The Reshaping of West European Party Politics

Talk by Christoffer Green-Pedersen, University of Aarhus

Long gone are the times when class-based political parties with extensive membership dominated politics. Instead, party politics has become issue-based according to the interpretation by Green-Pedersen’s latest book “The Reshaping of West European Party Politics”. In the book, Green-Pedersen develops a new issue incen­tive model of party competition, relying on a top-down perspective which emphasizes issue ownership and coalition seeking behavior by mainstream parties. Empirically, he documents the ebb and flow of party competition on five key contested issues (immigration, European integration, the environment, education and health care) across seven Western European countries from the 1980s onward.