Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T02:10:32.648Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Political Parties in the New Politics of Insecurity

from Part III - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

By
Christian Salas ,
Frances McCall Rosenbluth  and
Ian Shapiro
Edited by
Frances McCall Rosenbluth  and
Margaret Weir
Frances McCall Rosenbluth
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Margaret Weir
Affiliation:
Brown University, Rhode Island
Get access

Summary

Political moderation in developed economies after World War II owed much to the large number of stable, well-paying industrial jobs. The decline in the number of working-class jobs has dealt a hard blow to parties on the center-left, causing them to fragment into smaller and more extreme parties. This is especially true in proportional representation electoral systems, which give voters little reason to vote for large parties in the political middle. Employing a novel dataset of parties’ vote share and seat share in 35 OECD countries from 1945 to 2017, we find that every 20 percent drop in the number of industrial jobs adds one more party on the left. We find a corresponding decline in policy moderation as the left fragments. In the United States and Britain, where majoritarian electoral rules limit party fragmentation, economic insecurity takes other forms including attacks on parties’ ability to formulate and implement moderate policies.

Keywords

party fragmentationeconomic insecuritydecline of the leftalt-right
Type
Chapter
Information
Who Gets What?
The New Politics of Insecurity
 , pp. 237 - 258
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahlquist, John S., and Ansell, Ben. 2017. “Taking Credit: Redistribution and Borrowing in an Age of Economic Polarization.” World Politics 69(4): 640–675.Google Scholar
Ansell, Ben J. Broz, Lawrence, and Flaherty, Thomas. 2018. “Global Capital Markets, Housing Prices, and Partisan Fiscal Policies.” Economics & Politics 30(3): 307–339.Google Scholar
Bawn, Kathleen, and Rosenbluth, Frances McCall. 2006. “Short versus Long Coalitions: Electoral Accountability and the Size of the Public Sector.” American Journal of Political Science 50(2): 251–265.Google Scholar
Birney, Mayling, Shapiro, Ian, and Graetz, Michael. 2008. “The elite uses of public opinion: Lessons from the estate tax repeal,” in Shapiro, Ian, Swenson, Peter, and Donno, Daniela, eds, Divide and Deal: The Politics of Distribution in Democracies. New York: New York University Press. 298–340.Google Scholar
Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boix, Carles 2019. Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads: Technological Change and the Future of Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Calmfors, Lars, and Driffill, John. 1988. “Bargaining Structure, Corporatism and Macroeconomic Performance.” Economic Policy 3(6): 13–61.Google Scholar
Carey, John, and Shugart, Matthew S.. 1995. “Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas,” Electoral Studies 14(4): 417–439.Google Scholar
Hallerberg, Mark, Strauch, Rolf Rainer, and Jurgen, von Hagen. 2009. “The Design of Fiscal Rules and Forms of Governance in European Union Countries,” European Journal of Political Economy 23(2).Google Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York: The New Press.Google Scholar
Iversen, Torben, and Soskice, David. 2006. “Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More than Others,” The American Political Science Review 100(2): 165–181.Google Scholar
Iversen, Torben and Soskice, David 2019. Democracy and Prosperity: Reinventing Capitalism through a Turbulent Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Leamer, Edward. 2007. “A Flat World, a Level Playing Field, a Small World After All, or None of the Above? A Review of Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat,” Journal of Economic Literature. 45: 83–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lanny W., and Vanberg, Georg. 2011. Parliaments and Coalitions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Persson, Torsten, Roland, Gerard, and Tabellini, Guido. 2007. “Electoral Rules and Government Spending in Parliamentary Democracies.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 20: 1–34.Google Scholar
Powell, Bingham G. 2002. “PR, the Median Voter, and Economic Policy: An Exploration,” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Gerald N. 2008. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rosenbluth, Frances McCall, and Shapiro, Ian. 2018. Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Ian. 2016. Politics against Domination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shattschneider, E. E. 1942. Party Government. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction.Google Scholar
Warwick, Paul, and Druckman, James N.. 2001. “Portfolio Salience and the Proportionality of Payoffs in Coalition Governments,” British Journal of Political Science 31(4): 627–649.Google Scholar
Williamson, Vanessa, Skocpol, Theda, and Coggin, John. 2011. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.” Perspectives on Politics 9(1): 25–43.Google Scholar
Wilson, Harold. 1979. The Final Term: The Labour Government 1974–76. London: Weidenfield & Nicholson.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×