The Changing American Voter.

Why do people think and act politically in the manner they do? Despite the foundational nature of this question, answers are unfortunately incomplete and unnecessarily tentative, largely because political scientists do not take seriously the possibility of nonenvironmental influences. The suggestion that people could be born with political predispositions strikes many as far-fetched, odd, even perverse. However, researchers in other disciplines—‐ notably behavioral genetics—‐have uncovered a substantial heritable component for many social attitudes and behaviors and it seems unlikely that political attitudes and behaviors are completely immune from such forces. In this article, we combine relevant findings in behavioral genetics with our own analysis of data on a large sample of twins to test the hypothesis that, contrary to the assumptions embedded in political science research, political attitudes have genetic as well as environmental causes. 1

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=poliscifacpub

Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted

The American political science review

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 253p. $19.00. Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.

/pdf/a-new-engagement-political-participation-civic-life-and-the-no7rq6z3ws.pdf

A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen

Political socialization research holds the distinction of benefiting, possibly more fully than other subfields of study, from conceptual and empirical contributions from many academic disciplines. While the main emphases of scholars from different fields may reflect certain intradisciplinary perspectives, the cumulative product is distinctly interdisciplinary, as seen in the widescope of contemporary research findings. Educators have been concerned with the role of the schools in the political socialization process, while sociologists have directed attention more broadly toward the roles of many potential agencies of political socialization. Psychologists, focusing upon political socialization as a learning process, have directed attention to learning and developmental theories. Political scientists have examined both the antecedents and consequences of the socialization process.

Political Socialization: A Topical Bibliography.

One of the critical questions in the debate about the concept of party identification is its stability over time, particularly its stability relative to that of voting behavior. This article utilizes data from a new three-wave panel study to assess the properties of party identification in Canada, and to compare levels of partisan stability in Canada with those in Great Britain and the United States. In addition to directional stability, other features of the party identification concept and its applicability to Canada are examined, notably the constituency of identification across levels of the federal system. Analyses indicate that party identification in Canada is subject to considerable fluctuation, and that the U.S. pattern of relatively stable party identification coupled with substantial short-term swings in voting behavior reflect the institutional characteristics of the U. S. electoral system. The article concludes by suggesting that patterns of partisanship in Canada, although distinctive in certain respects, probably have important commonalities with those in many other contemporary liberal democracies.

Partisan Instability in Canada: Evidence from a New Panel Study

The fate of governing parties in times of economic crisis

Referendums are rare events in most parliamentary democracies, and when they do occur they present an analytical puzzle. Are they such unusual events that they fall outside of the theoretical frameworks familiar to students of elections? Or, even though they enter political life infrequently, can they be understood as something not entirely foreign to our thinking about electoral politics? Here, we argue that voting in referendums such as the constitutional referendum of October 26, 1992 is driven by many of the same factors that are present in elections—parties, leaders, issues, a campaign timetable, the interplay between long- and short-term forces and the dynamic of the campaign itself. In spite of their unique features, referendums can be understood in terms of models of voting behaviour familiar to students of elections in Canada and elsewhere. But, devoid of some of the long-term partisan and social anchors which play a role in elections, their outcome is even more dependent on the short-term elements of the campaign. As such, referendums are subject to greater volatility and uncertainty than that typically found in ordinary parliamentary elections.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008423900018357

Referendum Voting: Attitudes and Behaviour in the 1992 Constitutional Referendum*

Sovereignty, leadership and voting in the Quebec referendums

Plusieurs hypotheses existent, qui tentent d'expliquer la faiblesse du vote de classe au Canada. Je tente ici de reformuler certaines de ces hypothPses, i partir de leurs postulats i1'6gard de la conscience de classe et de la formation de classe. Deux types d'explications sont identifies: celles, d'abord, qui soutiennent que le bas niveau de conscience de classe au Canada est la cause de I'absence de formation de classe; et celles pour qui l'inverse est vrai. Toutes les hypotheses considerees trouvent des donnees qui les supportent dans la ricente Etude electorale nationale. I1 est actuellement impossible de choisir entre elles, alors que les donnees disponibles ont une valeur limitee et que des problemes de niveaux d'analyse restent i resoudre. On devrait considerer les deux modes d'explication comme interactifs, et aussi vraisemblables l'un que l'autre.



Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the low levels of class voting in Canada. This article reformulates a number of these in terms of their assumptions about class consciousness and class formation. Explanations are divided into those which hold the society's low level of class consciousness responsible for the lack of class formation, and those which propose the reverse. Evidence from recent National Elections Study data contains support for all of the hypotheses, and it is concluded that choosing between them is currently impossible because of data limitations and level-of-analysis problems. The two lines of argument should be regarded as interactive and equally plausible.

Jon H. Pammett

Papers

Partisan Instability in Canada: Evidence from a New Panel Study

The fate of governing parties in times of economic crisis

Referendum Voting: Attitudes and Behaviour in the 1992 Constitutional Referendum*

Sovereignty, leadership and voting in the Quebec referendums

Class voting and class consciousness in Canada