Dealignment and Accountability in Europe since the 1980s

The decline of cleavage politics (Franklin 1992) enabled once close linkages between parties and social groups to give way to what Dalton (1988) labeled the "new politics" of issue voting. A focus on issues permits tracking of whether the parties voters support are proposing the policies that they (the voters) prefer. Holding parties to account for representational failures would inevitably result in voters abandoning parties that had disappointed them. So the dealignment of party systems that has been widely observed should logically have accompanied an increase in accountability. In my proposed paper I would investigate party congruence with voters in left-right terms over the period of a quarter century since the late 1980s. By that time the decline of cleavage politics had supposedly run its course almost everywhere; however, I will distinguish between cohorts of voters socialized under the earlier ethos of frozen social cleavages and cohorts socialized under the "new politics" of issue voting so as to be able to assess whether the decline of cleavage politics permitted a rise in electoral accountability -- and whether that development is still visible today in a different relationship between parties and voters among "new politics" versus "old politics" cohorts. My analysis will be conducted at the country-cohort-level where I can account for change in congruence using Error Correction models. Among new politics cohorts I expect to see a generally greater willingness to hold parties to account for any growing mismatch in congruence between party left-right location and voter left-right location. I will also see whether holding parties to account in this way enables parties to adjust policy positions in light of voter feedback. I also hope to be able to investigate which particular parties (distinguishing small new extreme parties from others) adjust their left-right positions in response to signals from voters.