In this last step, we turn to an analysis of the political spaces in these three countries. Using MDS for spatial visualization of both issues and parties, we compare the political spaces before (early 2000s) and in the crisis in each one of the three countries (Fig. 9.3). As can be seen, each of the three pairs of spaces is structured by two dimensions. The graphs have been drawn in such a way that the horizontal dimension corresponds to
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Fig. 9.3 The political spaces in the 2000s and 2012/13 compared France
2002 & 2007 2012
Germany
2002 & 2005 2013
the conflicts on the economic issues, while the vertical axis corresponds to the cultural ones. Note again that the parties’ positions towards an issue can range from −1 to 1 and that positive values indicate support for a given issue category (for the content and direction of the categories,
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see again Table 9.1). In each graph, the positions of the major parties have been linked to each other so that the dominant configuration in the party system becomes apparent. The larger the triangle (or the polygon) formed by this configuration, the greater the overall degree of polarisa-tion between the major parties in a given system. The overall posipolarisa-tion of the triangle indicates the centre of gravity of the political structure, while its overall orientation—whether it is more aligned with the vertical or the horizontal dimension—indicates the relative importance of the cultural and the economic dimension for the structuration of the system.
Starting with France, we see that the two dimensions of the politi-cal space are less integrated in the latest elections than previously, which means that the economic and the cultural dimension are more indepen-dently structuring the political space than in the two electoral campaigns of the early 2000s. Furthermore, as we have seen before, with respect to the degree of polarisation, there is more conflict on the cultural dimen-sion. Although the FN moved to the left on the economic dimension, it remains close to the anti-immigration issue. Overall the centre of gravity of the French political space shifted toward welfare and cultural liberal-ism. Although no political party was close to economic liberalism in the
Austria
2002, 2006 & 2008 2013
Fig. 9.3 (continued)
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first place, even the parties from the right moved away from it. The FN stands not only close to anti-immigration, but it has also moved rather far away from economic liberalism, although it is not close to welfare either.
This highlights that the FN adopted a more left-wing economic program (see Lefkofridi and Michel 2014) but that it is still mainly associated with its tough stance on immigration in the public debate. Lastly, it is important to note that Europe moved to the outskirts of the space, which reflects the fact that all parties have adopted a more critical position and that it is no longer as clearly structuring the second, cultural dimension of the space in the 2012 election.
In Germany, too, the space remains two-dimensional, with a slight increase in the independence of the two axes. This bi-dimensionality appears although the CDU moved up, slightly closer to welfare and cul-tural liberalism and further away from economic liberalism. The left par-ties are located close to one another. The SPD has moved closer to the Green and die Linke in the latest electoral campaign. Overall, the changes are less striking in Germany as the structure remained roughly the same.
Nonetheless, we see that here parties moved away not only from eco-nomic liberalism but also from anti-immigration. All parties, with the exception of the FDP, who failed in this campaign, and of the newcomer of the AfD, fall in or close to the upper left-hand quadrant—favouring welfare and cultural liberalism. Indeed, there is no radical right party TUBOEJOHDMPTFUPUIFBOUJJNNJHSBUJPOJTTVFJO(FSNBOZ)PXFWFSUIF AfD with its anti-European and anti-immigration statements occupies a position in the political space where no other party stands, the bottom right-hand quadrant. Yet, as stated before, the AfD had a limited visibil-ity in the media and, thus, it has hardly contributed to the structuring of the political space. Finally, we see again that Europe is not as integrated in the political space as it used to be. It is located at the margin and all parties stand apart from it, which again reflects the fact that Europe has not been a structuring issue at all in these elections—in spite of the euro crisis.
In contrast to the two previous cases, the Austrian political space appears more integrated in the latest electoral campaign as is shown by the fact that, in 2013, the economic and the cultural dimensions are less independent from each other. Nonetheless, the political space remains
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two-dimensional like in the other two countries. Importantly and as we have already noted repeatedly, we observe more competition on the economic dimension and more polarisation overall, as is indicated by the much larger triangle connecting the three major parties. In addition, each one of the main competitors is situated closely to its core issues—
the SPÖ is close to welfare, the ÖVP close to economic liberalism and further away from welfare, while the FPÖ is close to anti-immigration.
)PXFWFSFWFOJGUIFUISFFQBSUJFTXFSFESJWFOGVSUIFSBQBSUUIJTEJEOPU prevent the formation of yet another grand coalition in Austria. In this case, Europe is not even in the picture. Due to the few references to this issue in the campaign, Europe does not reach the threshold set to include an issue in the political space as we have only included issues with more than 3 % of the statements.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we analysed potential transformations of the structure of party competition in France, Germany, and Austria. We inquired whether the euro crisis critically transformed political conflict at the party systemic level. More specifically, we were interested in exploring whether electoral campaigns shifted their focus in terms of either atten-tion (measured through salience) or conflict (measured through polarisa-tion) on economic issues or on new cultural issues, and whether recent campaigns saw major restructuration of the political space. What can we conclude based on our analyses? Most importantly, we saw that, at the systemic level, there have hardly occurred any exceptional changes which would warrant speaking of a paradigm shift in the structure of party competition (see also Bermeo and Bartels 2014). Rather, the crisis seems to have reinforced trends already observed before its onset, namely, the emergence and growing importance of a second, cultural, dimension of the political conflict, driven by parties of the populist radical right.
