10 - Actor configurations in the public debates on globalization

Summary

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of the actors' positioning in public debates, complementing the first and second parts of the book that dealt with how the new cleavage is structured in party politics and the protest arena. Most importantly, we will explore which actors are pivotal contenders in public debates on the three crucial issues of globalization: immigration, European integration, and economic liberalization. Further, we will identify the cleavage coalitions that emerge from the basis of the actors' positions as well as the coalitions' framing of the integration-demarcation divide.

As discussed in Chapter 8, public debates cover all arenas. This allows us to include the full variety of relevant actors engaging in conflicts over globalization in the analyses. The extension of the array of actors, however, raises important questions with regard to the analysis of the actor constellations in the new cleavage. First, it is unclear whether the new actors can be easily integrated into the two-dimensional space found in previous analyses. Second, whereas we looked at the consistency of actors' positions across arenas in Chapter 8, we will analyse the general positioning of actors in debates and the ways in which they differ across the economic and cultural aspects of the globalization debates. In addition, this chapter explains whether the articulation of the losers' potential varies substantially across countries.