Download or read book Class Voting in Western Europe written by Oddbjørn Knutsen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Class Voting in Western Europe outlines the theories of changes in class voting and provides an empirical analysis of class voting. Knutsen's thorough study will provide a new, straightforward understanding of social class and party choice to anyone interested in the complex r...

Download or read book Erosion of Class Voting and of the Religious Vote in Western Europe written by Mattei Dogan and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe written by Zsolt Enyedi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is European party politics hovering above society? Why do voters pick one party over others? Is it a question of class? Of religion? Of attitudes about taxes or immigration or global warming? Or is it something else entirely? The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe takes a detailed look at the ways in which Western Europe’s party systems are anchored in social and ideological structures. The book’s first section focuses on the role of social structures - particularly education, class and religion - and analyzes the complex interplay among these factors. The second section addresses the ways that the sociological structures such as class and religion interact with voters’ values. The third section examines the way that these structures and values shape the space of political competition among parties. The conclusion integrates the findings of the empirical articles, putting them into broader comparative perspective, discussing whether relatively predictable structures have been overwhelmed by media-driven spectacles, political personalities and focus on short-term economic performance. This volume will appeal to scholars and graduate students in Europe and those from North America, Asia and other regions who study European politics, political parties, cleavages and political behaviour. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Download or read book The European Voter written by Jacques Thomassen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a systematic comparative analysis of how and why voting behaviour has changed in Europe in recent decades. It has been widely argued that radical changes have occurred in the how and why of voting behaviour in Europe as a result of changes in the structure of society, most notably the rise in material affluence and educational attainment, and the decline in religious observance and the size of the working class. But most tests of this proposition have been undertaken on single countries. This book, however, systematically tests the validity of this proposition across various European countries. The argument that social change has altered voting behaviour has been increasingly challenged on the grounds that it takes too little account of changes in the choices that are put before voters by the parties, such as the promises and proposals that are put forward at election time. This book, therefore, also assesses the relative explanatory power of claims that voting behaviour has changed because of changes in society against claims that it responds to changes in the offerings of political parties. And it is clear from the analyses reported in this book that contrary to the claims of much of the extant literature, the latter argument appears better able to account for many of the patterns and changes in European voting behaviour, and thus the book constitutes an important challenge to much current academic orthodoxy. This is the first book to provide a systematic comparison of the long-term dynamics of the voting behaviour of individual voters across such a wide range of European countries, taking into account the dynamics of the choices put before voters by the parties and, for the first time, relating this to the way voters behave. Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The General Editors are Max Kaase, Professor of Political Science, Vice President and Dean, School of Humanities and Social Science, International University Bremen; and Kenneth Newton, Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Southampton. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.

Download or read book Is social class or religion the prime determinant in the voting behaviour of electors in Western Europe written by Nia Verdenhalven and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-01-23 with total page 17 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: A/1.0/1st mark, University of London, language: English, abstract: Conventionally, social cleavages have been widely accepted as the prime determinant in the voting behaviour of electors in the western world. In largely religious countries Christianity was seen as main factor of people’s voting pattern, whereas in secular western countries social class was regarded as the strongest influence. However, in recent decades the prediction of electoral behaviour has become more and more problematic, as religious faith has declined and the traditional contrast of social classes began to be more difficult to distinguish. This essay will examine the impact of religion and social class as well as the increasing influx of ultra-right parties and influence of the growing number of ethnic minorities on voting behaviour in Germany and France, and will attempt to demonstrate that despite the former importance of religion and the changes of society during the post-war period, the fundamental influence on voting behaviour is social class in both countries.

Download or read book Social Structure Value Orientations and Party Choice in Western Europe written by Oddbjørn Knutsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-24 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual’s voting preferences. There have been major changes in recent decades both to social structure and how social structure determines people’s voting behaviour. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values. The author addresses the questions: How do social structure and value orientations influence party choice in advanced industrial democracies?; To what extent is the impact of social structure on party choice transmitted via value orientations?; To what extent is the impact of value orientations on party choice causal effects when controlled for the prior structural variables? The book will be of use to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, electoral politics and political sociology.

Download or read book Voting Radical Right in Western Europe written by Terri E. Givens and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-10 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Electoral Competition in Europe s New Tripolar Political Space written by Daniel Oesch and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a growing number of countries, the two dominant political poles of the 20th century, the parties of the Left and the Centre-Right, are challenged by a third pole made up by the Radical Right. Between 2000 and 2015, the Radical Right has obtained more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries and in over twenty national elections. We argue that the three poles compete with each other for the allegiance of different social classes. Our analysis shows the micro-foundations of class voting in nine West European countries where the political space was tripolar for part – or all – of the period between 2000 and 2015. Based on the European Social Survey 2002-2014, we find that socio-cultural professionals still form the party preserve of the Left, and large employers and managers constitute the party preserve of the Centre-Right. However, the Radical Right competes with the Centre-Right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the Left over its traditional working-class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the coexistence of old and new patterns of class voting. The analysis of voters’ attitudes shows that old patterns are structured by the economic axis of conflict: production workers’ support for the Left and small business owners’ endorsement of the Centre-Right. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the Radical Right and structured by the cultural axis of conflict: the support for the Radical Right by production workers and small business owners.

Download or read book Voting Behavior in Europe written by Erik Oppenhuis and published by Het Spinhuis. This book was released on 1995 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Short History of Electoral Systems in Western Europe written by Andrew McLaren Carstairs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a concise and accessible account of the historical experience of European parliaments – why different electoral systems were adopted, how they have functioned, how they have affected the development of political parties, and in what respects they have been found over time to be either suitable or unsatisfactory. The book begins with a summary of the main electoral systems, analysing and re-assessing each in the light of historical experience. The core of the book, however, is a country-by-country account of the systems which have operated in each of the main West European countries, in the context of their own constitutional, political and social developments.

