Deindustrialization fosters ethnonationalism; a comparative analysis of ethnonational parties in Western Europe, 1918–2018

Abstract

This article demonstrates that deindustrialization increases ethnonational mobilization. We maintain that levels of mobilization of ethnonational movements are to an important extent a residual to the class cleavage, that is, to the degree the class conflict dominates political competition. Since in the context of Western Europe industrialism is the main force behind the class cleavage, deindustrialization weakens this cleavage and allows instead for mobilization along ethnonational divisions. In order to empirically test our argument, we analyze levels of electoral mobilization of ethnonational party blocs among 15 Western European minorities between 1918 and 2018. Our analysis clearly reveals that levels of industrialization are negatively related to ethnonational mobilization. However, this is only true for regions with historically high levels of industrialization and if the ethnonational movement is unified. The article contributes to the comparative literature on the electoral performance of ethnonational parties and the literature on deindustrialization and nationalism.

Introduction

In the regional elections of May 2021, the Scottish Nationalist Party was able to repeat its electoral victory from five years ago. If Westminster gives the pressure from the Scottish regional government and allows for an independence referendum to be held, Scottish nationalists have a real shot in achieving national independence: But not only in Scotland is minority nationalism stronger than ever. Only three months before the Scottish elections, the secessionist parties of Catalonia were able to win another majority in the regional parliament while the polls had the New Flemish Alliance and the Flemish Interest (Dutch: Vlaams Belang) together at 45% of vote intention in Flanders. In contrast, in the Basque Country, Wales, and Wallonia support has remained at different levels rather stable over the last decades. This observation raises the important question of how different electoral trajectories of ethnonational parties even in the same country can be explained.

A classic explanation is the famous ethnic division of labor theory, according to which industrialism creates a cultural division of labor between members of different ethnic groups triggering ethnic identity and, in this way, a strong basis for political mobilization (Hechter and Levi, 1979). Similarly, it has been argued that ethnonational movements have been formed on the basis of perceived economic or identity threat by internal migration from culturally distinct agrarian regions into industrially developed regions (Shafir, 1995). Meanwhile, these theories have been contested on both theoretical and empirical grounds (Coakley, 1992; Connor, 1994). In line with this criticism, this article even argues and demonstrates that deindustrialization (rather than industrialization) strengthens ethnonational mobilization.

In order to explain the relationship between deindustrialization and ethnonational mobilization, we apply a “bottom-up” or “societal” version of Rokkan’s (1999) cleavage theory. We maintain that levels of mobilization of ethnonational minority movements are to an important extent a residual to the class cleavage, that is, to the degree the class conflict dominates political competition. Since in Western Europe industrialism is the main force behind the class cleavage (Bartolini, 2000), deindustrialization weakens this cleavage and allows instead for mobilization along ethnonational divisions.

In order to empirically test our argument, we analyze levels of electoral mobilization of ethnonational party blocs among 15 Western European minorities between 1918 and 2018. To our knowledge, no comparative study applies a time horizon as long as this study which is important to capture the path dependency effect of the enfranchisement of large segments of society after WWI. The analysis reveals that levels of industrialization are negatively related to ethnonational party mobilization. Furthermore, and as expected, this relationship is stronger for ethnonational minorities concentrated in historically highly industrialized regions, and when the ethnonational party bloc is unified.

Our analysis complements previous comparative studies on ethnonational and regionalist parties (Bernauer and Bochsler, 2011; Birnir, 2007; Bochsler, 2010; Brancati, 2006, 2008; Jolly, 2015; Massetti, 2009; Massetti and Schakel, 2013, 2015, 2016; Tronconi, 2005) in Europe by providing a new explanation for their electoral performances. Also, by focusing on minority rather than majority nationalistic parties our analysis complements the recent literature on the effect of economic modernization on the rise of Right Populist Parties (e.g., Engler and Weisstanner, 2020; Gidron and Hall, 2017).

Why deindustrialization triggers ethnonational party mobilization

A societal perspective on cleavage theory

Departing from a societal version of cleavage theory (Rokkan, 1999, also Bartolini, 2000; Bornschier, 2010; Caramani, 2004; Kriesi et al., Rogowski, 1990), we are interested in the structural conditions of political mobilization. Consequently, according to this perspective, the degree to which political elites are able to politically mobilize different constituencies depends on the salience of conflicts that are structurally determined and have been the result of the most important “social revolutions.” More specifically, we aim to explain how deindustrialization conditions the success of nationalist elites in the peripheries to mobilize their ethnonational constituency in the context of democratic elections.

