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Stability and Change in European Electorates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Alan Zuckerman
Affiliation:
Brown University
Mark Irving Lichbach
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Abstract

Arguing counter to the accepted positions of political sociology, we contend that voters' decisions are best explained by the absence or presence of strong loyalties to political parties rather than by social or economic factors. Hence, in areas where most people have strong party attachments, marked change in the partisan division of the vote occurs only when an exceptionally large number of new voters enters the electoral arena; alterations in the social composition of a party's voters follow changes in the occupation or social categories of those who consistently vote for the party. In presenting this argument, we analyze time-series data for Britain, West Germany, and Sweden which negate the predicted development of “catch-all” electorates, and we test the relative power of party and class variables as predictors of voting behavior in Butler's and Stokes's panel study of British voters between 1963 and 1970.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

1 A general critique of this literature may be found in Sartori, Giovanni, “From the Sociology of Politics to Political Sociology,” in Lipset, Seymour Martin, ed., Politics and the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press 1969), 65100Google Scholar.

2 Rose, Richard and Urwin, Derek, “Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems Since 1945,” Political Studies, xviii (September 1970), 287319CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Przeworski, Adam, “Institutionalization of Voting Patterns, or Is Mobilization the Source of Decay?” American Political Science Review, Vol. 69 (March 1975), 4967CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The British elections of 1974 are especially important, but note also the Swedish elections of 1973 and the Italian regional election of 1975 and the Italian national election of 1976.

4 Kirchheimer, Otto, “The Transformation of Western European Party Systems,” in LaPalombara, Joseph and Weiner, Myron, eds., Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1966), 177200Google Scholar.

5 A number of tests of Kirchheimer's argument have focused on political party competition in Italy. See Tarrow, Sidney, “Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System,” Comparative Politics, 1 (January 1969), 161–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McHale, Vincent E. and McLaughlin, John E., “Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System: A Reconsideration,” Comparative Politics, VII (October 1974) 3760CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Zariski, Raphael and Welch, Susan, “The Correlates of Intraparty Depolarizing Tendencies in Italy,” Comparative Politics, VII (April 1975), 407–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also , McHale and Shaber, Sandra, “From Aggressive to Defensive Gaullism: The Electoral Dynamics of a ‘Catch-All Party,’” Comparative Politics, viii (January 1976), 291306Google Scholar.

6 Kirchheimer's most explicit formulation blends the two: “De-emphasis of the classe gardee, specific social-class or denominational clientele, in favor of recruiting voters among the population at large.” This conceptualization is listed along with the other characteristics of the “catch-all” party. Kirchheimer (fn. 4), 190.

7 Ibid., 187.

8 Kirchheimer's example is the Italian Democrazia Cristiana; Ibid., 187–88.

9 See Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in , Lipset and , Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments, (New York: Free Press 1967), 164Google Scholar. For an analysis distinguishing between political division and political cleavage as well as establishing types of political cleavages, see , Zuckerman, “Political Cleavage: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis,” British Journal of Political Science, v (April 1975), 231–48Google Scholar.

10 Rose's and Urwin's index of social cohesion is developed in their article, “Social Cohesion, Political Parties and Strains in Regimes,” Comparative Political Studies, ii (April 1969), 812Google Scholar. In our analysis we use the term “homogeneity,” which does not imply the small-group intimacy of cohesion. Rose's and Urwin's index standardizes the share of a party's vote supplied by a cleavage, by comparing that to the cleavage's share of the population. They establish a score of 17 as indicating social cohesion, fanda's measure is more complex and sophisticated. The reflection score indicates the extent to which a party's electorate resembles the electorate's characteristics. It usually varies between 0 and 1, the latter being perfectly similar. Janda develops this and other measures in Comparative Political Parties: A Cross-National Handbooks (Evanston, Ill.: International Comparative Parties Project 1974)Google Scholar. For an analysis relating the parties’ social composition to other phenomena, see Robbin Gillies and Kenneth Janda, “Social Aggregation, Articulation, and Representation of Party Systems: A Cross-National Analysis,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, September 1975. “Reflection” was formerly labelled “representation.”

11 We have followed the procedures used in Axelrod, Robert, “Where the Votes Come From: An Analysis of Electoral Coalitions, 1952–1968,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 66 (March 1972), 1120CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Butler, David and Stokes, Donald E., Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice (New York: St. Martin's Press 1974), 255CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The originator of the method is Mosteller, Frederick, “Association and Estimation in Contingency Tables,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 63 (March 1968), 128Google Scholar.

