Kalyvas&vanKersbergen 2010

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Christian Democracy Stathis N. Kalyvas1 and Kees van Kersbergen21Department of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06510;email: [email protected] of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2010. 13:183209

First published online as a Review in Advance on January 4, 2010

The Annual Review of Political Science is online at polisci.annualreviews.org

This articles doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.021406.172506

Copyright c 2010 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

1094-2939/10/0615-0183$20.00

Key WordsEuropean politics, political parties, Christian democratic parties,Catholic Church, religion and politics, secularization

Abstract Despite its centrality in European politics, Christian democracy cto be the object of systematic research only recently. We reviewresearch that has emerged since the mid-1990s and pinpoint its ctributions in specifying the origins, evolution, and broader impaChristian democratic parties. We begin with a discussion of thegins of Christian democracy and show that it is a distinctive polmovement; we review the state of contemporary Christian democpolitics, describe the impact of Christian democracy on the proceEuropean integration, evaluate the content of the Christian democr welfare regime, and explore whether the European Christian decratic experience travels outside Europe and Christianity, especialthe world of political Islam. We conclude with an overview of the fuoutlook of this political movement.

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INTRODUCTION For a long time, the most common way to be-gin a study onChristian democracy was tocom-plainthatthispoliticalmovementwasneglectedby scholars, despite its critical importance fordemocratic constitutions, party systems, andthe political-economic regimes of continental

Europe (Hanley 1994, p. 1; van Kersbergen1995, p. ix; Kalyvas 1996, p. 1;Frey2009, p.1920).1 In the introduction to their edited volumeon Christian democratic parties since the endof the Cold War, Gerard & van Hecke (2004,p. 10) argue that the topic of Christian democ-racy is as much under-researched as lackingin theoretical elaboration. Indeed, research onChristian democracy pales when compared tothe effort that has gone into theorizing and in- vestigating empirically the twin political phe-

nomena of socialism and social democracy. This neglect is consequential. On the

substantive side, it distorts our understandingof European politics because Christian democ-racy, with socialdemocracy, forms thepoliticalfamily that has decisively shaped postwar Eu-ropean politics and societies, including theEuropean integration process. Clearly, it isimpossible to analyze the political history andimpact of social democracy without abundant reference to Christian democracy as its major

political alternative. To put it bluntly, it is im-possible to understand contemporary Europe without taking into account Christian democ-racy. Yet, to cite just one example, Bermans(2006) The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracyand the Making of Europes Twentieth Century,fails to even mention Christian democracy, afailure that undercuts her central argument that Europes postwar period was essentially of a social democratic nature (Lynch 2008, M uller2007). On the theoretical side, the neglect of

1Christian democratic parties also emerged in several Latin American countries (most notably in Venezuela in the 1940s,Chile in the 1950s, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1960s,and Costa Rica and Mexico in the 1980s); they remain majorpolitical players in Chile and Mexico (Mainwaring & Scully 2003). Nevertheless, Christian democracy is primarily a Eu-ropean phenomenon; hence our focus on Europe.

Christian democracy reects a deep difculin grasping the relationship between religioand politics in the European context, despitthe central role of religion in the emergencof modern, secular European societies. Thidifculty has important implications for th way we also understand religious mobilizati

in emerging democracies outside Europe.Fortunately, since the mid-1990s, Christiandemocracy has been the focus of more researcattention than ever before. This new researchascontributed to a much better understandingof Christian democracy: its origins, evolutioand contribution to European politics (including party and party-system formation and thpolitical economy of Western democracies), a well as the broader theoretical issue of the rlation between religion and politics. Ironicall

however, this renewed interest coincided wit what appeared to be an unstoppable decline Christian democratic parties following the enof the Cold War. As a result, the literatures frequent references to Christian democracy ofteserved as a mere pretext for introducing arguments either about the return of social democracy as the presumed leading political actor Europe or the emergence of an extreme anpopulist right preguring the radical reconguration of European party systems. For main

stream political science, Christian democracappeared to have become history. This paper proceeds in seven sections. W

begin with an examination of the origins Christian democracy. In section two, we focus on the concept of Christian democracyIs it a distinctive political movementand yes, how? In section three, we review the staof contemporary Christian democratic politicsSection four examines the impact of Chritian democracy on one of the most momentouglobal developments of the twentieth centuryEuropean integration. In section ve, we turto political economy and review the Christiademocratic welfare regime. In section six, wexplore how the European Christian democratic experience travels outside Europe anChristianity. Sectionsevenconcludeswitha discussion of the future of Christian democracy.

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THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY Contemporary Christian democratic partiesevolved from Catholic2 confessional partiescreated in the second part of the nineteenthcentury and the rst part of the twentiethcentury. These parties emerged out of a largely

antiliberal and ultramontane (meaningleaning beyond the mountains toward Rome)mass Catholic movement that challenged theascendancy of liberalism in Europe from afundamentalist and theocratic perspective (ascodied in the 1864 papal encyclical Syllabusof Errors). Indeed, Christian democracy was a concept coined in opposition to liberaldemocracy. Though spearheaded by theCatholic church, which feared for the loss of itsprivileges, especially in the eld of education,

Catholic movements gained their indepen-dence from the church through their trans-formation into parties. The Catholic churchresisted this process, which robbed it of its mo-nopolistic control over its ock, but could not thwart it because democracy provided Catholicactivists with an effective source of power andlegitimacy. Although initially ideologically opposed to democracy, these activists quickly realized that their interests lay in the consolida-tionand further expansionofparliamentary and

electoral democracy, institutions that providedthem social and political power (Kalyvas 1996).

The process through which confessionalparties were formed carried two important,though contradictory, implications. First, it turned religion into the foundational element of confessional parties, the core of their iden-tity, but religion proved more of a hindrancethan an advantage. Second, their religious ap-peal turned these parties into highly heteroge-neous coalitions of interest groups united only

by their initial adherence to religion; althoughthis heterogeneity increased the salience of class within these parties, it contributed to the

2 With the exception of the Calvinist parties in theNetherlands, all other confessional parties were Catholic(Kalyvas 1996).

decrease of the salience of class in their party systems.

The study of Christian democracy was fora long time the exclusive purview of histori-ans, typically those engaged in country-basedmonographs and in a few instances in compara-tive history (e.g., Mayeur 1980, Vecchio 1979).

With few exceptions, political scientists did not study it (Irving 1979, Fogarty 1957).This trend was reversed in the mid-1990s. The renewedinterest in Christian democracy had two re-lated sources. On the one hand, historians de-cided to pay more attention to a political move-ment that had always played second ddle to itscompetitorsfascism, communism, socialism,andliberalism.Historiansaskedtheprovocativequestion whether Dahrendorfs (1980) state-ment, that the social democratic century had

come to an end by the late 1970s, was wrongin the sense that such a century had never ex-isted in the rst place. The twentieth century obviously was above all a fascist and commu-nist era. Moreover, the postwar era in demo-cratic Western Europe was above all a periodof Christian democratic primacy, in contrast to what the dominant social scientic clich eimplies. Most decisively, Kaiser & Wohnout (2004b, p. 1) challenge the mainstream view of the postwar era by pointing to the crucial

role of Christian democratic parties in anchor-ing new party systems in postwar Europe; inlegitimizing the market economy through so-cial security and welfare provisions and the in-troduction of corporatist forms of consensualsocioeconomic policy making; and in endingnational frictions and rivalries by constructingthe supranational European Union of the early twenty-rst century.

In what is, perhaps, the most systematicanalysis of the origins of Christian democraticparties in the nineteenth century, Kalyvas(1996) analyzed the formation of confessionalparties in ve European countries (Belgium,the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Italy)and the failure of such a party to effectively emerge in France. He called attention toan empirical paradox: Confessional partiesemerged not as a direct result of the will of

www.annualreviews.org Christian Democracy 185

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the organized church, but in opposition to it.Likewise, these parties were not merely the re-sort of unsuccessful politicians looking for new political vehicles; they were formed, instead,in opposition to existing conservative parties. To help make sense of this paradox, Kalyvasspecied a rationalist model of party formation,

stressing the contingent and unintended out-comes of strategic moves made by the Catholicchurch and conservative politicians in responseto liberal anticlericalism and the rise of masspolitics during the late nineteenth century.Cost-benet considerations by the church andthe conservatives led them both to oppose theformationof confessionalparties. In light of theliberal assault, the church reluctantly opted foran interest-group strategy of mass mobilizationshort of party formation. The church tradition-

ally controlled its members through hierarchy and centralization, and it correctly anticipatedthat the formation of mass organizations and apolitical party would break this unity and sub- vert the hierarchy by allowing the lower clergy and lay Catholics to become independent of the episcopate. However, mass organizationscould be kept on a tight leash. Meanwhile, con-servative politicians who were losing groundin the emerging democratic competition saw the newly formed church organizations as

repositories of compliant local organizers and voters. They also feared that the permanent politicization of religion and the association with the church would restrict their autonomy.