While the societal version of the cleavage theory is structural, it follows historical institutionalism to some extent by taking path dependency into account. It does so by acknowledging the long-lasting impact of the institutionalization of party systems in the critical juncture of mass enfranchisement. According to the “freezing hypothesis,” the cleavage constellation after World War I has stabilized Western European party systems through positive feedback effects until at least the 1960s (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). However, in contrast to what would be typical for a historical institutionalist approach (see Hall and Taylor, 1996), the emphasis in cleavage theory is not on the contingency of paths taken in critical junctures through decisions of political elites but on the structural conditions under which these elites take their decisions.

From the perspective of cleavage theory, in order to explain party system change, we need to identify the most important societal forces that change conflict constellations and the degree to which these conflicts are cross-cutting. As Rokkan (1999) has famously shown, the configuration of party systems in Western Europe can to an important extent be explained with the degree to which conflict structures are reinforcing or cross-cutting. Furthermore, in the meantime it has been demonstrated that the concept of cross-cutting cleavages can even be successfully applied to ethnic voting in contexts of weakly institutionalized party systems beyond Western Europe (e.g., Dunning and Harrison, 2010). Hence, it is the more surprising that this perspective has not been systematically applied to explain variance in ethnonational mobilization in Western Europe over time.

A two-dimensional model of electoral mobilization

In our application of the cleavage theory, we maintain that for the context of Western Europe in the 20^th century the electoral strength of the ethnonational parties – parties that primarily promote the interests of “their” ethnonational groups – is to an important extent a residual to the class cleavage. Accordingly, the degree to which ethnonational parties can mobilize their ethnonational constituency depends on the extent to which the class conflict dominates (electoral) politics. At the source of the strength of the class cleavage is industrialization while deindustrialization can, to an important extent, explain its decline (Bartolini, 2000).

Deindustrialization has been preceded by a decline in the agrarian sector, which has led to the decline or reconfiguration of the urban–rural cleavage (for a review see Knutsen, 2013, 189–192). The decline of the manufacturing industry, more importantly, has decreased the vote share of the Social Democrats (Best, 2011). Hence, together with secularization, deindustrialization has allowed for the emergence of often-discussed new cleavages such as the post-materialism (Inglehart, 1990) or globalization cleavage (Kriesi et al., 2008).

With regard to ethnic and national identities, there has been no process similar to deindustrialization that would have undermined the center–periphery cleavage. Consequently, there has been no universal decline of the center–periphery cleavage. Rather, as this article argues, deindustrialization and its weakening of the class cleavage have strengthened the center–periphery cleavage.

While the cross-cutting cleavage hypothesis has intuitive appeal, its underlying assumptions often remain implicit. And although our historical macro-sociological approach does not allow to test the micro-level assumptions, making them explicit is important to gauge the plausibility of the hypotheses and its empirical testing in subsequent analyses. We make five main conceptual decisions to arrive at a parsimonious and testable theory that is – although simplifying – rooted in the empirical literature.

First, in line with previous work (Alonso, 2012; Elias et al., 2015; Massetti and Schakel, 2015) we conceptualize the class cleavage as the most important cleavage that cross-cuts the center–periphery cleavage. We focus on the class cleavage rather than the state–church or urban–rural cleavage because the class cleavage has clearly been the most important such division for party politics in Western Europe (Bartolini, 2000; Caramani, 2015). This is not to say that in all contexts, the class cleavage has been dominant. Arguably, in some states the state–church cleavage has been more consequential (Manow, 2015). However, while the state–church and the urban–rural cleavage have only been decisive to the configuration of party systems in some European countries, the class cleavage has left its mark on virtually all party systems in Western Europe. Also, while we focus on the class–cleavage our argument can be generalized to the state–church and the urban–rural cleavage when they are cross-cutting to the center–periphery cleavage.

