Guidelines for Interpretation

Part III combines the three dimensions of variation – time, space (countries), and cleavages (party families) – along which evidence has been described in Part II and introduces a series of explanatory factors based on the three dimensions of the structuring of political spaces displayed in the theoretical scheme sketched in Figure 1.1 (Chapter 1):

• State Formation: (1) Processes of centralization in opposition to cultural resistance from ethnically and religiously distinct peripheries; (2) state–church relationships and secularized political cultures of nation-builders (National Revolution).

• Democratization: Development of mass politics and party competition with the progressive extension/equalization of voting rights to the working (and peasant) population mobilized during the Industrial Revolution.

• Nation-Building: Differentiated patterns of cultural standardization versus social fragmentation, with religious and ethnic resistance leading to differentiated center–periphery relationships.

The explanatory factors introduced in this part of the book are meant to account for the variations in the levels of integration and types of territorial configurations of national electorates and party systems in Europe. The scheme attempts to simplify a very complex story and considers two types of variations. The first are time variations – that is, the general pattern toward the nationalization of politics in Europe. This aspect focuses on the commonalities between national cases. The second are cross-national variations – that is, differences between countries in regard to the level of nationalization. This aspect focuses on the resistance to – and deviations from – the main evolution toward nationalization.