Suchergebnisse

The central concern of Understanding Political Changeis to explore the social and political sources of electoral change in Britain. From the Labour successes of the 1960s through the reemergence of the Liberals as a national force in 1974 and the rise and fall of the SDP to the potential emergence of the Green Party in the 1990s, Dr Heath and his collaborators chart the continually changing mould of British politics. Questions of the greater volatility of a more sophisticated electorate, of new cleavages in society replacing those based on social class, of the Conservative government's deliberate and inadvertent interventions to shape the emerging social structure, and of the influence which the political parties have been able to exert on public attitudes are all addressed with reference to data from the election surveys carried out after each general election since 1964.

The purpose of "qualitative" or "naturalistic" research varies according to the research paradigm, methods, and assumptions. Generally speaking, qualitative researchers attempt to describe and interpret some human phenomenon, often in the words of selected individuals (the informants). These researchers try to be clear about their biases, presuppositions, and interpretations so that others (the stakeholders) can decide what they think about it all. Unlike conventional, positivist research, there is no single accepted outline for a qualitative research proposal or report (Morse, 1991). The generic outline that follows is suggested as a point of departure for qualitative research proposals, and it applies specifically to the research paradigm and methods that seem most applicable to the study of families and family therapy (e.g., post-positivist, phenomenological clinical observation and long interviews). The outline is intended to serve as a point of departure for researchers, who must decide how to organize their proposals (a) to best communicate their ideas to their intended audiences and (b) to satisfy the demands of the context.

Support for the extreme right in Britain has been relatively low in Britain in recent years and has not shown the surge apparent in a number of other European countries. The paper uses data from the 1979 British Election survey to examine the characteristics of care and peripheral National Front supporters at the time of their last surge in support, and then goes on to consider why support has remained low in recent years. The 1979 evidence shows that support for the National Front was strongly linked to racist attitudes but in other respects had a 'protest' character. It is suggested that the subsequent weakness of the extreme right in Britain may be due to its single-issue character and to the availability of more attractive alternatives for protest voters such as the Liberal Party.

Based on findings from the 1983 British General Election Study. Partial contents: The decline of class voting; The Alliance as a protest party.