Episode 11 - Tarik Abou-Chadi. Social democratic party strategies and the progressive coalition

Transformation of European Politics Podcast

In this episode we are changing the roles and Silja Häuserman, professor of political science at the University of Zurich takes over as the host. I discuss my article “The Electoral Appeal of Party Strategies in Postindustrial Societies: When Can the Mainstream Left Succeed?” which is co-authored with Markus Wagner and came out in the Journal of Politics in 2019. The article discusses different policy strategies of social democratic parties and their potential electoral appeal. The main hypothesis is that mainstream left parties need to appeal to educated middle class voters in order to be electorally successful. A combination of investment-oriented economic and liberal-progressive positions are necessary to appeal to this group. In addition to the article, we discuss different narratives for the electoral decline of social democratic parties. Neither the economic narrative that focuses on too centrist economic positions of the Third Way, nor the cultural narrative that blames too progressive positions on the second dimension find much empirical support. If you are interested in knowing more about my work (beyond this podcast) you can follow me on Twitter under at tabouchadi or visit my website www.tarikabouchadi.net I hope you enjoy the conversation