Institutions and Issues, Values and Priorities
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INSTITUTIONS AND ISSUES, VALUES AND PRIORITIES: A RE-EXAMINATION OF PARTIES OF CULTURAL IDENTITY by JEFF WILLIAM JUSTICE, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN POLITICAL SCIENCE Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Lawrence Mayer Chairperson of the Committee Dennis Patterson Cherie Maestas David Lanoue Accepted John Borrelli Dean of the Graduate School December, 2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 would like to extend my thanks to the following individuals for their help and support in the writing of this dissertation: Dr. Lawrence Mayer. Texas Tech University Dr. Dennis Patterson. Texas Tech University Dr. Cherie Maestas, Florida State University Dr. David Lanoue. University of Alabama Dr. David McCrone, University of Edinburgh I would also like to acknowledge and thank the Graduate School of Texas Tech University for their support of this project through the Dissertation Summer Fellowship Program. I would like to thank my family for their unconditional love and support as I have worked my way though this degree program. There is no way I would have been able to make it this far without them. Lastly, I would like to give my thanks to my grandmother who insisted that I watch C-SPAN well before I was old enough to cast my first ballot. She wanted me to be aware of what govemment was doing. Little did she know that her wisdom would set me on this career path. I know she would be proud that I made it this far in my studies. ABSTRACT Current research on parties of cultural identity tends to classify them using unidimensional dichotomous means. However, nationalist parties tend to operate in multi-dimensional space, meaning that the single criterion on which they are often classified reduces them to the point where their classification ignores one or more of their vital elements. This dissertation establishes a two-dimensional classification scheme for nationalist political parties based on two of the variables most commonly used to classify them: The first establishes whether the party deliberately excludes others from its identity group. The second establishes the geopolitical identity and goal of the party: supporting an existing nation-state, a regionalist party that desires autonomy for the region, or a regionalist party that desires to withdraw the region from the nation-state. The dissertation focuses on the member-states of the European Union of the 1990s as well as those countries which were candidates for membership during this same time period. Upon classifying each viable nationalist party into a nationalist cleavage using the two-dimensional scale mentioned above, I engage in a series of models that examine the differences in each cleavage in terms of the demographics of party supporters, their ideological beliefs, their attitudes toward outsiders, their geopolitical identities, and the sources of their frustration (i.e., the state, the political system, or the people in government). Upon establishing the utility of the classification system, I then apply it as a means of predicting where a party in a given cleavage will fall on a given political issue. In this case, that issue is confidence in the European Union. HI TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES viii CHAPTERS 1. WHO ARE WE? DEFINING PARTIES 1 OF CULTURAL IDENTITY 2. THE LITERATURE ON CULTURAL 15 IDENTITY AND NATIONALISM The Bases of Group Identity 15 Classifying NationaUst Movements 17 Modemizafion, the State, and Nationalism 22 Nafionalism: Turning Identity into Behavior 25 The Postmaterialism Aspect of Nationalism 36 Conclusion 39 3. WESTERN EUROPE'S NATIONALIST PARTIES 40 A Two-Dimensional Classification System 40 The Parties of the Dissertafion 45 Conclusion 67 4. THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF EUROPEAN 68 NATIONALIST PARTIES Gender 71 Age 72 Education 74 Subjective Social Class 77 Demographics and Nafionalist Party Cleavages 79 Conclusion 83 IV 5. MATERIALISM, POSTMATERIALISM AND 85 EUROPEAN NATIONALIST PARTIES Postmaterialism and Nationalism 85 "Traditional Ideology" 94 Postmaterial Ideology: The New Left and the New Right 105 Conclusion 109 6. THE "TARGETS" OF NATIONALISM AND 114 NATIONALIST PARTY VOTING The Three Targets of Nationalism: The State, 114 The Govemment, and the Regime Taking Aim: The "Targets" and Vote Choice 126 Conclusion 139 7. EUROPEAN NATIONALIST PARTIES AND 140 THE EUROPEAN UNION A Brief Overview of the European Union 141 Nationalist Party Classes and Confidence in the EU 145 Other Factors Impacting Confidence in the EU 152 Conclusion 155 8. CONCLUSION: A NEW MODEL OF CLASSIFYING 159 PARTIES BY CLEAVAGE REFERENCES 163 APPENDIX 173 LIST OF TABLES 3.1 The Parfies of the Dissertation and their Classes 44 4.1 Nationalist Vote by Gender 71 4.2 Nationalist Vote by Age 73 4.3 Nationalist Vote by Educational Level 75 4.4 Nationalist Vote by Subjective Social Class 77 4.5 Logit Models on Nationalist Party Demographics 80 5.1 Inglehart's