Second, we conceptualize state-wide parties as parties that, on average, have a stronger class character than the ethnonational parties (and hence are cross-cutting). More specifically, with regard to the state-wide parties we assume the party system to be divided into a Socialist party representing the workers and a Conservative and/or Liberal party representing the bourgeoisie. With varying degrees, all of these parties share a preference for the consolidation of the nation-state with the majority culture at the core of the imagination of this nation. On the side of the ethnonational minorities, in contrast, we assume the existence of a single interclass ethnonationalist party or several ethnonationalist parties, which are less segmented by class alliances than the state-wide parties. To be clear, we are not claiming that state-wide parties are not nationalistic, but merely that the linkages with their electorate are more based on class than on ethnonational identity relative to ethnonational minority parties where the linkages are more based on ethnonational identity than on class. Also, while our argument that state-wide parties have a stronger class character than the ethnonational parties might not be equally correct in all contexts (see below), there is ample evidence that class is a much weaker predictor for the choice of ethnonational parties than variables related to ethnonational identity such as ancestry and language and, hence, that the class cleavage is cross-cutting the ethnonational cleavage. ¹

Third, we want to argue that members of a core group of the antagonistic classes (e.g., industrial working class vs. owners and managers) tend more to vote for a state-wide Socialist or Conservative/Liberal party than other voters. The reason is that it is those groups that have been mobilized most strongly by these parties. ² The decisive process for the size of the antagonistic groups and hence the strength of the class cleavage is industrialization (Bartolini, 2000). The change in the size of the antagonistic class groups can be due to generational change or to occupational mobility within the voters’ lifecycles. The stronger the degree of industrialization, the larger the core groups of the worker and the bourgeois political movements and the more the different classes deviate in their political preferences and political organization. Hence, when the degree of industrialization is particularly high and the class division consequently strong, the class conflict might be so salient and the class movements organizationally strong that they tend to co-opt the workers and the bourgeois of the ethnonational minority. This explains why Caramani (2004) finds that the super-imposition of the economic left–right cleavage indicated a strong universal trend towards territorially homogenous electoral behavior in Western Europe since 1830.

Fourth, while the process of deindustrialization leads to a dealignment of the electorate from the class-based parties, we do not assume such a process at the level of the ethnonational groups. The reason is that those variables that are linked to ethnonational identity change more slowly than occupation (which is at the core of the class cleavage). ³ This is particularly true for (perception of) ancestry and for language, which are very strongly socialized and hence transmitted over generations. The dealignment of the electorate from the class-based party can again be due to generational change or due to changes in identity during the voters’ lifecycles. From the historical perspective taken here, generational change is probably more relevant. But also identity change during the voters’ lifecycles is important to explain changes in voting patterns. According to a growing literature on Right Radical Parties (e.g., Engler and Weisstanner, 2020; Gidron and Hall, 2017), deindustrialization leads large segments to embrace culturally rather than economically dominated identities due to status threat. This argument might also apply to voters that identify with an ethnonational minority and hence switch their party preference from a state-wide party to an ethnonational party.

To sum up, for the core segments of the class antagonism, the class imposes itself over ethnonational identity. Consequently, the core segments of the class conflict vote for state-wide class parties independent of their ethnonational identities. Because industrialism is the main determinant of the sizes of the core groups of the class conflict, levels of industrialism impact on the degree to which the class cleavage imposes itself through its composition of the electorate.

Composition hypothesis: The larger the share of industry workers the lower ethnonational party mobilization.

We have argued that state-wide parties have a stronger class character than the ethnonational parties. The argument is that ethnonational parties have to be of an interclass character in order to maximize their vote share (Elias et al., 2015, 843–846). This is especially true for small groups in national elections where ethnonational parties might not gain representation if they are fragmented. Consequently, on the economic left–right dimension ethnonational parties might favor centrist positions over extreme positions. More precisely, they tend to position close to the preferences of the median voter in the region of their targeted electorate, which depending on the region’s economic structure is moderate to the left or the right of the center (Massetti, 2009; Massetti and Schakel, 2015). However, if institutional incentives are not strong enough to hinder the fragmentation of ethnonational parties, the two-dimensional model developed above applies less. Especially since different ethnonational parties from the same ethnonational party bloc tend to have different positions on the left–right dimension (Massetti and Schakel, 2015), it cannot be excluded that they compete on the secondary economic dimension with state-wide parties. In this case, state-wide parties were probably never fully able to co-opt the working class and bourgeois voters and are hence less negatively affected by the deindustrialization process.

Fragmentation hypothesis: In the case of a fragmented ethnonational party bloc the negative effect of levels of industrialization on ethnonational party mobilization is weaker than in cases with a single ethnonational party.

High levels of industrialization should have a particular strong impact on the degree to which the party system is dominated by the class antagonism. Hence, in these highly industrialized cases, there is a higher potential that the theoretical model applies than in initially more agrarian societies. Assuming, furthermore, that there is some degree of path dependency (see above), we might also think that what matters most is the level of industrialization at the time point when the mobilization of the masses took off.

Early industrialization hypothesis: The negative relationship between levels of industrialization and ethnonational mobilization is stronger in regions that have had a high level of industrialization during the enfranchisement of large segments of the society.

