Introduction

The country chapters have shown how the structure of electoral competition has been affected by globalization in the recent period. In each of the six countries, we found strong evidence for a transformation of the main dimensions of the political space and for patterns of realignment. In the present chapter, we focus on the demand side of electoral competition, analyzing in more detail the formation of a potential for the new integration v. demarcation cleavage. We take here a comparative perspective and consider similarities and differences among countries in the nature of these developments. It must be emphasized that the nature of our data imposes some limitations on the extent to which voters' attitudes can be compared across elections. To be able to perform similar analyses and to rely on comparable categories of issues across space and time, it was necessary to standardize all scales measuring issue-orientations. This implies that differences among groups of voters are always expressed in a relative way. Absolute positions or absolute distances in the political space cannot be compared directly. This is certainly annoying, but it is unavoidable given the lack of survey questions and designs that are directly comparable across several countries and elections. While this problem limits the type of comparisons that can be performed, it leaves enough room to analyze several of the central implications of our theoretical argument.