Radical Left Voters in Western Europe

Raul Gomez, Luis Ramiro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000728576
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Radical Left Voters in Western Europe explores who votes for Radical Left Parties in contemporary Western Europe, and why.

Once considered a relic of the past which was doomed to disappear in affluent societies, Radical Left Parties were able to survive unprecedented electoral crises in the 1980s and 1990s to become a stable and significant feature of contemporary West European politics. Despite this, our knowledge of the electorate of contemporary Radical Left parties is extremely limited. To fill this gap, this book analyzes the radical left electorate in 17 West European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) for a period of 18 years (2000–18). The research combines data from multiple sources (surveys, country-level data, and party-level data) to show how, amidst social and political change, Radical Left Parties have been able to maintain a relatively sizeable and clearly identifiable electorate with fairly similar socio-demographic and attitudinal features. Moreover, the book argues that in order to explain electoral support for Radical Left Parties it is important to consider not only voter characteristics but also the characteristics of the parties themselves and of the political and economic context in which they compete for votes.

This book will be of interest to scholars of comparative politics, political sociology, electoral behaviour, and political parties.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of figures
• List of tables
• 1 Introduction. Radical left parties in Western Europe and their electorates: decline, transformation, and persistence
• 2 Explaining support for radical left parties: a framework for analysis
• 3 The social basis of radical left parties: social stratification and the radical left in contemporary Western Europe
• 4 Values, political attitudes, and policy positions of radical left parties’ voters: a distinctively progressive constituency
• 5 Non-electoral political participation and civic engagement of radical left voters: a mobilized electorate
• 6 The effect of the political, institutional, and socio-economic context: economic crises and political discontent as factors fostering support for the radical left
• 7 Parties’ behaviour, party competition, and voter support for the radical left: the importance of parties’ policy positions
• 8 Conclusion. Explaining voter support for radical left parties in Western Europe: the role of individual and contextual factors
• Bibliography
• Index