Integrative and divisive roles of political parties: party attachment, ideology and satisfaction with democracy in the Netherlands.

• Author: Todosijevic, Bojan
• Position: Report

Introduction

The role of political parties in legitimizing regimes and integrating citizens into the democratic political order is often praised (e.g., Schattschneider, 1942, Sartori 1976, Katz & Crotty, 2006) but less often demonstrated. (3) If parties have indeed such a role, they must exercise it, among other ways, through the emotional links that exist between parties and citizens (Enyedi & Todosijevic, 2009).

Citizens equipped with civic virtues such as political interest, knowledge, participation, sense of efficacy, should, therefore, be more likely to view political parties as legitimate political actors, and feel attached to (some of) them. Positive emotions binding citizens to parties, together with the mentioned civic virtues, should make citizens feel integrated into the political system, and result in the stronger acceptance of and satisfaction with the democratic political order.

Yet, parties are often seen as reflecting the insurmountable social divisions, and accused of promoting or even creating conflict and competition for their own purpose (cf. Maggiotto and Piereson 1977; Layman and Carsey 2002, Brewer, 2005, Ishiyama, 2009). From this perspective, according to Daalder "Mass parties are accused of being heavily ideologized 'fighting machines', seeking to subject both voters and the state to a combination of dogma and elitist self-interest." (2002, p. 43). Hence, partisanship may equally be expressive of the antagonistic view of the politics, of fundamental ideological disagreements and visceral abhorrence towards one's political opponents. Provided the right kind of motivation, political parties could easily appear as irreconcilable enemies, rather than representatives of alternative visions in the civic project of advancing the common good. When seen in this perspective, strong partisanship should be accompanied by ideological extremism, and possibly with the skepticism toward democratic order.

In light of the two visions of the role of party attachment, it becomes particularly important to identify the conditions under which partisan attachments develop and to assess their attitudinal consequences. The present paper examines the hypothesis about the mediating role of partisan attachments. (25) According to this hypothesis, strong attachment to political parties has a double function concerning the citizens' relationship to the political system: the integrative and the divisive. On the one side, political parties may help the integration of citizens into the political system. Attachment to political parties channels political and ideological polarization away from system-challenging activities towards the regime support and acceptance of the prevailing political (democratic) order. This view has a considerable history in the literature on party identification, such as Mainwaring and Scully (1994), Huntington (1968), Rose and Mishler (1998), Morlino and Montero (1995), Yanai (1999), Schattschneider (1942).

On the other side, parties could equally be seen as agents of political division and antagonism. In this view (e.g., Budge et al., 1976), parties may also foster ideological extremism, and thereby contribute to the dissatisfaction with democratic performance or even the rejection of the democratic system (Enyedi and Todosijevic, 2009). (4)

The present paper presents a detailed study of the relationships between civic virtues, (perceived) political polarization, party attachments, ideological extremism, and satisfaction with democracy, based on the Dutch Parliamentary Elections Study (DPES) series. Data from the 2006 DPES study are used as the model-building data. Data from 2002 and 1998 served to construct the verification models, since these data-sets contain equivalent variables needed to replicate the basic features of the model. Additional DPES studies are used to partially replicate the models, since they contain only subsets of variables from the initial model.

In general, the results indicate that it is possible to detect both the integrative or 'civic' dispositions, such as political efficacy and knowledge, and the divisive sentiments, like extreme views on various political issues, highly differentiated feelings towards parties (that is, both love and hate) and the perception of parties as standing far apart, behind the feelings of attachment to political parties.

Furthermore, the integrative effects of partisanship were visible in its association with the satisfaction with democracy, while the divisive role was revealed by its prediction of ideological extremism.

Theoretical framework and general hypotheses

Most empirical studies, whichever framework formed their basis, come up with similar social profiles of committed party supporters. The accumulated findings suggest that party attachment is related to social integration. Typical partisans tend to be male, old, married, urban dwellers, higher status citizens (e.g., Campbell 1960, Miller and Shanks 1996, Norris 2004, Schmitt and Holmberg 1995). From this perspective, the attachment to a particular party appears as part of the more general phenomenon of integration into the mainstream of the society.

For the present purpose, a different meaning of integration is relevant. From the civic culture perspective (Almond and Verba, 1963), a sense of political integration should be at least as important as the objective indicators of social integration. Citizens who are integrated into the (partisan) liberal democratic regimes, who internalize democratic norms, who follow politics attentively and see a benefit in participating in the political process, are more likely to develop partisan attachments. Belief in the importance of politics and elections, and accurate knowledge of the political process are part of the civic virtues that are supposed to characterize ideal citizens. Hence, regardless of whether party identification/attachment has roots in early socialization, or the need for information short-cuts, it is clear that indicators of civic orientation, or attitudinal predisposition for democratic politics should be predictive of the attachment to political parties. On the other side, the lack of party attachment can be conceived as a specific form of political alienation. Thus, it could be hypothesized that attitudes such as political interest, knowledge, participation, political efficacy compose a more general, latent dimension that can be termed as the 'civic disposition'. This dimension is, then, expected to be positively associated both with the increased likelihood of the attachment to a political party, and the satisfaction with political regime (in this case democracy). This triangle is here defined as the civic, or 'bright', or integrative aspects of partisanship.

But partisan attachments can also be products of less civic and more divisive attitudes (Budge et al., 1976). Engagement in politics is often rooted in dissatisfaction and in the rejection of certain ideological-political alternatives. Not only that political parties could be seen as being 'invented' in order to manage real or potential social and political conflict, they are often accused of creating conflict for their own power-seeking purposes. Therefore one could expect a polarized view of politics ('subjective polarization') behind partisanship as well. People who see large ideological differences between parties and who give discriminating emotional responses to them (that is, they like some and hate others) are likely to have stronger partisan attachments. Thus, the cognitive aspect of the polarized view of politics could be represented by the perception of large differences between parties in their stands on specific political issues, as well as on more general ideological dimensions (e.g., left-right). The affective aspects can be represented by differences in the affects that parties elicit. Affective polarization would be low for respondents whose degree of liking or disliking is uniform across different parties, but high for those who intensively like some parties, and dislike others.

This argument clearly follows from the social identity perspective. According to the social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981, Tajfel and Turner 1986, Greene, 2002), perception of intergroup differences and differential affective relationship to them should be followed by stronger identification with the in-group (in this case party attachment), and further, with the stronger rejection of the out-group (ideological extremism). (5)

Identification with the in-group (and parties are certainly central foci of group identification in the political sphere), is on the one side based on the perception of group differences and boundaries. On the other side, group identification itself has certain perceptual consequences, such as perception of in-group homogeneity, differentiation from the out-group, and emphasis on group boundaries. Most importantly, group identification is accompanied by differential treatment of the in-and out-group, i.e., more favorable treatment if in-group, and discriminatory attitude towards out-groups. In the political field, this means increased rejection of the competing parties, and possibly political extremism.

From this approach, one could also derive an implication of recursive relationships. In this case, it could mean a reversed causal direction--from identification to perception of group differences. In fact, such recursive relationship may be responsible for the stability of both party identifications and political perceptions. The present model, however, remains focused on unidirectional relationships for two main reasons. First, statistical estimates of recursive models are still unreliable (Kline, 2011). Second, the paper's focus is on the double role of party attachments, which implies unidirectional relationships. The existence of a recursive relationship between identification and perceptions of group differences would not...