Critical junctures and the crystallization of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism

Abstract

A burgeoning literature documents the emergence of a new globalization cleavage in Western Europe, centered around the issues of immigration and European integration. We investigate to what extent the globalization cleavage has crystallized by studying the alignment of preferences regarding open borders, their connection to more fundamental elements in the normative component of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism, and the extent to which this links up to the organizational component through party choice. To do this, we use innovative items tapping into political priorities, values, understandings of democracy, and virtues in a cross-sectional comparative survey in Norway and the UK. We find that the globalization cleavage is significantly more developed in the UK than in Norway but lacks a solidified normative component in both. This implies that considerable opportunities remain for ideological entrepreneurs to either fortify or dilute this cleavage, even in the UK.

Issue framing, political identities, and public support for multilateral vaccine cooperation during Covid‐19

“…Apart from age and education, the strength of national identity is a key predictor of a Leave identity (Hobolt et al., 2021, p. 1484). In this sense, Brexit identities also relate to the rise of the cultural dimension in politics across Europe and North America (Hobolt et al., 2021, p. 1484) and to a broader cleavage that is reshaping public attitudes towards international cooperation (de Wilde et al., 2022, pp. 6–7; Hooghe & Marks, 2018, p. 125; Hooghe et al., 2019, p. 737).…”

“…This cleavage has been variously described as a ‘transnational cleavage’ (Hooghe & Marks, 2018), a divide between integration and demarcation (Kriesi et al., 2006), cosmopolitanism and communitarianism (de Wilde et al., 2019) or green, alternative, libertarian versus traditional, authoritarian, nationalist attitudes (Dassonneville et al., 2023; Hooghe et al., 2002). Although these different conceptualizations of the cleavage in identity politics are not identical, there is a significant overlap (see also de Wilde et al., 2022, pp. 1–2; Ghassim et al., 2022, pp.…”