The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)
Cambridge University Press, 6/3/2004
EAN 9780521827997, ISBN10: 052182799X
Hardcover, 368 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
In an in-depth comparative and long-term analysis, first published in 2004, Daniele Caramani studies the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics. Using a great wealth of data on single constituencies in seventeen West European countries, he reconstructs the territorial structures of electoral support for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly fragmented politics in the early stages toward nation-wide alignments. Caramani provides a multi-pronged empirical analysis through time, across countries, and between party families. The inclusion in the analysis of all the most important social and political cleavages - class, state-church, rural-urban, ethno-linguistic and religious - allows him to assess the nationalizing impact of the class cleavage that emerged from national and industrial revolutions, and the resistance of preindustrial cultural factors to national integration. Institutional and socio-economic factors are combined with actor-centered patterns and differences between national types of territorial configurations of the vote.
Introduction
homogeneity and diversity in Europe
Part I. Framework
1. The structuring of political space
2. Data, indices, method
Part II. Evidence
3. Time and space
evidence from the historical comparison
4. Types of territorial configurations
national variations
5. The comparative study of cleavages and party families
Part III. Towards an Explanation
6. The dynamic perspective
national and industrial revolutions
7. The comparative perspective
social fragmentation and territoriality
Conclusion
from territorial to functional politics.