Do Political Parties Instrumentalise Animal Rights? A Comparison of Votes and Arguments in Two Parliamentary Debates.

Abstract

Animal welfare issues are increasingly finding a receptive audience among politicians in national political debates in Europe. The recent ban on bullfighting in Catalonia and the proposed Dutch ban on unstunned ritual slaughter by Jews and Muslims show that even long standing cultural and religious traditions are not immune to this development. The goal of this chapter is to examine the cases above in the light of recent concerns regarding the instrumental use of animal rights. Several scholars have pointed out that the increased public scrutiny of the harming of non-human animals by minorities, make such instrumentalisation more likely. In such cases animal advocates support the cause not out of a desire to protect non-human animals, but to denigrate minorities or to affirm one’s one superiority towards these groups. Such forms of instrumentalisation may be explicit, but also be an unintended side-effect of an otherwise integer campaign. I analyse these two cases through a systematic analysis of both the actual parliamentary behaviour of all parties in a parliament (in terms of votes cast) as well as the arguments given during the preceding debates and relate these to the existing political cleavage structures in the two systems. The analysis reveals that in the Catalan case the ban on bullfights was supported by parties favouring Catalan independence and opposed by those favouring a strong bond with Spain. In the Netherlands opponents and proponents were aligned along the religious-secular cleavage, with all secular parties supporting the ban and those with religious roots being opposed to it. I conclude by reflecting on the prospects of a further politicisation of issues surrounding the protection of non-human animals in Western Europe.

Keywords: animal rights, Catalonia, The Netherlands, political parties, ritual slaughter, bullfights, instrumentalisation