Getting the Balance Right? Party Competition on Immigration and Conflicting Ideological ‘Pulls’

Abstract

Will a plurality of cleavages ‘pull’ parties in different directions? Are these strains particularly troublesome when competing on issues that lack an obvious dimensional fit? Are some parties more likely than others to experience these tensions? And does it matter? While the essence of the party‐political space has received substantial coverage, less attention is paid to the effects that multidimensionality may have on issue competition. Comparing British and Swedish parties, this article analyses how any contradictory positions have been negotiated, and when such tensions are likely to emerge.

Immigration attitudes among Western and Eastern European MPs: social identity, economic aspects and political ideology

“…To protect their traditional working class constituency against these pressures economic left wing might be more prone to adopt skeptical attitudes toward immigration. In contrast, advocates of market mechanism may favor immigration as it increases competitiveness of the economy for its provision of inexpensive labor (Odmalm and Super 2014a : 304).…”

“…Some authors pointed to the immigration dilemma by socialist and social democratic parties (Carvalho and Ruedin 2018 ; Odmalm and Super 2014a ). On the one hand, left-wing parties traditionally advocate cosmopolitanism, solidarity and liberal sociocultural values, which triggers positive sentiment toward immigration.…”

Coming to Terms with the European Refugee Crisis

“…Over recent decades, the cleavage structure that well described the "frozen" party systems of the postwar period in western Europe (Lipset and Rokkan 1967) gave way to a national cleavage pitting the winners of globalization and European integration against its losers (Kriesi et al 2008(Kriesi et al , 2012Hooghe and Marks 2018). Within this integration-demarcation divide that manifests itself both in public attitudes and in political competition, immigration, rendered highly salient by the refugee crisis, can be regarded as a sort of "super-issue" with a potential to activate cultural and economic grievances simultaneously (Odmalm and Super 2014).…”

“…However, the political representation offered by political parties is likely to be highly imperfect, ridden with conflicting pressures on parties in a multidimensional political competition (Odmalm and Super 2014). Especially center-left parties are expected to feel the pinch (Hinnfors, Spehar, and Bucken-Knapp 2012; Abou-Chadi and Krause 2020), as they are trapped between the principle-based expectations of a leftliberal electorate and the threat of an exodus to RRPs of their traditional working-class voters.…”