The Nationalization of Politics
The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe

This 2004 book describes the transformation of politics from a territorial voting behavior to one of national homogeneity.

Daniele Caramani (Author)

9780521535205, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 March 2004

368 pages, 34 b/w illus. 46 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

"The analysis and the arguement [Nationalization of Politics] supports make landmark contributions to our understanding of nationalization over time, across nations, and among party families...It sets the standard for future work."
-Jason Beckfield, University of Chicago, American Journal of Sociology

In an in-depth comparative and long-term analysis, first published in 2004, Daniele Caramani studies the macro-historical process of the nationalization of politics. Using a great wealth of data on single constituencies in seventeen West European countries, he reconstructs the territorial structures of electoral support for political parties, as well as their evolution since the mid-nineteenth century from highly fragmented politics in the early stages toward nation-wide alignments. Caramani provides a multi-pronged empirical analysis through time, across countries, and between party families. The inclusion in the analysis of all the most important social and political cleavages - class, state-church, rural-urban, ethno-linguistic and religious - allows him to assess the nationalizing impact of the class cleavage that emerged from national and industrial revolutions, and the resistance of preindustrial cultural factors to national integration. Institutional and socio-economic factors are combined with actor-centered patterns and differences between national types of territorial configurations of the vote.

Introduction: homogeneity and diversity in Europe
Part I. Framework: 1. The structuring of political space
2. Data, indices, method
Part II. Evidence: 3. Time and space: evidence from the historical comparison
4. Types of territorial configurations: national variations
5. The comparative study of cleavages and party families
Part III. Towards an Explanation: 6. The dynamic perspective: national and industrial revolutions
7. The comparative perspective: social fragmentation and territoriality
Conclusion: from territorial to functional politics.

Subject Areas: Educational: Citizenship & social education [YQN], Political economy [KCP], Political structure & processes [JPH], Sociology & anthropology [JH]