundant years of grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD suggest a system of party dominance in Germany, reflecting a particular power structure between governing and opposition parties. This is the case when two major parties with a mandate share of over two-thirds have a constitution-changing majority. In the case of a grand coalition, dominance raises the question of the necessary influence of opposition parties in order not to undermine the principle of potential government change.

Niedermayer (2013, p. 86) therefore suggests considering minor parties solely for their “coalition strategic relevance.” This is measured by whether they belong to a minimal winning coalition and are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the coalition majority.

Volatility

Volatility is indeed part of the characteristic profile of party systems, but as the only measure, it does not rely on an internal structural element, but on a relationship characteristic to the electorate. Volatility captures the total sum of shifts in voter votes from one election to the next. The sum value is usually calculated using the Pedersen Index as “the net change within the electoral party system resulting from individual vote transfers, divided by two” (Pedersen 1979, p. 3). According to the measurement method, it is calculated by summing the absolute difference between the voter gains and losses in the vote shares of each party participating in the election, compared with the percentage value of the previous election. To avoid double counting, the sum is divided by two. Based on a numerical scale from 0 to 100, the index value of volatility can then be given. The larger it turns out from election to election, the more the dynamics of swing voter behavior come into play.

The explanatory power of volatility for changes in the party system is limited, especially since this index, detached from gains and losses, adds up the sum of all election vote shifts of all parties. It is not apparent how the gains and losses affect the balance of power between the parties, i.e., changes in the party structure. Ladner (2004, p. 132) therefore concludes that the volatility concept can provide little insight into the change or stability of party systems.

The numerical key-figure approach to determining the characteristics of party systems is focused on capturing anatomical structural features, which are used to diagnose the nature and further development of a party system. As quantitative morphological party system research, the approach tends to a certain sterility, especially since it hardly penetrates deeper states of the internal structure of party systems beyond the surface structure. Its main focus is on the descriptive representation and cartography of feature configurations of party systems.

To get to the bottom of the relationship between the parties, one must resort to the qualitative determination approach founded by Sartori (1976). He investigates how parties ideologically compare to each other and how they relate from a cooperation/competition perspective. For the former, Sartori introduced the criterion of ideological distance. And the position of the parties on the left-right axis can be used to determine the degree of polarization that prevails in a party system. According to Sartori, the existence of system-oppositional wing parties also speaks for polarization. Another clue is provided by the ideological distance with regard to the direction of competition that parties wage among themselves. It results from the extent to which the parties position themselves towards the axis center or the edges of the continuum. From this, either a centripetal or a centrifugal competition style can be derived.

How the cooperation relationship between the parties is designed can be read from the so-called segmentation of a party system. Lack of segmentation means the unrestricted willingness of the parties to form coalitions with each other. In the other extreme case of total segmentation, the parties isolate themselves uncooperatively from each other.

The qualitative determination characteristics of party systems developed by Sartori have all found their way into the criteria catalog of party system analysis. They were not without criticism, especially since the criterion of ideological distance or polarization lacks conceptual precision to be able to apply it as a descriptive feature of reality. It is not really tangible to what extent the ideological distance of a party system increases or decreases.

Nevertheless, the expanded exploration of the feature spectrum of party systems is of great value because it points to the core of party competition, namely to wage a competition among each other to conquer political power positions and control the government (Wolinetz 2006, p. 51). If the analysis only focuses on the competitive relationship and competition patterns of the parties, the political power reference, to which the parties owe their existence individually and in total, would be lost.

There are also demarcation problems if one assumes a polarized or a segmented state of a party system based on ideological distance. For Russell J. Dalton (2008), a broadly based voter-centered comparative study has shown that qualitative system properties, unlike counting quantitative sizes, have a much greater explanatory power about the state and development of a party system, regardless of this.

When referring to an ideological characteristic such as polarization, it contributes to something enlightening, namely the type of competition and cooperation with which parties are related. However, the phenomenon of polarization is hardly so precisely operationalizable that it could be reliably applied to every party system. Moreover, with the end of the East-West conflict, the frame of reference was lost from which the term drew its explanatory power. With the rise of right-wing populist anti-system parties, however, the polarization criterion has regained some of its classification suitability.

8.4 Typological Variants of Party Systems

Behind the development of determinants of party systems is not least the intention to condense the diversity of real manifestations into types or to classify the diversity of species into a typological schema.

As already became apparent in the construction of party types (Chap. 5), it depends on the choice and combination of defining characteristics to construct a type, if the characteristics match. If, on the other hand, the characteristics differ, different types can be inserted into a classificatory order scheme.

Since the defining characteristics to be used are located at different levels, Ladner (2004, p. 43) suggests aligning the comparative study of party systems with a five-dimensional analysis scheme, namely:

“At the level of the electorate (volatility, polarization, fragmentation),

at the level of the parties (competitive relationships),

at the level of the ideological or programmatic orientation of the parties (polarization),

in the parliamentary arena (volatility, polarization, fragmentation), and

in the government (competition versus concordance system, coalition form).”

Alan Ware (1996, p. 147) considers the following four criteria relevant for distinguishing party systems:

• 1. By the extent of their societal anchoring

• 2. By party ideology

• 3. By the understanding of the legitimacy of the political system

• 4. By the number of parties

Finally, Pennings and Lane (1998) essentially use five dimensions of the following content to construct party types:

• The total volatility as an aggregated change of votes between two elections

• The effective number of parties and the fractionalization index, measured by the number of parliamentary seats of parties

• The electoral disproportionality as a difference between the shares of voter votes and parliamentary seats of parties

• The number of issue dimensions as an indicator of the cleavage structure of the system

In view of the fact that the common quantitative measurement concepts are only remotely related to the key feature of party systems, namely party competition, Mair (1997) introduces another criterion into the discussion that leads directly to competition.

Against the background of this broad analytical framework, the party literature offers various approaches and variants on how to typologize party systems (Mair 1997, p. 200 ff.). They mostly use a multi-dimensional typological schematization approach. At the beginning is the distinction made by Duverger of party systems according to the one-dimensional feature of the number, or as it later became customary to say, the format. This results in a two-part typology of two-party and multi-party systems.

A greater diversification of types is achieved with the help of further feature dimensions. Referring to the feature of fragmentation or asymmetry, Blondel (1968) divides the diversity of party systems into two-party systems, dominated by two major parties, two-and-a-half-party systems, extended by a small party of strategic position, and multi-party systems, on the one hand with, on the other hand without a dominant party. Ware (1996, p. 167) arrives at a six-type typology: party systems with a predominant party, two-party systems, two-and-a-half-party systems, multi-party systems with a dominant or otherwise two dominant parties, and balanced party systems.

The informative value of these typologies based on numerical sizes is clearly limited. Exclusively numerical approaches are not able to capture the diversity of numerically similar party systems. More fundamentally, numerical approaches have to face the objection that the characteristic of a party system does not depend on the number or size ratio of the constituting parties, but on the competition between them or the fabric of competitive relationships between them (Mair 2006).

However, it is noticeable that this key feature is not defined more precisely and it remains unclear which indices are suitable for substantiating competition.

Joseph and Weiner (1966, pp. 22 ff., pp. 33 ff.) draw the consequence of completely deviating from counting criteria. They classify party systems according to whether they have competitive or non-competitive (authoritarian one-party systems, pluralistic one-party systems, totalitarian one-party systems) interaction structures. Competition systems can be further divided into four subclasses when the respective practice of power of the parties (hegemonic power or alternating) is dimensionally related to their prevailing style of competition (ideological or pragmatic).

Sartori’s (1976, p. 125 ff.) pioneering typological achievement now lies in the conceptual connection of the numerical criterion of fragmentation with the qualitative criterion of polarization. For him, the competitive structure fundamentally arises from the number of relevant parties (fragmentation) and the ideological distance with the resulting competitive dynamics (Fig. 8.1).

Fig. 8.1

Sartori’s typological schema of party systems

Where parties take their position in an ideological space conceived as a left-right axis depends on the number of relevant parties for him. In bipolar, i.e., two-party systems, the two competitors each position themselves to the left and right of the axis center in a centripetal orientation tendency in the fight for ideologically unbound voters. The location configuration and competitive orientation in multipolar multi-party systems look different. Here, one party occupies the axis center, while the other parties place themselves at increasing distances to the left and right of it and compete in their respective demarcation areas for partial voter segments—this on the basis of a centrifugal dynamics of competition.

By combining the numerical count criterion (fragmentation) with the qualitative distance criterion (polarization), Sartori can distinguish different party system forms from each other, which he categorizes into the following typological systematics (Sartori 1976, p. 258 ff.):

• 1. One-party systems,

  which he subdivides into totalitarian, ideological, hegemonic, authoritarian, and pragmatic-hegemonic subtypes.

• 2. Two-party systems,

  which are bipolarly fragmented and have a small ideological distance. The two parties compete centripetally, taking turns in government.

• 3. Predominant party systems

  Since the existence of a dominant party does not necessarily speak for a dominant party system, he uses the term predominance.

Determining criteria for predominant party systems are:

• a) The existence of a main party that regularly wins the majority of seats in parliamentary elections, which practically excludes a rotation of power.

• b) Three consecutive absolute seat gains in elections indicate predominance.

• c) The predominant party does not have a dictatorial status.

• d) The decisive factor is not the number, but the distribution of power between the parties.

(Examples for Sartori include Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as India).

The three remaining types are multi-party systems, which differ from each other in the degree of fragmentation and the extent of polarization.

• 4. Moderately pluralistic party systems

  Their fragmentation does not extend beyond five parties. The relevant parties are ideologically relatively close. Their competition is not ideologically oriented and is subject to a centripetal competitive dynamic. There is a lack of a true center party, just as relevant anti-system parties are missing. Coalitions are formed bipolarly by blocks.

  Sartori associates this type of system with segmented societies and cites Switzerland as well as the Scandinavian and Benelux countries as examples.

• 5. Segmented pluralistic party systems

  They are highly fragmented with more than five parties. Behind them are loyal supporter groups. The ideological distance is limited and the parties pursue a centripetal competitive strategy.

• 6. Polarized pluralistic party systems

  Their fragmentation extends beyond five parties. There are relevant anti-system parties present, which display oppositional obstructionist behavior. There are strong ideological distances (multipolarity) between the parties. The party competition is strongly ideologically socioculturally oriented (polarization) with a centrifugal competitive style. A center party is placed in the center, which forms a coalition government with neighboring parties. The competition is also carried out with outbidding promises.

  For Sartori, such systems lead to heterogeneous, unstable, and shattered coalitions. As an example, he mentions Weimar, the Fourth Republic in France, and Italy.

• 7. Atomized party systems

  They form a residual category in which party competition is ineffective for the parties involved.

Sartori’s two-dimensional typological approach represents a significant enrichment of comparative party system research and has permanently helped to establish the connection of the numerical scope criterion with that of the nature and direction of party competition. However, the categorical reference framework is limited to the design of the internal structure of party systems, while the relationship to society or the state is excluded. Thus, Ware (1996, p. 168 f.) criticizes Sartori’s classification scheme for the missing criterion of societal penetration (“Penetration”) of parties, which he illustrates using the example of the Netherlands.

Moreover, Sartori’s ideological polarization concept is unmistakably and strongly tied to the concern for the political stability of party systems due to its time-bound nature, with the Italian conditions with the system-oppositional communist party in mind. In this respect, with the decline of communist parties, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the type of polarized pluralism lost its discriminatory relevance, as did the derived dichotomous mode of centripetal and centrifugal competitive orientation. How much time has passed over the typological scheme is evident from an order scheme of European party systems replicated by Ware (1996, p. 172 f.) 20 years later according to the criterion of ideological distance. The ideological convergence and convergence of parties and their adaptation to a pragmatic competitive style that occurred after the collapse of communism can no longer be sufficiently discriminatingly captured with the Sartori scheme.

With the loss of the connectivity of polarized pluralism to the changed party reality, justified criticism of Sartori arose from the typological side, which Mair (1997, p. 206) put into the following words: “Most systems tend to crowd into the category of moderate pluralism, which clearly reduce the discriminating power of the typology.”

Klaus von Beyme took up this criticism as early as the beginning of the 1980s (1984, p. 320 ff.) and modified Sartori’s typological scheme, especially with regard to polarized pluralism (Fig. 8.2).

