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A Theory of Political Socialization: Institutional Support and Deradicalization in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Donald D. Searing
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When streams of research are isolated from one another by methodological style and ideological character, the fact that they share similar explanatory principles is easily overlooked. Thus, since the 1950s many quantitative and ‘pluralistic’ American studies have argued that political leaders are more likely than the public to support procedural rules of the game. And since at least the 1930s, many qualitative and ‘left-wing’ European commentaries have argued that, in matters of socio-economic policy, members of parliaments become more moderate than their parties' activists. These important claims are embedded in two partial theories which have previously been treated as unrelated, the theories of institutional support and of deradicalization. And yet, different as these theories may be in many respects, they are driven by similar socialization principles which accompany movement from one role in the political system to another. Such socialization principles are a conservative force inculcating both institutional support in procedural rules of the game and deradicalization in orientations towards public policy.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 1986 , pp. 341 - 376
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 McClosky, Herbert and Brill, Alida, Dimensions of Tolerance (New York: Russell Sage, 1983)Google Scholar; Searing, Donald. D., ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can the Politicians Be Trusted?, American Political Science Review, LXXVI (1982), 65–79Google Scholar; DiPalma, Guiseppe, Surviving Without Governing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Budge, Ian, Agreemeniand the Stability of Democracy (Chicago: Markham, 1970)Google Scholar; Key, V. O., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert. A., Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

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3 Kavanagh, Dennis, Political Science and Political Behaviour (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar; Stacey, Barrie, Political Socialization in Western Society (London: Edward Arnold, 1978)Google Scholar; Dawson, Richard. E., Prewitt, Kenneth and Dawson, Karen. S., Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).Google Scholar

4 Dawson, , Prewitt, and Dawson, , Political Socialization, p. 16Google Scholar; Tapper, Ted, Political Education and Stability (London: Wiley, 1976)Google Scholar. These theories (‘political theories of political socialization’) focus not on the processes but rather on the consequences of socialization for individuals and political systems.

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6 The attentive public is distinguished from the general public by the greater interest it takes in political affairs. It forms the bottom of the stratum of activists, the top of which, the candidates, are working to join Members of Parliament in the parliamentary parties. See May, , ‘Opinion Structure of Political Parties: The Special Law of Curvilinear Disparity’, pp. 135–6.Google Scholar

7 For evidence supporting this prediction see: Welch, Susan and Studiar, Donley. T., ‘The Policy Opinions of British Political Activists’, Political Studies, XXXI, (1983), 604–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whiteley, Paul, ‘Who Are The Labour Activists?’, Political Quarterly, LII (1981), 160–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although data on such activists are not available for examination in the present study, it is essential to keep the activists' position in mind. It is their position, as illustrated in the lower half of Figure 1, which makes it clear that the theory projects the same prediction for both parties – peaks among the activists – albeit without them the peaks are expected to occur among the attentive public on the Conservative side and among the candidates for Labour.

8 On anticipatory socialization, see Merton, Robert. K., Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1957), pp. 264–9.Google Scholar

9 This is based on the hypothesis that Labour activists are particularly radical compared to Labour voters. See Whiteley, , ‘Who Are The Labour Activists?’.Google Scholar

10 It should be emphasized that P4 is not inconsistent with P2 and P3. Political involvement can produce moderate linear relationships with one type of dependent variable and curvilinear results with another type in cases where these two types of dependent variables are correlated with one another.

11 Punnett, R. M., Front Bench Opposition (London: Heinemann, 1973), p. 13Google Scholar. In the same vein, Putnam, Robert. D. has argued that socialization to parliamentary norms is likely to undermine radical predispositions: The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1976), pp. 97–8Google Scholar. And Fenno, Richard. F. Jr, has claimed that socialization processes within the US House of Representatives tend to retard innovation: ‘The House Appropriations Committee as a Political System: The Problem of Integration’, American Political Science Review, LVI (1962), 310–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Searing, , ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can the Politicians Be Trusted?’, p. 250Google Scholar; Whiteley, , ‘Who Are The Labour Activists?’, p. 170.Google Scholar

13 Q. ‘How much interest do you generally have in what's going on in politics – a good deal, some, or not much?’ (A good deal).

