14 December 2005, Centre of International Studies, Cambridge

People

Tim Bale, Christina Boswell, Bram Van Damme, Cristoffer Green Pedersen, Sean Hanley, Steven Van Hecke, Dan Hough, Andrew Knapp, Julie Smith 

Presentations

Surveying the separate tables
Professor Tim Bale, University of Sussex, UK

The academic communities working on migration policy, on parties and on European integration have traditionally sat at separate tables. This is a problem if we think that 'politics matters' (even if only a little) and if we believe Europeanization is about 'uploading' as well as 'downloading'. Put simply, if EU policy on migration is changing, then those changes may well have been mooted by member states, and those states are steered in a particular direction by parties. Many of those parties, of course, hail from the centre right. They are themselves under pressure to take a more hard-line stance on issues of migration and multiculturalism from more radical, populist alternatives, from the media, and from some sections of public opinion. At the same time, such a stance goes against some of their core values, be they economic liberalism or compassion and charity - as well as values that may be more national in origin (commonwealth or republican solidarity, for instance). Whether the maintenance of those core values can trump the centre-right's traditional 'will to power' is a moot point. In fact, most such parties will oscillate between restriction and permissiveness, depending a) on whether they are traditionally sender or receiver countries, b) on their welfare state regimes, c) on their geographical location, d) on the extent to which security is an issue, and f) on their traditions of assimilation or multiculturalism. The questions which arise for us, then, are: does the centre-right have a distinctive position on these issues?; is there a difference in the extent to which or pace at which they pick up ideas from other countries?; and ultimately is it profitable for us to bring the separate tables together?

Britain
Dr Julie Smith, University of Cambridge, UK

The UK party system is currently in a state of flux. On many issues associated with identity and security the New Labour government can be seen as right of centre. They have welcomed globalisation and the benefits it can bring to the UK, while adopting relatively restrictive policies on asylum and immigration, and proposed legislation on internal security that some fear will undermine civil liberties. On some of these issues, the Conservatives have been willing to support the Labour government. However, on asylum and immigration especially they have proposed far more restrictive policies, calling for Britain to limit the number of asylum-seekers it takes in and to set quotas for economic migration. Such policies were advocated in the 2005 general election, master-minded in part by David Cameron, who was to be elected leader in December of that year. Since then, Cameron has swept aside many existing Conservative policies and looked for common ground with the Labour Party on a variety of issues. It remains to be seen how distinctive a position the Conservative Party will hold in future.

France
Professor Andrew Knapp, University of Reading, UK

France is unusual among European states in having attracted large-scale immigration, on and off, over some 200 years, and in having developed a model of integration based on (i) the jus solis (anyone born on French soil is French) and (ii) on the assimilation of immigrants, of whatever race and culture, to a French cultural and linguistic model considered to be of universal value. This 'Republican' model was contrasted with a supposed 'Anglo-Saxon' multicultural model, considered pregnant with dangers of social disintegration and inappropriate for France. From the mid-1970s, however, 'Republican' model came under strain from two more or less simultaneous developments: the rise of mass unemployment and the sédentarisation (settlement with families) of North African immigrants, most of whom had hitherto been young single men, expected to return to their country of origin. Politically, the rise of the far-right Front National from 1983 brought immigration to the centre of political debate and posed two distinct but related challenges to the two mainstream Right parties, the UDF and the neo-Gaullist RPR. Given the incentives of France's two-ballot electoral system to inter-party alliances, should they seek electoral or strategic agreements with the FN? And what concessions, if any, should be made to the FN's xenophobic immigration and citizenship policy? After a period of uncertainty in the mid-1980s, the RPR and the UDF chose to refuse any alliance with the FN; to undertake limited reforms to the nationality and citizenship laws; to emphasise their toughness on illegal immigration; but to continue stressing the virtues of the traditional republican model for long-established legal immigrants; and - a concession to multiculturalism - to build bridges with the moderate Moslem clergy. With a few alarms and excursions, this line survived till the early twenty-first century, with the ban on the wearing of religious signs at schools being a good indication of the resilience of the 'Republican' model. Most recently, however, it has been challenged from within the moderate Right by Nicolas Sarkozy, Interior Minister and leader, since 2004, of the UMP, the successor party to the RPR. Sarkozy argues that the 'Republican' model no longer meets France's needs, and proposes a further toughening of law-and-order measures in the run-down suburban estates where immigrant populations are concentrated; a selective immigration policy centred on attracting the well-qualified; the use of positive discrimination to promote integration; and the extension of recognition of moderate Moslem organisations, with the possible rewriting of France's law separating Church and State to facilitate this. Sarkozy's line has had the merit of posing relevant, and hitherto largely unasked, questions about France's immigration policy, which may converge towards a somewhat more 'Anglo-Saxon' position in the event of a Sarkozy presidency.

