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Left-Libertarian Parties: Explaining Innovation in Competitive Party Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Herbert P. Kitschelt
Herbert P. Kitschelt
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Abstract

Since the 1960s, new left-socialist or ecology parties have appeared in approximately half of the advanced Western democracies. These parties have a common set of egalitarian and libertarian tenets and appeal to younger, educated voters. The author uses macropolitical and economic data to explain the electoral success of these left-libertarian parties. While high levels of economic development are favorable preconditions for their emergence, they are best explained in terms of domestic political opportunity structures. There is little evidence that these parties are a reaction to economic and social crises in advanced democracies. The findings suggest that the rise of left-libertarian parties is the result of a new cleavage mobilized in democratic party systems rather than of transient protest.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , January 1988 , pp. 194 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

1 For European party systems, this argument was made by Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Lipset and Rokkan are concerned with the societal nature of cleavages that are represented on the level of party competition, not with the relative strength of particular parties. Critics and supporters of their argument are mistaken when they test the persistence of cleavages by the electoral stability of individual parties. See Rose, Richard and Urwin, Derek, “Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945,” Political Studies 18 (No. 3, 1970), 287–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maguire, Maria, “Is There Still Persistence? Electoral Change in Western Europe, 1948–1979,” in Daalder, Hans and Mair, Peter, eds., Western European Party Systems: Continuity and Change (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage 1983)Google Scholar; and Shamir, Michal, “Are Western Party Systems ‘Frozen’? A Comparative Dynamic Analysis,” Comparative Political Studies 12 (No. 1, 1984), 35–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 Electoral analysis of Scandinavian New Left parties are provided in Logue, John, Socialism and Abundance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982)Google Scholar, chaps. 6 and 8; Thomas, Alastair H., “Social Democracy in Scandinavia: Can Dominance Be Regained?” in Paterson, William E. and Thomas, Alastair H., eds., The Future of Social Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)Google Scholar. For France, see Boy, Daniel, “Le vote ecologiste en 1978” [The ecological vote in 1978], Revue française de science politique 31 (No. 2. 1981), 394–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For West Germany, compare Veen, Hans Joachim, “Wer wählt grün? Zum Profil der Neuen Linken in der Wohlstandsgesellschaft” [Who votes Green? On the profile of the New Left in the affluent society], Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 34 (September 1984), 3–17Google Scholar; and Bürklin, Wilhelm P., “The Greens: Ecology and the New Left,” in Wallach, H. G. and Romoser, George K., eds., West German Politics in the Mid-Eighties: Crisis and Continuity (New York: Praeger 1985)Google Scholar. For other countries, see Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand, “The Greens in Western Europe: Similar but Different,” International Political Science Review 6 (No. 4, 1985), 483–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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6 Case materials for a comparative study of left-libertarian parties in general, and ecology parties in particular, can be found in Baumgarten, Jurgeti, ed., Linkssozialisten in Europa: Alternative zu Sozialdemokratie und kommunistischen Parteien [Left socialists in Europe: Alternatives to social democracy and communist parties] (Hamburg: Junius, 1982)Google Scholar; Frank DeRoose, “De Groene Golf: Over de nationale diversiteit van een international fenomeen” [The Green wave: On the national diversity of an international phenomenon], De Groene Schriften 7, pp. 33–61; Florizoone, Patrick, De Groenen: Idee, bewegingen en partijen [The Greens: Ideas, movements, and parties] (Deurne: Kluver, 1985)Google Scholar; Müller-Rommel, Ferdinand, “‘Parteien neuen Typs’ in Westeuropa: Eine vergleichende Analyse” [‘Parties of a new type’ in Western Europe: A comparative analysis], Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen 13 (No. 3, 1982), 369–90Google Scholar, and] “New Social Movements and Smaller Parties: A Comparative Perspective,” West European Politics 8 (No. 1, 1985), 41–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rüdig, Wolfgang, “The Greens in Europe. Ecological Parties and the European Elections of 1984,” Parliamentary Affairs 38 (No. 1, 1985), 56–72Google Scholar.

7 Macrostructural theories are especially influenced by the work of Habermas, Jürgen, Legitimation Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975)Google Scholar, and , Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Touraine, Alain, The Self-Production of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and Offe, Claus, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

8 Autocorrelation between the values of Green electoral support within each German state may make the correlation look stronger than it is. But in view of the small number of cases and the limited purpose of this analysis, I have settled for a simple bivariate analysis.