Although both church and conservatives op-posed the formation of confessional parties,they chose a course of action that led to the re-alization of this unwanted outcome. First, thechurch launched a mass social movement to de-fend itself from the liberal onslaught. Provokedby the increasing anticlericalism of the liber-als, this movement became politicized after thechurch decided to use it in support of thoseconservative politicians who agreed to defendthe churchs interests.Theunexpectedelectoralsuccess of these prochurch coalitions providedthe means for the political emancipation of Catholic activists from the church and the con-servative politicians. In other words, electoral

success provided the mechanism of transitioto the formation of confessional parties. Thformation of confessional parties reinforceddistinctiveCatholic political identity, whichnoonly reinterpreted Catholicism in much lesdoctrinal terms but also started to challengthe religious primacy of the church in politic

matters. As a result, political Catholicism bcame separated from the church and religionand [t]hus, in a paradoxical way, the politiciztion of religion contributed to the secularization of politics (Kalyvas 1996, p. 245). In taccount, religion was primarily an electoral anorganizational asset, while the creeping tranformation from elite to mass politics took thrst movers by surprise and contributed to themergence of a new political actorthatwas fullcompatible with the realities of a new politic

age.

WHAT IS CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY?Until recently, political scientists tended tdeny any distinctive character to Christiademocracy.Thenameitselfwasseenasabizarrbut ultimately inconsequential label for pla vanilla, middle-of-the-road, conservative paties, primarilycharacterizedby pragmatism an

opportunism.3

Because Christian democrac was not distinctive, there was no Christiademocratic phenomenon and hence no need tostudy it.

This view was eventually challengedby studies that established the existence of a Chritian democratic phenomenon and analyzed from a theoretical and comparative perspectiv(van Kersbergen 1995; Kalyvas 1996, 1998 The Christian democratic phenomenon canbe broadly thought to rest on two pillars:

heightened capacity of Christian democratiparties to accommodate heterogeneous group

3Indeed, Christian democracy still tends to be treated arather nondistinctive in such otherwise excellent handbooksuch as Kriesis et al. (2008) overview of European politand Katz & Crottys (2006) handbook on party politics.


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and sectors, which gave rise to anearly and pro-nounced catch-all prole; and a creative abil-ity to both retain and tone down their religiousidentity, which was an essential feature in theirformation.

Perhaps the rst systematic exploration of thedistinctive elements ofChristiandemocracy

was that of Irving (1979, p. xviiixix), who listedseveral principles of distinctiveness, includingthe Christian commitment to elementary hu-man rights, liberal democratic values, and classand transnational reconciliation. Building onthis, van Kersbergen (1994, 1995, 1999) ar-gued that the key concepts that made Christiandemocracy distinctive were integration, (class)compromise, accommodation, and pluralism.In his view, it was the continuous effort to inte-grate andreconcilea pluralityof societal groups

(or nations, in the context of European integra-tion) whose interests were often at odds that made Christian democracy a distinct politicalmovement.

In this framework, pragmatism and oppor-tunism could be interpreted as effects of valuessuch as integration, reconciliation, accommo-dation, and pluralism. It is likely that it was thisdimension of the Christian democratic move-ment that made it so hard to graspa dimen-sion that grew from the unusual organizational

structure of this movement: internally dividedinto institutionalized factions or wings, havingclose organizational links with labor unions as well as employers, farmers, womens organiza-tions, and youth organizations.

The cause of this heterogeneity was anideological appeal that emphasized religion at the expense of class. However, external inter-classism produced internal classism. PowerfulCatholic workers and peasants associationshad to be incorporated into the new parties, which ended up adopting a peculiar confed-erate structure based on organizations denedin terms of class ( standen or lager ). The en-suing conicts gave rise to intensely accom-modationist and consociational practices that were necessary for ensuring the parties unity and cohesion. Mediation between these diver-gent and increasingly assertive interest groups

was imperative. As a result, Christian demo-cratic parties have displayed extreme skill indeploying and managing the politics of media-tion (van Kersbergen 1994), which their oppo-nents have derided as opportunism and a belief that the ends justify the means. The princi-ple of subsidiarity (higher authorities, such as

thestate, should interveneonly where individu-als or smaller communities are not competent), which is central in the process of European in-tegration, can also be traced back to these developments (van Kersbergen & Verbeek 1994,2004). Last, the ability to accommodate diver-gent class interests within the party produceda heightened capacity to successfully appealacross classes and sectors. In van Kersbergens(1994)words,Christian democracywasa catch-all party avant la lettre.

This observation implies that the politicaloutlook of the Christian democratic parties was determined by the actual balance of power within it, and, as far as the movement succeededinmirroringsocietyat large,withinthe nationalcommunityas well. In that respect, policyvaria-tion across Christian democratic parties can beseen as a reection of the intraparty balance of power.

Beyond its seemingly inherent pragmatism,it was the relationofChristiandemocracy to re-

ligion that puzzled many observers. The move-ments name refers to Christianity and, by di-rect implication, to religion. Yet there is alsoa general consensus that Christian democracy should not be confused with the ofcial church,or even with Catholic culture in general (vanKersbergen 1995, 1999). Social Catholic polit-ical ideology goes far beyond the teachings of the Catholic church (the grand tradition) be-cause Christian democratic political and socialmovements clearly transcend the churchs so-cial and political theory and practice (the littletradition; see van Kersbergen 1995, ch. 10).

Prewar confessional parties, albeit friendly to religion, avoided an institutional and ideo-logical association with the church. Likewise,the church could only protect its universal-istic identity by moving away from a direct and daily involvement in politics. However, the


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confessionalcharacterof these parties could not be shed because religion had become the ce-ment that kept their heterogeneous social basetogether. The quandary was solved in an inge-nious and momentous way. Confessional par-ties redened religion into a nebulous human-itarian and moral concept that allowed them to

be simultaneously Christian and secular. Vagueformulations such as religious inspiration orvalues of Christian civilization are today thesole references to religion in the ofcial dis-course of these parties. It is now perfectly pos-sible to be simultaneously a Christian democrat and an agnostic, atheist, Muslim, or Hinduand this is not even perceived as a contradic-tion. (In fact, this contradiction fuels one of the main objections that smaller, more ortho-dox Christian parties, like the Dutch Christian

Union, voice against Christian democracy.) The paradox of allegedly religious partiesgoverning highly secular societies, adoptingsecularpolicies,anddistancingthemselvesfromthe church led to the characterization of Chris-tian democratic parties as opportunistic orga-nizations whose relation to religion was mean-ingless at best and misleading at worst. Hencethe issue: Either the contemporary Christiandemocratic parties religious prole is mean-ingless, in which case one must explain the la-

bels persistence ina very secular context; or it isconsequential, in which case it seems irrational,as it would undermine these parties electoralappeal.

Explicit references to religion are scarce andperceived as risky given the highly secularizedEuropean electorates.TheScandinavianChris-tian democratic parities provide an interest-ing, albeit limited, contrast. These parties areboth more religious and more leftist than theircounterparts elsewhere in Europe. However, asthey have become more successful, they havetoned down their religious message in an effort to capture the median voter, thus approachingthe mainstream Christian democratic model(Madeley 2004).

Placing religion front and center would im-ply that Christian democracy could never be-come a true catch-all partyespecially in a

secular context where the mobilizing power the church has declined considerably. Indeedappealing to religion or confession may scaaway nonreligious voters or voters with a dferent creed. In a nation where, say, 30%40%of the population claim Catholic church membership, a party that exclusively tries to m

bilize religious voters on the basis of religioappeals can never hope to win a parliamentamajority. However, broadening the partys appeal to include nonreligious voters or members of different creeds entails a serious ribecause Christian democracy likely encounters a trade-off quite similar to the one faceby social democracy. Paraphrasing Przewors(1985), this trade-off could be expressed as folows: When Christiandemocratic partiesdirectheir efforts to mobilizing the support of non

religious allies, they nd it increasinglydifcuto recruit and maintain the support of the religiously inspired voters. Such a dilemma, however, would be relevant only if we assume tcontinuing salience of religion as an electormobilizer, that is, under conditions of marginaor constrained secularization. This implies thaif Christian democratic parties can be considered catch-all parties at all (Krouwel 1992003), they could only have become catch-aparties in the late 1960s and early 1970s, wh

theprocess of secularization really started to affect political afliation. In other words,a theorofChristiandemocracyhasto considerboththepolitical salience of religion and the aftermaof secularization.

