Single title
Intro
Society is changing. There is a strong trend towards individualisation. This is
mirrored in various developments, and among the most significant of these are
changes in voting behaviour and in the electorate itself. This paper illustrates the
reasons for these changes and gives advice on possible solutions.
Core voters: A romantic dream?
It is election day. Father, mother, son and daughter are sitting at the breakfast
table in their Sunday best. Having finished reading the Sunday papers, they
leave together to attend church. Then they walk from the church to the polling station, meeting some neighbours on the way. They chat about newspaper
reports and the Saturday night entertainment on television, which each family
would have watched together. They generally vote for one of the people’s
parties. Then the parents go off to spend Sunday afternoon in trade union
meetings, engaging in parish work or in club activities. And the children play
together.
This romantic image of an election Sunday is hardly applicable to Europe
these days. Many of the voting pensioners, families, single parents, singles,
patchwork families and immigrants would have cast their vote by post before
election day. Instead of jointly watching the Saturday night family entertainment
on TV, they will have viewed different digital cable channels or used a streaming
service to watch TV. Many would have surfed the Internet on their tablets at the
same time. If they had sought to keep up with the news at all, it would have
been from online media and TV, which do not overlap to a great extent.
Neighbours hardly know one another, and there are few common points of
reference to stimulate conversation. Voluntary work in churches, trade unions
and clubs are also increasingly characterised by temporary commitment and
project-based involvement.
The transformed electorate
There is a clear understanding of the long-term social developments which have
changed voters and therefore voter behaviour so fundamentally over recent
decades. In the political party system, this social transformation manifests itself
particularly in the loss of long-term party allegiance and its power to influence
people’s conduct. As is the case for trade unions and churches, membership is
declining, officials are ageing and few new people are joining. Since the
democratic transformation, levels of party allegiance have been low in countries
in Central and Eastern Europe. It would appear that the dynamic and frequently
fragmented party systems of the new EU member states are increasingly setting
the trend for development in the old member states.
Against this backdrop it is remarkable that traditional positions have
continued to play such a large role in the analyses and discussions of election
results and voter behaviour. No interpretational approaches are yet available to
gain a true picture of the transformed electorate and of the associated impact on
election results and the party landscape. Over a long period, societies
throughout Europe have been undergoing noticeable changes which have
undermined previously existing certainties with respect to voters, the underlying
reasons for voter behaviour, and developments in party systems and in
government compositions. Yet despite this, many commentators and analysts
are still primarily trying to identify ‘core voters’, ‘camps’ and ‘milieux’.
New parties come and go
Analysts and political planners who still work with conceptions of ideologically
motivated core voters disregard the fact that new parties are forming and
disappearing again in Europe, that recently formed parties are achieving good
election results within weeks, and that even in the rigid British multiparty system
there has been a coalition government in place for some time and an increasing
number of relevant parties. In many EU member states, people’s parties from the
centre–right and centre–left now attract support from less than half the voting
public. The European Parliament too acquired broader fringes and a narrower
centre at the last European elections. Many political analysts run the risk of
working on the basis of an outdated model of European societies, which no
longer matches the realities in many respects. This is reflected in the efforts still
made by political actors and analysts to pigeonhole on the basis of left–right
criteria new phenomena such as the Italian Five Star Movement, the Slovenian
Modern Centre Party, the German Pirate Party or the Alternative for Germany.
Within the parties too, the classic election Sunday described above, which
may have existed in the 1970s, appears to continue to be a generally accepted
ideal or at least a romantic notion. During many discussions between party
members and party officials all across Europe, the parties are still frequently
called upon to make greater efforts to return to the proven concepts of
membership parties with a clear ideological orientation.
When reviewing election results, many party representatives mistakenly
assume that voters ‘belong’ to them. Seen from that perspective, losses are then
frequently interpreted as meaning that the voters ‘belonging’ to the party have
merely ‘moved away’ and could be made to ‘return to the fold’ by the party
repositioning itself with respect to certain issues. Citizens’ freedom in deciding
where to cast their votes is left out of the equation.
In contrast with this viewpoint, the continuation of long-term trends towards
the extensive individualisation of society that is apparent within the EU clearly
suggests that other forces are at work. Permanent identification with a particular
party is either on a continuous decline or non-existent. The picture is
characterised by voter indecision, low turnouts and an ever greater willingness
on the part of voters to experiment.
Where is the core electorate?
The electorate and the party system are experiencing ever greater changes.
During national elections, most European voters cast their votes for a different
party from the one they voted for in the previous election. Many voters do not
make up their mind about which party to vote for until shortly before polling
day. There are large voter shifts, and conditions are favourable to the sudden
emergence of new parties. These movements produce great uncertainties and
risks in Europe, which are expected to play an even larger role during future
elections. Assuming that current trends will continue, it appears likely that, in the future,
achieving good election results will depend less on parties making efforts to
appeal to who they mistakenly believe are their ‘core’ voters. Instead, it will be
important to convince floating voters anew every time. This means that each
campaign will be a competition to appeal to all voters.
In individualistic societies that are devoid of ideologies to a large extent,
achievements in solving problems as part of government action will be the main
means of convincing voters. Modern voters want parties to solve their individual
problems, not to explain the world to them. Taking up positions based on
ideology in the political debate runs the risk of fragmentation under these
circumstances. Due to the demographic development if nothing else, parties will
have to make efforts to attract new voters just to stand still in terms of electoral
results. Great triumphs and disastrous failures frequently lie close together, given
volatile electorates.
