Political Conflict in Western Europe

Abstract

What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved.

The 2016 Austrian Presidential Election: A Tale of Three Divides

“…Among women, the Green candidate prevailed with 60% of votes, while the figures for male voters produce the exact opposite picture (Der Standard, 22 May 2016). While these numbers are based on surveys with small samples conducted on election day and may thus not be fully reliable, they confirm trends that have been observed in Austria and elsewhere in recent years (Plasser and Ulram, 2008: 65-70;Kriesi et al, 2012).…”

Opportunity or threat? Public attitudes towards EU freedom of movement

“…Citizens in different socio-economic situations may experience different costs and benefits from European integration (Hooghe and Marks 2018;Kriesi et al 2012). The EU divides citizens between those who win from transnationalism and thus support the EU, and those who lose from the same process and prefer demarcation.…”

Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance

“…Patterns of politicisation as well as developments over time are crucially dependent on the settings in which politicisation takes place (De Wilde 2014: 6;Kriesi et al 2012). Settings constitute frameworks or environments in which politicisation becomes publicly manifest.…”

“…Respective research shows that a broad variety of actors voice positions on European governance in the mass media. This setting is thus often considered to play a crucial role in the politicisation process (Kleinen-von Königslöw 2012;Koopmans and Statham 2010;Kriesi et al 2012;Risse 2010;Trenz 2013, 2015). The majority of the contributions to this volume draw on mass media data to study politicisation, albeit for different reasons: while some consider mass media as the primary setting of democratic politics due to its communicative and connecting functions (De Wilde and Lord 2015;Leupold 2015), others consider it a data source for the analysis of politicisation more generally (Grande and Hutter 2015;Hoeglinger 2015;Schmidtke 2015).…”

“…Yet Hoeglinger warns against an overestimation of the level of politicisation. His analysis demonstrates that national election campaigns are still dominated by other issues than European governance (see also Kriesi et al 2012). While media debates about European governance may be generally on the rise, attention strongly fluctuates in cycles, differs across countries and often lags behind other issues.…”