At the same time, religion has also been vehicle of general political appeal, precisely bcause it transcends class. Christian democrachas always had strong social integrative capaties by virtue of its (religiously inspired) polical ideology. With respect to the topic of poliical democracy and electoral competition, onof the main differences between social demoracy and Christian democracy is that the formers vehicle for mass support was the appeto class as a principal base for political artulation, while the latter employed a religiouappeal to cutacrossclass cleavages.What therefore seems cataclysmic for social democracy


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benecial for Christian democracy. To put it differently, what is a trade-off in social demo-craticpolitics mayinvolve a payoff forChristiandemocracy. By stressing the cross-class natureof the movement, Christian democratic par-ties managed to attract voters by appealingto catholicity in its literal sense. Christian

democracys choice or problem has not been whether to seek support exclusively in one classor to rely on multi- or even nonclass forces,but rather how to formulate and implement afeasible mediation between the various layersof society, whether these are dened as classesor not. Of course, this was possible in secular-izing societies, where a toned-down version of religion could attract many more voters thanit lost.

As for the catch-all character of Christian

democracy, it was not so much an effect of the transformation of Western European party systems and of the growing intensity of elec-toral competition, as Kirchheimer (1966) ar-gued, but rather the manifestation of the way the religiously inspired political ideology wasmade ready for the electoral battle. Althoughthe Christian democratic parties of continen-tal Western Europe are in several respects very close to Kirchheimers catch-all party, not allcatch-all partiesare the same; the empirical evi-

dence suggests that each hasa distinctive prolethat takes advantage of their pragmatic, oppor-tunistic, and reformist tradition (Krouwel 2003,Frey 2009). The logic of electoral competitionforced Christian democratic parties to moder-ate the conicts between capital and labor inorder to attract voters from the ranks of work-ers more easily. At the same time, these partiestried to stabilize other social and cultural cleav-ages that were benecial to them. Christiandemocrats tend to choose those issues that ap-pear tobeparticularlyapt tomitigate traditionalsocioeconomiccleavagesandkeepthesociocul-tural lines of conict constant (Schmidt 1985,p. 390; Frey 2009, pp. 3638). In short,Christian democratic parties have parlayedtheir religiousbackground into a uniqueadvan-tage in societies where a class compromise wasboth feasible and benecial.

What is the relationship between postwarChristian democratic parties and prewar con-fessionalparties? Two views have emerged fromthe literature. According to the rst one, eventhough modern Christian democratic partiesare the heirs of the older religious (primarily Catholic) parties, they were built up anew after

World War II as fully democratic and centrist political parties. It was only then that they ac-quired their distinctive character as religiously inspired, yet secular, parties that fully acceptedparliamentary democracy (Warner 2000,Conway 2003, Gehler & Kaiser 2004, Kaiser& Wohnout 2004a, Frey 2009). In that lineof thought, Frey (2009) distinguishes be-tween pure religious parties and Christiandemocratic partiesproperon thebasisof thean-alytical difference Lane & Ersson (1999) made

between structural parties, which are basedon social cleavages, and nonstructural parties, which attempt to bridge social-structuralconicts. Based on the Comparative ManifestoData (Budge et al. 2001, Klingemann et al.2006) and the Comparative Political Data Set (Armingeon et al.2006), which indifferentwayscharacterize the organization, political ideol-ogy, electoral appeal,andgovernment potentialof major political parties in democracies, Frey (2009) denes and classies Christian demo-

cratic parties empirically as nonstructural par-ties. These parties, which usually pick the labelChristian-democratic, share the features of an ideology aimed at conict accommodation;they are internationally connected through theChristian Democratic International (currently Centrist Democrat International) and, in theEuropean context, via the European PeoplesParty (the largest political party in the Euro-pean Parliament). Based on these criteria, Frey identies 16 Christian democratic parties in 13European countries (see Table 1 ).

According to Frey, religious parties havetheir roots in traditional cleavage conicts, whereas Christian democratic parties foster anideology that transcends cleavage-based pol-itics and has as its primary aim the mediationof cleavage-based conicts (e.g., class conict). With this distinction, he arrives at a position


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democraticones. Take, for instance, the catch-all character of the postwar parties. Becauseprewar confessional parties were formed on thebasis of religious rather than class appeals, they were socially heterogeneous from their very in-ception; and because they were built on topof mass corporate organizations formed by the

Catholic church, they had to manage daily in-ternal class compromises, so they naturally be-came catch-all parties with a sensitive ear toward compromise.

Ultimately, perceptions of continuity anddiscontinuity are not as far apart as often imag-ined.Noonewouldchallenge thefact that postwar Christian democratic parties look very dif-ferent from their prewarpredecessors; likewise,it would be difcult to deny that key elementsof their outlook, like their social concern, can

be traced back to their origins. In fact, no polit-ical scientist active in this eld would disagreethat there needs to be recognition that Chris-tian Democracy was not a uniform movement that arrived ready made in the history of post-1945 Europe but a dynamic and evolving phe-nomenon that was molded more by circum-stance than by intent (Conway 2003, p. 47).Kalyvas (1998) stylized political account of therise of Christiandemocracyrevolvesaroundtheparadox that Christiandemocracywas thecon-

tingent outcome of strategic decisions made by political actors, rather than the product of theseactors intentions and plans (p. 294). Overall,it is fair to say that this debate reects cross-disciplinary sensitivities; different degrees of generality and theorization are acceptable inhistory versus political science.

In summary, whether initiated by politicalscientists or historians, the combination of his-torical, comparative, and theoretical methodsin the study of Christian democracy has beenbenecial; it has facilitated the identication of Christian democracys distinctive features not only as a vote-seeking and ofce-seeking ac-tor but also as a policy-oriented political move-ment. Christian democracy has tended to rely on social policies with broad cross-class ap-peal in order to accumulate power, for whichthe religious appeal was benecial. Its distinc-

tiveness was reected in its political ideology and through it in the social-policy regimes it fostered.

The identication of the distinctive charac-ter of Christian democratic parties helped re- verse a view that dominated political scienceuntil the mid-1990s. It should be now estab-

lished that Christian democratic parties werenot merely pragmatic and opportunistic con-servative parties that went by another name.

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATICPOLITICS IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE The national political prole of contempo-rary Christian democratic parties hinges onhow these parties translate and modify within

theirownorganizationthestructureof conictsfound in their national contexts (van Kersber-gen 1995, 1999). The analysis of how Christiandemocratic parties have evolved since the endof the Cold War, as reected in the case stud-ies assembled by van Hecke & Gerard (2004),stresses the importance of historical context as akey factor for explaining the variation of Euro-pean experiences: thespeed with which theItal-ian Partito della Democrazia Cristiana (DC)4

collapsed in the 1990s (Leonardi & Alberti

2004); the remarkable stability of the GermanCDU after reunication, as well as its suddendecline and its recent apparent recovery (B osch2004);thefactthatin2002the OVPbecamethestrongest Austrian party, with 42% of the vote,for the rst time since 1966 (Fallend 2004); thesmall but increasing importance of the Chris-tian parties in Scandinavia (Madeley 2004);the repeated inability of Christian democratsin France to become an independent politi-cal force (Massart 2004); the failure of Span-

ish Christian democracy (Matuschek 2004); the wild electoral and power swings of Christiandemocracyin theNetherlands (Lucardie 2004);the diverging paths of the Flemish-speaking

4 Acronyms not dened in this paragraph are dened in Table 1 .


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andFrench-speakingChristiandemocraticpar-ties in Belgium (Beke 2004); and the success of Christian democracyat theEuropean level (vanHecke 2004).

Despite all this variation, there are impor-tant similarities that allow some generaliza-tions. In the recent history of Christian democ-

racy, the main commonality is the survival of apolitical movement that should have been ex-tinct a long time ago according to seculariza-tion theory. Likewise, it is possible to say that the prediction of a decisive decline of Chris-tian democratic parties following the end of theCold War has been falsied. Cyclical downturnis a more correct characterization as the elec-toral disasters of the early and mid-1990s werereversed and most Christian democratic par-ties rose from their deathbeds, to use Lucardies

(2004) apt metaphor. Italy proved to be an out-lier rather than a portent of things to come, asmany thought at the time.

To be sure, tracking the medium-term for-tunes of political parties is like aiming at amoving target. It is exceedingly hard to distin-guish deeper trends from much more commoncyclical ones, the conjectural changes from thestructural ones, the idiosyncratic and particularfeatures from the general and universal ones,the causal effects from the correlational ones.

It is also hard to synthesize divergent nationaltrends into clear common patterns. At the sametime, it is alsonecessary to try to inductivelydis-tinguish what appear to be the most interestingpatterns. Three emerge: stability, collapse, and volatility.

