Suchergebnisse

In a recent article, Patrick Dunleavy argues powerfully for an independent effect of 'consumption locations' on the political process in general, and voting patterns in particular, in Britain ('The Urban Basis of Political Alignment: Social Class, Domestic Property Ownership and State Intervention in Consumption Processes', this Journal, IX (1979), 409–44). Through an analysis of the housing and transport markets, Dunleavy suggests that people involved in 'collective' modes of consumption (such as council tenants and public transport users) are as a result of their own distinctive interests more likely to incline to the left than people involved in more 'individual' modes of consumption (such as home-owners and car-owners). Dunleavy suggests further that since consumption locations are at least partially independent of occupational class, the spread of home-ownership and car-ownership in the post-war period may help to account for the declining electoral influence of occupational class.

The image of voting in the United States developed by political scientists over the last decade differs markedly from the perspective offered in that classic study of electoral behaviour in the 1950s, The American Voter. Whereas the authors of The American Voter painted a rather unflattering portrait of the way in which the voter of the 1950s made his electoral choice, contemporary research has begun to discover some unexpected virtues in the American electorate of the 1960s and early 1970s. Compared to his counterpart in the previous generation, today's voter seems to attach less significance to his party identification, and more importance to his perceptions of the parties' stands on issues with which he is concerned, in deciding which party to support in presidential elections. Indeed, it would perhaps be only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the notion of electoral choice has now become a realistic, and not merely a metaphorical, manner of speaking about the American voter.