Germany,
Dr Christina Boswell, Migration Research Group, Hamburg, Germany

Since the 1980s, immigration policy has emerged as an important area for European centre-right parties (including the German CDU/CSU) to assert their distinctiveness from centre-left and liberal parties. Yet a focus on these issues carries its own risks, and has proved to be a liability for some centre-right parties. Building on the political opportunity structure literature, this paper analyses the possible costs of mobilising support on anti-migration positions, distinguishing between three types of legitimacy deficit: (1) loss of value legitimacy; (2) loss of programmatic coherence; and (3) loss of credibility in terms of policy implementation. The paper applies the framework to analysing the mobilising strategies and political resonance of CDU/CSU positions on migration between 1982-2004. On the question of value legitimacy (1), it argues that the CDU has been constrained from pursuing a more restrictive policy towards long-term residents and asylum-seekers, because of conflicts with a number of liberal and Christian values. On capacity to implement (3), the Kohl government arguably suffered a loss of legitimacy through its inability to reduce migration in the 1980s. However, the CDU has been largely successful in masking any programmatic incoherence implied by combining restrictive entry policies with a pro-business agenda (2).

Netherlands
Dr Kees van Kersbergen

The Dutch Christian democrats recovered from the crisis of confessional politics in the 1960s and 1970s primarily by becoming more distinctively Christian democratic than the three parties that make up the CDA ever were. This new identity was ideologically and electorally successful in the 1980s, but failed in the early 1990s. Power mobilization was seriously hindered by structural weaknesses relating to secularization, the decline of politically expressive and fairly fixed collective identities, the ill-adapted nature of its own preferred social and political model, and the loss of social embeddedness. Remarkably, it was populism Dutch style that politicized popular discontent and provided Christian democracy in 2002 with an opportunity to escape electoral marginalization. The Christian democrats tried to exploit the surfacing political discontent by hopping on the populist bandwagon and harvesting at least part of the multicultural dissatisfaction that suddenly surfaced in Dutch society. The conservative communitarianism of the CDA was instrumental for the purpose of regaining power. Still, the recovery of the party was also a matter of sheer "luck" as ultimately it was the political assassination of the populist leader Pim Fortuyn that suddenly changed the opportunity structure to the advantage of Christian democracy.

The post-Cold War politics of identity and insecurity: Responses from the transnational centre-right in Europe
Dr Steven Van Hecke, Centre for Political Research, University of Leuven, Belgium
Dr Fraser Duncan, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow, UK

In response of the effects of the end of the Cold War (changing pattern of ideologies, acceleration of the European integration process, enlargement of the European Union), a reshuffle of centre-right forces has taken place, at the level of the groups in the European Parliament as well as at the level of transnational parties. One of the main features of this development has been the transformation of the European People's Party form an exclusive Christian Democratic party organisation into a broad alliance of Christian Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals. This paper analyses the impact of this new constellation on, among other things, migration. Reference is made to the particularities of the centre-right at the transnational level and the role of the national member parties therein, to institutional constraints as well as to (other) determinants of party change and its effects on policy issues.