WINLOSE · The Winner-Loser Divide?: A Comparative Analysis of Voting Behaviour and Cleavage Formation in Post-Communist Party Systems

The Winner-Loser Divide?: A Comparative Analysis of Voting Behaviour and Cleavage Formation in Post-Communist Party Systems

This project investigated the hypothesis that party politics in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia has been driven by a divide between ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ which emerged during the first two decades of the post-communist era. The notion of an emerging winner-loser ‘cleavage’ – a durable political divide between distinct social groups, represented by different political parties - was an element of political discourse from the very beginning of post-communist transition, drawing on broader theories about the impact of the ‘new politics’ of globalization on political cleavages in the established party systems of Western Europe. The project builds on this literature theoretically, methodologically and empirically. The project sought to provide answers to two questions. Did winner-loser cleavages emerge during the first 25 years of transition? What explains their emergence or non-emergence? It investigated these questions from two theoretical perspectives: a bottom-up theory according to which the winner-loser divide became increasingly relevant to post-communist electorates as structural groups coalesced and became more conscious of their status and interests, and a top-down theory, according to which the emergence of winner-loser cleavages can be explained by the actions of political entrepreneurs who acted to shape or reshape lines of competition in accordance with this divide, causing cohorts of winners and losers to adjust their ideological preferences. To test these hypotheses, the project used a multi-stage comparative analysis of the supply side and demand side of electoral politics in the four countries of interest, using survey data on socio-demographics, political attitudes and voting behaviour. The first set of empirical chapters analysed the emergence of ‘political potentials’: correspondences of ‘demand side’ attitudes and ‘supply side’ party positions conducive to the emergence of cleavages. At the demand side, objective winner and loser groups were more likely to identify subjectively as winners and losers and with distinct ideological stances. However, these differences were not particularly large and the evidence pointed to little change over the period of analysis. At the supply side, both economic and GAL/TAN (green/alternative/libertarian versus traditional/authoritarian/nationalist) issues were of significant importance in the political appeals of parties over the period of analysis. However, this did not translate into the consistent articulation in all four countries of broad ideological divisions which encompassed both dimensions of political conflict. Collectively, parties did not provide an unambiguous signal to voters that the main line of political competition ran between market liberalism and cultural modernisation on the one hand, and interventionism and traditionalism on the other. The second set of empirical chapters examined voting behaviour. The analysis of social structure and political preferences largely confirmed existing findings about the impact of objective social status on voting behaviour, with education in particular distinguishing between groups of those who voted for different parties. There was also evidence to support the importance of subjective social status, with the happiness, contentment and sense of efficacy experienced by voters influencing both voting behaviour and electoral turnout. The impact of ideological values is less clear. While ideological issues certainly had an impact on voting behaviour, particularly in the Czech Republic (economic) and Poland (GAL/TAN), the vague identifications of left and right had a more consistent impact on the presence of divides between groups of voters. Overall findings indicate that while voters were often divided in important ways relevant to the winner-loser divide, these divides did not consistently develop into a clear winner-loser cleavage, for two main reasons. Firstly, the supply-side churn of parties and the failure of many of them to take clear and consistent stances on the two key ideological dimensions left voters without clear and consistent points of ideological orientation on one or more of those dimensions. From the perspective of voting behaviour, these countries’ publics were divided in important ways, but they were not consistently divided by the politics of the winner-loser divide. Secondly, analysis of the relationship between socio-demographics, attitudes and electoral turnout suggests that different rates of abstention among winners and losers helps to understand the failure of winner-loser divides to persist. With transition losers more likely to abstain (or at best to participate infrequently), the potential of the winner-loser divide to generate a lasting cleavage in these countries’ party systems was significantly diminished. The findings of the project suggest that the stabilisation of party systems in the region is hampered by the continued ideological flux of political parties on the one hand, and persistently high rates of non-voting on the other. While the socio-demographic distinctions identified by the winner-loser divide are associated with distinct tendencies in political attitudes, the party systems of the countries studied are only partially able to politicise those differences. These findings suggest that one particularly important path for further study concerns the determinants of electoral abstention, and in particular, whether the failure of parties to provide a broad enough range of ideological options is at least partly responsible for persistently low and demographically imbalanced turnout.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз