Protesting Culture and Economics in Western Europe

Abstract

This book links research on cleavage politics and the populist right with research on social movements. Both research fields have extensively dealt with the transformative power of globalization on political mobilization and conflict. At the same time, this book highlights that both fields tend to neglect the existence of different arenas of political mobilization, and focus on different features of the politics of globalization. By adopting a dynamic cleavage perspective, this study bridges the division. In part, its findings qualify recent research on the repercussions of globalization on social movements and protest politics. More specifically, the sweeping claim tested in this book is that globalization induces new structural conflicts into West European societies, and that the mobilization of these potentials has given rise to a new integration-demarcation cleavage. Based on original data on protest events and election campaigns in six West European countries, i.e., Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, this book shows that the integration-demarcation cleavage has left its mark on both electoral politics and protest politics. However, its impact on protest politics is less pronounced as compared both to electoral politics and to the impact of the new cleavages being on the rise in the 1970s and early 1980s. To arrive at this conclusion, this book suggests that it’s crucial to compare the two central transformations of West European politics, which have taken place since the 1970s, as well as to examine different political arenas and, even more importantly, their interactions within an integrated theoretical approach.

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