12 The published sources used in Table 1 are Alford, Robert, Party and Society (West-port, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1963)Google Scholar; Butler and Stokes (fn. 11); Blondel, Jean, Voters, Parties and Leaders (Baltimore: Penguin 1967)Google Scholar; and Pulzer, Peter G. J., Political Representation and Elections: Parties and Voting in Great Britain (New York: Praeger 1967)Google Scholar. Janowitz, Morris and Segal, David, “Social Cleavage and Party Affiliation: Germany, Great Britain, and the United States,” in DiPalma, Giuseppe, ed., Mass Politics in Industrial Societies (Chicago: Markham 1972), 212Google Scholar, and Rose, Richard, “Britain: Simple Abstractions and Complex Realities,” in , Rose, Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, (New York: Free Press 1974), 501Google Scholar, use the same categorization of the classes.

13 , Zuckerman and , Lichbach, “L'Elettorato Dei Partiti Europei,” Rivista ltaliana Di Scienza Politica, iii, No. 1 (1976), 116Google Scholar.

14 In addition to the sources cited in footnote 12, we used survey materials from the British election studies for 1964 and 1966, by David Butler and Anthony King; for 1970, by David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky; and for 1974, by David Butler and Denis Kavanaugh (New York: St. Martin's Press). The categories used in the discussion of the classes' voting patterns are set out below Table 1.

15 Derek Urwin, “Germany: Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics,” in Rose (fn. 12), 131.

16 For analyses that use similar cleavages, see Liepelt, Klaus, “The Infra-Structure of Party Support in Germany and Austria,” in Dogan, Mattei and Rose, Richard, eds., European Politics: A Reader (Boston: Little, Brown 1971), 193Google Scholar, as well as Janowitz and Segal (fn. 12), 216, and Urwin (fn. 15), 163. The discussion of the social categories' voting patterns follows the definitions set out below Table 2.

17 Franz Urban Pappi, “Parteiensystem and Sozialstruktur in der Bundesrepublik,” Polhische Vierteljahrschrift (1972), 191–213.

18 For analyses and the derivation of the relevant Swedish cleavages, see Bo Sarlvick, “Sweden: The Social Bases of the Parties in Developmental Perspective,” in Rose (fn. 12), 371–434; , Sarlvick, “Party Politics and Electoral Opinion Formation: A Study of Issues in Swedish Politics 1956–60,” Scandinavian Political Studies, 11 (1967), 167202Google Scholar; , Sarlvick, “Voting Behavior in Shifting Election Winds: An Overview of the Swedish Elections 1964–1968,” Scandinavian Political Studies, v (1970), 241–86Google Scholar; and Stjern-quist, Nils, “Sweden: Stability or Deadlock,” in Dahl, Robert, ed., Political Oppositions In Western Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press 1966), 116–46Google Scholar.

19 Using official Swedish Government statistics, Gosta Esping-Anderssen, “The Social Democratic Party and the Welfare State: A Comparative Analysis of the Sources and Consequences of Party Decomposition in Advanced Capitalism,” unpub. (Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin), cites the following indices of social cohesion for the Swedish Social Democrats: 1956:24.5, 1960:21, 1964:18, 1968:16, 1970:16, and I973:i74.

20 Sarlvick in Rose, (fn. 12), 395.

21 Ibid., 398.

22 In Zuckerman and Lichbach (fn. 13), 121, we present a similar analysis of Norway based on the 1965 election. The results add to the picture of the large Socialist Party's votes coming from its traditional social source, the working class.

23 See, for example, Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 201; John W. Books and Reynolds, JoAnn B., “A Note on Class Voting in Great Britain and the United States,” Comparative Political Studies, viii (October 1975), 360–76Google Scholar.

24 Sarlvick, in Rose (fn. 12), 393.

25 Ibid., 396–97.

26 Abrams, Mark, “Social Trends and Electoral Behavior,” in Rose, Richard, ed., Studies in British Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press 1966), 129–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benerick, R. J., Birch, A. H., Blumer, J. G., and Ewbank, Alison, “The Floating Voter and the Liberal View of Representation,” Political Studies, xvii (June 1969), 177–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 257–70.