Fig. 8.2

Typology of party systems according to von Beyme

Overall, it becomes apparent in the typological approaches found in the party literature that, as soon as examples are cited, their explanatory power suffers noticeably from outdated time reference, which would subsequently have to be accompanied by an update or adaptation of the typological systematics.

Thus, Sartori’s centrifugal polarization concept would have to be adapted to the current conditions to the extent that parties of the right center compete with right-wing populist fringe parties on the one hand, but also form government alliances on the other. Austria, Italy, and some Scandinavian countries provide examples for this.

The polarization criterion comes under even more pressure in its informative value when right-wing populist parties, as in Poland or Hungary, take over the government and thus bring the tectonics of the common party system taxonomy to collapse. Whether such fundamental axis shifts and competition upheavals of party systems align typologically with reality is still pending.

Since, according to the prevailing construction-logical conception, party systems are about the constitutive concept of competition, it is actually incomprehensible that no connection is made to economic approaches of competition forms. Above all, this would have been appropriate with the introduction of the cartel party theory by Katz and Mair (1995) as a characteristic of party competition systems.

Bardi and Mair (2008, p. 147 ff.) point out the deficiency that the research branch here demanded for the determination of party systems has been characterized by decades of stagnation and lack of innovation. More generally, Stöss et al. (2006, p. 138) complain that party system research “does not yet have a generally accepted analytical framework” that could serve to structure individual system analyses or internationally comparative studies. For this, a dimensional extension of the access perspective to party system reality would be necessary. Because party system research is macro-analytically focused on questions of party competition, neglecting to search for further indicators that could provide information about the performance of party systems as interest representation instances. Since this is omitted, the important question cannot be taken up from the perspective of change as to what extent parties at the macro level are subject to functional and performance restrictions. A research desideratum also represents the search for qualitative or quantitative indicators that could capture the degree of societal connection and legitimacy of party systems. The unmistakably structural analysis focus of this branch shows no interest in phenomena that inevitably impose themselves with regard to the performance, democratic system functionality, and social rooting and legitimacy relations of party systems.

The impetus from Ware (1996, p. 131) to include societal anchoring and understanding of legitimacy in the morphological criteria catalog received no further attention. Including not only structural but also functional-analytical criteria in the typological determination process of party systems has also not been pursued further, despite an important proposal from Helms (2005).

From a functional-analytical perspective, Bardi and Mair (2008, p. 157 ff.) make it clear that party systems, depending on the electoral or parliamentary level, are subject to different interaction logics. The former is about competitive orientation towards the electorate, the latter about cooperative government formation and maintenance of influence. From the power perspective, the three levels are nevertheless interconnected if one sees party systems as a structure for the execution of power struggles and the transformation of societal into political power relations. Instead, however, the current party system analysis tends towards a sterility cleansed of societal representation and political power issues when it deprives parties of their societal embedding from its focus and leaves out what they achieve as political conflict resolution instances and how efficiently they contribute to the resolution of politically pending conflicts.

The structuralist-descriptive party system research tends towards sterility because it does not subject its subject of investigation to quality and validity criteria, as modern empirical democracy research has long been doing (Stoiber 2011), with which the performance level of a party system could be evaluated.

8.5 Party Systems in Transition

8.5.1 Basics

The typological structural analysis of party systems is interested in the nature and variety of party systems in a comparative way, without paying much attention to change. However, this changed when a destabilization and change began in the European countries in the 1970s, and the main interest of party system research turned to the question of the dynamics and further development of party systems. The questions of the nature, direction, and extent of system change became pressing (Stöss et al. 2006, p. 13 f.), which triggered extensive research activity. From the analytical pre-understanding, changes to be considered were to be explored up to the borderline at which change turns into system transformation and ends in a new system type.

For Pennings and Lane (1998, p. 3), a party system change is measured by whether the competitive or cooperative relationships between parties in the electoral, parliamentary, or governmental arena are replaced. Party system stability means for them when the party relationships, based on the given laws and institutions, remain fixed, which dominant actors within the party system prefer. “Stability is a situation in which certain players in the electoral, parliamentary and executive arenas are able to uphold their dominant rules, most by imposing barriers to competition by means of institutional engineering.”

With regard to the extent of change, according to Gordon Smith (1989, p. 353), the change of party systems can take place in four stages: as temporary fluctuation, as limited change, as general change, and as transformation.

The first two variants involve partial changes in the system when individual changes bundle into a strand during general change. System transformation only occurs when a collapsing party system is replaced by a new one. He cites West Germany after 1945 as an example.

Temporary fluctuation, which is evident in time-limited phenomena such as increased volatility, increased polarization, or the rise of a short-lived party, is not sustainable. Limited change is indicated by the permanent breakthrough of a new party. General change is based on the changes of various system characteristics of lasting duration. And transformation results when a core element of the system fundamentally changes or the party competition structure is re-sorted by newcomer parties.

Pennings and Lane (1998, p. 6) distinguish three forms of party system change: once as stability or “inertia,” then as gradual change, which is identical to Smith’s limited change; finally, radical change, in which a party system fundamentally changes in a short time. For Pennings and Lane (1998, p. 5), party system change is “an enduring change in the inter-party relationships that both results from and affects the competition and cooperation between political parties.”

For the exploration of the phenomenon of party system change, the note by Peter Mair (1997, p. 49) is important that the change of parties and that of party systems must be distinguished. According to Mair, it also needs to be clarified to what extent the change of individual aspects of parties, such as their voter base, political orientation or government participation, already affects the “essence” or “identity” of a party. Only this would allow speaking of a change of the party.

So, according to Mair, a bundling of partial change phenomena must occur before the tipping point for a system change is reached. For him (1989, p. 256), this is the case “when a party system is transformed from a class or type of party system into another (i. O. italic, E. W.).” However, this is only the case for him if ideological, strategic or electoral changes lead to the transformation of the competition orientation or the “governing formula” (Mair 1989, p. 257). Individual aspects of change therefore have no substantial significance as long as they are not of “systemic relevance” for the “pattern of interactions among the parties” (Mair 1997, p. 75).

Both Smith and Mair thus limit system transformation to a borderline case of upheaval, which is usually preceded by less radical forms of system change in terms of both dimensional inclusion and the range of aspects of change. So, if a new party rises, this alone does not mean a party system change for Mair (1997, p. 75).

Ware (1996, p. 211) also emphasizes that partial changes in the system should not be equated with a fundamental system change. Such a transformation is very rare among the 23 democratic countries he studied and can only be proven in four countries (Belgium, France, India, and Israel). In essence, change usually occurs gradually and far from crisis symptoms within a party system and lacks a system-threatening or system-overcoming character.

The direction in which this internal view of change is aimed according to Mair (1997, 2006) is explained by his change-analytical concept, for which he uses the criterion of competition for changing government takeovers (“the structure of competition for control oft he executive” (Mair 2006, p. 65)). The change in the competition structure is measured by him on three factors (Mair 2006, p. 66, 1997, p. 206 ff.): first, the extent of government change, which can vary from not at all to partial to complete and vice versa. Second, it is about the constancy or renewal of party formations that are eligible for a change of government. And third, he refers to the power takeover range, which can be very wide and include many parties or can be limited to a small subgroup of “born” government parties.

Party competition can be open or closed in its structure (“party system closure”). Mair determines this based on how far a change of government is completely or partially carried out, i.e., a governing party continues its rule by forming a coalition with a previous opposition party. In the other case, a previous governing party is replaced and exchanged for a new party constellation. If there is a change of government with the same party constellation, Mair sees a closed competition structure. Conversely, a new party or party coalition completely takes over the government and establishes an innovative government constellation.

The focus of change is thus the common interplay that characterizes party systems. However, it would be debatable to clarify whether what changes through change is normal or indicates signs of crisis. And conversely, whether this, because so little changes, is to be seen as a crisis. Moreover, the change analysis of party systems has more to do than with changes of government. After all, this research strand can hardly ignore such change phenomena as the expansion and internal reorganization of power shifts, electoral destabilization and landslide elections, growing polarization, the decline of old and rise of new parties, and last but not least, societal uprooting, and the loss of legitimacy of party systems.

To delve into these deeper layers of party system change, the recourse to already presented determination criteria of party systems has a heuristic value, as various system changes can be uncovered based on the system characteristics of format, fragmentation, volatility, dominance, and asymmetry, which should interest the research of party system change.

8.5.2 Explanations of Changes in Party Systems

The question of how changes in party systems are explained opens up another subfield of party system research. The backgrounds and factors used to explain system change are diverse and multidimensional by nature. Pennings and Lane (1998, p. 5) list a whole spectrum of factors, ranging from changes in the international environment, upheavals in the economy and society, electoral law provisions, landslide elections, changes in party leadership, to regime collapses.

Various societal, economic, historical, and political-institutional factors are used to explain the diversity of party systems and their national characteristics, with electoral law occupying a prominent place. From a societal perspective, the cleavage theory stands out, which traces the formation and competitive structure of party systems back to deeply rooted conflict relationships. This will be discussed later.

However, it is not only external factors that have a more precisely determinable explanatory value. Changes in a party system can also be driven and effected from within the system itself. The latter is usually due to strategic reorientations of established parties or to signs of aging and rigidity in individual parties, which change the competitive structure of parties and the chances of forming a government.

For Gordon Smith (1989, p. 354), the electorate is the pivot of party system change. It is initiated by the electorate and expressed through the interplay of volatility. Added to this are well-known factors such as institutional framing, culture, the strength of parties, polarization, the relationship between government and opposition, and the intensity of competition.

Change, however, is also seen as the result of what parties have set in motion themselves. In this process, parties embody independent actors who influence voting behavior through their strategic maneuvers. Smith speaks of parties as strategic actors who drive change themselves. But they are also reactive actors who balance external pressure and the internal self-interests of the parties.

The institutional context, among the numerous dimensions of explanation, can look back on the longest tradition. It is associated with Maurice Duverger and has entered party literature as the so-called Duverger’s law (1959, p. 219). According to this, different party systems are conditioned by specific electoral systems, which he expressed in three formulaic statements:

“1. Proportional representation leads to a multi-party system with rigid, independent, and stable parties (except in the case of suddenly emerging movements). 2. Majority voting with a runoff leads to a multi-party system with elastic, dependent, and relatively stable parties (in all cases). 3. Simple majority voting leads to a two-party system with alternating large and independent parties” (Duverger 1959, p. 219).

In the further course, Duverger aims to empirically and logically substantiate his “sociological law,” namely “simple majority voting (promotes) party dualism” (Duverger 1959, p. 232). Thus, he explains majority voting-supported party systems “mechanically” with the discrimination of third parties and “psychologically” with the intention of voters not to waste their vote on unsuccessful competitors.

Duverger is well aware of the interplay of electoral law with other “socioeconomic” and “ideological” explanatory factors of party systems, but the “technical” factor of electoral law is decisive for him.

Contradiction was inevitable in the face of this institutionally monocausal explanatory logic and was associated with the identification of various other explanatory factors. These, as Nohlen (1998, p. 464) shows, can be mainly assigned to the institutional context and include factors such as the form of government, the regime type, party financing, and the form of parties.

Comparisons between countries, however, were also able to demonstrate the barrier character of majority voting systems against the rise of small parties, while mixed and proportional systems lower the parliamentary entry barriers for smaller parties. Accordingly, the number of parties represented in parliament is larger (Norris 2004).

The search for reasons explaining changes in party systems leads to a whole bundle of factors, and the individual factors cannot be denied plausibility. However, the identified institutional, societal, cultural, and political factors do not go beyond rather vague hints. How they are interconnected and how they impact the changed voting behavior as the main explanatory variable of system change has not yet been adequately illuminated. The explanatory logic of Duverger’s law is still more tangible, which, however, triggered corresponding waves of debate.

The unraveling of the complex cause-effect relationships is made difficult by the fact that from the party system side, the dimensions of change and the process of change would need to be more precisely defined in order to reconstruct which factors in combination have brought about the fixed system changes in what way. To accomplish this on the level of system comparison is still a task to be tackled. Therefore, key questions of change not only in party systems, namely why and how they change and which direction they take, according to Stöss et al. (2006, p. 142 f.) do not find satisfying answers.

