The More Policy Positions Change, the More They Stay the Same
This post is based on my recent publication in the journal Comparative European Politics, and investigates how the West European mainstream managed conflicting positional demands on the issue of immigration.
Conventional wisdom suggests mainstream parties have "turned to right" since the early 2000s, taking up harsher positions on immigration control, modes of integration and understandings of national identity. These shifts were said to be in response to particular external prompts, especially the increasing number of migrants (be that asylum, clandestine, labour, family reunification or student-type), the public mood steadily becoming more irate due to said numbers and the populist radical right (PRR) growing in strength across Western Europe. At the same time, however, the political mainstream is often accused of not responding to these prompts, thus fuelling popular sentiments of mainstream parties not taking the "legitimate concerns" of the electorate seriously.
That said, the issue of immigration is also more challenging compared to the more traditional areas of party political conflict, say, taxation, defence or labour market regulations. The reason being it is not solely about enforcing border controls, issuing visas or "stopping small boats" but also accessing labour and housing markets, social services, and education as well as determining who the "we" are, what the criteria of belonging should be and how one becomes part of this group. The political mainstream consequently finds it (very) difficult to decide whether the issue of immigration is about "money" or "values" (or something else). Questions of immigration cause strategic headaches, therefore regarding issue framing and problem formulation but, crucially perhaps, also about policy change.
Thus, the research question addressed in my article, namely, how did the West European mainstream manage conflicting positional demands on the issue of immigration? The article then unpacks positional changes on immigration, integration, and national identity, and explores potential reasons why they were made.
After probing the actions by fifty-one traditional mainstream parties of the social democratic and conservative as well as green, liberal and Christian democratic varieties in thirteen West European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) between 2000 and 2020, the results suggest a cautious mainstream. For example, its policy position on immigration was not necessarily liberal and then became restrictive (or vice versa). Instead, it already held a liberal (or restrictive) position, which was then dialled up to become even more liberal (or even more restrictive). But some mainstream parties also dialled down their positions and consequently became less liberal or less restrictive over time.
The following cases illustrate these types of (non)changes. The Danish Social Democratic Party, for instance, consistently held the restrictive position on immigration since the early 2000s but has then gradually made the process of family reunification even more burdensome by demanding economic self-sufficiency and introducing a minimum age requirement. By the same token, the British Conservative Party favoured assimilation as the best way of incorporating migrants into British society, but the party toned down this position over time, with David Cameron famously stating in 2011 that "state multiculturalism had failed" only to then underscore in 2018 that "integration is a two-way street".
It is worth noting, however, that mainstream parties across Western Europe showed some sensitivity to changes in "numbers", the public mood and the strength of the PRR. Yet at the same time, the political mainstream did not always respond by accommodating these shifts. The results suggest a disconnect, therefore, between the type and the extent of policy change and what these changes were in response to. They also are an important reminder to not overlook the power dynamics that exist within parties as "organisations", and how these dynamics – or tensions – affect the type as well as the extent of any policy changes.
To conclude, the advantage of the above strategy is that mainstream parties can claim their positions have changed although they largely remained the same. The disadvantage, however, is that mainstream parties also must explain how a more liberal or restrictive, assimilative or multicultural, or cosmopolitan or nationalist position qualifies as "change" to satisfy opponents and supporters alike.
Dr. Pontus Odmalm is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh (Politics and International Relations). His research focuses on the party politics of migration from a comparative West European perspective. He has published extensively on this topic over the past twenty years, notably "Justifying and negotiating responses to the radical right: the case of the Swedish Labour Movement and the intra-organisational arena" (with Salo and Rydgren, 2025) in Government and Opposition, and The European Mainstream and the Populist Radical Right (2017 Routledge) (co-edited with Eve Hepburn).
