What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved.

Although politicization has become a key concept in European integration studies, it is still contested whether, when and to what extent European issues have become politicized in domestic political arenas. This article contributes to this discussion both in conceptual and empirical terms. It uses a new multidimensional index of politicization to systematically trace the development of politicization in national election campaigns in five West European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland) from the 1970s to 2010. The findings provide clear evidence that Europe has indeed been politicized in the past decades. Moreover, two different paths towards such a politicization are identified. One of these paths is dominated by populist radical parties from the right, while the other path is shaped by the conflict between mainstream parties in government and opposition. On both paths, conflicts over membership play an important role and culturalidentitarian framing strategies are used.

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This paper starts from the premise that the politicization of Europe is indicative of a new structuring conflict that involves a set of processes which put the national political community under strain. This structuring conflict has been emerging long before the Euro and refugee crises. However, these crises may have reinforced and potentially reshaped public conflicts within and across countries. Therefore, the paper traces the politicization of Europe during national election campaigns in fifteen countries from the early 2000s up to 2017. The analysis focuses on the way the multiple crises have affected the level of politicization, its driving forces, and the location of European issues in the political space. Overall, the results indicate a substantive increase in politicization, but they also point to strong region and crisis-specific varieties which should be considered in scholarly discussions on the relative impact of domestic conflicts on the future course of European integration.

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