Political Parties and the Voting Behavior of Individuals

Why is class important in molding individual voting behavior in some societies but not in others, during some periods of time but not during others? Why are Norwegians more likely to vote on the basis of class than the French? Why are Swedish workers more prone to vote Social Democratic today than they were sixty years ago?

These are not questions about individuals. For even if individual acts tend to coincide with individual traits, why do individuals endowed with some attributes vote the way they do? Reduction does not suffice as an explanation because the causal path from individual traits to individual acts passes through the totality of social relations. “The counting of votes,” wrote Antonio Gramsci, “is the final ceremony of a long process.” (1971:193) This is a process of forming images of society, of forging collective identities, of mobilizing commitments to particular visions of the future. Class, ethnicity, religion, race, or nation do not happen spontaneously, of themselves, as a reflection of objective conditions in the psyches of individuals. Collective identity, group solidarity, and political commitments are continually forged – shaped, destroyed, and molded anew – as a result of conflicts in the course of which political parties, schools, unions, churches, newspapers, armies, and corporations strive to impose upon the masses a particular vision of society. The relation between places occupied by individuals in society and their acts is a contingent historical product of conflicts that confront interests and images, that involve preferences and strategies, that bring victories or defeats.