8.5.3 Structure and Change of the Party System of the Federal Republic of Germany

For party system research, the party system of the Federal Republic of Germany represents a special case in various respects in international comparison, namely maximum hyperstability and party concentration with centering. It is all the more interesting to extract it from the circle of country-specific variants and to show how its structure is captured and its changes over the last 70 years are analyzed.

Due to the division, the West German party system, which is initially to be examined here, experiences its birth in 1949 with the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany and only merges into a pan-German party system in 1990 with the reunification of the two German partial states. Its initial composition still goes back to the licensing policy of the occupying powers after 1945, which outlines the development path for format, fragmentation, and ideological distance of the post-war party system (Kreuzer 2009).

Oskar Niedermayer has traced the development of the initially West German, then all-German party system in numerous contributions (2010) and comes up with a total of five development phases by the year 2016 (2019).

In his quantitative-empirical diagnoses, he systematically uses the well-known criteria for determining the structure of party systems, mostly developed by Sartori, using both quantitative and qualitative criteria (Niedermayer 2003, p. 271). According to this, the party system of the Federal Republic of Germany is determined for him by the numerical key figures of the format, fragmentation, and dominance, which he breaks down according to the vote share for the two dominant major parties CDU/CSU and SPD, and according to the power asymmetry between the two rival competitors. Furthermore, he also uses the qualitative criterion of polarization, which he operationalizes according to the ideological distance between the parties. Finally, he completes the catalog of system properties with the criterion of segmentation, which he determines based on the coalition capability of the parties among each other (Niedermayer 2019, p. 99 f.).

For the typological classification of the German party system and the reconstruction of system change, Niedermayer uses the two-party dominance system. However, the distinction between a fragmented party system (more than five parties) and a pluralistic party system (up to five parties), both of which go back to Sartori, is also important.

On this category basis, Niedermayer divides the development of the German post-war party system into seven phases (2019, p. 102 ff.). At the beginning is the “consolidation phase of the fifties,” in which the two-party dominance intensifies with growing asymmetry in favor of the union parties. The initial fragmentation fades, and the polarization noticeably weakens at the end of the 1950s.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a three-party system of CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP with low fragmentation is established. The SPD reduces the deficit compared to the union and can even surpass it in 1972. The low polarization moves along the socio-economic conflict line with the poles of the welfare state and market freedom.

However, this assessment of the 1970s can also be seen differently, especially since this decade is characterized by a confrontational polarization between the social-liberal coalition alliance of SPD and FDP on the one hand and a fundamental CDU-CSU opposition under Kohl and Strauß on the other. The resulting “overheating” (Wiesendahl 2002) triggered spectacular electoral mobilization effects and drove the vote concentration in favor of CDU/CSU and SPD to the peak.

In the 1980s, according to Niedermayer, the party system goes through a “pluralization phase.” Fragmentation increases with the rise of the Greens; both people’s parties show mobilization weaknesses. Societal modernization initiates a value change, which results in a new conflict line between progressive-libertarian and conservative-authoritarian values. New coalition options between Red-Green are still hindered by increased segmentation along the socio-cultural conflict line.

As a fifth phase, after the unification in 1990, there is a “fluid party system” throughout Germany, which initially was strongly segmented by the non-coalition-capable Greens and the PDS. These contrasts gradually diminish for coalition strategic considerations. In 1998, the red-green change of power takes place and creates the prerequisite for the flexibility of party competition for later three-party coalitions.

Niedermayer sees the “previous, relatively rigid competitive structure” of the party system broken up by a “fluid party system” at the latest in 2005 (2019, p. 112). It is characterized by the following properties (Niedermayer 2001, p. 126 f.):

“(one) a still relatively low fragmentation and polarization, (two) an open competitive situation between the two major parties due to the reduction of the structural asymmetry favoring the Union, (three) an open competitive situation between the three small parties, all three of which have not yet clearly defined and consolidated their position in the party system, (four) an East/West discrepancy due to the fact that the Greens and the FDP in the East and the PDS in the West represent marginal parties, and (five) a decline in the temporarily increased segmentation due to the gradual inclusion of especially the Greens, but also to some extent the PDS.”

From 2009, Niedermayer marks the 6th phase of the transformation of the German party system through a “type change (…) from a system with two-party dominance to a pluralistic system” (2019, p. 112 ff.). He cites the breakthrough of the party Die Linke in West Germany as an important reason, which as the “only true party of social justice” successfully competes with the SPD. From 2009, the SPD is caught in a downward spiral as a people’s party, and the Union under Merkel also experiences a decline in its conservative voter base.

After 2013, Niedermayer sees the 7th phase as a “return to two-party dominance,” which is primarily due to a resurgence of the Merkel CDU as a chancellor party. The power asymmetry with the SPD increases significantly. The development phase after the 2013 federal election does not yet give Niedermayer a clear profile. It is dominated by the refugee crisis, which almost tears apart the alliance between the CDU and CSU and is accompanied by a loss of voters.

The structural and developmental analysis of the party system of the Federal Republic of Germany ends before the federal election in the fall of 2017. In an analysis of the outcome of the 2017 federal election (2019), Niedermayer does not provide any further trend statements on the ongoing structural change of the party system fragmented by the AfD into six parties. This is surprising, especially since, according to the typological system change logic he previously used, a transformation towards polarized pluralism should have taken place again. Aiko Wagner (2019) addresses this very question with regard to the outcome of the 2017 federal election, whether from a qualitative point of view, the established system of moderate pluralism consisting of SPD, CDU/CSU, FDP, Greens, and Linke has not undergone a change towards the party system type of polarized pluralism with the rise of the AfD and the changed political competition structure.

The question is examined based on eight criteria that, according to Sartori’s specifications, constitute a multi-party system of polarized pluralism (Wagner 2019, p. 117 ff.). These include the presence of anti-system parties and a bipolar left and right opposition. The governing parties occupy the center axis and are exposed to opposition from both left and right parties. From an ideological distance perspective, there is strong polarization among the parties, which results in a centrifugal competition. And fundamental political conflicts are fought against each other. Wagner applies the latter to a centrifugal irresponsible “bidding competition” (2019, p. 118).

He operationalizes the criteria based on election results and survey findings from the “German Longitudinal Election Study” (GLES) of 2017. Above all, due to the orientation of the electorate behind the AfD and structurally through the placement of a system-critical party to the right of the Union, as well as through increased fragmentation with weakening of the people’s parties, Wagner sees the trend towards the German party system characterized by polarized pluralism confirmed. However, it is still about a “mixed type” (Wagner 2019, p. 129).

Other party researchers take a less differentiated periodization of the development of the German party system, but also forego the determining criteria developed by party system research.

Everhard Holtmann (2012, p. 61 ff.) proposes a five-phase scheme with a historically extended longitudinal section from 1918 to the beginning of the twenty-first century and includes structure-forming socio-economic and socio-cultural explanatory contexts in the consideration. From these, moments of caesura are derived to mark the transition to a new development stage of the party system each time.

Holtmann goes back to the beginnings of the party system in 1918 with his approach and then divides the period between 1918 and 1933 as the second phase, followed by the period between 1945 and 1970 as the third phase. The fourth phase covers the 1980s to 1990. The fifth phase covers the time from the reunification in 1990 and the all-German integration of the East German party system. The system ends with the 2009 federal election, which, according to Niedermayer’s terminology, leads to a “fluid” party system.

It is noteworthy that Holtmann carries out the development phases of the party system according to party types, which are “characteristic” for the respective phase (Holtmann 2012, p. 71). The problem here is that development typologically from the rise of individual party forms macro-analytically concludes the sequence of development stages of a party system. As a result, the development of individual parties is given more space than the development at the party system level itself.

Ulrich von Alemann, together with Philipp Ebentraut and Jens Walther, presents his well-known periodization scheme from five development phases, which, according to the authors (von Alemann et al 2018, p. 52), “puts fundamental changes in the structure of party competition at the center.”

It is divided (from von Alemann et al 2018, p. 52 ff.) into an

• 1. Formation phase from 1945–1953,

• 2. Concentration phase from 1953–1976,

• 3. Transformation phase from 1976–1998,

• 4. Breakthrough phase 1998–2005, and a

• 5. Fragmentation phase since 2005.

In the systematic derivation and classification of the phases, as already with Holtmann, it becomes apparent that the analysis level of the party competition system tends to be lowered to the meso-analytical level of the individual parties and their development. As a result, the development process of the parties individually often overlays that of the development course of the party system from the perspective.

Dividing the development course of the West German party system into phases raises the question of how deep the change initiated by a new phase goes: Is it a limited process that only covers partial areas, or does the phase change take place abruptly with the replacement of the old by a new party system?

Against this background, von Alemann bases his phase representation on a clear finding, namely “the West German party system has changed its shape several times in its almost 70-year development” (von Alemann et al. 2018, p. 105).

This judgment is, however, difficult to understand because it lacks an analytical framework from which it could be derived according to which criteria the “shape” of the German party system has demonstrably changed.

Oskar Niedermayer, on the other hand, following his quantitative category scheme, is much clearer for the fifth phase of party system development beginning in 2009 (2011, p. 8). He diagnoses a type change of the German party system in view of the parliamentary success of five parties and the breakthrough of the party Die Linke, namely from a “two-party dominance system” to a pluralistic party system. However, as it would turn out a little later, this system change diagnosis was exaggerated and premature. Because as early as 2011/2012, the established people’s party dominance system consolidated and was able to restore itself as a four-party system with the parliamentary eviction of the FDP in 2013.

This makes it clear that temporary popularity cycles of small and medium-sized parties do not indicate a structural dealignment in the form of the irreversible decline of dominant major parties. What can be reliably read from the development course alone is an epoch of unstable electoral trends with a tendency towards turbulent roller coaster cycles. Only with the election result of 2017 does a system-changing structural change become apparent, which, in view of the continuing weakness of the major parties and the electoral rise of former small to medium-sized parties, forces cross-block and cross-camp government formation constellations. This trend is further intensified by the parliamentary rise of the AfD as a far-right party.

As can be seen from the party system development debate, a purely numerical determination of party systems can lead to overly sharp typological system boundaries, which does violence to the diagnosis of a real type change of party systems in a method artifact way. In addition, the initial premise of the change of party systems should not be lost sight of, that there are graded and differently far-reaching forms of system change and that system transformation, as in Italy or France, is a rare exception.

Overall, it becomes apparent that the categorical framework introduced by party system research with its quantitative and qualitative characteristics is useful for depicting and tracing the property profile and development of a party system, such as the German one. However, gaps in coverage also become visible in the profile determination.

Thus, the power character of party systems and thus the question of how power struggles are structurally organized is neglected. For the analysis of this phenomenon, the bow can be drawn to the criterion of dominance and asymmetry. Both criteria, however, only numerically take into account the strong gradient between the two largest parties of a system, while the power structure as a whole captures the camp formation within a party system. It interprets party competition as a power struggle for the occupation of the government and analyzes how parties permanently form camp alliances for this purpose.

This results, as was typical for the German party system for a long time, in a bipolar camp and coalition block structure, in which a coalition political openness and willingness to change of the block parties towards the other party camp is excluded by pre-electoral coalition statements at elections.

This point is implicitly contained in the criterion of ideological distance. However, the block formation criterion looks at the left-right axis according to how the parties distribute themselves on it in connection with the camp and from this a power distribution structure emerges in terms of coalition strategy. Thus, Adenauer deliberately formed a center-right citizen block alliance under his chancellorship in 1949, which, including CDU/CSU, FDP, and initially still DP, monopolized government power until 1966 and permanently relegated the SPD as the political representation of the left camp to the opposition benches.

Against this background, the criterion of dominance or asymmetry should not only be related to the balance of power between individual parties such as CDU/CSU and SPD, but to the power gradient between ideologically close or distant camp parties.

The typical bourgeois-left camp asymmetry of the two-and-a-half party system of the Federal Republic only reversed in 1969 with the FDP’s switch to the social-liberal camp in favor of the SPD. In alliance with the bourgeois FDP, it was able to decide the parliamentary power question in its favor until 1982, although the CDU/CSU, kept away from government power, clearly outperformed the SPD in elections.

