Suchergebnisse

We explore the reasons for the unexpected defeat of Winston Churchill's Conservatives by Labour in the British general election of 1945. Was the outcome a result of Churchill's election campaign errors, as many have supposed, or did the coming-of-age of a new political generation make it a foregone conclusion? Much controversy in the partisanship literature centres on whether electoral realignments result primarily from conversion of existing voters or from mobilization of previously non-voting individuals. In particular, the 1930s US realignment has been the focus of considerable debate. In this article we shed new light on realignment processes by examining the 1945 British realignment that brought the Labour party to power. We find that, in this more straightforward case, the critical impetus came from new voters rather than from converts. Our findings raise questions that need to be confronted in the analysis of other realignments, such as that accompanying the American New Deal. They also shed new light on a much-interpreted episode in British electoral history. (British Journal of Political Science / AuD)

Social class has long been recognized as being the preeminent influence upon electoral choice in Britain, but recent studies provide support for the argument that it has become a weakened force. These studies differ only in the interpretation that they place on its decline. Through the simultaneous estimation of the effects on voting choice of class measured by occupation, and other variables, this article shows how one of the recent studies implied an overestimate of the declining importance of occupational class. Further it shows that when the indirect effects of class on party choice are taken into account, by means of causal modeling techniques, its preeminent position in determining voting choice in Britain can still be seen. The article seeks to clarify the nature of class-based voting behavior during a period of dramatic decline in this phenomenon, terminating at the last point at which traditional measures can reasonably be used.

One of the major unexplored areas in the literature of political science in Britain is the relationship between the attitudes of individual legislators in policy areas and their behaviour in the House of Commons. In the United States, the study of legislative behaviour has benefited from the fact that the unobtrusive measurement of the attitudes of legislators has been possible through the aggregation of roll-call votes. This procedure has provided the foundation for a body of literature upon which a theoretical framework has been constructed for further research.

This edited collection explores the role of Euroscepticism in the European Parliament (EP) elections of 2014 both in particular EU Member States and across broader regions. It shows how the "second rate" features of elections with no clear agenda-setting role facilitated the astonishing success of Eurosceptic parties while the traditionally "second order" nature of purely legislative elections amplified this outcome, giving it a quite different character than the outcome of any previous EP elections, with potential in turn to affect outcomes of later national elections as well. The chapters draw on a number of different methodological approaches and focus on different perspectives regarding how Euroscepticism played a role in the election context, investigating public opinion, party strategies and media coverage; and assessing how these elections created links to national party politics with likely consequences for electoral success of Eurosceptic parties in future national elections and referendums. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of European politics, voting behavior Euroscepticism. --

The Italian party system largely collapsed in the early 1990s, providing us with a natural experimental situation in which voters were confronted with new parties -- indeed, with an entirely new party system. How did they react? This paper develops a number of expectations on the basis of existing theory and tests these expectations using a dataset consisting of election studies conducted in Italy between 1985 and 2008. We find that a new party system causes confusion as to where parties stand in left-right terms, making it difficult for voters to make their choices on the basis of ideological cues. The confusion is greatest among older voters -- those already set in their habits of voting, but only the very oldest cohorts (containing voters over 60 years old) are significantly debilitated. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]