Bischof_PHD.pdf (1.09 MB)
Does Protest Matter? Parties’ Rhetorical Reactions to Protesters’ Claims in Comparative Perspective
thesis
posted on 2016-04-21, 09:07 authored by Daniel BischofIn my PhD thesis I disentangle the rhetorical reactions of political parties to
public opinion and protest. Previous research on political responsiveness of
parties pre-eminently views the relation between public opinion polls and
party agendas as the key feature of responsiveness (Miller and Stokes 1963;
Soroka and Wlezien 2010; Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 1995; Burstein
1998; Adams et al. 2006; Ezrow 2010). Yet, taking to the street has become
an ever more important toolbox to articulate popular grievances. Social
movements have emerged throughout Western advanced democracies and
transformed the political landscape in Europe. Also new political parties
emerged from these social movements – such as Green parties and the
New Left (Kitschelt 1994; Kriesi et al. 1992). It is, therefore, surprising that
the link between political parties and protest has largely remained a lacuna
in social movement studies and the literature on party competition.
My thesis is a first attempt to address this gap. I argue that besides public
opinion polls, political protest will affect party position taking. I hypothesise
that growing protest leads to polarisation of party systems. While all
parties will increase their attention to the issue at stake during protest in
an effort to secure votes and/or office, they respond differently to protest
contingent on how their ideology relates to protesters’ demands. Furthermore,
the success of protest depends on its support by the public at large. I
test my theoretical framework using a new and unique data-set containing
party positions on nuclear energy – revealed in interviews, press statements
and press conferences – of 67 parties across 12 Western Democracies. I run
time-series-cross-sectional models to test my theoretical arguments. Traditionally
susceptible to responding to anti-nuclear protest, parties of the left
understand increased protest as a window of opportunity to influence policy
debate in their favour, while right-wing parties perceive protest as a
threat to their ideological position on the usage of nuclear energy. Furthermore,
I aim to understand in my last empirical chapter whether protest
also affects parties’ issue emphasis in manifestos. To this end, I use the
Comparative Manifesto Project data and protest data on 18 democracies across 15 years to estimate how parties adapted their issue emphasis to
postmaterialist issues. While I again find a significant influence of protest
on parties’ issue emphasis, the polarisation hypothesis does not find support
in my last chapter. Finally, the instrumental variable models used in
this last chapter suggest that the causal direction runs from protest to parties’
position.
History
Supervisor(s)
Morales, Laura; Guerra, SimonaDate of award
2016-04-04Author affiliation
Department of Politics and International RelationsAwarding institution
University of LeicesterQualification level
- Doctoral
Qualification name
- PhD