Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class: New Voting Patterns

ISBN-13: 9783030462383 / Angielski / Twarda / 2020 / 111 str.

Line Rennwald

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction

Social democratic parties as children of the industrial revolution 

Re-examining the class base of the electorate for social democracy

Social democracy in crisis: adding a piece to the puzzle of understanding a complex transformation

Plan of the book

Chapter 2: A reflection on classes; a reflection on parties

Taking sociology seriously: social class to capture important differences in the labour market

Taking politics seriously: The role of political parties in class mobilisation

Taking history seriously: Social democracy as a workers' party, but not only as such

A note: A ‘working-class party’ is more than a working-class electorate

Using the Oesch class schema to study the transformation of social democracy

Chapter 3: Were social democratic parties really more working-class in the past? 

Conceptualising the relationship between social democracy and social classes

Social democracy as hybrid working-class parties in the 1970s

Dominance over the working-class vote

Summing up 

Chapter 4: The class basis of social democracy at the beginning of the twenty-first century

Small and large breaks with the working class

The new fragmentation of the working-class vote

Mobilising the working class and allied classes

Summing up 

Chapter 5: Parties' changing political projects and workers' political attitudes

Bringing parties back in

Between pro-redistributive and anti-immigration worker preferences in the 1970s

Continuity in class preferences in the 2010s

Summing up 

Chapter 6: Renewing social democracy by re-mobilising the working class?

Fragmentation in the working-class vote and the de-proletarianisation of social democracy

Continuity in preferences; changes in parties' political offers

Should workers be mobilised at all?

How should workers be mobilised?

O autorze

Line Rennwald currently works on the ERC Advanced Grant “Unequal Democracies” at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She previously held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Lausanne and the European University Institute.

Blurb

This open access book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social democratic parties face competition on multiple fronts for their core electorate – and not only from radical right parties. Starting from a reflection on ‘working-class parties’ and using a sophisticated class schema, the book paints a nuanced and diversified picture of the trajectory of social democracy that goes beyond a simple shift from working-class to middle-class parties. Following a detailed description, the book reviews possible explanations of workers' new voting patterns and emphasizes the crucial changes in parties' ideologies. It closes with a discussion on the role of the working class in social democracy's future electoral strategies.

Line Rennwald currently works on the ERC Advanced Grant “Unequal Democracies” at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She previously held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Lausanne and the European University Institute.