Restructuring party systems in Northwestern Europe: A comparative analysis of six countries

The article examines the impact of the recent crises – the Eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, Brexit, COVID-19, and the war in Ukraine – on the structuration of party competition in six Northwestern European countries. Situating the multiple crises in a long-term perspective on the transformation of party systems, we emphasize their reinforcing effect on the structuring capacity of the new cultural divide. In some countries, this divide and its main driving forces have become so powerful in transforming the political space that we observe an emerging multi-polar pattern of party configurations. This pattern is characterized by a green new left opposed to the populist radical right on the new cultural dimension. In contrast, the center-left and the center-right, despite converging, still oppose each other on the economic dimension. Empirically, the article examines election campaigns in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, drawing on the original PolDem relational content analysis of mass media coverage published before national elections from the 1970s up to 2022.