Page 212 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

198 Globalization and Democracy

Republicans towards the Right (Singh, 2003 : chapter 3 ). Many of those
who study political parties argue that there has been class dealignment
over the last few decades, a fall in the support of working - class voters for
Left - wing parties, and of those in middle - and upper - class occupations
for parties on the Right (Manza, Hout, and Brooks, 2009 ). There is con-
tinued controversy on this issue, but in a situation in which the traditional
working class itself has shrunk in absolute terms, with the decline of
manufacturing and the growth of service industry jobs, the question of
class loyalty to political parties has become less relevant today. What is
more important is that the numbers of people actually involved in party
politics has declined. It has declined in absolute terms across Europe, as
party members leave and others do not join (Mair and van Biezen, 2001 ).
In the US, political parties were never mass membership organizations as
they were in Europe, but there has also been a well - charted decline in
nationwide voluntary associations that were networked into state and
federal government (Skocpol, 2003 ; Putnam, 2000, 2002 ). The result in
Europe and the US has been the same: a growing distance between ordi-
nary people and professional political elites.
At the same time, as parties across Europe have adapted to neo - liberal
globalization in different ways, they have tended to move towards the
center, advocating pragmatic policies that tend to converge on keeping
taxes low, encouraging business, and cutting state costs. Exceptionally,
in the US, where historically parties have often been virtually indistin-
guishable in terms of ideology and policy, the Left/Right gap between
Democrats and Republicans has opened up in recent years around issues
of “ social liberalism ” like abortion rights and gay marriages, and also the
domestic and foreign policies associated with the neo - liberal and authori-
tarian “ New Right ” (McKay, 2005 : 121 – 7). The desire to overcome party
divisions that Barack Obama expressed during the 2008 election should
be understood in this context.
Political parties now target voters as citizen - consumers rather than in
terms of political ideologies. They market themselves, focusing on keeping
core voters, trying to confuse those who intend to vote for other parties,
and, above all, trying to capture “ fl oating ” voters, those who have not
made up their minds which way to vote. Parties have become a good deal
more professional in techniques of political communication, strengthening
the role of professional media managers in party structures in the process.
“ Spin doctors ” are employed as experts in dealing with the media; they
frame news releases to be favorable to party policies and personalities,
preempt or conceal bad news, and generally try to represent the party as