INTRODUCTION

The study of policy convergence has received considerable attention both in comparative politics and in the field of international studies. Interestingly, both disciplines have approached the subject from opposite starting points and with differing methodologies. Whereas in the field of international studies theoretically derived expectations of an increasing similarity of states and political systems driven by economic or ideational forces constituted a dominant thread in the early convergence literature (for a comprehensive overview see Drezner 2001), comparative studies initially focused more on the explanation of empirically observed differences between national political systems and programmes (Lundqvist 1974, 1980). Only recently have the two research strands effectively merged into an integrated study of policy convergence that increasingly challenges the traditional boundaries between comparative politics and international relations.

In this chapter we first introduce the concept of policy convergence and explain how it relates to similar concepts like policy transfer, policy diffusion or isomorphism. In a second step we review the existing empirical research on environmental policy convergence both in comparative politics and in international relations. Based on this overview, and drawing more broadly on the general convergence literature, we systematise the major causes of policy convergence that have been identified in these studies. We distinguish between causal mechanisms which translate pressures at the international level into domestic policy change and, possibly, into convergence of domestic policies, and facilitating factors which operate at the level of individual countries or specific policies.

INTRODUCTION

As has been shown in the previous chapter, the study of cross‐national policy convergence is a highly popular research area in political science. Notwithstanding these far‐reaching research efforts, it is generally acknowledged that we still have a limited understanding of the causes and conditions of policy convergence.

It is the objective of this chapter to develop the theory further by a systematic discussion of the causal factors of policy convergence and by the formulation of general theoretical expectations on policy convergence for each factor. We proceed in the following steps. First, we briefly present the central aspects we distinguish for the assessment of policy convergence. In a second step, we identify and compare different causal factors of cross‐national policy convergence. Having elaborated on the major causes of policy convergence, however, we still know little about the conditions under which these factors actually lead to convergence. This is the objective of the third part of our analysis, in which we develop theoretical expectations for the different aspects of cross‐national policy convergence. These hypotheses form the background for the empirical study of environmental policy convergence in Europe presented in the following chapters. Specifications of these expectations in the form of testable hypotheses that relate to the different empirical models used in this study will be presented in the respective chapters (6 and 7).

HOW TO CONCEPTUALISE POLICY CONVERGENCE?

For the purpose of the underlying study, we define policy convergence

INTRODUCTION

The central objective of this book was to advance our theoretical and empirical understanding of causes and conditions of cross‐national policy convergence. In theoretical terms, we were especially interested in the extent to which growing economic and institutional interlinkages between nation states – developments that are usually associated with catchwords such as globalisation and Europeanisation – constitute major driving forces of cross‐national policy convergence. In this regard, we studied the impact of three central convergence mechanisms, namely, international harmonisation, regulatory competition and transnational communication.

In empirical terms, we analysed the relevance of these factors for the area of environmental policy. More specifically, we were especially interested in two research questions. On the one hand, we studied the extent to which the policies of the countries under study actually became similar over time. On the other hand, we focused on the direction of convergence; i.e., the question whether potential similarity increases coincide with often‐discussed races to the top or bottom of national environmental policies. To answer these questions, we analysed the development of forty different environmental policies of twenty‐four countries over a period of thirty years (1970 until 2000).

In addressing these theoretical and empirical questions, our study not only indicates several new insights and innovations, but also points to new and interesting questions for future research. Both aspects, innovations and avenues for future research, will be presented in more detail in the following sections.

The varied electoral success of green, radical right, and ethnoterritorial parties across Western Europe is the result of mainstream party strategies. This is the thesis introduced in Chapter 1. Contrary to the dominant literature, I argue that the electoral trajectories of niche parties are not mere reflections of the institutional or sociological characteristics of a country. These successes and failures are rather the result of deliberate attempts by center-left and center-right political actors to quell new political threats and bolster their own electoral competitiveness. Niche party fortunes are, in many respects, the by-products of competition between mainstream parties.

And yet existing strategic theories of party competition prove ill-suited for understanding the nature of interaction between mainstream parties and their neophyte competitors. Unlike their mainstream party opponents, niche parties refuse to compete within the given policy dimensions, instead promoting and competing on new issues that often cut across existing partisan lines. Consequently, mainstream party reactions are not limited to the standard spatial tools of policy convergence and divergence – i.e., movement toward and away from a competitor – on an established issue dimension. Rather, mainstream parties can also alter niche party electoral support by manipulating the salience and ownership of the neophyte's new issue for political competition.

In this chapter, I challenge the standard spatial approach to party interaction by developing a theory of party competition based on this expanded conception of party strategies.

In 1970, calling for the protection of “our British Native stock” against “colored immigration,” the National Front fielded candidates in its first parliamentary election. Formed four years earlier by a merger of the League of Empire Loyalists and the British National Party, the National Front criticized the absence of the immigration issue from mainstream party political debate. Over the next decade, this xenophobic niche party would try to force the issue onto the political agenda with its repeated calls for the immediate cessation of immigration to the United Kingdom and repatriation of all nonwhite foreigners.

