Religious Denomination and Party Choice in Western Europe: A Comparative Longitudinal Study from Eight Countries, 1970–97
| Author | Oddbjørn Knutsen |
| Published date | 01 January 2004 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512104038169 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Religious Denomination and Party Choice in
Western Europe: A Comparative Longitudinal
Study from Eight Countries, 1970–97
ODDBJØRN KNUTSEN
ABSTRACT. In this article, the impact of religious denomination on party
choice is studied in eight western European countries from the early
1970s to the late 1990s. The research problems are (1) to examine the
strength of the correlation between party choice and religious denomina-
tion over time, and (2) to analyze which political parties those who are
affiliated and those who are unaffiliated to a religious community vote
for, and how this has changed over time. The denominational cleavage
varies considerably in strength in the eight countries. It is strongest in the
Catholic and religiously mixed countries of Continental Europe. There is
stability in the correlation between party choice and religious denomi-
nation in most countries. The main polarization involves, to a large
degree, voters for parties on the left versus voters for parties on the right.
It varies considerably, however, as to which parties on the left and the
right have voters who contribute comparatively to polarization. Green
parties are making inroads among the unaffiliated sections of the
population. This changes the polarization caused by religious denomi-
nation in the sense that denominational differences become smaller for
some other parties, first and foremost, the socialist and the communist
parties.
Keywords:• Comparative cleavages • Party choice • Party families
•Religious cleavage • Western Europe
Introduction
The Two Faces of Religious Cleavage
In their seminal article on the development of party cleavages in western
democracies, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) were impressively detailed about the
International Political Science Review (2004), Vol 25, No. 1, 97–128
DOI: 10.1177/0192512104038169 © 2004 International Political Science Association
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
development of the religious cleavage. The religious cleavage was first shaped by
the Protestant Reformation, which created divisions between Catholics and
Protestants. These divisions had political consequences because control of the
nation-building process often became intermixed with the religious cleavage.
Protestants frequently found themselves allied with nationalist forces in the
struggle for national autonomy (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967: 37–41). In Anglican
England and the Calvinist Netherlands, the Protestant church supported national
independence and became a central element of the emerging national political
identity. In other nations, religious conflicts also ran deep, but these differences
sidetracked the nation-building process (Dalton, 1990: 66; Martin, 1993: 100–8).
Gradually, the political systems of Europe accommodated themselves to the
changes wrought by the Reformation. The French Revolution renewed religious
conflicts in the 19th century. Religious forces (both Catholic and Protestant)
mobilized to defend church interests against the liberal, secular movement
spawned by events in France. Conflicts over church and state control, the
legislation of mandatory state education, and disestablishment of state religion
occurred across the face of Europe (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967: 37–41). These
conflicts were often intense, as in the Kulturkampf in Germany and Switzerland. In
reaction to these liberal attacks, new religious political parties formed in Germany,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and Belgium. These parties ranged
from the Calvinist Anti-Revolutionary Party in the Netherlands (named in reaction
to the French Revolution) to the Vatican-allied Catholic Partito Populare in Italy
(Dalton, 1990: 66–7). The party alignments developed at the start of the 20th
century institutionalized the religious cleavage in politics, and many basic features
of these party systems have endured to the present.
The religious cleavage has two aspects: the various religious communities of
which people are members, including a category for those who are not a member
of any religious community (religious denomination), and how religious they are,
independent of the religious community they belong to (Bean, 1999: 552; Dalton,
1996: 177–9). This latter aspect is normally measured by frequency of church
attendance. Lane and Ersson (1999: 44–53) differentiate, for example, between a
latent and a manifest religious cleavage. Religious denomination belongs to the
latent religious category and represents the structural aspect of the overall
religious cleavage. A religious structure is composed of religious communities and
is “by definition a latent, or unconscious, structure which can be transformed into
a manifest structure through a process in which religious cleavages become tied to
some kind of religious awareness” (Lane and Ersson, 1999: 51).
Data Sources and Research Problems
In this article, I will examine the impact of religious denomination on party choice
in a comparative setting. I use a genuine cumulative data set based on all Euro-
barometers from 1970 to 1997 to examine how religious denomination influences
party choice and how this has changed from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.1The
analysis comprises eight of the nine countries that were members of the (then)
European Economic Community: Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, (West)
Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands.2
The research questions are as follows:
1. For the whole period (1970–97), what is the comparative strength of religious
98 International Political Science Review 25(1)
denomination as a party cleavage, and how has this changed from the early
1970s to the late 1990s?
2. For which parties does religious denomination have the largest impact within
the various party systems and across national contexts? The various parties will
be grouped into party families, and the cross-national comparison will be done
on the basis of parties within the same party family.3
3. What causes the changes in the strength of the correlation within a given
country? How do those with various religious affiliations change their voting
behavior so that we observe change in the impact of religious denomination?4
For which parties do we find the most significant change in support from the
various religious denominations and those who are not affiliated to a religious
community?
Hypotheses
Many researchers have noted that there is a somewhat paradoxical situation
related to the importance of the religious cleavage. Only a small number of
political issues clearly follow the religious–secular conflict line. By the same token,
there are very few issues that are completely divorced from it. Despite the paucity
of explicitly religious issues and the lack of religious themes in most campaigns,
religious beliefs have proven to be a strong predictor of party choice in many
western European democracies. Smith (1989: 20) has, therefore, characterized the
religious cleavage as a passive rather than an active force in shaping political
behavior.
Perhaps the most important reason why religion continues to play an influential
role for voter choice is that religious conflicts helped determine the structure of
the modern party system and, therefore, still affect the electoral choices open to
the voter. The religious cleavage is also important because it reflects deeply held
human values, which have a great potential for influencing behavior. Although
religious issues are not very prominent on the political agenda, religious values are
related to a wide range of social and political beliefs: work ethics, achievement
aspirations, lifestyle norms, parent–child relations, morality, social relations,
attitudes toward authority, and acceptance of the state. Religion signifies a
Weltanshauung that extends into the political area (Dalton, 1990: 86). Religious
faith is strongly connected not only to party choice. The connection encompasses
political ideology, outlook on issues, and attitudes toward a wide range of political
objects (Wald, 1987: Ch. 3).
Empirical research on mass behavior has underscored the continuing
importance of the religious cleavage. Rose and Urwin (1969) conducted one of
the first comparative analyses of the topic, examining the social basis of party
support in 16 western democracies. Their finding was that, contrary to conven-
tional wisdom, “religious divisions, not class, are the main social basis of parties in
the Western world today” (Rose and Urwin, 1969: 12). In a comparative study that
included most western European countries, Rose (1974a: 16–18) compared the
impact of religion, social class, and region on left–right voting on the basis of data
from mainly the 1960s, and found that religion was much more important in all
the Catholic and religiously mixed countries. Only in Britain and the
Scandinavian countries was social class the most important predictor for left–right
party choice.
Several studies have examined the impact of religious cleavage over time in a
KNUTSEN:Religious Denomination and Party Choice 99
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