Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice.
01 Aug 1970-Vol. 14, Iss: 3, pp 523
About: The article was published on 1970-08-01. It has received 172 citations till now.
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TL;DR: This paper found that the value priorities of the more affluent postwar group do contrast with those of groups raised under conditions of lesser economic and physical security, suggesting that the age-group differences reflect the persistence of pre-adult experiences, rather than life cycle effects.
Abstract: A transformation of basic political priorities may be taking place in Western Europe. I hypothesize: (1) that people have a variety of needs which are given high or low priority according to their degree of fulfillment: people act on behalf of their most important unsatisfied need, giving relatively little attention to needs already satisfied—except that (2) people tend to retain the value priorities adopted in their formative years throughout adult life. In contemporary Western Europe, needs for physical safety and economic security are relatively well satisfied for an unprecedentedly large share of the population. Younger, more affluent groups have been formed entirely under these conditions, and seem relatively likely to give top priority to fulfillment of needs which remain secondary to the older and less affluent majority of the population. Needs for belonging and intellectual and esthetic self-fulfillment (characterized as “post-bourgeois” values) may take top priorities among the former group. Survey data from six countries indicate that the value priorities of the more affluent postwar group do contrast with those of groups raised under conditions of lesser economic and physical security. National patterns of value priorities correspond to the given nation's economic history, moreover, suggesting that the age-group differences reflect the persistence of preadult experiences, rather than life cycle effects. The distinctive value priorities imply distinctive political behavior—being empirically linked with preferences for specific political issues and political parties in a predictable fashion. If the respective age cohorts retain their present value priorities, we would expect long-term shifts in the political goals and patterns of political partisanship prevailing in these societies.
1,334 citations
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17 Mar 2008TL;DR: A Contextual Theory of Rational Retrospective Economic Voting: Competency signals and rational retrospective economic voting as mentioned in this paper was proposed to define and measure the economic vote in Western democracies, and it was shown that economic variation and its sources can be traced to economic voting.
Abstract: 1. Introduction Part I. Describing the Economic Vote in Western Democracies: 2. Defining and measuring the economic vote 3. Patterns of retrospective economic voting in western democracies 4. Estimation, measurement, and specification Part II. A Contextual Theory of Rational Retrospective Economic Voting: Competency Signals: 5. Competency signals and rational retrospective economic voting 6. What do voters know about economic variation and its sources? 7. Political control of the economy Part III. A Contextual Theory of Rational Retrospective Economic Voting: Strategic Voting: 8. Responsibility, contention, and the economic vote 9. The distribution of responsibility and economic voting 10. The pattern of contention and the economic vote Part IV. Conclusion and Summary: 11. Conclusion.
713 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the validity of the spatial model from the perspective of both parties and voters, by testing its application to recent British general elections and found that competence considerations have become more important than ideological position in British elections.
349 citations
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21 Jul 2011TL;DR: A model of intra-party politics is presented in this paper, where the authors compare the effect of backbench dissent in four Westminster parliamentary systems, 1945-2005, on policy preferences, constituency service, and the personal vote of MPs.
Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. A model of intra-party politics 3. Patterns of backbench dissent in four Westminster parliamentary systems, 1945-2005 4. Policy preferences and backbench dissent in Great Britain and Canada 5. Dissent, constituency service, and the personal vote in Great Britain and New Zealand 6. The cost of dissent to the party 7. Demotion and dissent in the Canadian Liberal Party, 1991-7 8. Discipline and dissent in the Australian Coalition, 1996-8 9. Career trajectories, socialization, and backbench dissent in the British House of Commons 10. Conclusion Appendix 1. Comparative statics and proofs Appendix 2. Content and construction of ideological scales Appendix 3. Sampling and coding of media dissent and discipline Appendix 4. Demotion and the parliamentary careers of Canadian MPs References Index.
267 citations
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TL;DR: This article proposed a comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty, district-level elections, which can be used to explain or predict how geographic distributions of electoral results depend upon economic conditions, neighborhood ethnic compositions, campaign spending, and other features of the election campaign or aggregate areas.
Abstract: We propose a comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty, district-level elections. This model, which provides a tool for comparative politics research analagous to that which regression analysis provides in the American two-party context, can be used to explain or predict how geographic distributions of electoral results depend upon economic conditions, neighborhood ethnic compositions, campaign spending, and other features of the election campaign or aggregate areas. We also provide new graphical representations for data exploration, model evaluation, and substantive interpretation. We illustrate the use of this model by attempting to resolve a controversy over the size of and trend in electoral advantage of incumbency in Britain. Contrary to previous analyses, all based on measures now known to be biased, we demonstrate that the advantage is small but meaningful, varies substantially across the parties, and is not growing. Finally, we show how to estimate the party from which each party's advantage is predominantly drawn.
264 citations