Scholars identify the process of globalization as a key causal mechanism in the recent restructuring of the European political space. Phenomena such as the decreased salience of the class cleavage and the possibility of a new cleavage between winners and losers of globalization, as well as the rise of new parties on the right and left, are oft-cited consequences of this restructuring (Kriesi et al. 2012; Azmanova 2011; Kriesi et al. 2008). Change within actor constellations originally tied to social class is a particularly salient example of how such restructuring can change the very nature of electoral competition. Specifically, changes in electoral competition related to shifts in foundational cleavage structures pressure traditional mass parties and provide new opportunities for parties at the fringes of the political spectrum while, on the voter level, weakening the traditional linkage between class and partisanship. Drawing from the voter-party data set provided by the CMP/MARPOR project, this paper explores whether shifts at the voter level due to increased globalization pressures are mirrored by shifts at the party level. From the supply side, I examine how traditional class based parties respond to new contested issues related to globalization while on the demand side I examine voter responses to such changes. The paper compares not only class based parties in Western European democracies but also examines how such restructuring has occurred in the US and what impact the decreased salience of the class cleavage has on voter-party linkages in a non-European party system. The inclusion of the U.S. in the analysis, the linking of voters and parties, and the use of manifesto-derived policy stances rather than media data to derive party positions all serve to extend current research on how electoral competition changes in the face of the breakdown of traditional cleavage structures.
