Globalizing West European politics: dimensions of comparative analysis

Has globalization resulted in a fundamental change of West European politics, its cleavage structures, parties and party systems? Although globalization has been one of the most important topics in social science research over the past decade, this question has thus far been widely neglected. In political science, most attention has been paid to the empirical analysis of the consequences of economic globalization on national state capacities and policies (e.g. Scharpf and Schmidt 2000a, 2000b; Weiss 2003) and to efforts at establishing new transnational institutions and organizations able to regulate effectively a rapidly globalizing capitalism (Zürn 1998; Held et al. 1999; Held 2004; Slaughter 2004; Grande and Pauly 2005). The impact of globalization on politics has received hardly any attention. This holds true in particular for political parties. While there are some studies on the reactions of interest groups to globalization (Zürn and Walter 2005; Streeck et al. 2006) and on the transnational organization of social movements (della Porta, Kriesi and Rucht 1999; Smith and Johnston 2002; Tarrow 2005; della Porta and Tarrow 2005), a systematic comparative analysis of the consequences of globalization on political cleavage structures, political parties and party systems is missing. Conventional wisdom still holds that political parties, their ideological profiles, their organizational capacities and their strategic interactions are all determined by domestic factors.