MARCO TEORICO Y CONCEPTUAL

Importantly, political parties are not left out from models of policy and public opinion; in fact, they often stand out. Political parties structure the process of policy-making by bringing together issues and ideas, in doing so, they provide a valuable service.88 Parties and politicians make the ‘cues’ – and for which they have a strong incentive to do – that the general public rely on to change their preferences. In other words, the ‘logic of party competition for votes encourages the structuring of policy alternatives – at least where citizens’ decision-making is concerned – in relatively simple ways’.89 _{Competition is}

fundamental to the functioning of the model because it is crucial to the transfer of information from government to voters.90 But it is not only fear of losing seats which compels parties to listen to a public that can reward or punish on the basis of how their personal preferences match up with the actions of the government. Some politicians may believe they are agents bound to represent public preferences in policy: Margaret Thatcher was ‘not in politics to ignore people’s worries […] [but] to deal with them’.91 _{Or perhaps, somewhat conveniently}

for elites, the public’s preferences sometimes tidily coincide with their own, and their party’s preferences. Regardless, parties are important: policy can [and does] diverge significantly simply because of party control of government’.92

Political parties have a critical role to play in the making of public policy.93 _{Although in}

recent decades there has been some discussion of the degree to which political parties impact on policy, there is little evidence that parties’ impact on policy has declined.94 In Manfred Schmidt’s extensive review of the existing literature on political parties and public policy, he finds that parties do propose different options from those advocated by their contenders and they do drive policy-making.95 In trying to distinguish themselves from their competition, parties’ policy-making is influenced by elections and electoral results. This is the core of partisan theory (associated with Hibbs’ 1977 text), which hypothesises that policy tends to vary in response to electoral outcomes.96 Scholars have noted that applications of partisan theory to empirical data of OECD countries have generated very different results. 97 Imbeau et al posit that it is difficult to show impact: the ‘partisan effects would be too subtle to ensure sufficient robustness of cross-sectional statistical estimates’.98 The impact may be subtle, but

that does not mean that parties are not dynamic objects; parties ‘help to structure as well as reflect voter opinion – not only in terms of what citizens think but also what they think about […] they respond to pressure but they also help to cue, channel and even ramp it up’.99 Similarly, Triadafilos and Zaslove contend that parties have a ‘central role in representing competing societal preferences and, through participation in government, translating programs into public policy’.100 _{This, they argue, makes it all the more curious why so little}

research has been done on political parties and migration.

In recent years, efforts have been made to consider political parties as agents of immigration policy-making.101 Earlier literature on parties and policy-making has tended to focus on parties’ influence on the generosity (or otherwise) of the welfare state or economic policies, in part because quantitative data on these topics was readily available.102 Previous research on immigration policy-making has concentrated on the state, and thus neglected to account for the role of political parties in determining immigration policies. Recent work has given political parties greater credit with regard to their impact on immigration policy.

Writing in 1997, Lahav argues that parties continue to be significant in shaping the dialogue on immigration in Europe, but parties also act as a constraint on immigration policy- making.103 She points out that political parties compete on the issue of immigration policy, yet there is little leeway for difference. Most political parties push for more restrictionist policies. Immigration policy is ‘marked by uneven political contestation’ because there are few votes for expanding immigration or extending the vote to immigrants.104 Despite this, parties do matter; ‘although the immigration issue has appeared to obscure ideological/party differences, party affiliation persists in differentiating attitudes towards immigration’.105 This fits with Lahav’s observation that ‘MEPs devalue the role of these traditional sources [parties or party groupings] in structuring their thinking, but their positions on immigration may be distinguished by party identification’.106

Tomas Hammar takes a normative approach and argues that political parties function to solve social problems according to their party ideologies and the interests of voters. Immigrants, he says, as long as they remain foreign nationals, cannot vote, and so, parties, with no

prospect of electoral gain, may ignore immigrants’ interests. In such a situation, the logical line for a party to take will be based on their evaluation of how immigration will affect the welfare of their (non-immigrant) constituents.107 True, Hammar accepts that those immigrants who can vote – and very likely their descendants – are more likely to vote for left-wing, or social-democratic parties than conservative parties. However, nearly all political parties presume that (some of) their voters possess some degree of anti-immigrant feeling.108 Parties must therefore walk a fine line between appeasing those with anti-immigrant views and not alienating new arrivals and their descendants.

