Historical Trends in Europe

Figures 3.1 to 3.4 display the general historical evolution of the levels of territorial homogeneity of party support and turnout (for all countries) from the 1830s to the present, as measured by different indicators weighting for the size of parties. They show the basic result of this broad exploration: a clear trend toward increasing nationally integrated electorates and homogeneous party systems over the past 150 years.

As mentioned earlier, figures of turnout and party support measure distinct aspects of the nationalization of politics:

• Turnout: High territorial disparities in turnout indicate the survival of marginal areas in terms of socioeconomic development: economic structure – for example, the persistence of traditional society (an economically backward periphery) – literacy, certain forms of political culture (local clientelism or patronage), and so on; a pattern of homogeneous turnout rates, on the other hand, indicates how these marginal groups have been mobilized and integrated into the national political system.

• Party support: This is an indicator of the strength of the territoriality of political cleavages that emerged from the National and Industrial Revolutions: center–periphery and cultural cleavages (ethnolinguistic and religious cleavages in particular) and socioeconomic cleavages such as the urban–rural cleavage and the left–right opposition between wage earners on the one hand and employers and owners on the other.

The shape of the curves in these figures toward a reduction of territorial disparities indicates therefore both the integration of electorates of peripheral regions and the reduction of the territoriality of political cleavages over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.