The electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long‐term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non‐mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further.

This paper studies the interactions between governments, challengers and third party actors in the context of 60 contentious policy episodes in 12 European countries during the Great Recession. More specifically, we focus on the endogenous dynamics that develop in the course of these episodes. Based on the combination of a new event dataset, which allows for the construction of action sequences, and a novel method (contentious episode analysis) to study the impact of actor‐specific actions on subsequent actions within a sequence, we test a set of hypotheses on the determinants of actors’ overall action repertoires within specific contexts. Overall, our results are more supportive of the interdependence of cooperation than of the interdependence of conflict: the repression‐radical mobilisation‐external legitimation of conflictive behaviour nexus is weaker than the concession‐cooperation‐mediation nexus. While the literature tends to focus on conflict dynamics, we find that there is a more systematic dynamics of cooperation in the course of contentious episodes.

This article links the consequences of the Great Recession on protest and electoral politics. It innovates by combining the literature on economic voting with social movement research and by presenting the first integrated, large‐scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. The economic voting literature offers important insights on how and under what conditions economic crises play out in the short‐run. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics of opposition in the two arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic grievances. More specifically, it is argued that economic protests act as a ‘signalling mechanism’ by attributing blame to decision makers and by highlighting the political dimension of deteriorating economic conditions. Ultimately, massive protest mobilisation should, thus, amplify the impact of economic hardship on the electoral losses of incumbents and mainstream parties more generally. The empirical analysis to study this relationship relies on an original semi‐automated protest event dataset combined with an updated dataset of electoral outcomes in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The results indicate that the dynamics of economic protests and electoral punishment are closely related and point to a destabilisation of European party systems during the Great Recession.

In this lecture I discuss the development of the social divisions in Western Europe and their translation into politics. I successively take up the three aspects embraced by the notion of ‘cleavages’— their structural base, the political values of the groups involved, and their political articulation. My main argument is that the decline of traditional cleavages does not necessarily signify the end of structuration of politics by social divisions. There is ample empirical evidence for the existence of a new social division between two segments of the new middle class, which has important consequences for politics. This new social division is shown to be closely linked to the new ‘value cleavage’ although it is not able to fully account for the enormous political implications which contrasting value–orientations have today. Finally, I suggest that the political articulation of both the transformed class structure and the new configuration of values is strongly shaped by the political legacy of traditional cleavages.

In the actor–centered institutionalist approach of Fritz Scharpf (1997), ‘actor constellations’ constitute the crucial link between substantive policy analysis and interaction-oriented policy research. This paper presents an attempt to conceptualize the ‘actor constellation’ in a given policy domain and to analyze it empirically with network analysis. The empirical context is provided by the Swiss energy policy elite in the late 1990s – an example of a policy domain in transition between two policy equilibria. Based on interviews with 240 of the core actors in this policy elite, the results show a characteristic antagonism between a pro–ecology and a pro–growth coalition. On the national level, the two coalitions are of comparable size and power, which explains the current impasse in the policy domain in question. Moreover, in a federalist state like Switzerland, the energy policy elite is not concentrated at the center, but the basic antagonism is reproduced in each region nationwide. Confirming the consensus character of Swiss politics, the different components of the two antagonist coalitions not only cooperate within, but also across coalitions. These cooperative ties and the presence of honest brokers, policy enterpreneurs, and heterogeneous interests within each coalition provide opportunities for new alliances, which may lead out of the current impasse in the more or less near future.

We present a number of concepts and hypotheses concerning the impact of the political opportunity structure on the mobilisation pattern of new social movements in Western Europe. The hypotheses refer to the general level of mobilisation in a given country, the general forms and strategies of action employed, the system level at which mobilisation is typically oriented and the development of the level of mobilisation across time. The hypotheses are tested in a comparative analysis of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The analysis reveals country-specific variations in the mobilisation patterns of new social movements, which are largely in line with the theoretical expectations and serve to confirm the relevance of the political process approach for the study of social movements.

On the basis of data on the Dutch peace movement, we study the relationship between traditional organizations of political intermediation such as parties, unions and churches with a new social movement on the local level. After having argued for the relevance of the institutional context, the general structure of new social movements and the particular structure of the movement under consideration with regard to this relationship, we first present evidence confirming our claims that we are dealing with new social movement. Then we show that the relationships in question are quite elaborate confirming the hypothesis that political activity within traditional organizations and new social movements is to some extent cumulative. More generally, the results imply that the development of the peace movement and other new social movements in the Netherlands is not indicating a diminishing legitimacy of the Dutch political parties.

Taking a political process approach to the study of social movements, we analyze the impact of the availability of direct democratic institutions on the action repertory of Swiss social movements. Comparing social movements in the German and the Latin parts of the country, we show that the availability of direct-democratic instruments induces most social movements to use them. This has a moderating impact on their action repertory. However, we have to relativize this general result in two ways. On the one hand, direct-democratic institutions are selective to the extent that they favour the mobilization of certain types of movements at the expense of others. On the other hand, very radical movements such as counter-cultural movements may refuse to rely on this type of instrument altogether. We also note that in a polity with an important direct-democratic opening, such movements have little legitimacy and are likely to be less successful than in a polity where no such opening exists at all, or where it provides only a limited access to the political system.

This article starts from the assumption that the current process of globalization or denationalization leads to the formation of a new structural conflict in Western European countries, opposing those who benefit from this process against those who tend to lose in the course of the events. The structural opposition between globalization ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ is expected to constitute potentials for political mobilization within national political contexts, the mobilization of which is expected to give rise to two intimately related dynamics: the transformation of the basic structure of the national political space and the strategic repositioning of the political parties within the transforming space. The article presents several hypotheses with regard to these two dynamics and tests them empirically on the basis of new data concerning the supply side of electoral politics from six Western European countries (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland). The results indicate that in all the countries, the new cleavage has become embedded into existing two‐dimensional national political spaces, that the meaning of the original dimensions has been transformed, and that the configuration of the main parties has become triangular even in a country like France.