Affiliation:
1. BOGAZICI UNIVERSITY, FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Abstract
Why were Christian democratic unions (CDUs) among workers and farmers more proactive in some Western European states than in others? Marxist theories explain union activity by industrialization. However, CDUs were not the most active in the late 19th century in rapidly industrializing states, e.g., Italy and Germany. Using social identity theory and Lipset’s & Rokkan’s cleavage theory, this paper conducts process tracing on the German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Belgian cases to test the following argument: CDUs were more likely to develop in states where anticlerical attacks unleashed a center-periphery conflict. CDUs are less likely to expand in states where anticlerical attacks precipitated a church-state conflict. The presence of a Catholic minority moderated this relationship. In the Protestant-dominant states, Catholicism allowed for mobilizing individuals and maintaining cohesion. The Lutheran states’ hostility toward Catholic activism and the regional concentration of the minority accentuated this denominational difference, which catalyzed CDU development.
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