THE TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPEAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY - A case study on the validity of the postmaterialist hypothesis to account for ideological shifts of social democratic parties in Europe

Sammanfattning

The thesis investigates the ideological transformation of European social democratic parties, with particular attention to the shift in party platforms from traditional economic priorities to cultural and identity-based issues. The main goal is to evaluate whether the transformation of these parties can be explained by the postmaterialist hypothesis; at its core this hypothesis posits that economic security prompts new value orientation on the part of the citizens, with the prioritization of non-material values (such as environmental concerns, gender equality, democratic participation). By contrast, the materialist hypothesis is rooted in the recognition of economic and material realities as the sources responsible for the changes in parties’ ideology and orientation.Through a quantitative thematic analysis of key political documents, drawing from primary and secondary sources, including the Manifesto Project dataset, the study takes into examination 3 European social democratic parties (Germany’s Social democratic Party, the U.K.’s Labour party, France’s Socialist party), from which I sorted political themes into materialist and postmaterialist domains, enabling an assessment of their evolution across decades.I concluded that the data does not support the validity of the postmaterialist hypothesis. Data related to parties’ documents confirms that, while increasing in visibility and salient, non-materialist concerns have not become more important than traditional material concerns. The study concludes that economic and structural pressures, rather than fundamental value shifts, are what influenced ideological repositioning of social democratic parties.Finally, the study contributes to debates on political cleavages, party transformation, and voter realignment within the broader academic discourse.