Summary
Political Party Competition and the Transnational Cleavage in Europe
The purpose of the project is to update our understanding of political party competition for the 21st century by examining and explaining the positioning of political parties on topics that make up the contemporary transnational cleavage in Europe. This new cleavage separates parties that support international integration and denationalisation from those that strive to preserve cultural distinctiveness and national autonomy. Knowledge about party competition remains rooted in older cleavage structures along which formerly dominant parties positioned themselves. Yet the parties at the poles of this new cleavage, the green-left and the far-right, differ dramatically from older parties in the topics that they prioritise.
Transnational cleavage theory expects high levels of policy differentiation and antipathy between green-left parties and parties of the far-right. Within this project, we will provide the most rigorous empirical tests for these theoretical hypotheses on political topics that make up the transnational divide: immigration, the environment, Gender/LGBTQ politics and international trade. We will run a series highly-focused expert surveys with the purpose of unpacking and understanding the positions that political parties in Europe take on these four policy areas at the heart of the transnational cleavage. The results will provide a deeper understanding of party competition in policy areas where we currently have only surface knowledge of party positioning.