Although we cannot discuss every case here,theGerman, Italian, andDutch experiences de-serve special attention as intriguing instancesof variation. The decline of German Christiandemocracybegancomparativelylatebuthasnot led to political insignicance. The decline of Italian Christian democracy, in contrast, wasinitiallyhardlyperceptible,but then suddenanddramatic, such that by 2008 only remnants of a once-dominant party could be traced. TheDutch Christian democratic experience is oneof wild swings: steady decline, sudden recovery,decay again, and nally revitalization.

In the late 1980s, Christian democracy iGermany faced organizational, ideological,anelectoral problems that were very similar those of parties in other countries: loss of voers and of political and governmental domnance, especially at the L ander level (B osch2004). Secularization; the dwindling effect

anticommunism; the transformation of traditional values; poor economic circumstanceconicts with the peace movement, the unionand the churches; an unpopular leadershipall these factors added to the expectatiothat the end of the Christlich DemokratischUnion Deutschlands/Christlich-Soziale Union(CDU/CSU) was near. However, Chancellor Kohls CDU/CSU won the 1990 election with 43.8% of the vote, just 0.5% short his score in the 1987 elections and > 10%

more than the main rival party, the socidemocratic SPD (Sozialdemokratische ParteDeutschlands). The German unicationclearlycontributed to the unexpected victory of thGerman Christian democrats, who, probablyfor the nal time, were able to play the anticommunism card. The inclusion of the Easinto the German political system provided ne voters for the CDU. Traditional cleavages (religion more than class) hardly mattered for thesnew voters. Instead, they picked the party th

offered the best deal for a rapid assimilatiointo West Germany. B osch (2004, p. 59) observes that between 1990 and 1994, the CDUbecame the party of the Catholic and economically powerful South and the poor atheistEast. The unique conditions of German politics helped delay the effects of what appeato have been the normal cause of decline Christiandemocracyin othercountries, namelythe end of the Cold War (Keman & Penning2006). However, the unication effect ran ouof steam by the late 1990s. In fact, the Kogovernment was blamed for having underetimated the costs of unication and for beinresponsible for mass unemployment (11% nationally, but a high 20% in the Eastern part) which turned into the main campaign issue 1998.Attheelectionsofthatyear,theCDUsuf-fered a signicant drop (5.8%), and althoug


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its Bavarian sister party CSU managed to re-tain its vote share (down only 0.6%), the com-bined Christian democratic strength at the fed-eral level went down to a historic low of 35.2%.Christian democracy was out of power whena red-green coalition was formed betweensocial democrats and the Greens. In opposi-

tion, Christian democracy gained back someof its strength and reached 38.5% of the votein the 2002 elections, exactly the same scoreobtained by the social democrats. The 2005elections were disappointing for the Christiandemocrats, who again lost votes (35.2%), but so did the social democrats, adding to the frag-mentation of the German party system andmaking it extremely difcult to assemble a win-ning coalition of either the center-left or thecenter-right. As a result and out of necessity,

therefore,a GrandCoalitionbetweenChristiandemocracy and social democracy was forged with a Christian democratic chancellor at thehelm (Clemens 2007). The recent electoraloutcomes for Christian democracy and socialdemocracy in Germany and the rise of new political parties [the Greens in the 1980s andthe Left Party (PDS/Die Linke) (Partei desDemokratischen Sozialismus) more recently]seem to t the general trend in Europe: a polit-ical convergence between traditional mass par-

tiesof thecenter-left andthe center-right, whilethe center declines as a result of rising electoral volatility and the increasing strength of chal-lengersonboththeleftandtheright.Thistrendis particularly strong in countries where Chris-tian democracy and social democracy have tra-ditionallybeenthemain competitors forpower.Bothseemtobelosingtheirroleaspivotalpow-ers in the party systems in which they operate(Keman & Pennings 2006).

The case that contrasts most sharply withthe German developments concerns the Ital-ian DC (Partito della Democrazia Cristiana).On average, and until 1992 (excluding the one-time high of 48.5% at the elections of 1948),the DCs share of the popular vote was al-most 34%. Then, in 1992, the party suddenly won < 30% of the vote, although the Christiandemocrats remained in government. Between

1992 and 1994, the whole Italian party systemcollapsed and with it the DC, which explodedin a plethora of small successors that never at-tained anywhere near the former strength of the DC. Leonardi & Alberti (2004) argue that the systematic failure of theDCs political elitesto maintain the productivity of the consocia-

tional construct of their party, their continuedeffort to deal in mutually advantageous com-promises and exchanges with coalition partners(especially the socialists), and their neglect of political fragmentation inside and outside theparty (e.g., the emergence of a regional con-tender) made the party unable to respond ade-quately to a series of crises, challenges, and po-litical changes that evena well-disciplinedparty would have found difcult to surmount. Suchdevelopments include generally relevant events

such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapseof the Soviet Union, the international nan-cial crisis, the formulation and implementationof the European Monetary Union criteria, on-going secularization, and the rise of a populist movement,aswell as specically Italian circum-stances: themanipulite(cleanhands) corruptionscandal, the introduction of a largely majoritar-ian electoral system, and the drifting apart of,on the one hand, the Catholic subculture andthe church, and on the other hand, the politi-

cians of the DC. In the elections of 1994 (underthe new electoral system that forced parties toform electoral blocs), the Partito Popolare Ital-iano (the DCs successor) won only 11.1%, andthe centrist pole of which it was part won amere 15.8%. Since then, the Christian demo-cratic legacyhas been scatteredover several par-ties that participate in diverging political blocsor poles, and at least two parties claim to bethe real Italian Christian democratic party (see Table 1 ).

The Dutch main Protestant and Catholicparties recovered from the crisis of confes-sional politics in the 1960s and 1970s by merg-ing into a single new party, the Christen-Democratisch Appel (CDA). This party wasmoredistinctivelyChristiandemocraticthanitspredecessors in its social-policy prole and itscross-confessional and cross-class appeal. The


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new Christian democracy radically broke withconfessionalism,diluted denominational differ-ences between Catholics and Protestants, andproved successful in the 1980s. By the end of the era, the party had become the most pow-erful one, earning 35.3% of the vote in 1989.In the next two elections (1994, 1998), how-

ever, the party lost an unprecedented 16.9%of the vote, its membership was drained, andthe party lost its pivotal role in coalition build-ing. In 1994, for the rst time in 76 years, theChristian democrats failed to become part of the government. The CDA was forced to act as the major opposition party until 2002. Be-ing removed from the national center of powerimplied that it became more difcult to holdonto power at the regional and local levels(Duncan 2006, 2007). At rst, the liberal right

and center-right proted from the electoralhemorrhage of the Christian democrats, but inthe late 1990s voters shifted to the left for an al-ternative (Lucardie2004,p.161).Many anobit-uary was written in those days for DutchChris-tian Democracy, but unpredictably the CDAselectoral appeal was re-established in the early 2000s, and the party became once again thebiggest in Parliament. The CDA in 2006 re-gained 80% of its parliamentary power of 1989, and with that it could recapture the piv-

otal position in coalition building. As in other countries (and as for other par-ties), one of the main political problems of Christian democracy in the Netherlands hasbeen to craft a convincing and electorally ap-pealing program of socioeconomic adjustment to the new (international) economic conditionsand of welfare-state reform. The party used itsforced sojourn in opposition during the 1990sto try to revitalize its ideology, policy platform,organization, and strategies (see van Kersber-gen 2008). However, as elsewhere, this task wasseriously hindered by structural weaknesses re-lating to secularization,the decline ofpolitically expressive and fairly xed collective identities,the ill-adapted nature of its own preferred so-cial and political model, and the loss of socialembeddedness. In the end, the CDA came up with a modernized political ideology with roots

in theChristiandemocratic tradition,but it alsostarted to incorporate mainstreamconservativemarket-liberal proposals. None of this seemeparticularly convincing to the voters or couladdress effectively the structural weaknesses the party.

However, as in Germany and Italy, country

specic developments helped the Christiademocrats to recover from their identity crisiIn the Dutch case, it was the arrival of righ wing populism that proved oddly benecifor Christian democracy. As elsewhere in th Western world, political distrust and dissaisfaction had been growing in the Netherlands for some time, a trend whose depth wmissed by the main parties. In the early 2000Pim Fortuyn, a political entrepreneur, beganto politicize the diffuse popular discontent an

antielitism, predominantly targeting the rulingcoalition of social democrats and market libeals. The populist challenge suddenly providethe Christian democrats with an opportunity toescapeelectoral marginalizationby alsoexploiing the surfacing political discontent to theadvantage. A drastic change in the Christiademocratic approach was the successful straegy of harvesting the growing dissatisfactio with immigration and pushing for the integration of the Muslim minority (van Kersberge

& Krouwel 2008). To some extent, then, the re-covery of Dutch Christian democracy, despitstructural weaknesses not unlike those exprienced in other countries, was contingent othe shocking assassination of the populist PiFortuyn, a development that abruptly shiftethe opportunity structure to the advantagof Christian democracy in 2002 (Pennings &Keman 2003, van Holsteyn et al. 2003).