First, we find that the economy has not become the only game in town. Two dimensions (an economic and a transformed cultural one) structure the political spaces in all three countries in 2012/2013 and we observe tri-polar party configurations as we did in the pre-crisis period
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(Kriesi et al. 2006, 2008, 2012). In all three countries, welfare and to some extent economic liberalism are salient issues, but not more than in the campaigns during the early 2000s. Especially in France, the coun-try confronted with the most negative economic prospects, the crisis did not trigger any major re-politicisation of economic issues. By contrast, we rather see the continuation of the long-term trend of their declining importance.
Second, although, political parties appear to be more polarised on the new cultural issues, the crisis did not uniformly boost their salience.
Interestingly, the more salient conflicts over these issues become, the less polarised they get. It appears that the cultural dimension is reinforced as a structuring line of conflict because it gains prominence, not conflic-tive power. A uniform trend concerns European integration. The issue of European integration is no longer as firmly embedded in the cultural dimension, and it is not structuring the overall political space as most parties have converged on a more Euro-critical position in times of crisis as compared to the early 2000s. The average position on European inte-gration became more Euro-critical to about the same extent in all three countries.
Third, we find that national trends remain important. The German campaign in 2013 can be labelled as rather depoliticised and we observe no major changes from the pre-crisis period. Interestingly, in Germany, the most salient issues are not polarised and the polarising issues gain limited attention. This reflects the Christian Democrats’ strategy to focus their message on Angela Merkel and to move further to the left (by pick-ing up issues emergpick-ing from the left and integratpick-ing them into her own program). This might have increased the niche in the political space occupied by the new challenger party AfD, which, however, did not (yet) have much influence on the overall structure of party competition at the period of the 2013 campaign. In France, the campaign further shifted to new cultural issues (Tiberj 2013). On the economic dimension, we observe limited change, although even the Front National adopted a more left-wing agenda. As a result, all parties are located further to the left in the political space and far more spread along the cultural dimen-sion. Finally, in Austria, the picture is different as we observe increasingly salient and polarised conflicts over both dimensions. Unexpectedly, the
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economic dimension is even more salient. Indeed, in Austria, we find a strong increase in conflicts over economic liberalism, while Europe almost disappeared from the campaign. But it is important to again high-light that, even in Austria, this did not lead to any major restructuring of the political space.
As stated in the introduction, we submitted the idea of a paradigm shift to a hard empirical test as we did not include any of the countries which TVêFSFENPTUGSPNUIFDSJTJTBOEUIFSFMBUFEBVTUFSJUZQBDLBHFT)BEXF observed this restructuring of the political spaces in France, Austria, or Germany, we would be confident that the crisis has had a strong impact on party politics across Europe. As the Greek example shows, the crisis may be an earthquake that shakes the foundations of the political system and greatly contributes to the emergence of new political parties and new lines of conflict in the political space. In future research, we pro-pose to expand this research to Southern European countries not only to study the rise of Syriza in Greece as a unique case of transformation of the political space but also to confront it with other similar phenomena in Spain or Italy, as well as divergent trajectories in Portugal. Indeed, the debtor countries from Southern Europe did not seem to uniformly witness the emergence of new challengers in the political arena. In Italy and Spain, the Movimento Cinque Stelle and Podemos challenge the established political parties, while in Portugal no comparable challenger has emerged yet. This will allow us to inquire whether the crisis in its medium-term evolution led to a restructuring of political spaces in the countries confronted with drastic austerity and widespread dissatisfaction with political elites and their management of the crisis.
To put these results into a broader perspective, let us again emphasise that the upshot of the cumulated effect of the Great Recession on the party systems in Europe do not indicate a shift in paradigm but rather the reinforcement of long-term destabilizing trends that have been trans-forming the party systems in the Northwest of Europe for more than 20 years before the crisis set in. And these trends seem to have belatedly SFBDIFE4PVUIFSO&VSPQFBTBSFTVMUPGUIFDSJTJT*OEFFEBT)FSOÈOEF[
and Kriesi (2015) show, the main electoral beneficiaries of the economic hardship in Western have been new parties, as well as parties of the radi-cal populist right and the radiradi-cal left. By contrast, the impact of the Great
[AU2]
Recession on the party systems of Central and Eastern European coun-tries has been quite different. In these councoun-tries, incumbents have been punished less for economic hardship than for increasing corruption, and the party systems have followed an opposite trend as they have stabilized to some extent. While the volatility of the Central and Eastern European party systems is still a lot higher than in Western Europe, it is noteworthy that the volatility between established parties has actually decreased in these countries in the crisis period.
)PXFWFSGVSUIFSSFTFBSDIJTOFFEFEUPDPNQBSFUIFFêFDUTPGUIFDSJ-sis on the structuration of political conflict within and across European regions. In the light of the already apparent diverging trajectories found CZ)FSOÈOEF[BOE,SJFTJ UIF(SFBU3FDFTTJPONBZSFTVMUJONBKPS transformations in specific countries or regions, but it may not lead to a ‘new era of democratic politics’ as hypothesised in the introduction of this book. Taking a long-term view, we might rather observe a conver-gence of party systems in Europe. Lane and Ersson (1996: 130) already suggested some time ago that, in terms of volatility, fractionalization, and polarisation, the party systems of Eastern and Western Europe might have more in common than things that set them apart. While consider-ing it still premature to speak of convergence of the party systems in the two parts of Europe, the contrasting experience of Western and Central and Eastern European party systems during the Great Recession suggest that the long-term trends may bring them closer together.
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