Materialist/Postmaterialist Scale 87 among Nationalist Parties 5.2 Logit Models on Inglehart's Materialist/Postmaterialist 90 Value Scale 5.3 European Nationalist Voters by Traditional 97 Left/Right Ideology 5.4 Logit Models of European Nationalist Voters by 98 Traditional Left/Right Ideology 5.5 European Nationalist Voters by Postmaterialist Ideology 106 5.6 Logit Models of European Nationalist Voters by 108 Flanagan's Postmaterialist Ideology 6.1 Logit Models on Targets of Nationalism: 128 Exclusive Statist Parties 6.2 Logit Models on Targets of Nationalism: 131 Exclusive Independentist Parties 6.3 Logit Models on Targets of Nationalism: 132 Non-Exclusive Autonomist Parties 6.4 Logit Models on Targets of Nationalism: 134 Non-Exclusive Independentist Parties VI 7.1 European Identity I47 7.2 Level of Confidence in the European Union 148 7.3 Ordinal Logit Models on Party Types and Level of Confidence 158 In the European Union VI1 LIST OF FIGURES 5.1 European Nationalist Parties by Traditional Ideology 95 5.2 European Nationalist Parties by Postmaterialist Ideology 105 6.1 Lack of Confidence Levels in Parliament, by Political Party 115 6.2 Lack of Confidence Levels in Parliament. 116 By Nationalist Party Cleavage 6.3 Unconventional Behavior among Nationalist Parties 119 6.4 Unconventional Behavior by Nafionalist Party Cleavage 120 6.5 Local and National Identity 123 6.6 Local and Nafional Identity by Nationalist Party Cleavage 124 Vlll CHAPTER 1 - WHO ARE WE? DEFINING PARTIES OF CULTURAL IDENTITY The general state of the literature places the origins of modem nationalism with the formafion of the modem nation-state, generally beginning with the French Revolution (Kohn. 1939; Deutsch, 1953; Hechter, 1975; Anderson, 1983; Gellner. 1983, 1997; Hobsbawm. 1990; Greenfeld. 1992; Kellas. 1998). However, national identity and nationalism experienced an explosion of growth throughout Europe in the Twentieth Century, especially in the post-World War II era. Prior to the war, nationalism manifested itself often in the form of violent movements as few countries allowed it to express itself through the ballot box. With the spread of democracy throughout the West following the war, it quickly found it to be another avenue in which it could promote itself. So why should we study nafionalist parties at all? Why care about them and what they do? As Rohrschneider (1993) put it. we should expect to see larger political parties move to take posifions that will swallow up smaller, fringe or single-issue parties. However, that expectation has not always come to pass, as nafionalist parties of all stripes continue to spring up all over Western Europe - and in larger numbers with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expansion of the European Union's geography and political powers - tapping into a strong form of group identity that other established more "mainstream'" parties fail to capture. For instance, take note of the 2002 French presidential elecfion, which the anti- immigrafion Front National actually took second place in the first round of balloting. pitting incumbent Jacques Chirac against ultranationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen and relegating Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin to the sidelines. Also consider the 1999 Austrian federal election in which Wolfgang Schiisscrs Christian Democrats turned to the Feiheilliche Partei Osterreichs [Austrian Freedom Party, or FPO], in order to form a majority govemment. The FPO is presently led by Jorg Haider, a man who has been quoted as admiring Adolf Hitler, and Haider himself has been twice elected governor of the Austrian province of Carinthia. There is also the British National Party, which has slowly gained a foothold in British politics through local elections, thus far. Nationalism sometimes forms an entire plane of political ideology within a given party system to the extent that the parties involved must be classified somewhere along this dimension. One major Euoprean example is the Spanish party system, which is best depicted on two dimensions, one being the traditional liberal/conservative dimension and the other a pro-Spain/pro-regionalist dimension. Another example on a regional level is the Northern Irish situation, a difficult one to classify at best, in which the four parties that gain the most votes in British and Northern Irish elections happen to have cultural group identity bases as their primary means of attracting votes. As of this writing, more than twenty parties of national identity have representation in national parliaments covering over half of the countries composing the European Union in the 1990s or that were offered the possibility of membership during that period. This includes parties that identify with existing nation-states as well as those who identify with subcultures within those nation-states.' The answer to the question of "why care" is simple, and yet it is also complex. These parties exist. They do draw votes. They do win seats in local, regional, and national representative bodies.