This shows that the competitive structure of a party system should analytically distinguish between the electoral power gradient and the parliamentary power distribution structure. However, this can only be achieved if one refers back to the camp relationships between the parties, which are significant both electorally and parliamentarily.

From this perspective, the power shift back in favor of the bourgeois block parties from 1982 to 1998 under Chancellor Kohl is of utmost relevance, with the bipolar camp structure being expanded and simultaneously fragmented on the left side from 1983 due to the parliamentary rise of the Greens. This is of power-securing and power-excluding weight for the further distribution of forces between the bourgeois black-yellow and the left red-green camp, as the left camp continued to balkanize with the rise of the PDS/The Left, while the bourgeois camp could further base its electoral and parliamentary block base on the alliance parties CDU/CSU and FDP.

The electoral weakening of the bourgeois camp in the late phase of Helmut Kohl’s chancellorship finally led to a camp power change in favor of Red-Green in 1998. The subsequent development of the camp power distribution structure is determined from 2005 in favor of the CDU/CSU as the chancellor’s party, because the left red-red-green camp, which achieved a parliamentary majority of deputies in 1998, 2002, and 2005, was unable to convert its majority of deputies into government power due to internal fragmentation and segmentation.

The government dominance of the CDU/CSU under Merkel is therefore explained by a strategic power-building self-blockade of the left camp. It also explains the dissolution of the camp-bound power-building structure of the German party system that began at the latest after 2013, especially since the SPD, at the price of its electoral decline, enters into a government alliance with the CDU/CSU for its power security as a governing party in 2013 and 2017. The Greens, however, appear as further gravediggers of the camp system, after their coalition statement for Red-Green in 2005, 2009, and 2013 is crowned with strategic failure. As a result, they make a strategic turn towards overcoming camp coalition openness with a view to a black-green alliance alongside the bourgeois camp party CDU/CSU.

With the federal election of 2017, the old block party system of the Federal Republic disintegrates as the Greens break away from the left camp and open up to a Jamaica coalition of CDU/CSU, Greens, and FDP. The three-party coalition alliance famously fails due to the FDP’s refusal to form a coalition, which is needed to secure a majority for this alliance.

Under the new party leadership of Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, the Greens openly tend towards a black-green coalition, whereby they can now outperform the weakened SPD as the second strongest party due to their electoral surge in state elections and demographically at the federal level. Strategically, they even claim a priority position over the SPD. A realistic majority among voters for a hypothetical red-green-red camp coalition after the 2021 federal election is now lacking.

From a system typological perspective, the bipolar block party system of the Federal Republic has thus come to an end at the federal level. The coalition political dividing lines between the center-left and center-right camps have been removed and have been replaced by a camp-transcending flexibility strategy of coalition formation. The center-right camp benefits primarily from this inverted power structure.

From an all-German perspective, a uniform structure and development of the west and east German sub-areas of the all-German party system cannot be assumed since 1990. On the one hand, the GDR party system has legally merged into the west German pre-shaped all-German party system. Factually, on the other hand, it occupies a special position in its structure with the electoral area East, which is manifested until 2017 in a three-party dominance system. Both from the voter side and the party system level, the East German party system has a left-leaning camp structure. Nevertheless, the CDU was able to successfully establish itself as a structural minority party against a left majority camp as a governing party and drew governmental gain from the competitive constellation. The SPD and The Left, on the other hand, missed the chance to transfer their joint electoral and parliamentary majority into government coalitions.

Two recent trends subject the East German party system to a massive structural change. On the one hand, the SPD is on a continuing dramatic downward trend, which undermines its necessary electoral market leadership for government formation, strategically, with the exception of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Since coalition options close for the CDU to the left and right and vice versa for The Left, red-black alliances are not an option, the coalition formation scope for the system parties in East Germany narrows down to black-red-green or red-red-green tripartite alliances. Although it has sunk to a small party, the SPD thus secures a stakeholder role in the East German state governments.

The rise of the AfD in East Germany and the electoral marginalization of the SPD shake up the previous coalition formation patterns and force camp-overcoming addition alliances. A polarized six-party system is thus emerging, which is dominated by the AfD and the system parties slimmed down to mediocrity, including The Left. The AfD is excluded as a pariah from the system parties forming a power cartel. Due to the difficult arithmetic government formation problems, the left-right camp structure of the East German party system is leveled under the cartel party system closed against the AfD.

The characteristic party system of the Federal Republic has not only come to an end with the power-strategic self-blockade of the left-wing camp. It was already subject to erosion because the Merkel Union, with programmatic openings of its political line to the left-green, successfully reduced the old ideological distance, for example in energy and refugee policy, between the bourgeois and left-wing party camps. However, the decisive factor is the changed electoral arithmetic. The provisional major parties CDU/CSU and especially SPD are electorally so weakened that parliamentary government majorities can usually only be achieved through cross-camp three-party coalitions. This requires a general willingness of the parties to form coalitions, with the camp principle only being directed from the bourgeois side against the left. The AfD, as the far-right party of the center-right camp, is also subject to the rigorous coalition exclusion for the Union. This was reaffirmed by the CDU federal leadership after the mishap of the election of FDP member Kemmerich as Prime Minister in the Thuringian state parliament in early 2020 by a majority of deputies from FDP, CDU, and AfD against the incumbent Prime Minister of the Left, Ramelow. The dissolution of the parliamentary camp structure can no longer be stopped with the opening and flexibility of the coalition strategies of the parties. How this is related to the destabilization of the electoral camp structure is still a largely unexplained topic.

8.6 Formation and Change of Party Systems in the Light of Cleavage Theory

8.6.1 Basics

National party systems experienced their rise and breakthrough with the spread of mass suffrage. However, this institutionally uncontroversial context of origin cannot explain the structure and configuration of party systems, which have country-specific similarities but also differences, to illuminate their historically far-reaching background of origin. Party system research uses the cleavage theory to focus on the deeply rooted conflict structures of a country in order to explain the composition and competitive configuration of national party systems from there.

The basic lines of cleavage theory were developed by Lipset and Rokkan and published in their groundbreaking essay “Party Systems and Voter Alignments” in 1967. They were preceded by fundamental historical-sociological studies by Stein Rokkan, which trace the modernization process of European societies from the Reformation period through the formation of nation-states to the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century on a macro-analytical level.

The societal modernization processes provoke profound conflicts between the groups affected, which revolve around characteristic lines of tension (cleavages) and manifest themselves in societal camp formations. Parties take up these conflicts as alliance partners of the societal groups affected and as their political interest representation instances and translate them to the party system level for political conflict resolution.

This macro-sociological cleavage-theoretical approach raises some questions to which it must provide empirically rich and holistically integrating answers. It needs to be more precisely determined what a cleavage is and how it connects with a societal carrier group. Which societal divisions originating from where condense into a cleavage structure and form the breeding ground for the rise of a party system emerging from it is also to be found out historically-sociologically. Finally, it depends on the politicization of lines of tension by parties, whereby it needs to be clarified more precisely what strategic role they play in this process. And with further societal modernization thrusts, the research interest is directed to the relationship context, how societal change leads to cleavage change, and how this is reflected in a reconfiguration or new configuration of existing party systems.

So many phenomena are touched by this descriptive and explanatory context to be deciphered that two approaches are taken to research the complex of investigation: Once, and Lipset and Rokkan are pioneering in this respect, societal development processes are reconstructed interpretatively from the macro level in a historical-sociological way and “disjunctures” are filtered out, which cause tensions between opposing societal camps in their collective coping. The identification of social-moral milieus behind the conflict structures in Imperial Germany and Weimar by Lepsius is also done by a comparable macro-sociological interpretation method. Social statistical aggregate data and their spatial or social structural distribution are included in the approach.

On the other hand, individual data obtained through surveys and their elaborated quantitative-statistical processing form the basis for the micro-analytical approach, which is exemplarily applied in the recent cleavage study by Inglehart and Norris (2019). In this case, survey data from experts and the findings of long-term survey studies collected for the USA, Europe, and worldwide are used. With the help of the data, for example, cleavage constructs can be subjected to an empirical review. Or complex explanatory models can be factored out and factor-analytically checked for their explanatory content.

While the macro-sociological interpretative approach relies on the plausibility and evidence of the statement content, the micro-analytical approach focuses on variables, scales ,and constructs, the statistical relationship of which is analyzed bi- and multivariately with methodological effort. The historicity and societal context of origin of the data are left out in this process.

8.6.2 Content and Social Basis of Cleavages

The term Cleavage is used in party system research to capture conflictual fault lines that presuppose a division of society into group-related oppositions. However, as Niedermayer (2009, p. 30 ff.) points out, the Cleavage concept has some terminological and conceptual inconsistencies that relate to the societal and political aggregate state of the fault lines and the way in which societal and political conflicts are mobilized.

In this context, Niedermayer’s (2009, p. 35) suggestion to clearly distinguish between societal and party-political conflict lines is helpful. He defines a societal Cleavage as “a profound, stable over a long period, conflictual and organizationally solidified fault line between population groups, which are defined by their socio-structural positioning and the material interests and value concepts derived from it, or primarily by their different value concepts.” He distinguishes this from “party-political conflict lines” as those societal Cleavages that are taken up as matters of “party-political representation” (Niedermayer 2009, p. 37). It is important to distinguish between the two in order to note that the societal conflict structure does not per se reflect in the political one, but the latter emerges from an independent translation and processing process.

Cleavages reflect divisions as opposing interests of collective groups that do not become politically virulent on their own. According to Bartolini and Mair (1990, p. 213 ff.), objective division relations only take on the character of a “cleavage” when they take shape through social stratification, collective identity, and political organization. In other words, Cleavages

• 1. must be embedded in a socio-structural framework based on class or religion or status or education;

• 2. the societal group must have a collective identity, and

• 3. the conflict must take on an organizational form of expression and action.

Through a Cleavage, societal groups and political organizations are bound together through solidified forms of political behavior.

Manza and Brooks (1999, p. 33 ff.) adopt this three-dimensional concept, but bring it closer to the electorate. This group must have a common social rooting base; it must have a common conflict awareness regarding the tension pole, and it must express the Cleavage politically through interpersonal relationships and institutions.

Rainer Lepsius has worked out the collective community-building and consciousness-raising context of Cleavage mobilization, which is considered essential, in a historical-sociological milieu study for the German party system from 1871 to 1928. For this, he introduced the term “social-moral milieu” and understands it as “social units that are formed by a coincidence of several structural dimensions such as religion, regional tradition, economic situation, cultural orientation, layer-specific composition of the intermediary groups” (Lepsius 1993). This combines socio-structural demarcation with cultural identity formation factors, which also leads Lepsius to speak of “politically mobilized communities of conviction” (1993, p. 32). To achieve this subcultural state, common experiences of social situation must be transferred into a binding ideological collective consciousness through social and communicative condensation processes, which is promoted by milieu associations and milieu press products.

Social-moral milieus thus represent a socially homogeneous form of community life that distinguishes itself, which is welded together into a socially and ideologically sworn collective We by a pre-political network of associations, press and propaganda organs, educational institutions, and spokespersons. Today, one would speak of “corporate identity.” For the carrier groups, the milieus become collectively consciousness-shaping and behavior-shaping on the basis of their conflict embedding.

From this community situation, party ties emerge that provide the party, accepted as a political mouthpiece and interest representation institution, with a solid base of loyal core voters. Such connections are of high stability as long as the social cohesion within the community continues and loyalties are passed on through political socialization.

The socially segmented and closed social-moral milieus of a country have a strong structuring effect on the configuration of a party system, so they can also be seen as collective links between the societal conflict structure and the politicized political conflict structure through Cleavages. In this context, Franz Urban Pappi (1986, p. 369) speaks of a “politicized social structure.”

For the Empire and the Weimar Republic, Lepsius (1966) distinguishes five milieus that, with their camp structure, have provided the social basis of the German party system. He mentions the Catholic social milieu with the Centre as a political mouthpiece; the conservative-Protestant social milieu of rural-agrarian alignment with conservative representation parties. The Protestant-bourgeois social milieu of urban-liberal roots with an orientation towards liberal parties, and then the social democratic social milieu of socialist industrial workers and craftsmen with their attachment to initially social democratic and after 1918 also left-socialist and communist parties. With the end of the Weimar Republic, this more than 60-year stable milieu-based party structure collapses (Lepsius 1966, p. 380).

For the analysis of the societal conflict structure from which the party systems of European countries have emerged, the cleavage theory of Lipset and Rokkan (1967) with its two-dimensional breakdown scheme of tension lines is groundbreaking. They resort to a macroanalytical historical-genetic explanatory approach to derive the specific conflict structure of a country.

The envisaged historical-sociological framework of change goes back to the time of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then identifies the time of the national and industrial revolutions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as respective turning points (“critical junctures”) that have produced characteristic fault lines as cleavages. From a modernization theory perspective, Lipset and Rokkan hold abrupt societal modernization pushes responsible for the emergence of societal divisions that condense into cleavages.

The tension lines that emerge from these religious, territorial, national, and socio-economic divisions, they systematize (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, p. 10) according to a territorial and functional dimension, from which they form a four-field matrix with four cleavages placed therein by means of horizontal and vertical axis formation (Fig. 8.3).

Fig. 8.3

The four-field conflict model of Lipset and Rokkan

The four cleavages from which the European party systems emerged in the nineteenth century are:

• 1. The class conflict between the capital owners and the wage-dependent workers

• 2. The urban-rural conflict between the urban bourgeoisie from crafts, industry, and trade and the agricultural interests of the rural nobility

• 3. The church-state conflict between the representatives of the nation-state and the Catholic Church with its privileges

• 4. The center-periphery conflict between metropolitan central state elites and the spokesmen of regional, linguistic, ethnic, or religious minorities.

The conflicts obviously differ on the one hand according to their material socio-economic core, which, as in the case of the class conflict, can be anchored on a one-dimensional left-right conflict line. On the other hand, there are also socio-cultural contrasts that cannot be adequately represented by the left-right conflict line, but only by an independent cultural conflict line. This leads Stöss et al. (2006, p. 15) to conclude that European party systems usually have a multidimensional conflict structure. In this case, socio-economic and socio-cultural conflict lines overlap.

Since uniform party systems do not emerge everywhere in European countries, the national peculiarities of the individual countries must be taken into account, which are reflected in a peculiar conflict structure. For Germany, it was primarily the industrial class conflict and the state-church conflict from which the party system emerged. The center-periphery cleavage was not entirely insignificant for the formation years of the German party system, especially as regional parties repeatedly succeeded in maintaining themselves at the party system level on a regional or geographical basis. To this day, the Bavarian CSU, formerly BVP, provides the best example. Also, the urban-rural conflict with the contrast of bourgeois-urban industrial and trade interests on the one hand and conservative-rural agricultural interests on the other found declared advocates in liberal and conservative parties. However, these two cleavages cannot be attributed a truly formative influence on the conflict constellation of the German party system.

What is structurally formative, however, is the overlay of the class conflict with the religious conflict, so that the carrier groups of the conflicts each place themselves crosswise at the poles of the two conflict lines.

On the one hand, it is about the Catholic milieu, which emerged in the anti-modern reflex from the culture war triggered by Bismarck. In the 1870s, it revolved around the curtailment of the rights of the Catholic Church on divorce and public education issues, against which the Catholic Church and the clergy protested. Under the leadership of the Catholic clergy, the Catholic milieu organized itself as a religiously discriminated minority, which politically resisted both the bourgeois-Protestant hegemonic culture of Prussia and the Reich, as well as the laicist efforts of political liberalism and the socialist movement. The church-controlled center served as the political combat organization and action committee of the Catholic social milieu.

The socialist worker milieu, which relied primarily on the industrial working class and urban craftsmen, emerged as another major group. The Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany, which emerged in 1875 from the workers’ association of Ferdinand Lasalle and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of August Bebel, was able to establish itself as the political arm of the labor movement. After the end of its twelve-year ban under Bismarck’s Socialist Law (1875–1890), it was renamed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1891. The later electoral fragmentation of the worker camp through the split of the USPD from the SPD (1917) and the founding of the KPD (1920) provides an example that several parties can simultaneously compete successfully for the representation and “translation” of a cleavage.

Such a split is also typical for the third major group, the liberal bourgeois-Protestant milieu, in Germany. Based on urban population groups, political liberalism split into a national liberal and a free-thinking wing, which were represented by the left-liberal Freisinnige Volkspartei (1861) and the national and economic liberal National Liberal Party (1867). This split was later maintained in the Weimar Republic by the German Democratic Party (DDP) and the German People’s Party (DVP). Only the FDP succeeded in the Federal Republic in reuniting the two political wings under one organizational roof.

The conservative milieu, with its voter base in the regionally limited Protestant-agrarian social milieu of Prussia and the Empire, emerged as the fourth major camp. The German National People’s Party (DNVP) was able to establish itself as its political mouthpiece in the Weimar Republic.

Following the two-dimensional conflict structure, the early West German party system was also built, in which the socio-economic class conflict between capital and labor was expressed by the CDU/CSU and FDP on the one hand and the SPD on the other. The socio-cultural conflict dimension was marked by the opposition of state and church, with the poles occupied by the SPD and FDP on the one hand and the Union parties on the other. In the 1980s, there was a reformulation of the still existing conflict lines: The old class conflict was defused into a social state versus market freedom conflict. The state-church conflict, which still dates from the time of the culture war, was reinterpreted into a religion-related opposition between secularity and church affiliation.

Not only for Germany has the theory of societal conflict lines shaping the genesis of party systems, developed by Lipset and Rokkan, unfolded enormous heuristic fertility. However, the cleavage debate did not stop at the basic four-field scheme of Lipset and Rokkan. As Niedermeier (2013, p. 93 f.) shows, numerous other conflict lines have been introduced into the debate in the meantime. Their similarity and even frequent overlap with the original scheme is unmistakable.

8.6.3 The Role of Parties in the Politicization of Societal Conflicts

The fact that societal conflict structures are transferred into political conflict structures through politicization by parties can be considered a common good of party system research. However, the role parties play in this process leads to non-concurrent interpretations. No side in this debate argues that parties reflect the given conflict conditions unchanged from a sociologically determined perspective. Nevertheless, the societal conflict lines with their sociocultural communalization through carrier milieus are significant. They define the framework and the space for negotiation, within which party competition takes place in terms of the number of actors and the direction of conflict.

It is the task of parties to use this leeway to politicize tensions and mobilize support. As Lipset and Rokkan (1967, p. 26) emphasize, this task is central for parties because “cleavages do not translate themselves into party oppositions…” From this perspective, parties embody active strategic actors. They are “alliances in conflicts over policies and value commitments within the larger body politics” (i. o. italic, E. W.) (1967, p. 5).

Lipset and Rokkan paradigmatically assign parties an active translation function of conflicts to the party system level. They include a whole bundle of expressive, instrumental, and representative functions:

“They help to crystallize the existing social structure, and they force subjects and citizens to ally themselves across structural cleavage lines and to set up priorities among their commitments to established or prospective roles in the system. Parties have an expressive function; they develop a rhetoric for the translation of contrasts in the social and cultural structure into the demands and pressures for actions or inactions. But they also have instrumental and representative functions (i. O. italic, E. W.); they force the spokesmen for the many contrasting interests and outlooks to strike bargains, to stagger demands, and to aggregate pressures. Small parties may content themselves with expressive functions, but no party can hope to gain decisive influence on the affairs of a community without some willingness to cut across existing cleavages to establish common fronts with potential enemies and opponents.”

The scope for interpretation and design of parties, their “creative potential,” goes so far for Leon et al. (2015, p. 2) that they see in them political structuring instances of societal cleavages: Parties “politicise or 'articulate' such divisions to build powerful blocks of supporters in whose name they attempt to remake states and societies.” Political articulation serves to politicize social contrasts that would otherwise not become politically relevant (p. 3).

This idea is also supported by Eith (Eith and Schlipphak 2010, p. 77 f.). He goes so far in the translation role of parties from societal conflict and tension lines that he grants them an independent scope as “independent actors” who “structure the political competition through their political concepts and interpretation offers and thereby exert a not negligible influence on the societal development process.”

From this perspective, societal conflicts form the raw material, which wants to be processed and prepared into political conflicts, to be able to unfold a dynamic in the political arena. They must be picked up by parties, who can also refrain from doing so, even deliberately avoid it. And even in the political dispute area, they can channel the conflict, shape it, suppress it, or persistently make themselves permanent advocates. In “conflict handling,” each party leaves its own handwriting.

These statements accentuate the role of parties beyond the ideas usually represented in the cleavage debate. It is undisputed that parties play an indispensable role in the politicization of a cleavage and in the mobilization of the carrier milieus affected by the cleavage. Now, however, parties are implicitly given a constructive formative power, which may exaggerate their competence and interpretive capacity. After all, in addition to parties, social movements, interest groups, and mass media also come into play in the articulation and politicization of cleavages, which themselves as possible alliance partners limit the strategic scope of action of parties.

In order to be able to play a role as strategic politicization instances, parties, according to Lipset and Rokkan (p. 26 ff.), even put difficult-to-overcome barriers (“thresholds”) in their way, which take the following form:

• 1. Legitimation hurdle: the representation of the concern must be accepted as politically legitimate and justified.

• 2. Incorporation hurdle: the members of a new camp must be granted the right to elect political representatives.

• 3. Representation hurdle: the new movement must gain access to the political representation organs through its own strength or in alliance with other societal forces.

• 4. Exercise hurdle of majority power: a victorious political majority position must also be reflected in political implementation competence.

For Lipset and Rokkan, these barriers come into play differently depending on the European country.

The hurdles convey an idea of how difficult it is for parties to establish and permanently stabilize party-voter group alliances and that there can be representation gaps of cleavages at the party system level, whose politicization did not come about through an alliance with a party.

8.6.4 Stabilization and Destabilization of Cleavages

The cleavage theory of Lipset and Rokkan illuminates from a macrosociological perspective the division of society into lines of tension, and how the respective conflict structure is politicized and expressed through the corresponding party systems. They provide a historical-sociological explanatory context for the emergence and formation of the party systems of Western Europe. This took place in the socio-economic and socio-cultural upheaval and mobilization times of the nineteenth century, but then concluded in the 1920s. Lipset and Rokkan encapsulate this solidification of party systems in their famous “Freezing” thesis (1967, p. 50). It states that “the party systems of the 1960s reflect, with few but significant exceptions, the cleavage structure of the 1920s.”

The thesis put forward at the end of the 1960s did not remain without lively contradiction, especially since, apart from the interim period of National Socialism and the Second World War, societal conditions must have remained stagnant for almost half a century in order to leave the cleavage structures untouched.

When it became unmistakably clear from the 1970s onwards that voter landscapes were thawing and the destabilization of European party systems was beginning, the Freezing thesis inevitably came under pressure. The criticism that ignited as a result remained true to the logic of the sociological explanatory approach, by looking for societal causes of change for the shaking and erosion of the once stable party-voter group alliances (Lane and Ersson 1987).

From a cleavage and milieu theoretical perspective, such societal transformation processes come into view, which can explain the erosion of once stable cleavage and milieu conditions. Usually, such transformation phenomena are traced back to tertiarization, individualization, value change, and cognitive mobilization. This explanatory logic is also central to the analysis of the structural change of party systems, especially since it is assumed that societal modernization processes impact the party system through the erosion and reshuffling of the supporter milieu of parties and the emergence of new conflict lines.

In addition to the macrosociological diagnosis of societal transformation trends, the main arguments against the Freezing thesis have been put forward from the voter’s perspective. An empirical-analytical research strand took on the question of how the destabilization of party-voter alliances can be demonstrated and explained by changes in the attitudes and behaviors of voters.

This dealignment approach assumes that stability conditions start to move when the individual loyalty relationships of the camp voters become fragile or dissolve completely. This should be reflected in the increasing voting behavior of the former core voters. The dealignment research pursued these phenomena and was able to demonstrate the dynamization of voter behavior through volatility figures. At the same time, loosened and declining individual party ties pointed in the same direction (Dalton et al. 1984a).

A post-industrial modernization process with the driving factors of tertiarization, educational revolution, and value change was used for societal explanation. From these factors, so the thesis, one can infer the growing volatility and migration of larger parts of the electorate from their core parties. Migration is expressed in the process of dealignment, indicated by the decline of party identification, party membership, and the rise of swing voters (Lane and Errson 1987, p. 14).