14 Rokeach, Milton, Understanding Human Values: Individual and Societal (New York: Free Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Searing, Donald. D., ‘Measuring Politicians’ Values: Administration and Assessment of a Ranking Technique in the British House of Commons', American Political Science Review, LXXII (1978), 65–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Johnson, Nevil, In Search of the Constitution (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1977), pp. 29–32Google Scholar; Phillips, O. Hood, Reform of the Constitution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

16 Searing, , ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can the Politicians Be Trusted?’Google Scholar All items were first classified under the British Constitution's established principles. A correlation matrix was then created which supplied justification for most original item assignments since the strongest relationships were concentrated among items within the designated sets. Next, negative items were recoded in a positive direction so that high scores on all items would consistently signify support for rules of the game. Each set's internal reliability was then examined with an adaptation of the Spearman-Brown formula. The final step added item values within sets thereby constructing a new variable for each norm measured by more than one survey item. Since several questions were not asked in the public opinion survey, it should be noted that the public's measures for six norms incorporate one less item than the politicians'.

17 Core norms are defined as those with the highest mean correlations with all other items in the matrix. The deliberation set's core norms are ‘parliamentarism’, ‘flexible tactics’ and ‘adaptation: accept limitations’. The representational set's core norms are ‘role of the electorate’, ‘individual responsibility’ and ‘vigorous and critical opposition’. Cluster norms are defined as all other norms in the data which are correlated positively with these core doctrines.

18 This factor, which has an eigen value of 2·45 and explains 19 per cent of the variance, represents the best single summary of the data's linear relationships. Deliberation-representation is the main factor structuring politicians' thinking about these rules of the game. And since rules of the game in Britain are, in effect, what the politicians say they are, this is the main factor that structures rules of the game. Moreover, deliberation norms define the factor's negative pole, while representational norms define the positive, thus showing again the opposition between these two views.

19 Birch, A. M., Representative and Responsible Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1964).Google Scholar

20 Johnson, , In Search of the Constitution, pp. 61–2Google Scholar; Mackintosh, John. P., The British Cabinet, 2nd edn (London: Stevens and Sons, 1968), p. 14.Google Scholar

21 Marshall, Geoffrey and Moodie, Graeme C., Some Problems of the Constitution (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1967), pp. 67–71Google Scholar; Birch, , Representative and Responsible Government, pp. 139–49.Google Scholar

22 From this perspective, part of the most likely explanation is compatible with P2 and part is not. The part that is compatible argues that representational doctrines are more firmly embedded in Labour's extra-parliamentary collectivities than in the parliamentary party. The part that is not compatible argues that Labour MPs are less keen than Labour candidates about representational rules of the game because they are more keen than Labour candidates about the contrary deliberative interpretation.

23 On freedom: Dicey, A. V., An Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 10th edn (London: Macmillan, 1959), p. 253Google Scholar; on functional representation: Pulzer, Peter, Political Representation and Elections in Britain, rev. edn (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), p. 29Google Scholar. There is of course a potential conflict between functional representation and geographical representation such that it is logically possible to support one of them strongly and reject the other. In the minds of most MPs and candidates, however, these two principles are apparently related; and the relationships are expressed in positive correlations between functional representation and the role of the electorate doctrine as well as with other components of the representational interpretation.