Along the same lines, Martin Schain regards political parties as a ‘driving force’ in the development – and politicization – of immigration policy, in part because the issue can be a useful one for parties.109 After all, political parties, he argues, are ‘responsible’ for the framing, shaping and placing on the political agenda of the issue.110 There are a number of reasons why the immigration issue is so valuable to parties. For one, the very process of immigration has an impact on the expanding, and changing nature, of the electorate. For vote- seeking parties, immigrants are of particular interest because, Schain argues, they have not been ‘socialized’ within the system of their host country, and are thus more ‘available’ than native citizens.111 On the other hand, parties can exploit the issue of immigration, or make use of an opportunity to ‘shift committed native voters from one party to another’.112

Immigrants then, exemplify a challenge to society, in terms of their very existence and their integration. Thus, for parties, the immigration issue may well possess a ‘usefulness in altering the electoral balance’.113 _{Ted Perlmutter focuses on the critical role that political parties play}

in politicising or depoliticising the issue. While he argues that political parties are ‘autonomous actors’ and central to the development of immigration politics, he contends that ‘the politicisation [of immigration] is deeper than Freeman has argued […] its roots lie in the inability of mass parties to control the political agenda’.114 _{Furthermore, he argues that}

Freeman’s portrayal of depoliticisation, while accurate in stituations in which ‘the national agenda of mass parties control the political agenda’ is less applicable to instances in which the narrative has been challenged.115

Triadafilos and Zaslove argue that political parties are ‘critical nodes’ connecting broader forces (such as ‘traditions of nationhood, international human rights, and liberal norms and procedures’) to political processes.116 _{They recognise that party politics plays an important}

role in determining policy-making and that a party-focused approach may result in a greater understanding of the dynamics of ‘changing preferences, their relation to strategic interests, and the means by which they are activated in policy-making processes and transformed into legislation’.117 _{Similarly, Adams et al conceive of what they call a unified theory of party}

competition which can account for party policy variation.118 Their theory brings together the spatial model of elections (associated with the rational choice tradition) in which policy considerations are the dominant influence of voter choice with the behavioural model (associated with empirical research) in which non-policy issues matter too. Triadafilos and Zaslove predict a more substantial role for political parties in migration as the issue becomes a means of dividing up political territory that is ever more contested.119

Much research has shown that the party in office has a strong effect on shaping the state’s policy. Hansen’s book on citizenship and immigration in post-war Britain, which emphasises contingency and institutions as drivers of migration policy, contends that political parties have exercised their influence. He argues that ‘the deferral of migration restrictions until 1962 […] resulted from the intersection of ideology and partisan power’, with the main political parties (and especially the Conservatives) showing a fondness for the Commonwealth and the rights of its citizens.120 Certainly, UK governments of the post-war years have been – on the whole – restrictionist in their approach towards immigration policy, but party political differences continue to matter. There are, it seems, ‘party political shades of elite restrictionism’; in the UK, Conservative governments took a much more restrictive stance than their Labour counterparts over the period from 1990 to 2004.121

Terri Givens and Adam Luedtke look at the ‘variable role of political partisanship across different areas of immigration policy’ and come to an interesting conclusion.122 _They

hypothesise that ‘Left and Right parties are equally restrictive vis-a-vis policies to control immigration, but Right parties are more restrictive vis-a-vis policies to integrate already- resident immigrants into society’.123 _{Research has found that the main UK political parties}

push for similar policies on immigration control, but that there is variance on their policy positions for immigrant integration.124 _{Givens and Luedtke find some support for their}

hypothesis that as the immigration issue becomes more salient, the influence of ‘client politics’ decreases and immigration policy becomes tougher.125 _{Their research finds that}

party political differences ‘play a strong role in policies towards the integration of already- resident immigrants’, but that they have less impact on immigration control policies.126