9 The number of college students per 100,000 inhabitants is taken as a measure of educational advancement. Data are provided by UNESCO, Statistical Digest 1984 (Paris: UNESCO, 1984)Google Scholar.

10 Data on the distribution of materialists and postmateriahsts in these countries are provided by Paul R. Abrahamson and Ronald Inglehart, “Generational Replacement and Value Change in Six West European Societies,” paper prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 30-September 2, 1984. If we average the postmaterialism scores for 1976–1980 in Belgium, the Netherlands, and West Germany, they are only slightly higher than the average in France, Britain, or Italy. West Germany's score is smaller than that of France or Britain. Belgium, which was more postmaterialist in 1976–1980, is much less postmaterialist than are all other countries in the 1980s. Finally, the postmaterialism measure is heavily influenced by the actual inflation rates of a country. If this variable was held constant, the association between national postmateri-alism scores and left-libertarian parties would probably disappear entirely.

11 See Ronald Inglehart, “The Changing Structure of Political Cleavages in Western Societies,” in Dalton et al. (fn. 2), 62, and Russell J. Dalton, “Environmentalism and Value Change in Western Democracies,” paper prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 30-September 2, 1984.

12 See Hirschman, Albert O., Shifting Involvements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 39–41Google Scholar.

13 The figures understate the exceptional social and economic security Swiss citizens enjoy due to Switzerland's unique position in the world economy. See Schmidt, Manfred, Der schweizerische Weg zur Vollbeschäftigung [The Swiss path to full employment] (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 1985)Google Scholar.

14 See Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold J., eds., The Development of Welfare States in Western Europe and North America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981)Google Scholar, and Castles, Francis G., The Impact of Parties (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982)Google Scholar. Compare, as a recent analytic survey of studies on the determinants of the welfare state, Uusitalo, Hannu, “Comparative Research on the Determinants of the Welfare State: The State of the Art,” European Journal of Political Research 12 (No. 4, 1984), 403–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 In the burgeoning literature on labor corporatism, see in particular Schmitter, Philippe C. and Lehmbruch, Gerhard, eds., Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar; Lehmbruch, Gerhard and Schmitter, Philippe C., eds., Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982)Google Scholar; and Berger, Suzanne, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

16 Philippe C. Schmitter, “Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America,” in Berger (fn. 15), 287–330.

17 See Katzenstein, Peter, “The Small European States in the International Economy: Economic Dependence and Corporatist Politics,” in Ruggie, John Gerard, ed., The Antinomies of Interdependence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; , Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Michael Wallerstein, “The Microfoundations of Corporatism: Formal Theory and Comparative Analysis,” paper prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, August 30-September 2, 1984.

18 In two instances, left-libertarian centrist parties in Sweden (the Center Party) and in the Netherlands (Democrats '66) actually supported conservative governments. In both instances, the voters disapproved of these alliances and the parties lost votes in subsequent elections.

19 The argument that weak opposition parties spawn new opposition parties was developed by Pinard, Maurice, The Rise of a Third Party: A Study in Crisis Politics, enlarged ed. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

20 Some may argue that the period from 1970 to 1980 misspecifies the left government variable for those countries in which left-libertarian parties were formed much earlier than the late 1970s—i.e., the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. The use of earlier time periods for these countries, however, would not substantially alter the result. What is more important is that only in the later 1970s, after a period of organizational and/or electoral crisis, did the Scandinavian and Dutch New Left parties begin to adopt the entire left-libertarian agenda, including ecological demands, and to abandon traditional notions of socialism. The electoral constituency of Scandinavian New Left parties underwent a dramatic change during this period. Compare Logue (fn. 4).

21 See Hauss, Charles, The New Left in France: The Unified Socialist Party (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

22 See Gyorgy, Anna, ed., No Nukes: Everyone's Guide to Nuclear Power (Boston: Southend Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and Mez, Lutz, ed., Der Atomkonflikt: Atomindustrie, Atompolitik und Anti-Atom-bewegung im internationalen Vergleich [Nuclear conflict: Nuclear industry, nuclear policy, and the antinuclear movement in international comparison] (Berlin: Olle & Wolter, 1979)Google Scholar.