Data and method

Case selection

While studying ethnonational mobilization, we focus on parties that target what is referred to as “ethnonational group,” “ethnic group,” “national minority,” or “nation without state,” among others. Since these concepts are “essentially contested” (Gallie, 1955), albeit there is little disagreement on substance, there is no consensus on its use, which also varies strongly across scientific fields (e.g., conflict scholars use the concept “ethnic group” in a broader sense than nationalism scholars). The common denominator to these concepts when used in a similar way is that they refer to a category of individuals with a common subnational identity that claims some degree of self-government. The group “is the entity for which ethnonationalism claims autonomy or independence” (Lecours, 2000). Hence, it typically includes ethnic groups or such that have a self-perception of a nation because of former territorial independence (also see Massetti, 2009, 508–509).

For this study, a group is selected as a case if it fulfills four criteria. First, it must be a rather prototypical case of an ethnonational minority. In conflict studies, the fuzziness of ethnic groups has led to problems of selection bias (Fearon, 2002; Hug, 2003). This selection bias can be minimized if one studies the most prototypical cases, that is, by studying those cases which clearly belong to the category of interest (Strijbis, 2013). In order to include only rather prototypical cases, we consulted three datasets on ethnic and national minorities covering Western Europe and selected only those cases that appeared in at least two instances. The three data sources are the Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations: Ethnic and National Groups Around the World (Minahan, 2002), Pan and Pfeil’s Volksgruppen in Europa (2000), and the Geo-referencing of Ethnic Groups (GREG) data (Weidmann et al., 2010). These datasets are well suited because they apply a low numerical threshold for the inclusion of a group in the dataset and share an understanding of ethnonational minorities as self-identifying groups consistent with the conceptualization above.

The Encyclopedia of Stateless Nations covers all groups that self-identify as a distinctive group, display “outward trappings” of national consciousness, and have formed a specifically nationalist organization or political grouping that reflects a claim to self-determination (Minahan, 2002, xii). In fact, also very minor organizations are considered to fulfill the last criterion, putting more weight on the first two criteria.

Volksgruppen in Europa defines a “Volksgruppe” as a community that is numerically minor to the rest of a country, whose members are citizens of this country, who are distinct from the majority due to ethnic, linguistic, or cultural markers, and who are willing to maintain this idiosyncrasy (Pan and Pfeil, 2000, xiii).

The Geo-referencing of Ethnonational Groups (GREG) data (Weidmann et al., 2010) contain the data of the Atlas narodov mira (Miklukho-Maklai Ethnological Institute 1964). The Atlas narodov mira has no explicit definition of “ethnonational group,” but relies heavily on linguistic differentiation for its categorization. Also, it has been shown that the categorization is related to an understanding of ethnonational groups as groups whose members tend to marry within the group (endogamy) (Bridgmann, 2008, 1). It can therefore be assumed that this data set, too, puts common identity at the center of its (implicit) definition. In order to assure that divergence in the coding of ethnonational minorities is not due to the fact that the Atlas was compiled in the 1960s, we have taken a more recently compiled version of it from Weidman et al.’s Geo-referencing of Ethnonational Groups (GREG) data (Weidmann et al., 2010).

Second, since the article tries to understand levels of ethnonational mobilization, we only include groups for which the ethnonational identity is politically salient. Here we follow the distinction by Chandra and Wilkinson (2008, 524) between ethnicity activated in politics and its mobilization in institutionalized politics. Hence, the question is not when ethnonational categories actually become salient, but when politically salient ethnonational identity is mobilized. In order to make sure that only ethnonational minorities with salient ethnonational identities are included, we restrict the sample to minorities that have been rated as politically salient in the Ethnic Power Relations Dataset (EPR) (Cederman et al., 2010). To correct for the fact that the EPR data do not include the period from 1918 to 1944, we also selected all those with electoral support by an ethnonational party that cannot be found in the EPR dataset.

Third, we restrict the sample to cases of ethnonational minorities that count 50,000 group members or make for a minimum of 0.1% of the total population. This selection criterion is necessary because the strength of ethnonational minority mobilization will be measured in a way, which, with regard to the sources of the data, makes the indicators somewhat sensitive to ethnonational group size (see below).

