Social Democracy in Power

Merkel, Wolfgang; Petring, Alexander; Henkes, Christian; Egle, Christoph

doi:10.4324/9780203929063

Cited by 63 publications

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“…In response to these challenges, social democratic parties developed electoral strategies to appeal to new constituencies and build cross-class coalitions (Przeworksi and Sprague, 1986;Kitschelt, 1994). They developed organisations that were more disconnected from voters and less rooted in working-class constituencies (Katz and Mair, 1995), shifting towards the right in programmatic terms (Glyn, 2001;Lavelle, 2008;Merkel et al, 2008). In the short run, this so-called 'Third Way' (Giddens, 1998) was electorally successful, but it had negative electoral consequences in the long run (Arndt, 2013;Horn, 2021;Loxbo et al, 2021;Karreth et al, 2013;Schwander and Manow, 2017).…”

Section: Patterns Of Support For Social Democratic Parties and Their ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Who still likes social democracy? The support base of social democratic parties reconsidered

Bremer

Rennwald

2022

Party Politics

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Social democratic parties have experienced a profound electoral crisis in recent years. We study who still supports the centre-left by analysing two different ties to social democracy: vote choice and party identification. We develop a simple typology, which categorises voters into ‘core supporters’, ‘distant supporters’, ‘demobilised supporters’ and ‘non-supporters’. While demobilised supporters still identify with social democratic parties but do not vote for them, distant supporters vote for social democratic parties but do not identify with them. Based on data from the European Social Survey, we then show that working-class voters are more likely to be demobilised supporters than middle-class voters, whereas distant voters are a heterogeneous group. Union membership as well as more pro-redistribution and pro-immigration attitudes are positively correlated with being a core supporter. This helps us to re-evaluate the support base of social democratic parties and contribute to a better understanding of their current electoral crisis.

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Section: Patterns Of Support For Social Democratic Parties and Their ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Who still likes social democracy? The support base of social democratic parties reconsidered

Bremer

Rennwald

2022

Party Politics

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Parties’ Changing Political Projects and Workers’ Political Attitudes

Rennwald

2020

Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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This chapter reviews possible explanations of workers’ new voting patterns. It focuses on the contrast between changes in the way parties mobilise (or do not mobilise) workers’ social class and changes in workers’ political attitudes. In a first step, it discusses significant transformations in social democracy’s political project and attempts by new political parties to mobilise the votes of workers. In a second step, it examines the political attitudes of workers on issues of redistribution and immigration. Workers display a particular combination of political attitudes: they support redistribution and at the same time they are opposed to immigration. Importantly, the chapter shows a strong continuity over time of this particular combination of attitudes. This suggests, therefore, that a transformation in the political supply of parties is more decisive to understand new voting patterns than changes in workers’ demands.

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Conclusion: Is the Crisis of Democracy an Invention?

Merkel

2018

Democracy and Crisis

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Social Democracy in Power

Cited by 63 publications

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Who still likes social democracy? The support base of social democratic parties reconsidered

Who still likes social democracy? The support base of social democratic parties reconsidered

Parties’ Changing Political Projects and Workers’ Political Attitudes

Conclusion: Is the Crisis of Democracy an Invention?

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