It's All About Solidarity Stupid! How Solidarity Frames Structure the Party Political Sphere

Abstract

Inspired by Lipset and Rokkan, the field of political science has primarily focused on party oppositions as a derivative of historically anchored conflicts among social groups. Yet parties are not mere social mirrors; they are also active interpreters of social context. In a globalized era they deploy conflicting frames on how solidarity may be preserved, as recent work on populist welfare chauvinism shows. However, the role of party political agency in framing solidarity lacks an overarching framework. This article therefore proposes a Durkheimian model that takes the integrative pole of the conflict–integration dialectic seriously and distinguishes among group-based, compassionate, exchange-based and empathic frames. The authors test this solidarity framework in Flanders (Belgium) – a good case study due to its fragmented party system and increasing economic and cultural openness. The content analyses of party manifestos presented here suggest that a solidarity-based deductive approach to studying partisan competition is relevant because partisan differentiation along solidarity lines is growing; this evolution converges with similar inductive expert-based and issue-based findings.

Who has Shown Solidarity With Whom in the EU During the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020? Lessons for Teaching Solidarity to Students

“…Previous studies have used one of the aforementioned approaches to examine solidarity in times of crisis but rarely brought these approaches together (Baute et al, 2019;Lahusen, 2020;Thijssen & Verheyen, 2020). In an explorative fashion, the present study uses the data from the ECFR to compare the documented actions of solidarity with the publicly declared solidarity claims and thereby brings together the agency-oriented and discourse-oriented approach to solidarity.…”

Making sense of the ‘new normal’: The COVID-19 crisis in the communi- cation of the prime ministers of Ireland and New Zealand

“…Whether it was the global recession from 2007 onwards, the eurozone crisis, the migration crisis in Europe or the various protest movements across the globe (Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring) being addressed, the appeal to solidarity was strongly present in public debates (Wallaschek et al, 2020). It resonated in party manifestos (Thijssen & Verheyen, 2020) and parliamentary debates (Hobbach, 2019;Closa & Maatsch, 2014) as well as in offline and online media debates (Brändle et al, 2019;Trenz et al, 2020) and thereby demonstrated that public claims on solidarity may refer to any kind of crisis.…”

“…However, traditional fault lines have shifted due to contextual changes such as economic globalization, changing social structures, or the rise of new parties. Thijssen and Verheyen (2020) show that these structural transformations have led to the emergence of the new social and political fault line of solidarity which structures the political programme of all parties. Solidarity is thus no longer expressed exclusively by actors to the left of the political spectrum, but in various forms by all other party groupings as well.…”

“…New Zealand, on the other hand, was governed by a Labour-led coalition (together with the Green Party and the nationalist party New Zealand First) with the prime minister Ardern (in office since 2017). Previous studies on the effect of economic and cultural conflicts suggest that the divide between left and right parties (Thijssen & Verheyen, 2020;Kriesi et al, 2012) may impact the frequency and the manner in which heads of government refer to solidarity as part of their crisis communication. Nonetheless, we do not claim a causal relation due to the complex nature of such an unprecedented crisis (Kuehn, 2020).…”

All for One, and One for All? Analysing Party Positions on EU Solidarity in Germany in Challenging Times

“…First, while previous studies have investigated how the political orientation of citizens relates to their support or rejection of solidarity (Kiess and Trenz 2019), the analysis of party positions has so far received scant attention. If political parties are considered, more attention has been paid to this issue in studies examining parliamentary and public debates or party manifestos (Closa and Maatsch 2014; Thijssen and Verheyen 2022; Wallaschek 2020a). Second, Alessandro Pellegata and Francesco Visconti (2022) highlighted that future research on European solidarity should consider various types of solidarity in the same research design to compare and explain differences in conceptualization.…”