Finally, since we are interested in levels of mass mobilization and not the question of whether elites from an ethnonational minority movement found parties which contest (national) elections, we restrict our sample to movements which achieved minimal levels of mobilization at least once since 1918. The electoral data allow to identify all ethnonational parties receiving at least 5% of the votes in one electoral constituency in at least one state-wide parliamentary election (Caramani, 2000). Applying this criterion leaves us with 15 ethnonational minority groups for which we analyze electoral mobilization in national parliamentary elections.

As argued in the article, we restrict our sample to movements which achieved minimal levels of mobilization at least once since 1918. This leads to the exclusion of some ethnonational groups like the Basques in France, Frisians in the Netherlands, the Rhaetians in Switzerland, and the Slovenians in Austria, because they never successfully mobilized with an ethnonational party in national elections. Two cases where ethnonational parties were formed and competed in elections concern the Basques in France and the Frisians in the Netherlands. In the case of the former, the attempt to enter national electoral competition was made but was unsuccessful. The Frisian Nationalist Party (Fryske Nasjonale Partij) only contested regional elections where it gained a maximum of 13.2% of the votes (Hemminga, 2006). The cases of the Faroe Islanders and Greenlanders were excluded because of lack of data. Online Appendix A gives a detailed account on how the different steps led to the sample of this study.

Ethnonational party blocs

This article provides, to my knowledge, the first attempt to describe and explain the performance of ethnonational parties since World War I. Studying the political mobilization already at this early stage is important because this has been the first period of mass mobilization with a strong path-dependent effect (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967). In line with previous literature, we define ethnonational parties as those that primarily promote the interests of “their” ethnonational groups and/or the exclusion of others (see Chandra, 2011 for a review). As Strijbis and Kotnarowski (2015) demonstrate, in line with their political ideology, ethnonationals overwhelmingly attract the vote of their targeted ethnic group members. While strongly overlapping, this separates them from regionalist parties, which promote the interests of the entire population residing within a certain delimited territory and implies parties that represent ethnonational groups that are not regionally concentrated. ⁴

As our interest is in the political mobilization of ethnonational minorities and not in the electoral success of specific parties, we confine the study to the performance of ethnonational party blocs. As most difficulties in deciding whether parties are ethnonational or not boil down to the question of whether or not a group should be considered an ethnonational group, only a few problems concerning the classification of parties remain. Often, a party’s name provides a clue as to whether it should be considered ethnonational or not. Among the ethnonational parties considered here, however, a few cannot be identified as ethnonational by their name alone. One such case is the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in Northern Ireland. In the case of the SDLP, there have indeed been attempts to amend its identity to that of an interethnic socialist party. As the SDLP, however, clearly moved towards becoming a primarily ethnically defined party (Jenkins, 1997, 152–153; Webb, 2000, 20–25), other socialist parties based on interethnic alliances have been founded.

Most difficult is the classification of Catalan parties before the Spanish civil war. Although the ethnonational character at that time of the Regionalist League (Lliga Regionalista) and the Republican Left (Esquerra Republicana) is clear, we have decided with Medrano (1995) to exclude the Catalan Union (Uniò Català) and the Radical Party (Partit Radical). Also, in the post-Franco era some communist parties, such as the Basque wing of the United Left (Izquierda Unida), had no clear program relating to ethnonational minorities; we have excluded them from the ethnonational party family. We also exclude the Valencians from the dataset because this group showed no strong signs of ethnonational identity in the Second Republic, which is also demonstrated by the fact that group identity was still very weak in the early days after Franco (Coller and Castelló, 1999).

Table 1 lists all ethnonational groups and ethnonational parties that are included in the analysis. Most ethnonational minorities witnessed splits, dissolutions, and/or (re-)foundations of ethnonational parties during their democratic periods, presenting them with a more or less fragmented ethnonational party bloc. This resulted in 53 ethnonational parties representing 15 ethnonational minorities in seven West European countries in the period since WWI.

Table 1. Ethnonational party blocs in Western Europe, 1918–2018

Notes: ¹participation with ≥ 5% in a constituency; ²without the voter alliance with the Flemish Christian Democrats in 2007; ³includes voter alliances with Francophone Democratic Front of Brussels; ⁴Corsican nationalist candidates officially run as regionalists; ⁵coalition of Tyrolean People’s Party und Free Liberals; ⁶data for 1931 only available for Galicia, votes for nationalist parties could not be calculated for Catalonia and Galicia in 1936; ⁷single nationalistic candidates; ⁸Three candidates, not to confound with the Scottish section of the British Labour Party.

