Losing the Middle Ground: The electoral decline of Social Democratic parties since 2000

Author:

Wagner MarkusORCID,Abou-Chadi TarikORCID

Abstract

This is a chapter from an edited volume, Beyond Social Democracy: The Transformation of the Left inEmerging Knowledge Societies, edited by Silja Häusermann and Herbert Kitschelt. Abstract: Two widespread narratives attempt to account for the decline of social democratic parties over the past decades. The economic narrative points to these parties’ centrist positioning as the key cause and the Radical Left and Right as the key beneficiaries. In contrast, the cultural narrative focuses of the liberal positions of social democratic parties on new issues relating to cultural issues such as immigration, gender equality and European integration, and paints to the Radical Right as key beneficiaries. What links these two narratives is the idea that social democrats have alienated the working class. In this chapter, we use individual-level survey data from 8 countries to show that although social democratic parties have seen losses among all electoral groups, the voters who left social democratic parties were disproportionately centrist and educated. Second, we find that only a small share of former social democratic voters defected directly to parties of the Radical Right. Instead, social democratic parties lost most voters to moderate right, green and left-libertarian parties. We additionally show that cultural attitudes play only a small role for choosing between moderate right and social democratic parties. In contrast, they are strongly to choices between social democratic and green/left-libertarian parties. These findings cast doubt on both predominant narratives of social democratic decline.

Publisher

Center for Open Science

Cited by 1 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3