Häusermann, Kitschelt Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

The panel we propose would discuss the main arguments and findings of a book manuscript (currently under review with CUP) on the transformation of the left party spectrum, in particular the decline of Social Democracy and the role of green, radical left and left-libertarian parties in Western Europe. The performance and perspectives of left parties are a topic of major scholarly concern - think of the debates around the question whether social democratic parties have moved too much or too little towards economic liberalism, towards cultural identity-politics, or towards left-authoritarian positions. The book studies the reasons for the decline of Social Democracy and for the transformation of left party competition, the strategic options for social democratic parties, and the likely electoral outcomes of different programmatic orientations for left parties.

The book is edited by Herbert Kitschelt (Duke University) and Silja Häusermann (University of Zurich), and it contains chapters by a set of junior and senior experts on left parties and party system transformation from the US and Europe. The volume proposes a unified framework for the study of the left partisan field, and its chapters present the integrated findings of a three year long research project of the group of authors. The different chapters of the book answer a joint set of research questions with a variety of innovative methodological designs and data (including voter flow data, vote switching data, spatial data, panel study data, experimental survey data etc). Thereby, the integrated findings produce a robust set of insights on the reasons for the transformation of the left party field.

The book shows that explanations of social democratic decline based on an alleged "right-shift" of social democratic parties, or on an exodus of working class voters towards national-conservative parties are misleading. Social democracy has lost voters in all directions, but mostly towards other left-wing parties, notably green and left-libertarian parties. To reorient its electoral strategy, it can choose between four programmatic directions: new left, old left, centrist and left-national. The book shows that the left-national strategy is the least successful in the long run, whereas the centrist and new left strategies yield differential electoral success in the short- and the long-run. Of course, there are many more findings in the analyses of the volume, these are just a few examples to illustrate the kind of questions and findings we propose.

The book also makes three broader contributions to the study of the dynamics of party systems change. First, we show that it is critical to analyze party families within their ideological “sector”: gains and losses of a specific party family (such as social democratic parties) vis-à-vis other parties within their field and outside the field must be distinguished carefully, as electoral spaces become increasingly segmented and fragmented. Second, we highlight the use of data on citizens’ vote switching, ranking of party alternatives, as well as vignette survey studies as useful empirical evidence to identify the substantive and programmatic motives that drive voters’ choices between parties. Third, we incorporate analyses of social democratic parties’ strategic choices and their electoral consequences, a subject matter on which research has generated rather few empirical contributions. Our analyses illustrate the complex trade-offs (mainstream) parties have to negotiate: consequences of their strategic choices may be quite different for different constituencies of voters, but also for the parties themselves as compared to the impact on their ideological “sector”.

Four brilliant scholars have agreed to critically discuss the volume and its implications from different perspectives. Jim F. Adams (UC Davis) is an expert on parties’ electoral strategies and the study of their effects. Ruth Dassonneville’s work (University of Montréal) has made major contributions on electoral behavior and party competition. Peter A. Hall (Harvard University) studies the transformation of electoral politics in relation to the emerging knowledge economy. And Kimberly J. Morgan (George Washington University) is an expert on how parties strategically target constituencies with (social) policy proposals. Herbert Kitschelt and Silja Häusermann would participate in the panel and briefly react to the comments before Philipp Rehm would moderate an open discussion.

Book: Häusermann, Silja and Herbert Kitschelt (eds). Beyond Social Democracy: Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies. Under review with Cambridge University Press.
Authors: Tarik Abou-Chadi, Macarena Ares, Daniel Bischof, Björn Bremer, Jane Gingrich, Silja Häusermann, Johannes Karreth, Herbert Kitschelt, Thomas Kurer, Reto Mitteregger, Nadja Mosimann, Jonathan Polk, Philipp Rehm, Zeynep Somer-Topcu, Mathilde van Ditmars, Markus Wagner, Daniel Weitzel.

Sub Unit

• Division 15: European Politics and Society

Cosponsor

• Division 14: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Democracies

Chair

• Philipp Rehm Johns Hopkins University

Presenters

• James Adams University of California, Davis

• Ruth Dassonneville KU Leuven

• Peter A. Hall Harvard University

• Kimberly J. Morgan George Washington University

• Herbert Kitschelt Duke University

• Silja Haeusermann University of Zurich