From this, according to an influential article by Dalton et al. (1984a), the destabilization of solid party-voter alliances in the form of a “decomposition of electoral alignment in many Western nations” is derived (p. 8). The result: “Parties are fragmenting, and the social and psychological bonds that traditionally link voters to specific parties are weakening—party systems have entered a period of flux” (ibid).

When traditional loyalty connections based on eroding cleavages weaken and dissolve, societal groups open up to new political positions and can be won over for new issues and ideologies. This opens up new mobilization opportunities for parties:

“If the parties can capture these new issues or ideologies, the widespread partisan mobilization of a realignment may result. Realignment represents the absence, however temporary, of channeling party directions” (p. 21).

As is easily seen, the Dealignment thesis undermines the Freezing thesis of Lipset and Rokkan from an electoral perspective. For, as Errson and Lane (1987, p. 33) note, from the “floating electorate” one can conclude a “long-term rise in electoral instability in Western European countries”. There can be no more talk of “frozen party systems” (p. 36). Conversely, in most European countries, the cleavage systems would be replaced by “more open, flexible and changeable structures of party competition” (Pennings and Lane 1998, p. 13 f.).

According to the findings of party system transformation research, it is difficult to argue against this statement. This did not prevent Bartolini and Mair (1990, 1997) from objecting to the dealignment thesis, arguing that the growing volatility of voting behavior does not necessarily imply the destabilization of established party systems. They substantiate their objection with a comprehensive data analysis of all elections in 13 Western European countries between 1885 and 1985, pointing out that the average volatility of the last two decades is hardly higher than that of the past period up to 1905 and 1940. Moreover, the average volatility in the interwar period even reached a higher level (p. 100). They also find that the indeed significantly increased volatility would not lead to unbound and freely floating swing voting behavior, but that voter movements would be limited to a change of vote between the parties of a party camp.

Eith and Mielke (2017) take their criticism of the dealignment theory a step further. For them, the idea of individualized voting behavior falls into the realm of “myths,” in which “permanently established ties between parties and social groups” are ignored. For party actors, the “myth of a largely unbound and socially strangely amorphous electorate” creates room for political course maneuvers that would only subsequently lead to alienation from the party’s supporters” (Ibid). They accuse proponents of the dealignment thesis of creating an “image of the electorate” that “largely abstracts from societal conflicts and the interests becoming effective in them, in stark contrast to the cleavage model presented by Lipset and Rokkan” (Ibid).

The party-centered cleavage research takes the position that only the active and ongoing politicization of a conflict towards the supporters creates an integration effect to stabilize their “political identities and party ties” and to renew them again and again (Eith and Mielke 2001a, p. 11).

According to Bronschier’s view (2010, p. 5), a cleavage is kept alive in its significance by the ongoing political conflict. If this confrontation is missing, the political group identities behind it weaken. This is the case when parties fail to genuinely form and maintain “political identities” towards the social groups allied with them (p. 69 f.). Such group identity of the supporter base would erode especially when they would no longer be welded together into “partisan camps” through common living conditions, worldviews, and delimited collective interests. This would free up a space that would allow “the emergence of the new collective identities crafted by political entrepreneurs” (p. 70).

Last but not least, the loss of politicization and mobilization can also be deliberately brought about by parties when they, beyond their traditional role of interest representation towards the groups allied with them, adopt a catch-all strategy to expand their voter base.

The stability/destabilization debate based on election results is contrasted with a discussion led from the party system side, which revolves around the expansion and increasing fragmentation of traditional party systems by new parties, which has been striking since the 1960s (Ladner 2004, p. 73).

This can play a role as a background explanation of the structural change of cleavages, but it can also express the declining mobilization and translation performance of an existing party system. From a cleavage theoretical perspective, conflict lines can lose mobilizable tension potential over time with societal change. However, new conflict lines can also emerge due to change, leading to the restructuring of party systems.

From a party system perspective, the translation of societal conflict structures into political ones is impaired when parties, as the central politicization institutions, lose their societal-political sense-making and interpretive competence, and as a result, their collective group integration performance decreases.

Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair (1990, p. 211 ff.) have emphasized in this context that party-voter coalitions justified by cleavage theory only last as long as there are cultural or economically conditioned interest contrasts between societal groups, which must be ideologically and philosophically overformed for collective identity formation. In addition, they must integrate and isolate themselves in a solidarity community and be politically represented by a party as the political arm of the movement.

What environmental changes parties have to adapt to in practical terms is highly controversial against this background. As Eith and Mielke point out (2007, p. 18 ff.), two narratives compete for the interpretive sovereignty of change and the resulting adaptation strategies. On the one hand, the Individualization paradigm follows the modernization theoretical view. From this perspective, parties are dealing with a voter environment in which traditional group ties have dissolved due to individualization processes and as a result, voting behavior has also become unstructured. The new situation would correspond, in market analogy, to an unstructured party competition, which is addressed to volatile, rationally calculating, and short-term influenceable voters.

In contrast, the group structuring paradigm adheres to a societal image that cannot detect a “general de-structuring” of society (p. 19). Society and the electoral landscape are still characterized by collective group and interest structures. Accordingly, parties are still linked by historical alliances with the voter environment structured by fields and groups. These alliances need to be actively maintained and constantly renewed under difficult conditions. Milieu erosion does not lead to a general de-structuring of society, but to the diversification of new “status situations,” lifestyle groups and group mentalities. Only if parties consistently maintain alliances with their voter groups from a strategic perspective, can they expect to maintain their connectivity to changing loyalty relationships.

The destabilization debate is unmistakably conducted from two sides, which focus on the change in the voter landscape and in societal conflict structure on the one hand, and on the political mobilization achievements of the party system on the other. The dispute remains, each supported by empirical evidence, to what extent the voter landscape has liquefied and reshuffled, or still shows the stable dealignment structures through which the frozen party systems of the 1920s continue to exist. The latter is supported by the finding that the old parties, except for Italy and France, have not disappeared from the scene despite massive societal change. Conversely, the increase in voter volatility, which goes hand in hand with the rise of new parties on the left and right of the party spectrum, cannot be overlooked.

Krouwel (2012) has pursued both the constants and the variables of the structure of Western European party systems in a large comparative study. Everywhere, there is a continuing dominance of traditional main parties in the form of conservative and social democratic parties (p. 59). On the other hand, the number of parliamentary successful newcomer parties has steadily increased in Western Europe. Germany is the least changed in this Europe-wide fragmentation process (pp. 53 ff.).

8.6.5 Change in Conflict Structure and its Implementation at the Party System Level

Since the onset of post-industrial change in the 1960s, upheavals have taken place in the Western industrialized countries that have greatly shaken the traditional foundations of economic production and social coexistence. On the one hand, the level of prosperity and social security increased, on the other hand, there was an expansion of education and a tertiarization of professional relationships. Mobility grew, and people became beneficiaries of a consumer, leisure, and media society.

While socio-economic distribution issues and material bread-and-butter issues still dominated the political agenda during the post-war reconstruction phase, cultural disputes about moral guiding principles of coexistence and self-determined lifestyle attitudes began at the end of the 1960s, fueled by the process of individualization. The cultural change and the pluralization of value attitudes raised the question of whether a new cultural conflict line had not spread in addition to the still virulent socio-economic left-right conflict. This was all the more noticeable because, in the wake of the 1968 student revolution, issues such as the right to abortion, decriminalization of homosexuality, gender equality, marriage without a marriage certificate, peace, and environmental protection were put on the political agenda with the support of new social movements.

8.6.5.1 Value Change and the Rise of a New Cultural Conflict

Against this background, a discussion began about the societal genesis of new conflict lines such as the “post-material conflict line” (Dalton 2008; Saalfeld 2007, p. 75 f.) or a “libertarian-authoritarian conflict line” (Kitschelt), with the shift from traditional collective party ties to new parties primarily sparking interest in the change of existing conflict structures.

The research on value change, which first addressed the profoundly changed societal background of experience in the 1970s, was guided by Ronald Inglehart with his theory of post-material value change (1977). It revealed a value conflict between the prioritization of traditional material value attitudes on the one hand and new post-material value attitudes on the other. Inglehart identified younger education and prosperity generations of the post-war period as post-material carrier groups; the other side was made up of members of the war and pre-war generations, who had been shaped by experiences of material scarcity.

From the generation-specific explanatory approach, he predicted a post-material value change in favor of the younger generations, which, however, did not prove to be true. The rise of the post-materialists in the advanced industrial countries already declined at the end of the 1970s, and the majority society corresponded to the so-called mixed type.

Looking back on the value-cultural changes of the time, Inglehart and Norris view the post-material value change as a fundamental driving factor for the increasing importance of environmental protection, the peace movement, sexual liberation, democratic human rights, gender equality, cosmopolitanism, recognition of the rights of homosexuals, migrants, disabled people, and ethnic minorities. The participatory revolution also finds its source here (2019, pp. 33 f.). By now, majorities would emerge for this in public opinion.

It remained significant that Inglehart’s value change theory pointed to a new cultural fault line in the conflict structure of post-industrial societies, thereby enriching the debate about the spread of a novel cultural conflict line. The value change theory formed a close connection with the cleavage theory, as it allowed the contrast between material and post-material value priorities to be highlighted, and also identified generation- and class-specific carrier groups that could be considered for the politicization of the value conflict.

For the further course of the new value conflict debate, Flaganan (1987, p. 1304 f.) dichotomized the new value conflict according to a libertarian and an authoritarian value pole, according to which the inhabitants of post-industrial societies would split. Authoritarian values are determined by value concepts such as law and order, security, respect for authorities, discipline and duty, respect for tradition and convention, commitment to religious and moral attitudes, intolerance towards minorities, and patriotism. Libertarian value concepts, on the other hand, include values such as equality, self-realization, tolerance and advocacy for diversity, minorities and dissenters, permissiveness, environmental protection and quality of life, and advocacy for new ideas and lifestyles.

Inglehart and Norris have recently updated the authoritarian-libertarian fault line (2019, p. 72 f.). For them, authoritarian values demand adaptation, which, if not adhered to, should be harshly morally punished. Traditional decency and moral norms are upheld, while multiculturalism and diversity are rejected. They are closely associated with intolerance towards other groups. Added to this are racism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and ethnocentrism. Libertarian values stand for personal freedom, for multicultural pluralistic diversity, expansion of women’s and minority rights, advocacy for social justice, human rights, and international cooperation (p. 73).

The cultural conflict in post-industrial societies would be triggered by a secular drift towards libertarian values. This would lead to mobilization and counter-mobilization along the contradiction between authority and autonomy, conformity and nonconformism. For Inglehart and Norris, this is the aftershock of a profound opposition between religious and secular worldviews (Flanagan and Lee 2003).

This socio-cultural explanatory background is of high importance for the continuation of the cleavage debate. After all, the liberalism-authoritarianism conflict results from the tension potentials of the asynchronous societal modernization process. If the familiar conventions, lifestyles, and value system of society as a whole are questioned by impulses for change, the drivers and carriers of cultural change are fully inspired, while the carrier groups of traditionalist culture feel repelled and threatened in reaction to this.

What is still missing in this socio-cultural conflict approach is the link to the politicization of the conflict and its transformation into a changed political conflict structure at the party system level. This is not yet apparent for the West German party system of the 1970s, which still adheres to its basic structure of the socio-economically shaped class conflict and the socio-culturally shaped religious conflict. However, the original core of the labor-versus-capital and state-versus-church conflicts shifted towards a welfare state- versus market freedom- and a religion- versus secularism conflict (Niedermayer 2009, p. 44 f.).

The stability of this conflict structure was also reflected in the voting behavior of the West German population. Comparative longitudinal analyses indicate that the defused class conflict still influences the voting of left-wing and bourgeois parties, but has weakened (Detterbeck 2011, p. 76 f.). Conservative or Christian democratic parties can also continue to count on electoral support from church-bound Catholics and Protestants. For union-bound workers and church members with frequent church attendance, however, it is true that due to their ever-decreasing number, they contribute to the election result of their “home parties” with ever-decreasing weight.

