Party Identification and Beyond

This provocative and important book sets itself three tasks: to consider the "theoretical and measurement status" of party identification as conventionally defined, to uncover the dimensionality of response to some party systems, and to consider rational choice theory and the idea of party identification in light of each other. Each task gets its own section and each section has an introductory essay. The first part of the book finds the idea of party identification as a reference group phenomenon empirically wanting in most contexts. Warren Miller begins the section with a defence of the idea, but gives so much ground to the diversity of the European evidence and to the role of party in reducing citizens' information costs that he vitiates the idea he set out to defend. Jacques Thomassen, Max Kaase, and Budge and Farlie present evidence suggesting that for Canada and a number of European countries questions about party identification and vote intention are only alternative measures of the same predisposition. The evidence is more suggestive than conclusive and the recurring explanation for America's uniqueness, the indistinctness of her parties and political cleavages, is not particularly well thought out and is confounded somewhat by the Canadian case. For their part, Budge and Farlie hesitate to abandon the idea of party identification. They do, however, propose a measurement device using background characteristics rather than response to a party identification question. They argue that the device is more appropriate than either multiple regression or discriminant analysis in assessing the effect of variation in categoric, nominal data. This may be, but no multivariate classification device will produce an estimate of long-term predispositions if, in the election studied, social groups were moved around in an idiosyncratic way: prediction of party preference from background characteristics would itself embody short-term factors. The other chapter in Part One, by Ivor Crewe, is one of the outstanding contributions to the volume. Crewe sets out the standard model of party identification fairly and shows that, in terms of it, the individual-level evidence in the Butler and Stokes panel is inconsistent with aggregate change in response to British parties. He also points out the number of alternative meanings of party loyalty compatible with a given response to the questionnaire stimulus and proposes an emphasis on political events and sociological aspects of partisanship for future research. Five of the chapters in the second part identify the evaluative dimensions in terms of which Danish, Belgian, French, and Swiss electorates respond to parties. A sixth chapter, by Ronald Inglehart and Hans Klingemann, considers a number of countries together. The chapters are all competent, but none really sheds much light on the theoretical questions raised elsewhere in the book. To the extent that they do, their arguments run against the grain of the mild rational choice bias elsewhere, a nice irony for a section containing spatial analyses. The chapters vary in the extent to which they require background in the politics of the country. The most distinguished are by Jerrold G. Rusk and Ole Borre on Denmark and by Gary A. Mauser and Jacqueline Freyssinet-Dominjon on France. The third section raises questions about the coexistence of rational choice and party identification. In looking at both party strategy and voter response in Northern Ireland, Michael Laver elaborates on Downs's spatial duopoly model in useful ways. William Irvine looks at four models of political participation and attempts a synthesis of the four, using Canadian evidence. In a second chapter, Irvine tests three models of party preference and again attempts a synthesis. Both chapters are useful beginnings. In an outstanding chapter, Peter Ordeshook synthesizes and criticizes work on the spatial theory of elections, worrying about its reliance on pure strategy

Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has made major contributions both to cumulative research on democracy and to organizational developments in the discipline. His earliest research on Glasgow and Belfast focused on causes of democratic breakdown. After a period of studying elections, voting behavior, and party competition, he turned to public policy and how it might become responsive to popular preferences - a central democratic dilemma. His research covers both direct and representative democracy. He founded the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis in 1968. He has been President of the European Consortium in Political Research between 1979 - 83. Among his recent publications, (with Klingemann et al.), Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electorates and Governments 1945 - 1998 (2001), Elections, Parties, Democracy: Conferring the Median Mandate (with Michael D. McDonald) (2005); The New British Politics (Ian Budge, David McKay, Kenneth Newton and John Bartle) (2007). Sir Ivor Crewe is the Master of University College, Oxford. He is a former vice-chancellor of the University of Essex and president of Universities UK. His work covers British politics, especially elections, parties, and public opinion. He directed the British Election Study from 1973 to 1981 and has edited the British Journal of Political Science. Dennis J. Farlie is a mathematical statistician who has served a director of the ESRC Social Science Data Archive at the University of Essex and chairman of its Department of Mathematics. He has collaborated with Ian Budge on several applications of Bayesian statistics to political science data, covering voting, election predictions, and political careers.

New introduction to the ECPR Press edition - Ian Budge i List of contributors xv Preface xvii PART I - Party identification: its theoretical and measurement status 1 Introduction: party identification and beyond 3 The cross-national use of party identification as a stimulus to political inquiry - Warren E. Miller 21 Party identification theory and political change in Britain - Ivor Crewe 33 Party identification as a cross - national concept: its meaning in the Netherlands - Jacques Thomassen 63 Party identification and voting behaviour in the west German election of 1969 - Max Kaase 81 A comparative analysis of factors correlated with turnout and voting choice - Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie 103 PART II - Dimensional analysis 127 Introduction: the relationship of dimensional analysis to party identification and policy - based models 129 The changing party space in Danish voter perceptions, 1971 - 73 - Jerrold G. Rusk and Ole Borre 137 Cleavage structures and representational linkages: a longitudinal analysis of Danish legislative behaviour - Erik Damgaard and Jerrold G. Rusk 163 Party preference spaces and voting change in Belgium - Andre - Paul Frognier 189 Exploring political space: a study of french voters' preferences - Gary A. Mauser and Jacqueline Freyssinet - Dominjon 203 The left, the right, the establishment and the swiss electorate - Ronald Inglehart and Dusan Sidjanski 225 Party identification, ideological preference and the left - right dimension among western mass publics - Ronald Inglehart and Hans D. Klingemann 243 PART III - Rational choice and party identification 275 Introduction: rational choice, policy spaces and party identification 277 The spatial theory of elections: a review and a critique - Peter C. Ordeshook 285 Strategic campaign behaviour for electors and parties; the northern Ireland assembly election of 1973 - Michael Laver 315 Testing explanations of voting turnout in Canada - William P. Irvine 335 Testing models of voting choice in Canada - William P. Irvine 353 Surrogates for party identification in the rational choice framework - David Robertson 365 Placing party identification within a typology of representations of voting and party competition and proposing a synthesis - Dennis Farlie and Ian Budge 383 Index 395