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Conclusion: The Dynamics of Cleavage Politics across Political Arenas The impact of globalization on politics has become a major topic both in social movement research and in the analysis of cleavage politics. However, both fields emphasize different features of the politics of globalization, because they tend to neglect the existence of different arenas of political mobilization . Usually, social movement scholars focus on the protest arena, while those who are interested in changing cleavage structures and the populist right pay attention only to the electoral arena. This book has attempted to link the two fields by asking whether and how protest politics in Western Europe has changed because of the emergence of a new integration–demarcation cleavage brought about by globalization. Thus, this book has brought back the cleavage concept to the study of social movements. Adopting a dynamic cleavage perspective has allowed me to both complement and challenge what social movement research has emphasized as the main repercussions of globalization on protest politics. In short, globalization has substantially affected protest politics in Western Europe, but in a different way from how most social movement scholars expected. In addition, this book underscores the notion that scholars who study only the transformation of cleavage structures in the electoral arena miss a crucial part of the dynamics of cleavage politics in a global age. In short, even though electoral and protest politics are affected by the emergence of an integration–demarcation cleavage, the way the new cleavage has manifested itself significantly differs across arenas. In the following, I elaborate on these points by summing up the main findings of the book and by pointing to directions for future research. 132 Conclusion 133 The Rise of the Integration–Demarcation Cleavage in a Left-Libertarian Arena Both the electoral and the protest arena have been affected by the rise of a new integration–demarcation cleavage. By tracing the ebbs and flows of mobilization , we have seen that a remobilization has taken place in the protest arena since the 1990s. This confirms the notion of a new wave of protest sweeping across Europe and other regions of the world in the age of globalization. In addition, we have here looked at the main issue divides in the protest arena. Such divides refer to the normative and organizational elements of a cleavage. Following Bornschier (2010a), issue divides indicate how much a cleavage structures contemporary political conflicts and thus perpetuates the underlying political identities. As expected, a twofold transformation of the main protest issues has taken place. Conflicts over cultural liberalism, as the main issue linked to the new class cleavage, were most salient in the early 1980s. Since the 1990s, conflicts over the new globalization issues have become salient. Most important, protests by, against, and on behalf of immigrants have become more salient in Western Europe in the age of globalization. In contrast to immigration, the other two globalization issues (that is, global justice and Europe) are still of relatively little importance in the protest arena. Thus, this qualifies sweeping claims, both on the salience of struggles over neoliberal globalization (for example, della Porta 2007b; Gautney 2010) and the politicization of the European integration process beyond electoral politics (for example, Hooghe and Marks 2009; Imig 2004). Overall, Western European protest arenas are still the preferred terrain on which to voice positions that are most closely associated with the political left: defensive on economic issues and integrationist on cultural issues (see Fillieule 1997, 241–42; Koopmans and Rucht 1995; Soule and Earl 2005, 356–57). This is true for the entire research period, which spans from 1975 to 2005. We can observe only a slight shift toward less integrationist positions on cultural issues. Furthermore, there is a pronounced difference between protests over cultural liberalism, on the one hand, and protests over immigration on the other. When cultural liberalism is put forward in the protest arena, it is almost exclusively affirmative. People protest to fight for individual autonomy , to take a stance on the free choice of lifestyle, or for other universalistic values (for example, international peace). By contrast, conflicts over immigration are more polarized. In addition, the more salient immigration has become in the protest arena, the more contested it has also become. Thus, protests on the most salient issue associated with the integration–demarcation cleavage are linked to a certain return of right-wing voices to the protest arena (that is, to a mobilization site that is nowadays predominantly occupied by left-libertarian forces). [3.17.79...

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