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Described are diff's in the US & GB approach to election studies before describing French electoral sociol. While US studies are influenced by soc psychol'ts & in GB by pol'al sci'ts, the French have been most influenced by geographers, & the terms `electoral geography' & `electoral sociol' are used synonymously. Andre Siegfried is the earliest writer in the field & posited direct & simple explanations such as division of property, pop groupings, occup, submission to the priest, & racial character, & simple causation. The main portion of the work in electoral sociology (ES) has been done since WWII. There are 2 monographs in the field: (1) by Francois Goguel INITIATION AUX RECHERCHES DE GEOGRAPIRE ELECTORALE gives a synoptic account of the theory & practice. 6 main factors are to be considered in a sci'fic study of the elections: SC's; econ systems; religion; spatial configuration of the pop; influence of groups such as masons, unions, & parties; & auto-determination of the electoral evolution (the elections determine the meaning of the elections). (2) SOCIOLOGIE ELECTORALE, in which Goguel has written in the first portion he doubts whether generalization is possible. The rest of the book by George Dupeux is a guidebook for res under 4 headings: res in PO-to him, election returns, professions of faith by the deputies, dep'tal documents, & press reports; religious geography; soc structure, including pop, movement, age, sex, occup, & some econ data; & local history. E. Labrousse's work, LA REVUE SOCIALISTE, is almost the only work on a national level outside of Goguel's. He also believes that the permanence of the tendencies still holds and changes are due to changes in econ structure. Since industrial property is the primary effect on pol'al behavior, the progress of Socialism is assured. Goguel's geography of elections from 1870-1951 considers the Right & the Extreme-Left to the exclusion of the intermediate Left. One of his conclusions is that the ExtremeLeft is made up of both Ur WC & Ru peasant. This ExtremeLeft stems from the anti-clerical 'Extreme-Left'. Another conclusion is that in modern industrialized France, the CenterRight & Center-Left finds little favor in comparison to France as a whole, but the 2 extremes have their greatest strength there. He also concludes that the parties of the Center have a majority in France which can only be maintained if it considers the needs & problems of industrialized France. The methods & techniques of ES may be classified as: those that deal with map construction, &, those that reject maps for some other methods of presentation. Goguel considers questions of map construction: what shadings & hatchings to use, whether to map delegates or votes, etc. Claude Leleu advocates the use of indices in analysis for cartographic representation using fewer maps. Pierre George studied soc & econ conditions in a commuter town near Paris using road maps & semi-circles. His conclusions include a relationship of occup's to voting for pol'al parties. Guttman scales have been used by Sauerwein & de Vulpian. Roger de Smet has used is in a study of Belgian workers, & concluded that the Socialist & Communist Parties in each region of Belgium group almost exclusively workers & employees. Charles Moraze criticized ES primarily on the basis that studies have sacrificed accuracy for simplicity, & sees the need for better tools in soc sci. Arambourou criticizes similarly & wishes to study small regions intensively in order to identify components. Neither of these authors discuss interviewing as a method. Goguel called for studies of abstentionism using a temporary schema which divides abstentionism into 2 causes: where nonvoting is evidence of perplexity or deliberate att, &, where nonvoting is due to such factors as illness, not knowing of the campaign, living too far from the polls, etc. Jean Pataut distinguishes 3 sorts of abstentions: (a) necessary as a result of illness, change of address, etc: estimated at about 10%; (b) as a result of communication, pop characteristics, tradition, & other local characteristics. This is influenced by choice & will vary from place to place; & (c) pol'al factors may bring a rash of nonvoting. Roger Girod's study (N=50, based on interviews) of abstention in Switzerland postulates that both personal & collective factors are operating. Since abstaining is relatively stable in various Cantons, he concludes that abstention is primarily a function of the group. There are 3 studies of the feminine vote using Leleu's indices. Comparisons show that women abstain more than men & vote for most parties less than men with the exception of the MRP & some right-wing Cath groups. The greatest part of the women vote like the men of their class. It is concluded that work in French ES has been in spite of the methods employed,& the better short studies have used r techniques & detailed interviews. It is believed that the limitations are in the method. Working with gross data, the experimenter is unable to perform simultaneous breakdowns because he does not know how these variables actually _E among individuals. The facts of the French party system do not make his task easier. If French ES could add the soc psychol'al approach used in the US & GB to their studies of environmental forces, they could give a better picture of elections. In return, French studies have substance & methods which we in the. US could use. J. D. Twight.

By the time they reach voting age most individuals in the US have already formed loyalties to one of the 2 major pol'al parties. Past res has shown that the climate of opinion of the nuclear fam during adolescence is the best predictor of what party the new voter will choose. However, there is still some variation in such choices, & 2 possible sources of such variation are examined: the opinion climate of the peer group, &that of the country as a whole during the adolescent period. Data were taken from a larger study of adolescent subcultures. Written questionaire's were administered to every student in each of 10 HSch's in Illinois at 2 diff time periods - the Fall of 1957 &the Spr of 1958. Their parents were also polled by means of a mailed questionaire during the Fall wave. Using multivariate analysis, parents' party affiliation was found to explain 68% of the variation in the party preference of the adolescent. A 2nd result was interpreted to demonstrate the existence of interpersonal pressures within the adolescent soc system to identify with that party chosen bythe majority of members of the system. Further, it was noted that the Republican Party tended to get more than its due, even in the primarily Democratic Sch's, suggesting that the nat'l opinion climate, which was Republican at the time of the first wave, also influenced the choice of a party by the adolescent. This latter notion was supported by showing that from the first to the 2nd wave there was a small shift to the Democratic Party, at the same time the nat'l climate started to shift in the same direction in anticipation of the Congressional election of 1958. Finally, it was shown that boys were more influenced by the opinion climate of the peer group than were girls; while girls were more influenced by both their parents & the nat'l climate. A tentative explanation of this finding based upon the relationship between the saliency of an attitude to the individual & his utilization of various communication channels was offer^, AA.

The nearly simultaneous appearance of the 2 books by William Kornhauser, THE POLITICS OF MASS SOCIETY, (Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1959) & Seymour Martin Lipset, POLITICAL MAN, (See SA 7523) constitutes an important landmark in the development of pol'al sociol. Their common focus of interest is on the soc conditions which underlie the functioning of modern democratic gov both positively & negatively. Lipset's primary problem statement regards a major phase of the failure of the Marxian productions. His main findings concern: the attenuation of Wc militancy, Wc authoritarianism & the structural non-specificity of fascism, & adversely, the relevance of normative, cultural factors for liberalism & the politics of intellectuals. Such conclusions should necessitate a drastic revision of one of his points of reference, the Marxian view of the relation between a hierarchical soc stratification & an increasingly polarized pol'al-econ power system. Kornhauser builds his analysis around the problem of 'mass society'. His point of reference is communal society, where elites are 'non-accessible' & the masses not 'available'. In mass society, elites are accessible & masses available, whereas in totalitarian society a non-accessible elite stands over against an available mass. The most serious omission concerns the pluralist society where analysis would show that just as the non-elite is only relatively unavailable, & so the elite is only relatively accessible. This leads to a polarization at the leadership level. IPSA.

Contents: Introduction: social change and comparative studies, by Wilbert E. Moore; 'Research models' for Latin America, by Peter Heintz; The socialization of attitudes toward political authority, by Robert D. Hess; National values, development, and leaders and followers, by K. H. Silvert; Training and adaptation of the labour force in the early stages of industrialization, by Guillermo Briones; Entrepreneurs in Latin America and the role of cultural and situational processes, by Louis Kriesberg.