Existing studies on issue salience in Europe focus primarily on the rise of EU integration and immigration as the most dividing political topics of recent decades, while other issues receive far less attention. The cleavage theory, of which issue salience is an integral part, holds that political arenas of Western democracies have undergone two processes of cleavage change as reflected in changes in the most salient issue dimension. First, class-based issues of economic inequality and redistribution gave way to ‘postmaterialist cultural’ issues such as environment and morality (i.e. progressive stances on gender and sexuality) (Inglehart, 1977). Second, immigration and EU integration moved center stage and started to dominate political agendas (Kriesi et al., 2008). Whereas the two-stage character of cleavage transformation is widely acknowledged in the field (e.g. Bornschier, 2010; Häusermann and Kriesi, 2015), empirical studies still often use all non-economic issues together to capture the ‘new cultural cleavage’ that is believed to divide European populations. Empirical evidence for such a combination of cultural issues is, however, lacking, and recent studies rather suggest that morality might be losing salience, while immigration and EU integration are likely to grow in it (Pless et al., 2021).
This study addresses the outlined gaps in comparative research on issue salience in Europe and questions whether (1) economic issues have been overshadowed by cultural ones everywhere across Europe; (2) whether immigration has become the most salient dimension everywhere; and (3) whether other cultural issues follow the same trajectory. Using the Manifesto Project data on party programs from 27 European countries, I analyze time trends in the salience of five issue dimensions, one economic (i.e. economic inequality and redistribution) and four cultural (i.e. environment and morality, and immigration and EU), between 1980 and 2020. For each issue dimension in each country-year, I compute a national-level measure of salience by averaging the share of party programs devoted to a particular issue weighted by the election performance of the said party (Achterberg, 2006). Applying multilevel regression analysis, I then demonstrate that cultural issues have overshadowed economic ones only in the North and West of Europe, as economic matters are on the rise in the South and East. Looking inside the cultural dimension reveals different patterns for different cultural issues. Whereas immigration has been increasing in salience everywhere across Europe, this increase is far less spectacular in the South of Europe and in the Balkans. For EU integration, however, the increase in salience is significantly less pronounced. Finally, the salience of environment and morality has been declining across Europe. These results contribute to the literature on the evolution of cleavage politics across Europe and further highlight the need to differentiate between different types of cultural issues since not all of them increase in salience. Additionally, this study analyzes the regional differences in issue salience and, therefore, offers another perspective on whether Europe is growing together or apart.