Signicantly, we nd no instances of paties in Central and Eastern Europe that comnear the success of contemporary Christiademocracy in, say, Germany or the Netherlands.5 Why? One relatively straightforwar

5 The Czech Christian and Democratic Union (KDU- CSL won 7.2% of the vote in 2006, and the Slovak Democratand Christian Union (SDKU-DS), arguably one of the moselectorally successful parties so far, won 18.4% in 2006.


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answer is that because this region includes Eu-ropes most secularized countries, the electoralchances for any political party appealing to re-ligion were dim from the outset. As Bale &Szczerbiak (2008) correctly note, this reason-ing leaves out one puzzling case: Poland. Thisis a country where virtually the entire popula-

tion is Catholic, half of whom regularly attendchurch; where a large proportion of thepopula-tion is employed in agriculture; where there ex-ists a strong, socially conservative union move-ment; and where an anticlerical left emerged inthe early 1990s. These are conditions thought favorable for Christian democratic parties toemerge and thrive (Kalyvas 1996, Frey 2009). There were indeed many attempts to estab-lish self-proclaimed Christian democratic par-ties in the early 1990s, yet the closest parties to

emerge were either fully religious parties (suchas the Christian National Union) or nonreli-gious center-right/right-wing parties. In short,no successful Christian democracy arose inPoland.

Of the factors identied that account for theemergence and success of Christian democracy in continental Europe, only twowere present inPoland: a high number of practicing Catholicsand the presence of an anticlerical left. There were ve reasons for Christian democracys fail-

ure in Poland. First, parts of Christian democ-racys core constituencies were either missingor ercely competed for by other parties (e.g.,female voters disproportionately do not votefor the center-right, and an agrarian party at-tracts the peasant vote). Second, potential com-petitors on the right were not discredited by association with the totalitarian past. Third,the Catholic hierarchy was unwilling to back asingle Christian democratic party. Fourth, themost important civil-society organization, thelabor union Solidarity, refused to support any of the center-right political parties. Finally, de-spite anticlericalism, there was no specic needfor an actor to defend the churchs interests,as nearly all political parties of the center-right were committed to Christian values and sympa-theticto thechurchs socialandpoliticalagenda.

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY ANDEUROPEAN INTEGRATION Recently, considerable attention has been paidto the role of Christian democracy in interna-tional politics, particularly in European inte-gration (see particularly Kaisers 2007 tour deforce). Christian democrats can credibly claim

the paternity of the idea of European integra-tion, both as a solution to war and as an an-swer to international coordination problemsthat hampered economic and social prosper-ity. They take pride in the success of therisky undertaking of European integration: theprocess by which national sovereignty is re-nounced in order to stimulate and improvethe quality of the rule of law in the commonterritory (Oostlander 2003, p. 131). Thereare legitimate reasons for their pride. One

example is the Secr etariat International desPartisD emocratiques dInspirationChr etienne(SIPDIC), founded in 1925, whose core issue was pro-Europeanism, particularly focusing onFranco-German reconciliation (van Kemseke2006, p. 28; Kaiser 2007). Referring to Chris-tian democratic politicians during the interwarperiod, Pulzer (2004, p. 21) advises us to rec-ognize the extent to which the idea of politi-cal action beyond the boundaries of the nation-state was alive in those decades and how many

of those who realized the European idea af-ter 1945 served their political apprenticeshipthen.

The six nations that pioneered the pro-cess of European integration (Belgium, France,Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Nether-lands) all had well-established Christian demo-cratic parties. This is why the process of European integration was, from Britains per-spective, nothing more than a cover for aCatholic conspiracy, orchestrated from the Vatican (Young 1998). As Pulzer (2004, p. 22)put it, The odor of incense clung to the move-ment. At the heart of the new enterprise wasthe Europe of Charlemagne; it was not at allclear to everyone whether they were witnessingthe birth of a United States of Europe or theresurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.


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The role of Christian democracy in the pro-cessofEuropeanintegrationhasbeenstudiedindepth only recently (Kaiser 2007). This delay issurprising given the fundamental role of Chris-tian democracy in all phases of integration: theearly foundation period (19471957), the pe-riod of sclerosis (1960 and 1970s), the rebirth

of Europe (mid-1980s), and its rapid deepeningand widening (1990s and 2000s). As Granieri(2009, pp. 34) provocatively argued, If schol-ars hope to understand both the development of European Christian Democracy and the un-even course of European integration since the1960s, they need to appreciate the connectionbetween the crisis of Christian Democracy ina secularizing Europe and the crisis of Euro-pean identity that began at the same time.Lieshout (1999) has convincingly shown that

political, rather than economic, dynamics havebeen propelling European integration. Seenfrom an international relationsand foreign pol-icyperspective, theEuropeanproject providedthe institutional context in which the contin-uous struggle for power between France andGermany could at last be fought using peace-ful means (Lieshout 1999, pp. 12). Lieshout also shows how quickly and thoroughly thesupranational solution (the Schuman plan) that the French initially proposed to address the

German question was overhauled by tradi-tional intergovernmental behavior. The gov-ernmentsofthememberstateshavedeterminedall major steps in further European integration.Such governments are made up of political par-ties, either governing alone or in coalition withother parties. As such, understanding the polit-ical dynamics of European integration requiresan appreciation of the role political parties play.Kaiser (2007) demonstrates the crucial impor-tance of the transnational networks of Chris-tian democracy. These have been functional forcreating political trust, deliberating policy, es-pecially on European integration, marginalis-ing internal dissent within the national parties,socialising new members into an existing policy consensus, coordinating governmental policy-making and facilitating parliamentary ratica-tion of integration treaties (Kaiser 2007, p. 9).

Although the association between Christian democracy and European integration musbe qualied (Christian democratic parties hano monopoly on this idea and were intenally divided about it), it appears that the prEuropeanandprointegrationstancecamemorenaturally for Christian democrats than for an

of their rivals (Pulzer 2004, p. 22). Morover, the core ideological concepts of Chritian democratic politics seemed ready-madfor European integration in four ways. Firsthe principles of integration and accommodation are key pillars of the Christian democratpolitical philosophy and organizational practice (Irving 1979, pp. xviiixix). Second, tdoctrine of personalism stresses that individuals become full persons only when they amembers of their respective communities. Th

sovereign nation-state is but one such community: The national community is just onamong otherslocality, workplace, religionand not fundamentally different from a supranational community (Hanley 2002, p. 464 Third, with subsidiarity as a principle of govenance, Christian democrats possessed a quasfederalist principle, along with long organizationalpractice,whichallowed them to structureandconstrain theirsupranational ambitions.Fi-nally, for Catholics especially, in contrast to th

more nationally oriented Protestants, the ideof trans- or supranationalism is not particularlalien given the transnational structure of thchurch.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY A huge comparative literature assesses timpact of political parties on the politiceconomy of advanced capitalist democraci(Huber & Stephens 2001, Korpi & Palm2003, Allan & Scruggs 2004, Starke 2006Like the mainstream literature on politicaparties, for a long time it overlooked thimpact of Christian democracy. The so-callesocial democratic model of political economand welfare-state emergence and growth wadominant throughout the 1980s until roughly


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the early 1990s (Esping-Andersen & vanKersbergen 1992). The central thesis was that both egalitarian outcomes and the quality of welfare arrangements (universalism, solidarity,redistribution) were a function of the extent to which the population was organized as wageearners within the social democratic move-

ment. A developed welfare state, therefore, wasinterpreted as the outcome of the accumulatedpower of the working class and its politicalrepresentative, social democracy.

The social democratic model, however,quickly ran into severe empirical problems be-cause many countries pursued social justicepolicies, had extensive programs of market in-tervention, and were generally generous so-cial spenders, yet lacked the type of socialdemocratic power mobilization that the model

positedas thecause ofsuch a political-economicarchitecture. Apparently other parties beyondsocial democratic ones could behave as pro- welfare actors. Moreover, the model also brokedown for historical reasons: Early reforms of capitalism were pioneered by liberal and con-servative state elites and rarely, if ever, by so-cialists or social democrats (e.g., Bismarck inGermany in the 1880s). This all necessitated athorough theoretical and empirical revision of the model of welfare-state construction and ex-

pansion. This was done partly by reconsideringthe role of Christian democracy in the history of the welfare state (Huber & Stephens 2001,Seeleib-Kaiser et al. 2008).

