This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual’s voting preferences. There have been major changes in recent decades both to social structure and how social structure determines people’s voting behaviour. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values. The author addresses the questions: How do social structure and value orientations influence party choice in advanced industrial democracies?; To what extent is the impact of social structure on party choice transmitted via value orientations?; To what extent is the impact of value orientations on party choice causal effects when controlled for the prior structural variables? The book will be of use to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, electoral politics and political sociology.

This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual’s voting preferences. There have been major changes in recent decades both to social structure and how social structure determines people’s voting behaviour. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values. The author addresses the questions: How do social structure and value orientations influence party choice in advanced industrial democracies?; To what extent is the impact of social structure on party choice transmitted via value orientations?; To what extent is the impact of value orientations on party choice causal effects when controlled for the prior structural variables? The book will be of use to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, electoral politics and political sociology.

This study is a comparative analysis of the relationship between social structure and party choice in eight West European countries. Oddbjørn Knutsen analyzes the comparative strength of social structural variables, and how these have changed from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. Other factors that are considered include for which parties the structural variables have the largest impact within the various party systems and across national contexts, and for which parties are the most significant change in support from various social groups found.

This book explores the mechanisms of political representation and accountability in the European political system, against the backdrop of multiple crises in recent years in the economic, financial, security and immigration fields, which have triggered strong tensions and centrifugal drives inside the EU and among its member states. Exploiting a rich set of new ad hoc collected data covering elite and public opinion orientations and party positions, it investigates how the current politicization of European issues and the asymmetries among member states can challenge the sustainability of the European Union. It examines how existing policy tools were found largely unable to neutralize promptly the negative effects of these crises on the populations, economies and security of the Union and how this suggests the need to reconsider overarching theoretical frameworks and a more in-depth analysis of some crucial mechanisms of the European political system and to go beyond some of the dominant scholarly debates of the past decades. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of the European Union and more broadly to comparative European politics and international relations.

The process of electoral change is accelerating in contemporary democracies, and this book explains why. The emergence of Green parties in the 1980s and recent far right parties, Brexit and Trump's 2016 victory are parts of this overall process. Political Realignment tracks the evolution of citizen and elite opinions on economic and cultural issues from the 1970s to the 2010s-and the impact of these changes on electoral politics and public policy. Citizen positions on these cleavages have realigned over time, producing a similar realignment in the structure of the party systems to represent these demands. Economic issues remain important, now joined by divisions on cultural issues as a backlash to modernization. Assembling an unprecedented time series of empirical evidence, this study explains the new forces of elector change in both Europe and the United States.

Is European party politics hovering above society? Why do voters pick one party over others? Is it a question of class? Of religion? Of attitudes about taxes or immigration or global warming? Or is it something else entirely? The Structure of Political Competition in Western Europe takes a detailed look at the ways in which Western Europe’s party systems are anchored in social and ideological structures. The book’s first section focuses on the role of social structures - particularly education, class and religion - and analyzes the complex interplay among these factors. The second section addresses the ways that the sociological structures such as class and religion interact with voters’ values. The third section examines the way that these structures and values shape the space of political competition among parties. The conclusion integrates the findings of the empirical articles, putting them into broader comparative perspective, discussing whether relatively predictable structures have been overwhelmed by media-driven spectacles, political personalities and focus on short-term economic performance. This volume will appeal to scholars and graduate students in Europe and those from North America, Asia and other regions who study European politics, political parties, cleavages and political behaviour. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

This comprehensive and comparative book makes clear what party families are and, in doing so, helps categorise and make sense of parties in different countries. It describes the ideology of the families in Western Europe as well as classifying political parties accordingly. Furthermore, the book examines who the party families’ supporters are in terms of their social background and political values. What role do class, education, and religion play in the 21st century? Finally, the book provides a discussion of the degree to which the concept of party families is still meaningful in the 21st century and how it needs to be studied comparatively and comprehensively. Is party family still valid as a conceptual device to classify and compare parties across countries in Western Europe? This text will be of key interest to scholars, students, and practitioners working in the field of political behaviour, political parties and party politics, policy studies, and more broadly comparative and European politics.