28 Joseph Lopreato, “Social Mobility and Political Outlooks in Italy,” in Dogan and Rose (fn. 16), 202–12.

29 Shively, W. Phillips, “Voting Stability and the Nature of Party Attachments in the Weimar Republic,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 66 (December 1972), 1222Google Scholar.

30 Rose and Urwin (fn. 2), 308–9.

31 The general position is forcefully and precisely stated by Sartori (fn. 1), 84–90. See also Hamilton, Richard, Affluence and the French Worker in the Fourth Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1967), 291–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Zuckerman (fn. 9), elaborates the contention that political cleavages need not be tied to social divisions.

32 Examples of this view are Arend Lijphart, “The Netherlands: Continuity and Change in Voting Behavior,” in Rose (fn. 12), 242, and Rose, in Rose (fn. 12), 496–97.

33 Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 44.

34 Ibid., 319, 323.

35 Ibid., 329.

36 Butler and Pinto-Duschinsky (fn. 14), 346.

37 Alt, James, Sarlvick, Bo, and Crewe, Ivor, “Partisanship and Policy Choice: Issue Preference in the British Electorate, February, 1974.” British Journal of Political Science, vi (July 1976), 273–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Manfred Berger, “Parteiidentifikation in der Bundesrepublik,” Politische Vierteljahrschrift (1972), 215–25.

39 Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 41.

40 Studies of American voting behavior remain the major source in which attachment to a political party (“party identification”) is given major independent explanatory power. Two volumes by Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes are the classics of this literature: The American Voter and Election and the Political Order (New York: Wiley 1959 and 1966, respectively)Google Scholar.

41 To aid comparability and terminological precision, we have rendered the categories of party allegiance (“very strong,” “fairly strong” and “not very strong”), as strong, moderate and weak.

42 Rose and Urwin (fn. 2), 308.

43 Abramson, Paul, “Intergenerational Mobility and Partisan Choice,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 66 (December 1972), 1292CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, Kenneth H., “A Cross-National Analysis of Intergenerational Social Mobility and Political Orientations,” Comparative Political Studies, iv (April 1971), 8Google Scholar.

44 Abramson, Paul and Books, John W., “Social Mobility and Political Attitudes,” Comparative Politics, iii (April 1971), 421Google Scholar.

45 Thompson (fn. 43).

46 Abramson (fn. 43).

47 Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 101.

48 In addition to the literature cited above, see Stein Rokkan, ”Numerical Democracy and Corporate Pluralism,” in Dahl (fn. 18), 70–115; Martin O. Heisler with the assistance of Robert K. Kvavik, ”Patterns of European Politics,” 27–89, and Kvavik, ”Interest Groups in a ‘Cooptive’ Political System: The Case of Norway,” 93–116, both in Heisler, Martin O., ed., Politics in Europe (New York: David McKay 1974)Google Scholar.

49 , Zuckerman, Political Clienteles in Power: Party Factions and Cabinet Coalitions in Italy (Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics 1975), 01055Google Scholar.

50 See Butler and Stokes (fn. 11); also Philip Converse, “Of Time and Partisan Stability,” in DiPalma (fn. 12), 64–96.

51 Petersson, Olof, “The 1973 General Election in Sweden,” Scandinavian Political Studies, ix (1974), 226Google Scholar.

52 The sources of this analysis were The Economist of February 23, 1974, and especially March 16, 1974, as well as Butler and Kavanaugh (fn. 14), and Berrington, Hugh and Bedeman, Trevor, “The February Election,” Parliamentary Affairs, xxvii (19731974), 317–22Google Scholar.

53 The Economist, December 6, 1975, p. 24.

54 Butler and Stokes (fn. 11), 179.

55 Alt, Sarlvick, and Crewe (fn. 37), cite evidence to support the second position.

56 Butler and Stokes (fn. n ), 200–5.

57 Nie, Norman H., Verba, Sidney, and Petrocik, John R., The Changing American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1976), esp. pp. 346–52Google Scholar.

58 Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and party systems, I (London: Cambridge University Press 1976), 329Google Scholar; emphasis in original.

59 Arian, Alan, The Choosing People (Cleveland: Press of Case-Western Reserve University 1973)Google Scholar, chap. 8; Zelniker, Shimshon and Kahan, Michael, “Religion and Nascent Cleavages: The Case of Israel's National Religious Party,” Comparative Politics, ix (October 1976), 2148CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Sartori (fn. 58), 155.

60 Rose (fn. 12), 514.