An early answer was that Christian democ-racy (or political Catholicism) constituted afunctional equivalent or alternative to so-cial democracy for expanding the welfarestate (Stephens 1979, Wilensky 1981, Schmidt 1982). Catholic social thinking on the fair fam-ily wage, compassion for the poor, and usury,for instance, clearly allowed for the adoption of a pro-welfare stance by Christian democraticparties (Kaufmann 1989), particularly crucialin family policy (Fix 2001, Morgan 2006). Go-ing deeper, Opielka (2008) has recently arguedthat the values underlying the social and po-litical ethics and translated into modern so-cial policies clearly have Christian foundations,

in addition to their more obviously human-ist underpinnings. This is consistent with Kahl(2005, 2007), who traces the upstream effectsof Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist/Puritanpracticeson contemporary antipovertypolicies.In addition, one of the basic assumptions of thesocial democratic model was challenged: that

the power of labor equals the power of socialdemocracy. Christian democratic parties oper-ated in the political center and enjoyed con-siderable working-class support, and they werecommonly backed by powerful Catholic unions(van Kersbergen 1995). This political constel-lation was highly favorable to welfare-statedevelopment.

The most interesting thing about welfarestates is not how much they spend, but how and on what they spend, and which social in-

stitutions bear most responsibility. The moreradical differences between welfare states areof a qualitative, rather than quantitative, na-ture. There exist different types of welfareregimes, i.e., different ways of combining so-cial institutions for the provision of work and welfare: public provisions (e.g., compul-sory insurances, social services, job protectionregulation), market-based arrangements (e.g.,occupational pensions, private insurances), so-cietalorganizations (e.g., religious charities, or-

ganizations for voluntary work), and the family (informal care) (Esping-Andersen 1990). Thisnew conceptualization of a welfare regime fa-cilitated an improved understanding of the im-pact of politics on social policies and theireffects. It claried that Christian democracy did not simply promote welfare-state develop-ment like social democracy; instead, the move-ment fostered a distinctivewelfare-state regimethat is signicantly and systematically different from both the social democratic and conserva-tive/liberal social policy regimes, and its rise isconnected to the ideology of social Catholi-cism and the power of Christian democraticparties. Christian democracy is associated witha core of social policies that aggregate into a welfare-state regime funded by social demo-cratic rates of spending but with very differ-ent features (Huber & Stephens 1993, Huber


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et al. 1993, van Kersbergen 1995). The Chris-tian democratic welfare regime (Germany be-ing the prime example) is generous but passiveand transfer oriented. Its main features are in-come replacement ratherthan jobprotectionorcreation, the privileging of families rather thanindividuals, the fragmentation and semipublic

character of major aspects of the administra-tion and execution of welfare policies ratherthan their centralization and state control, thereproduction of social status rather than the re-fashioning of the social structure, and the rela-tive obstruction of womens access to the labormarket.

A decade and a half of research in the 1990sand 2000s further documented the causes,consequences, and contemporary reforms of the various regimes, including the Chris-

tian democraticwelfare state (Esping-Andersen1996a, Goodin et al. 1999, van Kersbergen1999, Scharpf & Schmidt 2000, Pierson 2001,Esping-Andersen et al. 2002, Seeleib-Kaiseret al. 2008). The ndings on the continentalEuropean Christian democratic welfare regimecan be summarized as follows. The regime was characterized by occupationally distinct,employment-related social insurance, combin-ing (sometimes) very high replacement rates with generally strict levels of employment pro-

tection. The system aimed to protect the male-breadwinner household. Social policy was pre-dominantly based on the principle of industrialinsurance against occupational risks, nancedby earmarked payroll contributions from em-ployers and workers. Strong social-partnershiptraditions extended into the administration of social insurance. The status of labor-market policies wasstrongly correlated with thepassivecharacterof social security. Theregimelackedadistinctive legacy of active employment-policy priorities.

These characteristics of the Christian demo-cratic welfare regime were subsequently usedto study whether and to what extent they werecausing the difculty in which the systems werending themselves in the period of economicchallengessince theoilshocksof the1970s.TheChristian democratic regimes were haunted

by the so-called welfare without work sydrome (Esping-Andersen 1996b). In the Christian democratic welfare states, spiraling uemployment in the early 1980s led to a viethat strategies of compulsory work reductionsuch as early retirement and disability leav were socially acceptable alternatives to high lev

els of unemployment among younger workers. The unintended result, however, was tha within less than a decade, labor-supply redution produced a problem of structural labormarket inactivityandanassociated nancial crsis of the employment-based social-insurancsystem. The generosity and long duration oinsurance-based income-replacement benetsthe passivity of the benet system, its contriutory nancing, and relatively high minimum wages all worked together to produce a dow

ward spiral of labor shedding. Payroll nancinof social benets put a premium on high productivity, but shedding less productive workeincreased the tax on labor because an evsmaller number of workers had to provide foan increasing number of inactive citizens. Ishort, the Christian democratic regime maximized worker productivity, producing an unintended inactivity trap. Productivity gains wentogether with rising wage costs and (early) exof lessproductiveworkers, requiringyet furthe

productivity growth and adding to the pressurto further reduce the work force subsidized bpassive social policies such as early retireme(Hemerijck & Manow 2001, van Kersbergen &Hemerijck 2004).

Currently, the literature on the Christiandemocratic welfare state is focusing on explaiing the puzzle of how the frozen welfare stalandscapes (Esping-Andersen 1996b, p. 24characterizedby thewelfare-without-worksyndrome, are changing rapidly even though reform was thought to be almost impossible. Thquestions are how and under which conditionis welfare-state reform possible, and who actually doing the reforming? Do Christiademocratic parties still play a crucial role the reform of the welfare regimes to whicthey arehistoricallyattached andstill politicallcommitted? Or is it the case, as much recen


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literature on the welfare state has stressed, that the role of Christian democracy is diminish-ing because political party struggles more gen-erally matter less and less in welfare-state re-form? Aging populations, sluggish economicgrowth, long-term unemployment, changingfamily structures and gender roles, the trans-

formation of life-cycle patterns, the postindus-trialization of labor markets, the rise of new risks andneedsas well as international pressures(e.g., globalization and European integration),not only seemed to bring an end to a goldenpolitical age of expansion, but also appeared tonarrowconsiderably the maneuvering space forpro-welfare political actors (Huber & Stephens2001, Pierson 2001).

New theories have been proposed that ex-plain how international economic pressures

and domestic social, cultural, and demographicchallenges create pressure for radical adjust-ment. Such theories imply that governmentsof whatever political persuasion can do littlefor the welfare states survival in the face of such overwhelming forces. Economic interde-pendence is expected to help liberal and con-servative governments pursue their agenda of rolling back the welfare state and force socialdemocratic and Christian democratic govern-ments to adjust radically their systems of social

protection to keep up with international com-petition. As a result, cross-national differencesbetween social-protection systems are disap-pearing as welfare-state regimes converge toward a lowest common social denominator (fora critical overview, see Garrett 1998, Glatzer& Rueschemeyer 2005). This view, however, iscontroversial and contested. Stephens (2005),for instance, argues that in northwesternEurope, trade openness leads to the expan-sion of the welfare state, but only under so-cial democratic or Christian democratic rule.If the secular right is in power, it does not take place. Both social democratic and Chris-tiandemocraticwelfare states arenotonly com-patible with competition on the world market,but to the extent that they enabled wage re-straint and provided collective goods valued by employers, such as labor training, the gener-

ous social policies actually contributed to com-petitiveness (Stephens 2005, p. 70). Seeleib-Kaiser et al. (2008, pp. 1005) demonstrate that the welfare-state reforms implemented in theChristian democratic welfare states Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands do not follow any clear and consistent logic that one would ex-

pect on the basis of partisanship. Contrary to what van Kersbergen & Hemerijck (2004) sug-gest, Seeleib-Kaiser et al. nd that there hasbeen a Christian-democratization of socialdemocratic social-policy positions, which hasfacilitated a shift from an exclusively Christiandemocratic type of welfare state to a liberal-communitarian model. This model stresses theneed to expand public policies to assist familiesand the necessity to correlate the right to socialbenetsmuch better with the obligation to par-

ticipate in society (e.g., to actively seek work). The overarching political aim is to restore thesocial cohesion of the community, a type of po-litical program still closer to Christian democ-racy than to social democracy (Seeleib-Kaiseret al. 2008, p. 169).