The numerous new parties created in Europe over recent years—you have
only to look at the rapid rise and fall of the Pirate Party in Germany—
demonstrate above all that declining identification with parties, voter indecision
and the fading importance of ideological orientation mean that it is becoming
ever easier in Europe to found a new party and achieve good results within a
short time. Unfortunately, European elections often perform an incubator role, as
party allegiance traditionally plays an even smaller role in that context and voter
turnout is lower in what are considered second-order elections. In many
countries, a volatile electorate encourages the arrival and departure of new
political parties, many of which resist traditional classification on the left–right
spectrum.
This scenario produces an important realization for political planning. If the
rise of new parties is first and foremost a consequence of volatile and
increasingly non-aligned, highly heterogeneous electorates, then it is an illusion
based on past performance if conventional parties think that they can ‘win back’
voters who have abandoned them for new parties by adopting certain positions
on the left–right spectrum. Instead, long-term trends indicate that it is very likely
that new parties will continue to appear and disappear rapidly because
individualistic, non-ideological voters will be increasingly swinging between
parties and be open to experiments in voting for different parties. Against the
backdrop of a highly heterogeneous electorate, taking up uncompromising
positions with respect to certain issues will be more likely to encourage
fragmentation rather than stabilization. Under these circumstances, people’s
parties will have to take up integrative rather than confrontational political
positions. Given the conditions of an individualistic society, the frequently
quoted ‘hard line’ or entrenched ideological stances are only likely to produce
fragmentation, fundamentalism and marginalization.
Personalities and problem-solving more important than party ideology
However, despite the long-term trend towards the rapidly advancing individualization
of society, it appears to be possible for a party to appeal to and
represent society in all its diversity. This has been illustrated not least by the
election results of the CDU/CSU1 in Germany and the fact that its approval rating
has held steady at over 40 % for years (Wolfram 2015a, b). But people’s parties
will obviously have to undergo significant changes to achieve this goal. The
recipe for success does not appear to be a return to old traditions but the
beginning of something new instead. Winning 41.5 % of the vote in an election
in 2013 (Wolfram 2015a) is simply a totally different challenge from achieving a
similar result back in 1976 (Wolfram 2015b). The CDU/CSU did not win 41.5 % of
the vote in the federal elections because it returned to old recipies but because
under Angela Merkel the party did something new.
Long-term allegiances and ideological orientation are of less importance to
parties in individualistic societies than the impact of personalities and the
demonstration of concrete problem-solving capabilities. In the new and still
changing circumstances, the latter also suggests that successful action while in
government is the most promising way to strengthen the standing of people’s
parties.
It appears that, above, all the effects of personalization have the capability to
stabilize parties faced with a volatile electorate. Integrative leaders, who can
convince the party’s own membership as well as having charisma that impresses
the heterogeneous segments of wider society, can help parties to gain greater
appeal. The successful parties of the future will not leave the development of
these leaders to chance. The early identification of talented individuals, efforts to
foster their talents and their development, as well as the assignment of
responsibilities to them, are becoming important factors in the survival of the
political parties. This idea of purposeful personnel development frequently
stands in contradiction to the existing selection and decision-making processes
within the parties.
What applies to personnel also applies to political issues; in future, parties will
have to increase their efforts to find processes that enable positioning and
decision-making, taking into account not only the party’s homogenous
membership but also the increasingly heterogeneous society. Modern parties
will likely be characterized by efforts to reach out to non-members, from regular
targeted surveys to co-decision rights. The reality of political parties will also
increasingly involve open lists, preliminary elections, public candidate hearings
and open forums on specific issues.
Problem-solving capabilities can only be demonstrated when the parties are
capable of picking up on the problems that are relevant to their very diverse
voters and devising approaches to solve those problems. If the people’s parties
in particular want to avoid being left behind by social changes, they must be
capable of extending their reach into all segments of an individualistic society.
This is where they encounter a serious problem. While society is changing at an
ever faster pace, the rate of change at the organisational level of the political
parties has lagged behind. This applies similarly to churches, trade unions and
other major organisations. To date, the parties in Europe have not changed
sufficiently to reflect phenomena such as the rapid changes in working practices,
the increasing digitisation of everyday activities and changed expectations with
respect to social engagement. The injection of new blood into the membership
and the ranks of party officials is not keeping pace with social change. At the
same time, the forms of organisation and participation of political parties in
Europe, which have not changed in decades in many cases, have not allowed the
parties to tailor their offering to members with very different demands, different
time budgets, different interests in issues, and different qualifications and
competences. There is still generally one participation model for all.
Conclusion
The successful parties of the future will have to offer their members different
membership models. These could range from passive membership and classic
participation in the local association to purely issue-based involvement and
virtual association structures to temporary involvement in individual projects.
Purposeful mentoring for new party members, new member officers in the
parties, and trial and premium memberships will soon be a matter of course.
Established European parties would be well advised to recognise the antiparty
parties of the populists, the unpopularity of political parties and the
protest behaviour of many voters as indications that the accelerating social
change makes it necessary for them to contemplate the consequences for their
internal forms of organisation and participation. This places the par ties in a
paradoxical situation. They claim to be involved in shaping social change, but
the parties are themselves driven by social changes that they can neither steer
nor undo.
The ability of political parties in Europe, and particularly the people’s parties,
to achieve substantial success will depend to a very large extent on their
capability to keep adapting to social developments. The parties’ flexibility in
issues, organisation and participation is increasingly turning into a decisive
success factor for political stability.
References
- Wolfram, N. (2015a). Parties and elections in Europe: Germany.
- Wolfram, N. (2015b). Parties and elections in Europe: Germany.
