The Politics of Economic Decline

This book originally published in 1979, deals with popular perceptions and expectations of economic trends, popular preferences among economic policies, and the relationships between these and broader aspects of political behaviour like voting, attachment to the party system, and political and social attitudes. The economy has long been held to be a critical determinant of the ability of governments to gain election. This book provides unique evidence about popular expectations of inflation, evaluation of economic management, and preferences among competing economic goals and policies, without which the connection between economic management and electoral success cannot be understood. At the same time, by dealing extensively with electoral survey data for Britain since 1964, the book provides a contemporary history of electoral and political behaviour in an age of unprecedented economic management.