Operationalizations

Since the electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties should be measured as the mobilization of the ethnonational parties of its targeted ethnonational group, and since ethnonational group sizes are not always stable over time, valid comparisons of ethnonational mobilization are enhanced by knowing the size of each group in question. Estimating the group size of the 15 native ethnonational minorities in this sample is, however, far from simple. Until now, studies that have used longitudinal data have made fairly imprecise estimates, assume very constant group sizes, do not contain data on all 15 groups analyzed here, and contain no information before World War II.

In estimating the size of ethnonational groups, we have tried to approach self-classification as narrowly as possible. This has two implications. First, we have tried to rely on information on ethnonational categorization whenever possible. Second, we have tried to rely on census or register data whenever possible (see part A.2 in the SM).

In order to measure the electoral mobilization of the ethnonational movements, we focus on electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties. Although it has been demonstrated that regional elections are more than “second order” (Schakel and Dandoy, 2013), for reasons of data availability, we restrict our analysis to vote choice in national elections for the lower parliamentary chamber. Since ethnonational parties primarily want to mobilize their co-ethnics (Chandra, 2004, 5–6; De Winter, 1998, 210; Diamond and Gunther, 2001, 198), their levels of electoral mobilization should be measured as the share of ethnonational group members at voting age, voting for “their” ethnonational party or ethnonational party bloc if several ethnonational parties mobilize the same ethnonational group. Hence, we divide the share of the ethnonational minority parties’ vote by the state-wide share of ethnonational group members (Strijbis and Kotnarowski, 2015, 5–8). The values for this Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM) typically vary between 0 and 1. They can be higher than 1, however, in cases where members of an ethnonational minority vote homogenously for “their” ethnonational parties and have a higher turnout than the members of other ethnonational groups.

The Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM) is based on the assumption that the size of the ethnonational groups is exogenous to the parties’ electoral success. One might, however, argue that ethnonational parties can impact the ethnonational group size. Hence, in this case, the electoral success of parties that are able to increase the size of their targeted ethnonational group would be underestimated with the previously developed measures. In order to test for such a bias in this measure, we will replicate the analyses by taking the mean ethnonational group size as the denominator and include the group size at each election as an independent variable.

For the degree of industrialization, we use as an indicator, the share of industry workers in the region in which the ethnonational minority is territorially concentrated. The regional level is used because this is the territorial level at which ethnonational parties can gain representation. Through interpolation, the share of industry for most regions at most points in time could be estimated. In some cases, however, there were no data for the interwar period. Instead of extrapolating the data for these cases – continuous growth/decrease could not be assumed – the cases were categorized according to the description in historical sources, and the variable was expressed as estimates of the share of industry workers in 10% intervals. In order to test the robustness of this indicator we also report the analyses calculated without our estimations, relying on primary sources alone.

We have argued that the effect of deindustrialization on ethnonational party mobilization should be stronger among those groups that are concentrated in regions that have historically been highly industrialized. In order to test this implication of the theory, we will split our sample between those cases that had at least 30% of workers in the industry in the interwar period and those who were dominated by the agrarian sector.

Finally, we include several variables that have been put forward in the literature: We use a lagged value of the Polity5 index (Marshall and Gurr, 2020) in order to control for ethnonational mobilization as a reaction to state repression, the electoral system at the level of the territorial concentration of the ethnonational group, the degree of territorial autonomy making use of the Regional Autonomy Index (RAI) (Hooghe et al., 2010), level of European integration (Brancati, 2014), and national GDP per capita. The descriptive statistics for all variables are given in Table 2 (for operationalizations and sources see the SM part A).

Table 2. Descriptive statistics

Sources: See Supplemental material

Method

The data are collapsed into five-year periods, producing a largely balanced panel. In those few cases when two elections were held within the same period, the mean was taken. Since the data are non-stationary and autoregressive, we make use of time series cross-sectional regression analysis. More specifically, we use fixed effects for spatial units and panel correct standard errors (PCSE). The fixed effects model reads as (Beck, 2001, 283):

$${y_{i,t}} = {x_{i,t}}\beta + {f_i} + {\varepsilon _{i,t}},$$

where f _i is a dummy variable marking region i. Since average levels of the dependent variable over spatial units (regions) are fixed, the model predicts variance over time and is consequently suited to analyze the effect of change (to which the term deindustrialization points). This specification is preferable over a difference model where we would lose degrees of freedom. Also, Table B.2 in the supplemental material shows that the results are robust to inclusion of time fixed effects in a two-way fixed effects model. Finally, we find very similar effects if we lag the independent variable by up to about 20 years, which is approximately one generation (Table B.3 in the SM).