23 The interaction between state and challenging anti-nuclear movements is analyzed in comparative perspective in Kitschelt, Herbert, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest. Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Pohtial Science 16 (No. 1, 1986), 57–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For the general study of collective social mobilization, an approach that combines social transformation, political opportunity structures, and precipitating conditions was outlined by Smelser, Neil, The Theory of Collective Behavior (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To explain party formation, Smelser's framework has been elaborated by Pinard (fn. 19); Charles Hauss and David Rayside, “The Development of New Parties,” in Louis Maisel and Joseph Cooper, eds., Political Parties: Development and Decay (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage); and Wilson, Frank L., “Sources of Party Transformation: The Case of France,” in Merkl, Peter, ed., Western European Party Systems (New York: Free Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

25 The fractionalization and the number of cleavages incorporated in party systems, for instance, show little association with the rise of left-libertarian parties. These common measures of party systems apparently do not capture relevant political opportunity structures to explain the new left-libertarian cohort of parties.

26 Cf. Lijphart, Arend, Democracies: Patterns of Majontarian and Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 9; Harmel, Robert and Robertson, John D., “Formation and Success of New Parties: A Cross-National Analysis,” International Political Science Review 6 (No. 4, 1985), 501–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 See Boy (fn. 4), 414–15; Wilhelm P. Burklin, “Value Change and Partisan Realignment in West Germany 1970–1983: Recent Findings and some Political Interpretations,” paper prepared for delivery at the American Political Science Association Convention, Washington, DC, August 30 to September 2, 1984; Burklin (fn. 4); Alber, Jens, “Modernisierung, neue Spannungslinien und die politischen Chancen der Grünen” [Modernization, new cleavages, and the political chances of the Greens], Politische Vierteljahresschriften 26 (No. 3, 1985), 211–26Google Scholar.

28 See Alber, ibid. To be fair, Bürklin combines breakdown theory and structural change and is more inclined to believe that the West German Greens are here to stay. It is not clear, however, whether breakdown and structural change arguments are compatible with each other in Bürklin's work. See Bürklin, Wilhlem P., “The German Greens: The Post-Industrial Non-Established and the Party System,” International Political Science Review 6 (No. 4, 1985), 463–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 See Bürklin, Wilhelm P., Grüne Politik. Ideologische Zyklen, Wähler und Parteiensystem [Green politics: Ideological cycles, voters, and party system] (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1984)Google Scholar.

30 This view is popular in liberal and conservative editorial opinion, as well as in the work of some recognized historians. See Craig, Gordon, The Germans (New York: Meridian, 1982), 210–11Google Scholar, and Laqueur, Walter, Germany Today: A Personal Report (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985), 162–74Google Scholar. For a citique of the West German peace movement, see especially Russel Berman, “Opposition to Rearmament and West German Culture,” Telos (No. 56, 1983), 141–47. A more balanced assessment of the peace movement and nationalism in German politics is provided by Andrei S. Markovits, “On Anti-Americanism in West Germany,” New German Critique (No. 34, 1985), 3–27.

31 See Barnes, Samuel H. and Kaase, Max, eds., Political Action: Mass Participation in Five Western Democracies (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar.

32 Bürklin (fn. 4), p. 206.

33 Bürklin (fn. 29), p. 199.

34 Feist, Ursula, Fröhlich, Dieter, and Krieger, Hubert, “Die politischen Einstellungen von Arbeitslosen” [The political attitudes of the unemployed], Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 34 (No. 45, 1984), 3–17Google Scholar.

35 Krieger, Hubert, “Arbeitsmarktsituation und politische Stabilität: Reaktionsformen abhängig Beschäftigter auf die Arbeitsmarktentwicklung 1975–1985” [Labor market situation and political stability: Patterns of reaction among employees to labor market developments], Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 36 (No. 17, 1986), 3–15Google Scholar.

36 Bürklin (fns. 27 and 29) emphasizes declining elite circulation as a cause of left-libertarian party support.

37 See Heidenheimer, Arnold J., Heclo, Hugh, and Teich-Adams, Carolyn, Comparative Public Policy, 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), 49–51Google Scholar.

38 Bürklin (fn. 27), Tables 7 and 8.

39 Ibid.

40 See Braunthal, Gerard, The West German Social Democrats, 1969–1982: Profile of a Party in Power (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

41 For a close analysis of the internal dynamic of left-libertarian parties, see Herbert Kitschelt, “Logics of Party Formation. Structure and Strategy of the Belgian and West German Ecology Parties” (mimeo), Duke University, 1986 (forthcoming, 1988).