This paper analyses the politicization of immigration in the party political agenda through a comparative analysis of electoral party manifestos since the 1990s in Austria, Britain, France, Spain and Switzerland. Previous research suggests that the immigration issue is rather volatile in the party political agenda, and that parties will only talk about immigration when it is in their electoral advantage. More generally, the ‘policy agendas’ literature suggests that friction will condition the (slow) response of parties to change in the public opinion mood. The paper examines first, across these five countries, the changing dynamics of electoral competition around the issue of immigration – when and how parties discuss immigration in their electoral manifestos – and whether this is in line with spatial or issue-ownership patterns of competition. The second section of the paper examines how well a number of factors account for the fluctuations and cross-national variations in the party political agenda. We pay special attention to the role of competition with anti-immigrant parties (supply-side explanations), and the structure and evolution of the public opinion mood (demand-side explanations).
