Abstract
The research questions in this chapter are: What is the comparative strength of the correlation between a given social structural variable and party choice? Which party families contribute most to the correlations between a given structural variable and party choice? An important general finding is that the New Politics parties (Green, Left Socialist and Radical Right) play a central role by having different support among many socio-structural variables. The total explanatory power of the structural variables in aggregate shows large variations between the countries. The comparative strength of the structural model is largest in those countries with the most advanced social structure, and in fragmented party systems.
This chapter is written in cooperation with: Peter Egge Langsæther, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, Email: p.e.langsather@stv.uio.no
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52123-7_8
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Notes
- 1.
The high lor scores for “Other parties” are not considered here. The same applies in the rest of the analyses.
- 2.
The tables showing the location of party voters on the various structural variables are shown in Appendix Tables.
- 3.
For example, in a pioneering study based on longitudinal data from West European countries, Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere (1995a) found clear trends in the direction of disengagement from institutionalised churches and disengagement from institutionalised churches. They note clear cohort effects in church attendance and religious beliefs, and they find support for contagion model of religious change where the process starts among the younger cohorts and spreads towards the older (Jagodzinski and Dobbelaere 1995a: 105–113). In cohort terms, this implies cohort effects combined with a specific type of period effect.
- 4.
Most of the literature emphasises that age difference in support for the Greens and Left Socialist parties is a cohort effect. A relevant scholarly contribution in this respect is Wilhelm Bürklin’s analysis of the support for the German Green party (1987). Bürklin challenges the dominant generation perspective on the left-libertarian parties. Instead of the generation thesis based on the assumption that the reasons behind the left-libertarian vote lie in changing political issues and value preferences, Bürklin has formulated a life-cycle hypothesis which he also calls a “protest” alternative. According to this hypothesis the attitudes of young voters, who are the mainstay of the Green vote, derive primarily from their position in the life cycle.
- 5.
For an overview of literature of the realignment in the Scandinavian countries in the 1930s, see Knutsen (2003: 50–56).
- 6.
In Austria age differences in support for the Social Democrats and the Radical Right also contribute significantly. The Social Democrats gains stronger support from the older age group and the Radical Right from the younger age groups (8 and 7 percentage points, respectively).
- 7.
Lipset and Rokkan also compared the Scandinavian Christian parties with the nonconformists in Britain and the Anti-Revolutionaries in the Netherlands because they were opposed to the tolerant pragmatism of the Established Lutheran Churches, rejecting the lukewarm latitudinarianism of the national Mother Church (1967: 18).
- 8.
Religious denomination is recoded into three categories for the religiously homogeneous countries: No denomination, the Main denomination and Other denominations. For Britain, Germany and Switzerland there are separate categories for the Catholics and the Protestants, while there is an additional category for the Rereformed church in the Netherlands.
- 9.
The data material does not allow separating these categories due to low N, but as an illustration, support for the Christian Party in Sweden among the small group of members of free churches and non-conformists (included in the “other” denomination category) is 71%, but N is only 14 for this category.
- 10.
As to the urban base for the support for the Greens, see Dolezal (2010: 544–547).
- 11.
This is done by collapsing categories 0, 1 and 2 (primary, lower secondary), 3 and 4 (upper secondary) and 5 and 6 (tertiary).The correlations between this collapsed education variable and party choice is very similar to those based on all categories. The mean correlation for all countries declines from 0.224 to 0.191, and the ranking of the countries is nearly identical.
- 12.
This is explained in the empirical section.
- 13.
The averages for the various party families are based on the number of countries where the party families are present in the data material. The percentages for the various social classes do not sum up to 100, but exceed 100.
- 14.
The correlation coefficients are the square root of Nagelkerke’s R 2.
- 15.
The analyses of each group of variables without controls will – somewhat misleadingly – be referred to as “bivariate” below. It is, however, controlled for the other variables within the group, but since the coefficients for these individual variables are not identified, “bivariate” for the group of variables might be justified.
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Knutsen, O., Langsæther, P.E. (2018). Party Choice and Social Structure. In: Social Structure, Value Orientations and Party Choice in Western Europe. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52123-7_4
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