Please note that changes in the boundaries of the electoral constituencies or regions do not bias our analysis. This is because we measure the ethnonational party vote share not at the constituency or regional, but at the national level. Insofar as changes in variables that are related to boundary shifts have a causal effect on electoral mobilization, this should be accounted for by the control variables. However, the measurement of the ethnonational group sizes might be prone to measurement error, which could bias the estimates. As a robustness test, we will replicate the analysis while calculating the Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM) with each ethnonational group’s average relative population size. If the estimates of the group size would have strong impact on its value of ethnonational mobilization, the results would differ heavily from other analyses.

Results

Bivariate analysis

Is ethnonational party mobilization related to levels of industrialization as the theoretical part of this article has argued? Figure 1 shows a negative correlation between levels of industrialization and ethnonational party mobilization as measured with the Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM). The correlation (R = −0.248; P < 0.000; N = 231) depicted with the straight fit line indicates a moderate but substantial relationship: With a 1% increase in industrial labor force, the share of ethnonational minority members that votes for an ethnonational party decreases by about 0.24%. Also, as indicated by the dashed fit line, the relationship is considerably stronger if we censor the relationship to values above zero (R = −0.354; P < 0.000; N = 164).

Figure 1. Electoral mobilization of ethnic parties and levels of industrialization.

The graph also shows that while a large share of industry workers seems to be a sufficient condition for a lack of ethnonational party mobilization, a low share of industry workers is not sufficient for a high share of ethnonational party mobilization. This foreshadows our results that only in specific contexts do low levels of industrialization trigger ethnonational party mobilization. Hence, Figure 1 offers a first indication that deindustrialization might trigger the electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties and that it can be interpreted along the theoretical model proposed here. However, due to well-known limitations of such bivariate descriptive analyses only a multivariate analysis will allow us to arrive at stronger conclusions.

Multivariate analyses

In a first step, we show the statistical relationships between levels of industrialization and the electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties for the full sample. Also, in the first three models we make use of the variable for industrialization that is based on 10% scales, which is available for the full sample. Model 1 in Table 3 shows the results if only the independent variable – the regional share of industry workers – and the regional fixed effects are included. The significant coefficient of −0.046 means that with an increase of the industrial labor force by 10% of the total labor force, the value on the RIEPM is 0.046 points lower. In substantive terms, this can be interpreted as a reduction in the mobilization of the targeted ethnonational group of about 4.6%.

Table 3. Time series regression analyses on electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties

Note: Beta-coefficients with panel correct standard errors in parenthesis; Dependent variable: Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM); Control variables: Ethnonational group size (rel. and abs.), Polity5 (t − 1), electoral system, regional authority index, European integration index, GDP per capita (2011 USA$); All models are calculated with panel fixed effects and robust standard errors; + P < 0.1, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001.

This main effect is only somewhat lower if we introduce the control variables in model 2. Model 3 tests the same relationship when including levels of territorial autonomy. This model is tested separately because the data for the regional autonomy index are only available for the time period after World War II. The relationship between industrialization and the ethnonational mobilization is now slightly smaller (and due to fewer cases less significant). The contrast of this model with a model only including the post-WWII period without controlling for federalism shows that the inclusion of the regional authority index has a smaller effect on the coefficient than the fact that the data are restricted to the post-war period (not shown). This suggests that the relationship between levels of industry and ethnonational mobilization is stronger in the early periods of the time series – a point to which we will return in the conclusion.

Model 4 shows the results if we make use of the raw numeric data on the size of the industrial sector rather than the scale, which is partly based on estimates. The substitution of these two variables results in a loss of twelve cases. The coefficient is now somewhat stronger than the one for the share of industrial labor force used in the previously calculated models. Indeed, a 10 percent increase in industrial labor force is now associated with a reduction of the mobilization of the targeted ethnonational group by about 5.4 percent.

So far, we have analyzed the effect of deindustrialization on ethnonational party mobilization for all 15 minorities jointly. However, in the theoretical part of the article we have argued that the effect of deindustrialization on ethnonational party mobilization should be stronger for those groups that are concentrated in regions that have historically been highly industrialized. We have called this the “early industrialization hypothesis.” In order to test the implication of the hypothesis, we split our sample between those cases that had at least 30% of workers in the industry in the interwar period and those who were dominated by the agrarian sector.