Download or read book Social Democratic Parties and the Working Class written by Line Rennwald and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book carefully explores the relationship between social democracy and its working-class electorate in Western Europe. Relying on different indicators, it demonstrates an important transformation in the class basis of social democracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the working-class vote is strongly fragmented and social democratic parties face competition on multiple fronts for their core electorate – and not only from radical right parties. Starting from a reflection on ‘working-class parties’ and using a sophisticated class schema, the book paints a nuanced and diversified picture of the trajectory of social democracy that goes beyond a simple shift from working-class to middle-class parties. Following a detailed description, the book reviews possible explanations of workers' new voting patterns and emphasizes the crucial changes in parties' ideologies. It closes with a discussion on the role of the working class in social democracy's future electoral strategies.

Download or read book Electoral Competition in Europe s New Tripolar Political Space written by Daniel Oesch and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a growing number of countries, the two dominant political poles of the 20th century, the parties of the Left and the Centre-Right, are challenged by a third pole made up by the Radical Right. Between 2000 and 2015, the Radical Right has obtained more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries and in over twenty national elections. We argue that the three poles compete with each other for the allegiance of different social classes. Our analysis shows the micro-foundations of class voting in nine West European countries where the political space was tripolar for part – or all – of the period between 2000 and 2015. Based on the European Social Survey 2002-2014, we find that socio-cultural professionals still form the party preserve of the Left, and large employers and managers constitute the party preserve of the Centre-Right. However, the Radical Right competes with the Centre-Right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the Left over its traditional working-class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the coexistence of old and new patterns of class voting. The analysis of voters’ attitudes shows that old patterns are structured by the economic axis of conflict: production workers’ support for the Left and small business owners’ endorsement of the Centre-Right. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the Radical Right and structured by the cultural axis of conflict: the support for the Radical Right by production workers and small business owners.

Download or read book Do Elections Still Matter written by Emiliano Grossman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The critique of liberal democracy has focused mostly on the same issues since the 19th century. Liberal democracy is denounced as an elitist project that deprives the vast majority of the people of any meaningful form of participation. Elites, once elected, will primarily respond to economic interests or serve themselves, rather than represent voters. Elites become increasingly disconnected from the rest of society and access to the sphere of political elites will become increasingly difficult over time. In the context of globalization, they are moreover less and less connected to their countries of origin. The electoral supply is growing increasingly similar, thereby limiting effective choice for voters. Political elites, the media and scholars have voiced increasing concern about the shrinking leeway for elected governments to actively shape policies in times of growing international interdependence, regional integration, budget pressures and political polarization (Boix, 2000; Mair, 2008). Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, recently expressed concern about the fact that Europe had "drawn up rules that people in the member States through elections no longer can change" and that voters "could not anymore influence economic policy by casting their vote." Against this background, electoral promises are essentially cheap talk designed above all to win the election and then quickly forgotten. In most democracies, opinion polls reveal a climate of generalized and growing scepticism towards parties and their promises. Party programs are often presented as a mere instrument of communication. In France, for example, one recent survey reveals that "broken electoral promises" are among the reasons that are most cited by interviewees for loss of confidence in the executive. A non-trivial number of citizens and political actors in virtually all contemporary democracies shares parts or all of this non-exhaustive list of critiques. Many political challengers, especially on the far right, have built their political agenda and their electoral clientele around these criticisms. Increasingly, even mainstream parties have taken up many of these points and there is a growing number of attempts to reform political systems to respond to their perceived or real shortcomings. Many of the typical reforms of the past years, such as reduction of the number of parliamentarians, introduction of popular referenda or instances of deliberative democracy, are motivated by doubts about the functioning of representative democracy. The present book tries to ascertain some of those claims with a focus on the policy relevance of elections. We want to examine whether liberal democracies have really become the deceptive machines that its opponents claim they are. These claims deserve an empirical investigation. How relevant are democratic elections to public policy? This topical question is mostly addressed through the lens of what has been called promissory representation, or mandate responsiveness. Yet, empirical work to date has most often failed to take into account the relationship between party issue competition on the one hand and mandate responsiveness on the other. The very notion of mandate responsiveness has often been defined very partially and requires further elaboration. Our central argument, based on a more comprehensive approach to mandates, is that there is empirical evidence for a significant connection between electoral supply and public policy. We will shed new light on the institutional determinants of mandate representation and show that the situation in most cases has not deteriorated as much as critics pretend"--

Download or read book The End of Class Politics written by Geoffrey Evans and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1999-09-23 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last few decades has seen a prolonged debate over the nature and importance of social class as a basis for ideology, class voting and class politics. The prevailing assumption is that, in western societies, class inequalities are no longer important in determining political behaviour. In The End of Class Politics? leading scholars from the US, UK and Europe argue that the evidence on which the assumptions about the decline importance of class is based is unfounded. Instead, the book argues that the class basis of political competition has to some degree evolved, but not declined. Furthermore, the social basis of political competition and sweeping claims about the new politics of postindustrial society need to be re-examined.

Download or read book Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe written by William E. Paterson and published by London : Croom Helm. This book was released on 1977 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Regional and National Elections in Western Europe written by R. Dandoy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Utilizing both historical and new research data, this book analyzes voting patterns for local and national elections in thirteen west European countries from 1945-2011. The result of rigorous and in-depth country studies, this book challenges the popular second-order model and presents an innovative framework to study regional voting patterns.

Download or read book Political Conflict in Western Europe written by Hanspeter Kriesi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved.