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Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class

Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class New Voting Patterns

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Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class

New Voting Patterns

Line Rennwald

Political Science / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections

This open access book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social democratic parties face competition on multiple fronts for their core electorate – and not only from radical right parties. Starting from a reflection on ‘working-class parties’ and using a sophisticated class schema, the book paints a nuanced and diversified picture of the trajectory of social democracy that goes beyond a simple shift from working-class to middle-class parties. Following a detailed description, the book reviews possible explanations of workers' new voting patterns and emphasizes the crucial changes in parties' ideologies. It closes with a discussion on the role of the working class in social democracy's future electoralstrategies.

Line Rennwald currently works on the ERC Advanced Grant “Unequal Democracies” at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She previously held post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Amsterdam, the University of Lausanne and the European University Institute.


Publication Date: 22 July 2020
Publisher: European Research Council
Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN-13: 9783030462383
Format: Hardback
Page Count: 111

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