Neighbors and Friends: The Effect of Globalization on Party Positions

This paper seeks to examine the effect of economic, social and political globalization on parties’ overall positions. Our empirical analysis is based on a panel model of 34 political parties in 17 west European countries between 1970 and 2010. We find that both economic and social globalization have a significant effect on parties’ positions, whereas political globalization seems to have less of an influence. However, the effect of globalization varies depending on the type of political party. Right-wing parties move leftward in response to all types of globalization while left-wing parties do not alter their position, or move rightward. Moreover, we find strong evidence about party’s influence of the positions that parties in other countries take. These findings give support for the existence of parties’ convergence in the face of globalization with right-wing parties coming closer to left-wing parties, rejecting the established in the literature argument of the so-called “neoliberal convergence”.