Parties and Protests in Crisis-Hit Europe: Continuity and Change in the Structure of Political Conflict Endre Borbáth Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Florence, 6 December 2018 European University Institute Department of Political and Social Sciences Parties and Protests in Crisis-Hit Europe: Continuity and Change in the Structure of Political Conflict Endre Borbáth Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute Examining Board Prof. Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute (Supervisor) Prof. Dorothee Bohle, European University Institute Prof. Tim Haughton, University of Birmingham Prof. Jan Rovny, Paris Institute of Political Studies © Endre Borbáth, 2018 No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permis- sion of the author Researcher declaration to accompany the submission of written work Department of Political and Social Sciences - Doctoral Programme I Endre Borbáth certify that I am the author of the work Parties and Protests in Crisis-Hit Eu- rope: Continuity and Change in the Structure of Political Conflict. I have presented for exam- ination for the Ph.D. at the European University Institute. I also certify that this is solely my own original work, other than where I have clearly indicated, in this declaration and in the thesis, that it is the work of others. I warrant that I have obtained all the permissions required for using any material from other copyrighted publications. I certify that this work complies with the Code of Ethics in Academic Research issued by the European University Institute (IUE 332/2/10 (CA 297). The copyright of this work rests with its author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This work may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. This authorisation does not, to the best of my knowledge, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that this work consists of 57 375 words. Statement of inclusion of previous work: I confirm that chapter four was jointly co-authored with Swen Hutter and I contributed 50% of the work. I confirm that chapter five was jointly co-authored with Theresa Gessler and I contributed 50% of the work. Signature and date: September 28, 2018 Abstract Post-2008 developments in European politics have reopened the debate on the extent to which we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of patterns of party competition and protest mobilization. Two phenomena in particular have drawn attention: the success of new parties and the rise of movement-like mobilization. Despite the attention devoted to them, it is un- clear whether these developments have transformed the underlying programmatic structure and patterns of mobilization in European societies. Therefore, the dissertation examines the structure of political conflict in countries from northwestern, southern and eastern Europe, from the perspective of: (1) party system stability and; (2) the interaction between electoral and protest mobilization. The article-based dissertation is composed of four chapters, each with a separate empirical analysis of one aspect of the over-arching theme of the changing structure of political conflict. The first two empirical chapters examine party system stability by distinguishing between the programmatic and organizational dimensions. The first examines the interaction between the programmatic and the organizational dimensions of party system stability through a compara- tive analysis of fifteen European democracies across the three regions. The chapter presents four ideal-typical scenarios: stable systems, instability, systems with ephemeral parties and systems with empty party labels. The second empirical chapter offers a case study of party competition in Romania, to show the role played by political issues centred on reforming de- mocracy and fighting corruption in maintaining programmatic instability and helping main- stream parties survive. Both chapters rely on similar methods and are based on ‘core sentence analysis’ of issue salience and party positions as presented by two national newspapers. The third and the fourth chapters challenge the conventional approach of examining electoral competition as a self-contained arena of mobilization. Both chapters provide a comparative analysis of political conflict in light of the interaction between the electoral and the protest arena. The third chapter focuses on party sponsored protests and presents the type of parties which most frequently rely on protest mobilization. The chapter relies on an original large-n protest event dataset collected by the POLCON project across 30 European democracies, a subset of which contains events linked to political parties. The chapter shows that the typical protest party is: in opposition; ideologically on the economic left and cultural right; belongs to a radical party family and; has a mass-party organization. Protest parties are shown to be mostly present in new democracies and thrive in the context of a weak civil society. The fourth empirical chapter examines the interaction between the two arenas from the per- spective of protest participation. Based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey and hierarchical logit models, the chapter shows that unlike in countries from north- western and southern Europe, in eastern European countries right-wing citizens are more like- ly to protest than their left-wing counterparts. This ideological difference is explained by re- gime access, both historically and in the present. The chapter finds that partisanship and gov- ernment ideology contribute to differences in the composition of protest. Keywords: party system stability, protest politics, programmatic structure, economic crisis V VI Acknowledgements Being at the European University Institute (EUI), I was fortunate to turn the relatively lonely task of writing a PhD dissertation into an experience enriched by the input of many others. Central to this were the memorable conversations with and the extensive written feedback by my supervisor, Hanspeter Kriesi. Hanspeter never got tired of reading newer and newer itera- tions of the papers presented here and his feedback has been essential to complete the disser- tation. I would also like to thank the members of the committee. The feedback from each member of the committee helped with framing the contribution of the thesis as well as with more specific issues in the individual chapters. I would like to thank my two co-authors. Over the years, Swen turned into a second supervi- sor with an office next door, to whom I could always turn for immediate feedback. For the patience, encouragement, and million ways of support I received over the years from Theresa, I am severely indebted. Her belief in my work helped me through some of the more difficult periods during my time in Florence. I would like to thank the numerous colleagues who have provided feedback or otherwise helped me along the way. This includes all members of the POLCON team. Our monthly meetings served as a testing ground for many of the ideas developed in the thesis. It also in- cludes all the coders of the core sentence dataset, among them Sergiu Lipcean who has coded the sample of elections in Romania with me. I would also like to thank all coders of the pro- test event dataset, including Mateus Alves who has helped with coding the exact names of the VII political parties. I thank Simon Watmough for proofreading the thesis. I thank Maureen Lechleitner for helping with all organizational issues at the EUI. I would like to thank all my friends at the EUI. Without the ambition to list everyone, the friendship of Björn, Guillem, Daniela, Elisa, Estelle, Frederico, Jasmine, Joao, Malte, Marco, Marion, Patrice, Reto, Simone, Sophia, Trajche and all the others make me miss the EUI whenever I am away. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement and patience with listening to political science ‘stuff’, as well as my brother for often visiting me during this period. VIII Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... V Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. VII Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... IX List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... XI List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... XIII Chapter 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Two Faces of Party System Stability ................................................................. 13 Chapter 3. Resilience of Mainstream Parties: the Case of Romania ................................... 51 Chapter 4. Protesting Parties in Europe ............................................................................... 79 Chapter 5. Different Worlds of Contention? .....................................................................