The fact that the liberalism-authoritarianism conflict leads to the rise of green-alternative parties is primarily thanks to Herbert Kitschelt (1994). He diagnosed for the 1980s the formation of a two-dimensional conflict structure, with a cultural conflict line opposing libertarian and authoritarian values overlaying the older distributive left-right axis with the poles welfare state versus market freedom. The politicization of the libertarian part led to the rise of green-alternative parties—“new issues sprawn new parties” (Kitschelt 1994)—and social democratic parties also shifted their value profile towards the libertarian axis side due to pressure to adapt.

The split of the old working class into left-authoritarian low-skill and left-libertarian high-skill employees (Kitschelt 1994, p. 26 f.) would result in a two-dimensional competitive space for social democratic parties in Europe, with the old class-political left-right axis being overlaid by a diagonally lying left-libertarian/right-libertarian polarized cultural axis (Kitschelt 1994). As a result, social democracy can no longer assume a stable politically mobilizable camp structure.

West Germany, with the parliamentary breakthrough of the Greens at the end of the 1970s at the state level and from 1983 at the federal level, became a pioneering country in Europe. This is due to the politicization of the liberalism-authoritarianism conflict, where the value pole merged with the ecological and nuclear energy issue. Without the spreading protest culture and the enormous political mobilization efforts of the environmental protection, anti-nuclear power, and peace movement, the Greens, as the parliamentary arm of the new social movements, would hardly have found their successful path.

Remarkably, the libertarian-authoritarian conflict at the party system level of the 1970s and 1980s was initially fought between the social-liberal camp under Chancellor Willy Brandt and the union camp under Strauß and Kohl.

Thus, Bronschier (2010, p. 45) states for the union parties of the 1980s that they were still committed to an ideological position and a program profile, which at that time were occupied by right-wing populist parties in other European countries. Only the policy orientation of the Schmidt government in favor of material growth, nuclear power expansion, and military rearmament acted like a catalyst effect to provide a voter base for the libertarian camp under the leadership of the Greens (Wiesendahl 2002). With the beginning of the Kohl era from 1982, the conflict structure of the West German party system expanded and incorporated the culturally interpreted libertarian-authoritarian conflict line (Niedermayer 2009, p. 44 f.).

As a quintessence of the debate about the change in the conflict structure, it can be stated that, as Kitschelt (1994) has worked out, party systems undergo a change in their conflict structure and competitive orientation when new parties push into a representation gap that established parties tear open by neglecting the needs of their electorate. The conflict structure represented by the established parties would, however, remain. Of a different quality, on the other hand, would be the change in the party system if it were caused by new lines of tension and conflict issues such as the ecological question or migration. This has been the case for Kitschelt since the 1960s. Since then, a new cultural conflict between libertarian versus authoritarian values has been established alongside the traditional conflict line “welfare state redistribution versus market freedom.” And this conflict has promoted the rise of green-libertarian and far-right parties.

Richard Stöss (1997, 2002) has used Kitschelt’s two-dimensional conflict model for the analysis of the changed relationship between the electorate and parties in Germany in the 1990s and has penetrated it more deeply to its conflict core, namely the dispute over fundamental values. Since, according to his spatial value conflict model, the two independent socio-economic and socio-cultural conflict lines intersect, he conceives a four-vector model in which the social justice-market freedom and the libertarian-authoritarian conflict line intersect at the zero point (Stöss 1997, p. 176 ff.). As illustrated in Fig. 8.4, both the value orientation location of party supporters and that of parties in the four-field matrix can be located through voter surveys.

Fig. 8.4

Conflict structure of the German party system according to Stöss

On the one hand, the debate presented so far about new conflict lines is determined by the explanatory background of sociological modernization theory and culminates in the idea of an expanded two-dimensional conflict line space, in which a new socio-cultural value conflict overlays the old material distribution conflict. In this context, the participating party and value change researchers agreed to label the new cultural line of tension as libertarian-authoritarian conflict.

On the other hand, since the 1990s, the massive societal consequences of globalization have come into focus, which went hand in hand with the expansion of free trade and the division of labor international interweaving structure of value chains and trade relations. Since there was a first wave of the rise of right-wing populist parties at the same time, research interest turned to the question of how the phenomenon of globalization and the opening of national borders could be related to the reshuffling of voting behavior in favor of populist anti-system parties.

In the context of a large-scale international study on the change of societal and political conflict structures, Edgar Grande and Hanspeter Krisie (2012, p. 3 ff.) argue that globalization and the opening of nation-states create a new “critical juncture” from which a new structural conflict between winners and losers of globalization and denationalization has emerged. This conflict fits into the existing two-dimensional economic and cultural conflict structure of Western European countries and can be described as an “Integration-Demarcation” cleavage.

The consequences of globalization can be distinguished according to their economic and cultural logic (Krisie et al. 2012, p. 16 f.) in terms of three types of conflict, namely economic integration, cultural diversity, and political integration. The conflict articulates and structures itself in a public debate about the issues of immigration, economic liberalization, and European integration (Grande and Krisie 2012, p. 7).

From an economic perspective, globalization embodies the exposure to risks of unbounded competition. Economic losers of globalization expect political protection and social security against the consequences of open competition.

Culturally, it is about the negative consequences of cultural diversity and political integration, as well as the threat to the material situation posed by migrants. This gives rise to political demands for national limitation of migration and the shielding of the welfare state from refugees.

Resistance to economic openness articulates itself more among the unskilled working class in the question of migration. And in the face of the associated cultural diversity, resistance is articulated by the native population, who are concerned about their cultural identity. Higher education classes, on the other hand, would advocate for cultural libertarianism, cosmopolitanism, and universalism, associated with cultural openness and tolerance. The conflict over European integration would ignite in view of national sovereignty versus the favoring of transnational institutions (Grande and Krisie 2012, p. 13 ff.).

The articulation and politicization of the conflict would be taken over by parties, associations, institutions, civil society groups, and representatives of the political sphere, who, as competing spokespersons and representation instances of winners and losers of globalization, would bring the conflict to political resolution.

To derive “cleavage coalitions” between voter groups and parties, the research team around Krisie (Krisie et al. 2012, p. 20 ff.) constructs a four-field matrix (Fig. 8.5), which is divided into two dimensions according to an economic and a cultural conflict space. Each quadrant can thus ideally be assigned a specific cleavage coalition.

Fig. 8.5

Two-dimensional space of cleavage coalitions

8.6.5.2 Parties in the Cultural Conflict and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism

As Fig. 8.5 shows, the actors of a coalition are loosely composed across various societal areas and are connected solely by shared fundamental convictions. It becomes apparent that left-wing parties have maneuvered themselves into a representation dilemma. Initially, they traditionally acted as mouthpieces for employee interests in the struggle for social issues. But then they were attracted by the value change and the struggle of the new social movements for women’s emancipation, human rights, solidarity with refugees, and multiculturalism, and adopted these cultural concerns of the “new politics.” This moved them up in their political representation claim to the globalization winners from the upper middle classes. They lost sight of the economic and cultural concerns of the globalization losers from the lower classes (Grande and Krisie 2012, p. 30). The left thus sets itself up as an advocate of the multicultural open society in contradiction to the role as a representation instance of the globalization losers, who would feel threatened by societal openness and cultural diversity (Grande and Krisie 2012, p. 19).

In a comparative analysis of the party programs of Western European parties, Krouwel (2012, p. 286) also found that left-wing parties (communists, new left, and social democratic parties) had turned away from economic disputes and increasingly towards the agenda of the post-material-liberalism conflict. This involves a moment of failure. Because the political chances of ascent for right-wing populist parties increase “by the failure of established parties to effectively represent salient interests or sentiments in the body politic.” This is the case “where they exclude or ignore major currents of opinion that are denied institutionalized channels of expression” (Roberts 2017, p. 287).

The French sociologist Didier Eribon (2016) has exemplified this with his own proletarian background from Reims, where the voters have broken away from the communist party and switched to the Front National. Applied to the SPD, the marginalization thesis would explain why in the 2017 state and federal elections, for example in Ruhr area constituencies with the highest SPD losses, the AfD was able to make its biggest gains. And it would also explain why, after 2015, the SPD nationwide in the state and federal elections fell into its worker core voter area and the AfD caught up with it. In France and Austria, the National Bloc and the FPÖ have long since risen to become workers’ parties.

The explanatory logic has its charm, as long as it is only assumed that the SPD, so the implicit assumption, was punished and abandoned by its old core electorate because of neglect of socio-economic interests.

A WZB research group led by Wolfgang Merkel chooses a starting point for their model of conflict structure change that also begins with globalization, but places different emphases on the resulting cultural conflict. The population survey data underlying the research project were taken from the World Values Survey 5 and 6 and the Transatlantic Trend Survey of 2008 and 2009 for the countries Germany, Poland, Turkey, Mexico, and the USA. A separate sectoral elite survey was conducted in these countries in 2014/2015.

As Wolfgang Merkel explains (2017), triggered by globalization, a new line of conflict has emerged in the context of a profound cultural change in Western societies. It ignited on contentious issues of open versus closed borders of the nation-state with regard to goods and services, labor, refugees, and asylum seekers, and the cession of national sovereignty to transnational and supranational bodies.

The new conflict is built two-dimensionally according to economically determined interest contrasts and cultural disputes about multiculturalism and migration or refugee issues (Merkel 2017, p. 13). The conflict groups would be made up of spatially mobile globalization winners on the one hand and spatially immobile globalization losers on the other. The first group forms under the guiding concept of the “cosmopolitans,” who are recruited from higher education and wealth classes and are very mobile. They have high “human, social and cultural capital” and show a pronounced sensitivity for open borders, general human rights, climate protection and multicultural coexistence. They also wish for more Europe.

The second group is formed by “communitarians.” They are less educated and live in modest, spatially ancestral income conditions. Their capital equipment is limited. For communitarians, the preservation of national borders is important, and they reject multiculturalism.

Wolfgang Merkel’s thesis is that due to the comprehensive anchoring of cosmopolitan elites in top positions of economy, parties, media and state, the public discourse would be dominated by cosmopolitanism (2017, p. 17). As a result, the “cosmopolitan discourse of the rulers (…) has become the ruling discourse in the developed societies on this side and beyond the Atlantic” (Merkel 2017, p. 17).

The cultural hegemony of the better-off would be secured by a morally charged discourse that would delegitimize criticism as morally unacceptable and reprehensible. Through moral exclusion, dissenting members of the lower and lower middle class with economic and cultural loser status as well as sociologically unlocatable conservative citizens would be marginalized. This has provoked revolting reactions that have played into the hands of the AfD.

The splitting and drifting apart voter and party landscape is primarily due to a political-missionary alliance of libertarian-cosmopolitan circles from upper middle classes and educational milieus with the opinion-forming leading media of public broadcasting, with cultural creators and the theater milieu. To promote and secure the migration-centered culture of welcome for the Greens, this camp is a life elixir.

CDU, SPD, and Linke have, partly out of emphatic conviction, partly out of strategic misjudgment, joined this camp and adopted its ideas of the cosmopolitan, colorful post-migrant society.

This is the reason for a profound police-attitude gap, which opens up to the majority society. In the Federal Republic of Germany, which has taken in the majority of refugees since 2015, the parliamentary wings of the parties have sided with the welcome camp in their political line and denied the skeptical majority population the political representation of their ideas. From this, a “populist revolt” can be derived, which “can be interpreted as a reaction to the excessive cosmopolitanism of the mainstream and the better-off” (Merkel 2017). It is in turn politicized by right-wing populist parties, with the “populist agenda” being oriented towards “the fight against the foreign or even the foreigners” (Merkel 2017, p. 19). The breeding ground for this is provided by the “alienation of the less cosmopolitan lower classes” (Merkel 2017, p. 19).

Economic marginalization and cultural fears of foreign domination, triggered by migration flows, have long been used in party research as a major cause for the rise of right-wing populist parties. Hans-Georg Betz (1994) has already used this explanatory context in connection with the first wave of refugees in the early 1990s.

Kitschelt and McCann (1995) illuminate the explanatory reason for the mobilization successes of the “New Radical Right” more broadly and draw on a mixture of ethnocentric-authoritarian and market-liberal voter messages as the core of the “winning formula” of the far-right parties. The market-liberal explanatory factor, however, is met with broad opposition. According to Bronschier (2010, p. 6), only the cultural conflict has sufficient success power. He postulates (Bronschier 2010, p. 25), “economic preferences are clearly secondary.” And further; “the enduring success of right-wing populist parties crucially depends on the prevalence of culturally, as opposed to economically, defined group identification among its supporters” (Bronschier 2010, p. 26).

