Suchergebnisse

The electoral success of many West European Christian Democratic parties as prototypical people's parties has been threatened in recent years by growing secularization and economic trends. In the light of these challenges, this article analyses the importance of social and attitudinal variables in predicting support for seven Christian Democratic parties at the individual level using data from the European Social Survey. The results highlight the continuing centrality of religion in Christian Democratic voting. Regular attendance at church, particularly among Catholics, raises the probability of supporting Christian Democracy at the ballot box substantially. Class, by contrast, offers a weak guide as to the likelihood of a Christian Democratic vote. The importance of religion is such that expectations about other potentially important independent variables (character of domicile, age) are generally not met. Yet the reliable support of religious voters is increasingly an ambiguous electoral asset with clear signs that this partisan constituency is in decline throughout Western Europe.

Using the Harmel and Janda model of external shocks and party change, this article explores the reaction of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) to its unprecedented exile in opposition after 1994, focusing on the period before the 1998 parliamentary election. As an office-seeker par excellence forced into an alien environment, the CDA provides an ideal test-case for investigating how a party adapts in such circumstances. The article argues that various dimensions of party change can be identified following 1994, but that in contrast to developments in party leadership, internal factional balance, strategy and organization, programmatic change was less extensive. It is argued that the explanation for this lies in the nature of the Dutch party system, the history of the CDA and the party's secondary yet still important goal of ideology.