Table 4 shows the model with and without control variables for the two samples. The analysis seems to confirm the implication that deindustrialization had a stronger positive effect on ethnonational party mobilization in historically strongly industrialized regions. The first two models show that in highly industrialized regions, an increase of 10 percent of workers in industry decreases ethnonational mobilization by about 5.4 to 4.4 percent. The fact that in the second model with the control variables the coefficient fails to be significant at the 5 percent significance level is likely because with the reduced sample size and the same number of control variables the model is now overdetermined. In line with our expectation, the third and the fourth models for low industry regions now show small coefficients and low model fit.

Table 4. Time series regression analyses on electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties by level of industrialization

Note: Beta-coefficients with panel correct standard errors in parenthesis; All models are calculated with panel fixed effects and robust standard errors; ⁺ P < 0.1, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001. For the list of variables see Table 2.

Another expectation of our model has been that industrialization should be more negatively related to ethnonational party mobilization if there is only one ethnonational party rather than a fragmented ethnonational party bloc. The reason is that with a fragmented ethnonational party bloc along the economic left-right dimension, ethnonational parties can profit less from a dealignment along class positions. In our sample, only the cases of the Basque Country, Catalonia, Northern Ireland since the 1950s, and Flanders since the 1990s, are instances where ethnonational parties have typically been divided. Consequently, we would expect a weaker relationship between industrialism and ethnonational party mobilization for those than for the other cases. In order to test this expectation, we split our sample between the four cases with divided ethnonational parties and those where there has been only one unifying ethnonational party. Since we now split Northern Ireland and Flanders into two periods, we increase the number of panels from 15 to 17. ⁵

Table 5 reveals that the expectation is correct: In those cases where the ethnonational parties are fragmented, the relationship between industrialism and ethnonational party mobilization is much weaker (and statistically insignificant) than in those cases with a single ethnonational party.

Table 5. Time series regression analyses on electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties by party fragmentation

Note: Beta-coefficients with panel correct standard errors in parenthesis; All models are calculated with panel fixed effects; + P < 0.1, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001; For the list of variables see Table 2.

In a final step, we report the findings from our most important robustness check. We first test if our results are sensitive to the ethnonational group data or when dropping the assumption that the ethnonational group size is exogenous to electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties. We do so by fixing the ethnonational group size for the calculation of the Relative Index of Ethnic Party Mobilization (RIEPM) at its mean and using the relative and absolute group sizes as independent variables. In combination with the time series model applied here, this means that we control for average group size and test for its independent time variant effect. The results from Table 6 show that relative group size does have a positive effect on ethnonational mobilization. For our purpose, more important, however, is that dropping the variance in group size from our dependent variable, and hence using ethnonational group size only as an independent variable, only strengthens our results. This means that our results are not negatively biased due to measurement error of ethnonational group sizes or the assumption that ethnonational group size is endogenous to ethnonational party mobilization.

Table 6. Time series regression analyses on electoral mobilization of ethnonational parties with control for variance in ethnonational group size over time

Note: Beta-coefficients with panel correct standard errors in parenthesis; All models are calculated with panel fixed effects; ⁺ P < 0.1, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001; For the list of variables see Table 2.

Conclusion

Classic work has argued that industrialization has a positive impact on ethnonational mobilization. This article has argued the opposite and hypothesized that deindustrialization has a positive effect on ethnonational party mobilization especially in historically highly industrialized regions. The reason put forward is that the ethnonational cleavage is cross-cutting the class cleavage and secondary to it. Hence, the dealignment of the class cleavage due to deindustrialization in highly industrialized regions has allowed for an alignment of parts of the electorate along the ethnonational cleavage. The article has shown that 100 years of experience of 15 Western European ethnonational minorities fit well to this explanation. This way, the article has confirmed the explanatory power of cleavage theory in the realm of ethnopolitics.

With its emphasis on the link between (de)industrialization, the class, and the ethnonational cleavage, the article has been historically contingent and centered on Western Europe. Additional analyses also suggest that the relationship is stronger for the first half of our time series. Hence, the question appears whether it is possible to generalize this insight to the present context of globalization (Smith, 2013), European integration (Gómez-Reino, 2018), and to other geographical contexts. We hypothesize that this is the case if the socio-economic structuration of the class cleavage is contextualized. Because, while it is true that class voting has decreased if class structure is conceptualized in schemes that are rooted in the class schemes of highly industrialized countries (Knutsen, 2006), it is less clear whether this is the case if the class schemes are adjusted to social stratification in highly developed service industries (Oesch, 2008) or to the specifics of class structure in developing countries. This means that there are good reasons to believe that the class cleavage still cross-cuts the ethnonational cleavage today and in the future, both in Western Europe and the rest of the world.