Over the past three decades the effects of globalization and denationalization have created a division between 'winners' and 'losers' in Western Europe. This study examines the transformation of party political systems in six countries (Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK) using opinion surveys, as well as newly collected data on election campaigns. The authors argue that, as a result of structural transformations and the strategic repositioning of political parties, Europe has observed the emergence of a tripolar configuration of political power, comprising the left, the moderate right, and the new populist right. They suggest that, through an emphasis on cultural issues such as mass immigration and resistance to European integration, the traditional focus of political debatethe economyhas been downplayed or reinterpreted in terms of this new political cleavage. This new analysis of Western European politics will interest all students of European politics and political sociology.

Abstract. This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization 'winners' and 'losers' is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries

Although ideology is a central factor in models of voting choice, little is known about the factors that explain the variation across elections in the strength of ideological voting. This paper suggests that the role of citizens' left-right orientations increases with party system polarization. It improves on previous studies on this question by avoiding potential sources of bias linked with voters' perceptions of the level of polarization, with rationalization effects, and with the specification of the spatial model of the vote. Based on data from the 1999 European Election Study and from an expert survey on party positions, the results confirm that polarization reinforces ideological voting. However, this effect is mediated by party identification and by political sophistication.

During international crises, trust in government is expected to increase irrespective of the wisdom of the policies it pursues. This has been called a 'rally-round-the-flag' effect. This article examines whether the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in such a rally effect. Using multi-wave panel surveys conducted in Austria and France starting from March 2020, in the article it is examined how government trust was affected by the perceived threats to the nation's health and economy created by the pandemic as well as by the perceived appropriateness of the government's crisis response. A strong rally effect is shown in Austria, where trust was closely tied to perceived health risks, but faded away quickly over time. Perceptions of government measures mattered, too, while perceived economic threat only played a minor role. In France, in contrast, a strong partisan divide is found and no rally effect. KEYWORDS COVID-19; trust in government; rally effect; panel data; threat perceptions; crisis management During international crises, support for the government is expected to increase even regardless of the wisdom of the policies it pursues (Mueller 1970(Mueller , 1973. This effect is commonly called the 'rally-round-the-flag' effect. As international crises create unexpected and profound challenges to the status quo, such an increase in support for the government helps politicians in objectively bad times to enact specific emergency policies (Davis and Silver 2004). While political support is critical for society's functioning even under normal circumstances (Zmerli and van der Meer 2017), trust in the government in times of crisis becomes ever more