Cambridge University Press The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics)

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. Review "...an exhaustive study of the processes by which electorates in Western European countries became increasingly nationalized in the late-19th and early-20th centuries." -P.V. Warwick, Simon Fraser University, CHOICE"Caramani is deeply versed in the multidisciplinary literature relevant to this model, and his interpretation of the data makes a nuanced and welcome contribution to the party systems literature." -Alice H. Cooper, University of Mississippi, Perspectives of Politics"For its rare blend of empirical support and theory-driven analysis, [this book] stands as one of the major contributions in the field of historical political sociology." -Piero Ignazi, University of Bologna, The International History Review"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 Book Description This 2004 book describes the transformation of politics from a territorial voting behavior to one of national homogeneity.