The Catholic vote
I should add before moving away from the collapsing centre-left parties issue, that I think a big part of the decline can probably be explained by looking at changes in the Catholic community.
I say can probably be explained because both the media and academics seem uninterested.
They should be more interested because the centre-left used to own the Catholic vote just about everywhere in the western world.
Part of this is obvious. Catholics have historically been anything but individualists and, until the 1970s, they used to pursue jobs mostly in the unionized sector. On top of which there was the Catholic social policies and corporatism which could be summed up a system where "paternal overlords of protected, closed national economies" engage "in brokerage politics whereby the fruits of growth could be spread out among clients and beneficiaries".
Somewhere along the line, though, Catholics started drifting away. In the Canadian case, for example, the shift of the Catholic vote from Liberal to Conservative over the last few elections is a stunning thing to behold. No one in the press seems to care though.
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