The previous chapter looked at very broad orientations towards the political system and the degree of confidence people had in their capacity to take effective action within it. Such action is very often prompted by quite specific issues and problems which people face. The context of issues within which people participated will be the subject of chapter 11. But, occupying an intermediate position between the broadest of perceptions of the political process and the recognition of immediate issues are a number of outlooks by means of which individuals place themselves in the political spectrum.

Amongst the most central of these outlooks in the modern political world tends to be the stance people take towards the political parties which play such a significant role in aggregating values. Closely linked to this sense of identification with political parties are the alignments of people on those issues which have traditionally distinguished the political left from the political right. Since the 1960s, however, new sets of issues have emerged with steadily increasing prominence which do not readily fit into the old dichotomy between left and right based, as it mainly is, on material issues. Amongst the issues of this ‘new politics’ are the environment, nuclear weapons and their potential threat to world peace and survival, and the status of women in a male-dominated society. The very emergence of these new issues carries with it some implication that old modes of participation have not handled them adequately.