Democratic Defense and the Socio-Cultural Dimension of Political Competition: Mobilization, Identifies and enclosure

Cleavage theory argues for the emergence of a sociocultural dimension of political competition in Western Europe, which cuts across traditional dimensions of class and religion. This cleavage is variously described as the univeralism-particularism (Bornschier 2010, Bornschier et al 2024), integration-demarcation (Kriesi 1998, 2012) or Green Alternative Libertarian-Traditional Authoritarian Nationalist (GAL-TAN) (Hooghe and Marks, 2018 and 2025) cleavage. One central puzzle in the literature is how this new cleavages has come about in the absence of the dense organizational networks in civil society which profoundly shaped political behavior for traditional class and religious cleavages (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Bartolini and Mair, 1990). Drawing on studies pointing to protest politics as a constitutive arena for new cleavages (eg Kriesi et al 2012, Hutter 2012), this paper examines the role of mobilization for democratic defense by opponents of radical right populist parties in Hungary, Poland, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Denmark. It uses party data from the CHES, V-Dem, and protest and political claims data from the Initiatives Opposing Populist Parties in Europe dataset (Bourne et al, 2024 Harvard Dataverse), More specifically, the paper explores how patterns of mobilization and claim-making by political parties and civil society actors opposing radical right populist parties correspond to these broader patterns of conflict. It asks firstly, whether patterns of mobilization map onto the socio-cultural dimension of political competititon. It does so by examining whether political parties positioned closer to the GAL poles of socio-cultural political conflict mobilize against radical right populist parties - whether in governmental, parliamentary and protest arenas - more extensively than centrist and other parties. It then considers the role of polarization and articulation of cleavage-based identities. It does so by examining whether the prevalence of polarizing, demonizing, anti-populist claims are more prevalent for parties with stronger GAL positions than others. And finally, it explores mobilization for democratic defense and processes of social enclosure consolidating cleavage-based social identities. It does so by examining whether parties with stronger GAL positions are more likely to form social networks with civil society actors using similar polarizing, demonizing anti populist frames instead of other justificatory frames.