To capture the ideological orientation of right-wing populist parties in the political competition space of the 1990s and early 2000s, Bronschier (2010, p. 30 ff.) uses a content analysis of election campaign coverage by leading print media for three elections in the 1990s and 2000s. The statements taken from the reports of the parties were initially broken down into issue positions for further multivariate statistical analysis and then assigned to the group of economic and cultural issues.

Based on a comparative analysis of the right-wing populist party family in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, Bronschier (2010, p. 21) finds that right-wing populist parties changed their line of attack in two areas in the 1990s: once the confrontation with migration, which they counter with a “cultural racism.” And then the cultural defense against the multicultural society and universalistic values advocated by the libertarian left. Both fields of attack could be subsumed under the new libertarian-universalistic versus traditionalist-communitarian conflict line.

Since the libertarian party camp has approached identity-political ideas, according to Bronschier, the discourse fueled by right-wing populist parties revolves around three beliefs: first, the primacy of traditional norms of ordinary coexistence over general universalistic principles. Second, that the multicultural society undermines the natural cohesion of the national community and the traditional norms, and finally, that majority decisions of a national community should stand above abstract normative principles and decisions made by supranational bodies such as the EU (Bronschier 2010, p. 18).

It is not to be overlooked that the rise of right-wing populist parties is explained by the logic of the counterstrike against the rise of the Greens promoted by the Liberalism-Authoritarianism conflict following the libertarian turn of the parties of the Left. This thesis was already introduced into the debate by Ignazi in the early 1990s (2003). And Bronschier (2010, p. 71) also speaks of the “counter-mobilization” that right-wing populist parties would carry out against the spread of the libertarian-universalistic value change that began in the late 1960s. In particular, Inglehart and Norris (2019) resort to a “cultural backlash” theory for the rise of right-wing populist politicians and parties in Europe and the USA. Both attribute the rise of right-wing populist parties to a cultural cleavage, which has taken on a cultural battle expression between supporters of liberal and authoritarian values.

The “cultural backlash” theory of Inglehart and Norris states that carrier groups of older conservative-authoritarian societal and moral values, led by the interwar generations, feel pushed back and devalued by the generation-specific spread of liberal values. This cultural marginalization would be answered by them with a counterstrike, an “authoritarian reflex” (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 16).

With their approach, Inglehart and Norris expand the cleavage debate to a three-dimensional conflict line model, which, based on the value change theory of the “Silent Revolution” from the early 1970s, a cultural battle value conflict between the carrier groups of cosmopolitan and social liberal values on the one hand and those of authoritarian and traditionalist values on the other. This ties in with the Libertarian-Authoritarian value conflict worked out by Flaganan and made fruitful by Kitschelt for the rise of parties, but expands it by embedding it in a three-dimensional conflict structure and by referring back to the generational approach already underlying the value change theory.

From a cleavage-theoretical point of view, the foundation of the three-dimensional conflict model and the way in which the three tension lines coincide with or interlock with the previous conflict lines of party literature are of interest. In their model, Inglehart and Norris horizontally lean on the classic left-right axis, which brings the class conflict into a timely form of expression with the poles of state versus market freedom. This material conflict line is crossed by the cultural authoritarianism-libertarianism conflict line, with authoritarianism characterized by security, adaptation, and subordination. As a novelty, Inglehart and Norris thirdly introduce a populism-pluralism dimension, with populism being captured by trust values.

With the advance of post-material libertarian values, a new cultural tension line opens up for both, which brings the carrier groups of the new values into a cultural battle against supporters of the traditional conservative values. The conflict is fought over issues such as “identity politics, religiosity versus singularity, sexuality and gender, family and marriage, support for LGBT rights, environmental protection and nationalism versus cosmopolitanism” (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 449).

European Social Survey surveys between 2002 and 2014 are used as the data basis for determining individual values and attitudes.

In addition to the liberal, conservative, and authoritarian values and attitudes of the population, Inglehart and Norris are also interested in the ideological positioning of 268 parties from 31 European countries. They are captured according to survey data from experts (Chapel Hill Expert Survey (HES)) in a three-dimensional space, which, in addition to the classic socio-economic left-right dimension, is primarily drawn up by the cultural authoritarian-libertarian and the populist-pluralistic conflict line. The classification of the parties is based on expert judgments.

Based on the degree of index expression, a total of 270 parties were classified into the scheme. Parties that exhibit a high degree of authoritarianism and populism were assigned to the category of populist parties.

Pluralism provides the counterpoint to populism as a communication style. It is operationalized by tolerance towards multiculturalism and social diversity, and then the exercise of political rule through representative democratic institutions, checks and balances between the executive powers, and respect for minority rights as a counterweight to the majority attitude of the population (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 217). Organized populism as a rhetorical style becomes a threat to liberal pluralistic democracy when it forms a connection with authoritarianism.

Populist parties are distinguished from pluralistic parties when the former advocate for a government that should “reflect” the will of the people, while pluralistic parties advocate for decisions to be made by elected representatives and distributed across various government institutions, as is customary in liberal democracies (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 222).

Inglehart and Norris (2019, p. 24, note 4) do not find it useful to define populist parties by 1. their political objectives, 2. their organizational leadership structure, 3. their social base, and 4. their ideology. They are satisfied with the characteristic of the populist rhetorical style. On this basis, according to Inglehart and Norris (2019, p. 6 ff.), the elite-hostile populist-rhetorical style forms a connection with authoritarian target values in authoritarian-populist parties and results in a policy characterized by intolerance, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia.

Party-shaped populism has deep roots, but has experienced a new bloom since the 1980s in Western and then Eastern Europe, with an unbroken upward trend. Inglehart and Norris identified more than 50 right-wing populist parties in Europe in 2017 (2019, p. 9 ff.).

The left-right cleavage still carries weight, but is increasingly overlaid by the rise of cultural issues such as migration, integration of ethnic minorities, same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights, or climate change (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 50).

The counter-movement against the spread of libertarian and post-materialistic values comes from the conservative societal camp. However, it only reaches a critical point of cultural struggle when conservative values combine with authoritarian attitudes. These stand for adaptation to existing conventions and traditional traditions, for security to ward off dangers, and for loyalty and obedience to leaders (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 450).

Inglehart and Norris draw on the periodic effects of the 2008 banking and global economic crisis and the 2015 refugee crisis to control further explanatory factors. Above all, the globalization loser thesis discussed in this context is of importance, but all of these would not reach the explanatory value of the cultural backlash theory on their own. It can explain the largest share of the variance.

The methodically elaborate survey study underlines the already known connection that the cultural conflict around libertarian-universalistic and authoritarian-parochial value orientations has deeply entrenched itself in advanced Western democracies. After the rise of the Greens, it has found its reflection in the changed conflict structure of today’s party systems through the parliamentary successful counterstrike of right-wing populist parties.

However, the dimension of populism versus dualism introduced to identify right-wing populist parties falls substantially behind the socio-economic left-right and cultural libertarianism-authoritarianism dimension already introduced into cleavage research. Operationalizing populism without substantial content minimally as a special communication style alone is not sufficient, just as defining pluralism through the affirmation of representative democratic elite rule cannot satisfy. Similar doubts are raised by the procedure of measuring the populist orientation of the population exclusively through trust values towards parties and politicians (Inglehart and Norris 2019, p. 117 ff.).

The survey approach of the study does not analytically penetrate the relationship that connects population groups as communities of conviction with a common societal mobilization environment and thus with certain parties. The fact that such cleavage-theoretically relevant political-media mobilization networks exist has been illustrated by the cultural hegemony of cosmopolitanism in Germany.

According to the more recent state of cleavage research, the thesis is increasingly being put forward that due to societal individualization and social de-structuring processes, value conflict communities would no longer be produced in a socially structurally demarcable way via a homogeneous social camp environment. As Niedermayer shows (2009, p. 32 f.), the spread of culturally shaped new conflict lines was accompanied by the discussion to what extent cleavage-theoretically cultural fault lines, like the traditional socio-economic class conflict, would have to be anchored in socially structurally clearly identifiable and demarcable carrier groups. For Lipset and Rokkan or also Lepsius, this sociological connection was still compelling. However, this position already softened with the value change theory and then reduced to the thesis that the carrier groups, socially de-structured, could identify themselves solely through their pro or contra attitude to certain value orientations. Thus, Richard Stöss assumes (1997, p. 151) that value orientation conflicts do not need to have a social anchoring.

This position is in the context of the culturalist turn in sociology, which has turned away from the individualization thesis of hard collective phenomena of material inequality, unequal social stratification, and class formation. Indeed, in the recent transformation debate, societal conflict structures are operated with sociological categories such as those of the winners and losers of globalization, whose demarcation and social-structural classification, however, remains strangely pale. This extends into the newer macro-sociological diagnosis of societal structural change, which does not relate the spread of the “Society of Singularities” (Reckwitz 2017) to empirically tangible, hard social-structural categories of societal rooting beyond the diffuse sector model of the “creative economy.” The societal tracing-back of conflict lines to “dividing lines between prospering global cities and shrinking peripheries” (Koppetsch 2019, p. 17) is hardly less sociologically crude and amorphous.

The newer cleavage research faces the research-logical problem that it is based on the collection and statistical processing of aggregated individual survey data. Thus, it can hardly penetrate to collective group formation and community forms, which are macro-sociologically associated with the outbreak of “disjunctures” and the societal embedding of divisions according to the classic cleavage concept.

However, survey research could technically address this problem by moving beyond vague stratification categories to the socially revealing activity profile of the respondents. Thus, Bronschier (2010, p. 86 ff.) divides, in order to distinguish members of the middle class according to their economic interests and cultural worldviews, based on the Erickson-Goldthorpe class schema, into three subgroups according to their activity profile: once managers, determined by their organizational work focus and their integration into administrative hierarchies. Then technical specialists with professional professional orientation. Finally, socio-cultural specialists without strict subordination relationships. They form human service providers with a pronounced client or patient orientation. Both the technical and the socio-cultural specialists value individual autonomy.

Protected from the hardships of the market and the harshness of the production sector, socio-cultural specialists represent universalistic values and economic-material equality ideas. Bronschier (2010, p. 87 ff.) assumes that for these reasons the group would most strongly reject the ideology of the populist right.

On the other hand, those who would lean towards culturally right-authoritarian, traditionalist-communitarian as well as economically market-liberal value ideas. This would make them mobilizable for right-wing populist parties, while technical experts would stand between the two groups.

To be added is the poorly educated petty bourgeoisie, which with its traditionalism and market orientation would be appealing to right-wing populist parties. In addition, parts of the working class would come as voter potential for the right-wing populists, with both unskilled and skilled workers standing close to the traditionalist-communitarian ideology due to their low education and on the losing side of the dwindling welfare capitalism (Bronschier 2010, p. 89).

Ultimately, however, the question remains unresolved whether the socially structurally transcended ideas of value conflicts still coincide with the sociological cleavage concept. The conflict-theoretical depth of the structural change of societal conflict lines suggests that it is about permanent shifts in the cultural fabric of today’s societies, which are reflected in increased fragmentation and polarization in the party systems of Europe. Even in the event of a politicization lull of the refugee issue in Germany, there will therefore remain a “restructuring of main political conflict lines” (Grande 2018, p. 20 f.), which would play into the hands of the Greens, but also of party-form right-wing populism.

The new cultural conflict to be politically translated is essential because, as Grande formulates, it touches on “questions of belonging, social integration, and identity” (2018, p. 21). And further, “the alternatives in this conflict are ‘closure’, ‘exclusion’ and ‘demarcation’ on the one hand, ‘opening’, ‘recognition’ and ‘integration’ on the other hand” (Grande 2018, p. 21). The “cultural identity conflict” is fought over contentious issues such as “immigration, Europe, and cultural liberalism,” which could also be discharged on other issues in the future.

There will therefore be no return of the established parties to their lost mobilization strength and competitiveness. They will have to “reposition themselves strategically and programmatically in a structurally changed political competitive space” for Grande (2018, p. 20).