Christian Democracy

[parochial boy]

Continuing a series in pointing out stuff of very little interest. Here are a couple of crappy excel charts showing the progression of Christian Democratic parties across Western Europe since 1980. The first one is their % score, and the second one shows relative performance by rebasing their first post-1980 result to 100% (Except for Sweden, who start in the mid 90s for sanity's sake).




Anyway, my few comments:

- Look at national political scenes conforming to stereotypes. the PDC's progression is basically a straight line, whereas CDA jump all over the place
- pretty obvious trend, and before anyone shouts "but the party scene has become fractured", they have done significantly worse than other traditional parties eg compare PDC to PLR in Switzerland; CDA to VVD in the Netherlands; the Belgian Christian Dems to Open VLD or MR.
 - Spain, the UK are excluded as PP and the Tories aren't really Christian Democratic. Italy's CD's obviously committed suicide in the 90s; and while there might be a case for including the Giscard D'Estaing-Bayrou line for France, I don't think they are quite the same thing
- The Nordic CD's are probably quite different in form to the traditionally Catholic CD's, and had this massive boom in the 1990s

[DavidB.]

Good observations. The CDs decline is caused by a base that is dying off + secularization + declining partisanship in general.

They can still have electoral success with a good leader and the right message (see Balkenende in NL in the 00s), but as the abovementioned processes continue, this becomes increasingly difficult: CDs highs will be lower and their lows will be lower too, with the trend continuing to move southward.

In the Netherlands, just consider the fact that the CDA's 2010 election result (21 seats, a loss of 20) was an all-time low and universally viewed as a major defeat of historic proportions, but its 2017 election result of 19 seats (a gain of 6), two seats fewer than in 2010, was mostly viewed as a victory.

I think Sebastian Kurz has showed how to "reform" a Christian Democratic party: in most of Europe, there is a big electoral market for a right-wing party critical of immigration but generally pro-establishment/"don't rock the boat" and appealing to "the values of yore". However, it seems unlikely that any of the other non-Scandinavian Christian Democratic parties (except for the CSU of course) will move in that direction in the short run.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

While starting from a much higher base, I'd say Fianna Fail have many of these same problems.

[EPG]

So, the story is that fuddy-duddy parties have done worse since 1980, and the gains have gone to liberal right-wingers and xenophobic nationalists. Makes sense: I guess the number of observant Christians is now smaller in those countries. Certainly lay Catholic organisations are smaller. The church got a bit too conservative under John Paul II, in my opinion (as if anyone cares!). Then the new voters, who might once have been Christian Democrats, split mainly based on the economic status, education, values correlation.

In party organisation terms, I would say the Austrian and Nordic parties are a little different to the mainly founded around lay, often peripheral and mildly anti-system, Catholic politics. I assume the point for Nordics is clear; for the Austrians, I mean that the big difference between the CDU and the ÖVP is that one was descended from the opponents of the mainstream, whether German Reich Catholics or East German Lutherans, and the other was the mainstream. Is this over-simplifying?

1980 is, however, a pretty funny time to begin polling. You've got a recovery from the initial victories of the populist right during the oil crisis and Islamic terrorism of the 1970s, and a turn toward Thatcherite politics.