Although it garnered an average vote of less than 4 percent across contested districts, or a scant 0.3 percent average nationwide during the 1970s, the National Front did not go unnoticed by the British mainstream parties. The Conservative Party reacted with intense accommodative tactics to the defection of some of its voters to the niche party. Adopted by the Heath government as early as 1973, the Tories' accommodative proposals included the strengthening of immigration controls and the retraction of British citizenship obligations to immigrants from former Commonwealth nations. Conservative politicians, including party leader and future Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, even invoked the National Front's xenophobic imagery of Britain as “a crowded island” being “swamped” by foreigners to try to win (back) anti-immigrant voters.

Since the 1970s, the political systems of Western Europe have undergone a major transformation. Competition between mainstream parties has been interrupted by the emergence of niche parties, actors that are fundamentally different from their mainstream opponents. The new parties' rejection of the economic focus of politics and their introduction of new and controversial issues have threatened the content of the political debate and the very partisan alignments that ensure mainstream parties' electoral and governmental dominance.

Yet, although they have transformed political arenas across the region, niche parties have experienced wide variation in their electoral success. Hoping to explain why some green, radical right, or ethnoterritorial parties floundered while others flourished, scholars have turned to the institutional and sociological characteristics of the particular political environments. According to these theories, parties fail under restrictive electoral rules or unfavorable economic and societal conditions. Niche party success, therefore, occurs under the opposite conditions: for example, when PR rules are in effect or, in the case of radical right parties, when unemployment and immigrant populations are high.

As the analyses in this book suggest, however, the electoral successes and failures of green, radical right, and ethnoterritorial parties are not merely the reflection of the institutional and sociological environment. Rather, this study finds answers to the puzzle of niche party performance in a factor that has been largely ignored in this literature: party competition. To the extent that institutional and sociological variables underlie a party's success, they are not neutral, exogenously determined variables.

Running under the slogan “defend the French,” a new political party known as the Front National (FN) first fielded candidates in the 1973 French national legislative elections. Over the next three decades, the FN, fearful of the contamination and erosion of the French national identity, advocated a ban on further immigration and called for the (forced) repatriation of immigrants and the restoration of traditional French family values. Initially, the FN's promotion of this new set of issues was met with little electoral enthusiasm; in its first decade of existence, the party received less than 1 percent of the national vote per legislative election. Its charismatic leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, also fared poorly, capturing a mere 0.7 percent in the 1974 presidential election.

Although political observers and scholars at the time discounted the prospects of this minor party – especially in an electoral environment thought to disadvantage nonmainstream parties – the FN emerged as one of the strongest radical right parties in Western Europe by 2000. Even though large-scale immigration to France had been banned officially since 1974 and the percentage of foreign citizens had been stabilizing and even falling, the anti-immigrant FN won an average of more than 9 percent of the vote across national legislative elections in the 1980s and 1990s and ended the millennium with a peak vote of 14.9 percent in 1997. Once on the margins of the French political scene, the Front National would surpass the Communist Party to become the number three party in France.

And pounce it did. By the time Alistair Smith issued this warning to his fellow members of the Conservative Party in 1976, the Scottish National Party had already emerged as an unexpected and almost unstoppable force. Although it never gained a national average of more than 3 percent, its true menace is revealed in the vote percentages it obtained in Scottish seats – the seats in which it competed. Between 1970 and 1997, the SNP consistently captured more than 11 percent of the vote in Scotland, with an average vote of 18.8 percent. In the October 1974 General Election, it achieved its peak vote of 30.4 percent, just 6 percentage points shy of Labour's electoral plurality. In this same election, the ethnoterritorial party surpassed the Conservatives to become the second most popular party in Scotland. Although support for the SNP would decline somewhat in the 1980s, the party reasserted its strength on the Scottish electoral scene in the 1990s.

In 1989, the British Green Party surprised the political establishment by capturing 14.9 percent of the vote in the European Parliament (EP) elections. Green Party candidates attracted more support than Labour candidates in six constituencies and challenged the Conservatives' hold of two of its safe seats. With its phenomenal electoral score, the Green Party surpassed the Liberal Party to become the number three party in the country.

While some scholars have downplayed the importance of the 1989 victory, this election was seen by the British mainstream parties as a warning. Concern about the environment – and, with it, the membership of the Green Party – had grown in recent years. The level of postmaterialism in Great Britain had increased by 75 percent since the Green Party, at that time named the People's Party, first contested Westminster elections in 1974. By 1989, the environment had surpassed unemployment, the perennial favorite, as the most important problem facing the United Kingdom according to MORI survey respondents (MORI polls).

More importantly for the mainstream parties, this growing public interest in the issues of pollution and nuclear power was influencing voting decisions. Even before the June 1989 EP elections, Green Party candidates were capturing an average vote of 8 percent and peak votes of 14 percent in the May 1989 local county elections (O'Neill 1997: 288). Although supporters of environmental parties are often first-time voters, the British Green Party was stealing voters from the established parties.