From Values to Interests? The Evolution of Party Competition in New Democracies

This article explores how social cleavages and party strategies interact to shape the nature of party competition in new democracies. We conceive of political competition on two dimensions: interests and values. Using the example of postcommunist Europe, we show that as the socioeconomic cleavage deepens (reflected in increased income inequality), the salience of the interest dimension increases. Since this development is likely to benefit more leftist than rightist parties, the latter have an incentive to draw voter attention away from interests to values. This strategy is more likely to be successful in the presence of identity-based cleavages, such as ethnic and religious-secular divisions, which can be mobilized on value-based appeals. We confirm that the salience of values increases as a result of increased inequality in ethnically diverse and/or religious societies but decreases in those that are homogeneous and/or secular. This dynamic is largely due to the behavior of rightist parties