Another recent development in thepolitical-economy literature concerns a criticalrethinking of the role of religion and Christiandemocracy in welfare-state development that challenges mainstream approaches. As argued

above, the welfare-state literature originally posited that it was the combination of Chris-tian democracy and Catholic social doctrinethat explained why Christian democratic welfare states were as generous in termsof social spending as the social democraticones, although qualitatively different. A new perspective on religion and welfare-statedevelopment (van Kersbergen & Manow 2009)stresses how social cleavage structures andelectoral rules interact to produce the different political class coalitions behind the various welfare regimes. In countries with proportionalelectoral systems, the absence or presence of statechurch conicts was the key factor that helped determine whether class remainedthe dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively basedon socioeconomic interests (e.g., religion) was


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introduced into politics and, particularly, intosocial policy. This perspective highlights (class)coalition politics and institutional effects. Incountries with a majoritarian electoral system,only one social-cleavage dimension can be rep-resented in politics, namely the laborcapitalclass conict. In suchsystems, the right tends to

governmore often than the left, explaining why a residual (or liberal) welfare state emerged. Inproportional systems, more cleavage dimen-sions can be represented via party politics, andthe cleavage structure explains which partiesarise and how the middle class is integrated intothe political system. In Scandinavia, parties of agrarian defense arose because of the absenceof a strong religious cleavage and the presenceof an urbanrural conict. The typical universal social democratic welfare state was the

result of a coalition between social democraticparties and the rural middle class. In continen-tal Europe, the second cleavage representedin the party systems, besides the dominant laborcapital cleavage, has been the religious(statechurch) cleavage, as a result of whichparties of religious defense emerged. The typ-ical continental welfare states are the product of a coalition between social and Christiandemocracy.

This approach looks at which type of mid-

dle class entered into a coalition with socialdemocracy and argues that the patterns of class coalitions better explain the observed em-pirical variation in welfare-state development.It deemphasizes the direct role of Christiandemocracy in shaping the continental welfare-state regime, to the point where it argues that the features of even a prototypical Christiandemocratic welfare state such as Italys are theunintended and unanticipated outcomes of aclientelistic policy mode in which Catholic so-cial doctrine has no impact on policy outcomes(Lynch 2009). More generally, the fact that the transfer-heavy, insurance-based, family-privileging type of welfare regime is also foundoutside the OECD context and in countries(especially in Latin America) where Christiandemocracy has not been the dominant politicalactor challenges the robustness of theChristian

democratic effect.6 In fact, the recent debaton the relative weight of the various fators that impact on welfare-state developmenand regime variation in Latin America macast new doubts on the causal mechanism widely thought to account for the emergencof the Christian democratic welfare states (se

Segura-Ubiergo 2007, Haggard & Kaufman2008).

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY BEYOND EUROPE ANDCHRISTIANITY Does the Christian democratic model travebeyond Europe and Christianity? FollowinKalyvas (1998b, 2000, 2003), we answer a quied yes. Our answer implies that the legacy

European Christian democracy transcends ittemporal and spatial boundaries and carriesmuch broader signicance.

Our answer calls for a move that is at onconceptual, historical, and analytical. Rathethan attempting to compare contemporaryChristian democratic parties with contemporary religious parties elsewhere, we shoufocus instead on theprewarconfessionalpartieof Europe. First, and like many religious paties today, the European confessional partie

appeared in a political context that can best bdescribed as one of emerging democracies This is a context characterized by considerabinstitutional uncertainty and uidity, wherdemocratic norms are not consolidated, anpolitical actors are not necessarily commited to existing institutions. Second, prewconfessional parties can be conceptualized organizations engaging in religious moblization. Despite widely differing religiodoctrines andpolitical andsocialenvironments

it is possible to study religious mobilization intheoretical and comparative fashion, much asis possible to study labor or ethnic mobilizatioacross cultures, space, and time. Religious mbilization is characterizedby ve features: (a) an

6 We thank Isabella Mares for pointing this out to us.


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antisystemcritique of liberal institutionsrely-ingon religious rhetoric; (b) the reconstruction,not just the mobilization, of existing religiousidentities; (c ) a mass mobilization relying on a wide use of selective incentives and a concomi-tant focus of economic and social issues; (d ) across-class appeal; and (e) links to pre-existing

religious institutions (Kalyvas 2003).Focusing on religious mobilization in thecontext of emerging democracies is a move that builds on an extensive recent critique of es-sentialist approaches that assume an inherent incompatibility of certain religions with lib-eral democracy, pluralism, and even modern-ization (Tibi 1990; Huntington 1996; Lewis2002, 2003).Such approaches remainprevalent in publicdiscourse, especiallyafter theSeptem-ber 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but enjoy little

scholarly support (Kalyvas 2000, Wiktorowicz2004, Bayat 2007, Roy 2007). With religious mobilization dened, a num-

berofquestionscanbeposed.Hereweraisetwothat focus on its causes andconsequences. First, what accounts for variation in the incidence,timing, size, and type of religious mobiliza-tion? Theanswermust take into account demo-graphic, historical, cultural, institutional, andideological parameters. Second, can religiousmobilization possibly contribute to democratic

consolidation, and if so, how? In short, what are the conditions for a successful political in-corporation of religiously inclined parties intoemerging democracies? Put otherwise, what isthe path out of unsecular politics?

It is possible to analyze the process of po-tential incorporation as an interaction betweenincumbents and religious challengers (Kalyvas1998b, 2000; Berman 2008; Altinordu 2009).Focusing on parties that rely on religious mo-bilization, Kalyvas (1998b, 2000, 2003) empha-sizesthecentralityoftheprocessofmoderation, which is fraught with three key questions. First, what is the structure of opportunities affordedby the existing political system? (Are incum-bents willing to link moderation with incentivesand radicalization with sanctions?) Second, what is the structure of electoral constraints? (Isthe religious party able to win a parliamentary

majority or must it rely on electoral coalitions with secular partners?) Third, what is the reli-gious partys association with the religious in-stitution to which it is related? (Is this religiousinstitution centralized or decentralized?) Con-necting these three dimensions should help uspredict whether religious mobilization ends up

consolidating a edging democracy by swayingthe religious party toward a moderate path. Let us examine these three questions in more detail.

First, a religious partys willingness to mod-erate hinges on the structure of incentivesand sanctions faced by that party. FollowingHuntington (1993, p. 165), it is possible tosee democratic politics as entailing a partici-pation/moderation trade-off. Participation inelectoral politics tends to lead to the modera-tion of previouslyradical groups, as political in-

terests, pragmatic considerations, and politicallearningtakeprecedenceoverdogmatic rigidity (Nasr 1995, Anderson 2000, Schwedler 2007).Likewise, Berman (2008) emphasizes sanctionsimposed on radicalization by incumbent elites. Theexperience of the AKP (Adalet ve KalknmaPartisi or Justice and Development Party) in Turkey is an example of the ability of Islamist politicians to understand a political opportu-nity structure that provided both incentivesand sanctions, leading to the incorporation of

political Islam through a more skillful man-agement of sensitive institutional relationships(Altinordu 2009).

At the same time, however, as Altinordu(2009) warns, moderation may not be an op-tion if regime incumbents are uninterested inthe incorporation of religious parties. Insofaras emerging democracies (not to speak of au-thoritarian regimes) can be political contexts where the opportunities attached to modera-tion are limited, we may well fail to observeit, but not because of the religious partys un- willingness. If religious parties realize that they will not be allowed to govern even if they wina majority (or if they are not allowed to com-pete in the rst place), they may naturally turnto nondemocratic alternatives. Naive observers will then be likely to attribute such a turn tothe religious character of the party rather than


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to the opportunities afforded to it by the polit-ical regime. In an international context charac-terized by a simplistic discourse on terrorism,undemocratic incumbents will have an incen-tive to play up a false secular card and reducethe opportunities available to religious partiesso as to (perversely) tip the internal balance of

religious parties towardradical factions andjus-tify crackdowns supported by the internationalcommunity in the name of democracy, or at least stability.

If the political system is open and oppor-tunities exist, the second question comes up: What is the structure of electoral constraintsfaced by the religious party? Is it able to win aparliamentary majority or must it rely on elec-toral coalitions with secular partners? Two pos-sibilities exist. On the one hand, when electoral

constraints are salient, religious parties will belikely to moderate via the mechanism of coali-tion formation. This was the path followed by most confessional parties in nineteenth-century Europeandmost recently by theBJP(Bharatiya Janata Party or Indian Peoples Party) in Indiafollowing the 1996 elections. It is interesting tonote that analysts who had been skeptical about the BJPs prospects for moderation recognizedlater that the logic of Indian politics has madeit clear to the BJP that if they want to be in

power they must ndenoughcoalitionpartnersin the South and East,which is impossible with-out ideological moderation (Varshney 1998,p. 15).

On the other hand, if electoral constraintsare lacking, that is, if parties have the capac-ity to win parliamentary majorities that al-low them to govern without partners, thenthe key explanatory variable falls on nonelec-toral constraints. This process is illustrated by nineteenth-century Belgium (Kalyvas 1998b)and contemporary Turkey (Altinordu 2009). The presence of institutional actors, such asthe army, who have the ability to guarantee thedemocraticandsecularnatureoftheregimewillbe crucial in moving these parties toward mod-eration. At the same time, however, this sce-nario can produce the failure of incorporationalong with democratic deconsolidation.

This is where the third question comes in What kind of association exists between threligious party and the religious institution t which it is related? We begin by noting that thprocess of moderation can be either endogenous, if it is initiatedexclusivelyby the religiouparty, or exogenous, if it is initiated by rel

gious actorsassociated with theparty. Assumindemocraticincumbents,religiousparties poiseto win majorities in emerging democracies faa commitment problem (Kalyvas 2000). An ante credible signaling of postvictory behaior is critical. Though willing to moderate, thleadership of youngreligiousparties maybe unable to send the unambiguous signals that wsatisfy rulingelitesunable, that is, to suppresthe radicals. A solution to this problem can bprovided by religious institutions. Centralized

authoritarian,andhierarchical religious institutions can play a positive role when they help religious parties to overcome credibilityproblemby shouldering the responsibility of silencinthe radicals. This is, in fact, what happened nineteenth-century Belgium but failed to happen in Algeria in 19911992, because the leaership of the FIS (Front Islamique du Salu was not helped by the decentralized structure oIslam (Kalyvas 2000).

The lens of religious mobilization shows th

relevance of the Christian democratic experenceforcontemporary non-Europeanandnon-Christian settings, opening important and interesting possibilities for comparative work, indicatedby a spateof recent studies (Wickham2004, El Ghobashy 2005, Ismail 200 Altinordu 2009).

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE: AN OUTLOOK We have seen that grasping the history ancharacter of Christian democracy is crucial funderstanding European politics, including theprocess of European integration. The Christiandemocraticexperiencemoregenerallycon veys important lessons about religious polical mobilization and religion as a foundation


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element of political identity, which are also rel-evant outside the European context. Moreover,as we argued, a theory of Christian democracy should not only consider the political salienceof religion but should also inform us about thepolitical consequences of secularization. And it should give us more analytical bite to make

sense of the gradual decline, yet survival andcyclical downturn, of Christian democracy that we observe.

With this outlook, then, we ask what the future holds for Christian democracy inEurope. Presently, wecanobservea multiplicity of trends, with some parties adapting to themand some bucking them. Some parties havecompletely erased any reference, even perfunc-tory, to religion, while others are toying with adiscourse on ethical and moral values, target-

ing postmodern issues such as conception,euthanasia, etc. In some cases, a tough stanceon law and order issues has produced elec-toral dividends. Particularly intriguing is thesuggestion that trends in the European Parlia-ment (especially the incipient bipolarization)may be having some effect on national politics.Last, the issue of (predominantly Muslim) im-migration may produce changes either way: toward more secularization (if the issue is framedas secular versus religious values) or more

religious polarization (if it is framed as Chris-tianity versus Islam). Clearly, Christian demo-cratic parties are facing some thorny dilem-mas, and the consequences of their choices arelikely to be momentous. Various studies already do an excellent job at showing how particularcontexts affect choicesbut also how different choices are made in contexts that are not very different.

Gerard & van Hecke (2004) rightly arguedthat Christian democracy is an undertheorizedtopic. Stronger theory is necessary in orderto develop a comparative framework for ex-plaining not just the historical development of Christiandemocracybut also the cross-national variation in the movements continuing capac-ity to mobilize, and its impact on the politi-cal economies of various countries, i.e., if it can be shown that the partisan effect is still

operational. Leonardi & Alberti (2004, pp. 2122) have identied two approaches in the study of Christian democracy: (a) a rationalist ap-proach that treats Christian democracy as aunitary player, with a given set of preferencesand interests and driven mainly by costbenet concerns and (b) a reexivist approach that

sees Christian democracy as a distinctive po-litical phenomenon with a consistent set of val-ues intrinsically reected in its political iden-tity. Their own alternative constructivist andinstitutionalist approach sees Christian democ-racy as an articulate phenomenon charac-terised by political moderation and originatingfrom a consociational pattern of interactionsthat have been more or less institutionalisedin time and space (Leonardi & Alberti 2004,p. 24).

The distinction between the rationalist andreexivist approaches seems overstated, as it does not really lead to different interpretationsof Christian democracy. Most, if not all, re-search seems to converge around the observation that Christian democracys unique fea-tures are its capacity to mobilize a plurality of interests and to accommodate diverse con-stituents. These features have accorded Chris-tian democratic parties a remarkable ability toadapt to a continuouslychangingeconomic, so-

cial, cultural, and political environment, whichis functionally related to the development of the movements ideology, policies, and strate-gies. However, this consensus about the natureof Christian democracy does not offer us many theoretical clues about major emerging issues.For example, under what conditions do Chris-tian democratic parties adapt successfully to anew structural context increasingly affected by ongoing secularization and globalization? Un-der what conditions can Christian democraticparties adapt to new competitors such as pop-ulist parties?

Following Meguid (2005), we may try to understand the future political prospectsof Christian democracy by focusing on thestrategic interaction among competitors. Meguids modied spatial model for explainingthe electoral strength of niche parties posits


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that a mainstream party is capable not only of moving its policy position when faced with aniche competitor, but also of manipulating thesalience and ownership of the issue that the new party wishes to introduce into political compe-tition (Meguid 2005, p. 357). How Christiandemocratic parties strategically react to the

emergenceof right-wing populist challengers istherefore crucial for their survival (Bale 2008). Another issue is the more general questionof the (electoral) opportunities for religiousparties. Most analyses hold that Christiandemocracys fate is not linearly linked to sec-ularization. Why not? One explanation is that secularization is not a one-dimensional processthat implies only the severing of religious andpolitical identity. Surely, religion as a cognitiveshortcut for party identication has declined

spectacularly(Norris & Inglehart2004),butweknow much less about how beliefs, norms, val-ues, and institutional arrangements that wereinitially Christian are transformed into secular values and institutions (Kahl 2005, 2007)andhow this inuences political identities. Thistransformation, however, may be an important element of the structural process that we labelsecularization. We therefore need to take it into account if we are to understand not only why support for religious parties is so volatile

but also why such parties manage to surviveat all. In other words, analyses that focus onstructure alone tend to suffer from a one-sidedand somewhat mechanical conception of secularization, and as a result, both variationand survival of religiously inspired politicalactors pose problems of explanation.

Taking a less structured approach, onemight hypothesize that the link betweensecularization and party afliation is variablebecause religious political movements are sim-ply not the passive casualties of the changes insocial structure. Here, the literature certainly has part of the story right when the stress ison how the parties adapt in order to becomemore secular in their electoral appeals,movingtoward bridging strategies that enable themto win electoral support from many diversesocial groups (Norris & Inglehart 2004,

p. 211). But that may be just part of the story, such an analysis tends to overlook andthereforunderestimate how religious parties themselves are active producers of a moderniz version of unsecular politics (Kalyvas 20pp. 29394). This term refers to a politiccontext in which religious ideas, symbols, a

rituals are used as the primary (though noexclusive) instrument of mobilization by least one major political party (i.e., a credibcontender of power). The modern version ounsecular politics is the oftenuneasy attempt tstrip off the explicitly and exclusively religioideological baggage, while at the same timconstructing a new religiously inspired packagof beliefs, values, and norms. In this sensmodernChristian democratic politics is neitherreligious nor secular; it is unsecular. Mor

over, the ability to dialectically manipulate horeligion is perceived in politics may well the hallmark of Christian democratic partie very much as the dialectical manipulatioof class has been the foundation of socdemocracy.

In addition, because religion has no vanished and continues to exert a signicainuence on culture and politics, the seculaization paradigm as derived from modernization theory has increasingly come under a

tack (Davie 1994, Stark & Iannaccone 199Berger 1999, Stark 1999, Martin 2005; but seBruce 2002 for a powerful defense). Accoring to a former proponent but current criticof the paradigm, our world is as furiously regiousasiteverwas(Berger1999,p.2).Politicascientists should pay more attention to recendebates in the sociology of religion (Aldrid2007, Davie 2007) that could provide them with well-theorized, albeit contradictory, hypotheses on the likely fate of religious political orgnizations. Either religion continues to be important for the cultural and political attitudeof citizens (the point of view of the critics the secularization paradigm), an

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Kalyvas&vanKersbergen 2010