24 ‘Socialism’ and the other political values described in this study were measured by a ranking instrument that requested subjects to rank a total of thirty-six values presented in four separate lists of nine values each. This value inventory was constructed from ideals expressed in parliamentary debates, commentaries by political correspondents, recent political memoirs, and academic attempts at synthesis. The form presented to respondents had been pre-tested with British university students and with former Members of Parliament. It was assessed for reliability and for validity. And the data it generated were examined for order effects, of which there were some, and for social desirability effects, which were judged less likely. See Searing, ‘Measuring Politicians’ Values: Administration and Assessment of a Ranking Technique in the British House of Commons'.

25 Revisionists support, for example, the mixed economy and propose to improve the lot of the working class through public expenditure paid for by high growth rates. See Bradley, Ian, Breaking The Mould? (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981), p. 45.Google Scholar

26 The ranking instrument defined social equality as ‘equality of dignity and privileges’; and this definition most often elicited from respondents comments about equality of opportunity. A coda to the different interpretations of socialism is found by correlating socialism's ranks with ranks for ‘economic equality’. The gamma coefficient is 0·70 among candidates, but only 0·38 for Members of Parliament. Labour MPs also strike a less egalitarian attitude than is associated with activists in their reactions to political equality – ‘participatory democracy’ in Figure 4. This is a radical political ideal because it conflicts with established views which consider participation appropriate primarily at elections. Participatory democracy was at the time mainly a left-wing goal that subsumed industrial democracy and democracy in the community. See Coates, David, Labour in Power? (London: Longman, 1980), p. 275Google Scholar; Brand, Jack, ‘Support for Democratic Procedures in Scottish Cities’, Political Studies, XXIV (1976), 301–3.Google Scholar

27 To avoid overcrowding Figure 5, these data are not reported. The items are, however, included in the Appendix. The policy item ‘comprehensive schools’ states the official party policy on secondary school reform. This was designed to promote equality of opportunity and reflected the shift in the party's search for equality from economic to social policy, see Bilski, Raphaella, ‘Ideology and the Comprehensive Schools’, Political Quarterly, XLIV (1973), 197–211CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The item ‘oppose selectivity’ refers to opposing criteria that would reduce social service benefits by making them available only to the ‘really poor’ rather than to all low-wage earners.

28 This is a matter of perception of the sort which role socialization can affect by tinting the lenses through which we filter information. See Lovell, R. Bernard, Adult Learning (London: Groom Helm, 1980), p. 92Google Scholar. From the viewpoint of the activists, the bourgeoise is seen as a force hostile to working-class interests; and MPs are seen as preferring to ignore or to mute this fact: see Coates, , Labour in Power?, p. 261.Google Scholar

29 Michels, Robert, Political Parties (New York: Collier Books, 1962).Google Scholar

30 See Butler, Lord, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 48Google Scholar; Gilmour, Ian, The Body Politic (London: Hutchinson, 1971), pp. 44–7.Google Scholar

31 This re-evaluation of the party's goals and policies was carried out under the guidance of R. A. Butler. Eden presented the theme at the Annual Party Conference: ‘We are not a party of unbridled, brutal capitalism, and never have been … we are not the political children of the laissez-faire school’. See Beer, Samuel. H., British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York: Knopf, 1965), pp. 313–17Google Scholar; Gamble, Andrew, The Conservative Nation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 61–4.Google Scholar

32 In the same vein, the Right of the party had, by the early 1970s, long been irritated by the trendy ambivalence towards the concept of capitalism and was convinced that Britain's wealthcreating entrepreneurs had long been burdened with unjustified abuse and interference. See Behrens, Robert, The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher (Farnborough, Hants: Saxon House, 1980), p. 71.Google Scholar

33 Butler, Lord, The Art of the Possible, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

34 See Behrens, , The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher, p. 14Google Scholar. This is also the path taken by the value ‘community’, which has been a central theme of progressive Conservative thought throughout the post-war period.

35 A third and closely related core value is ‘patriotism’, the identification with which by the Conservative party is said to be Disraeli's most lasting contribution: see Blake, Robert, The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill (London: Fontana/Collins, 1970), p. 130.Google Scholar And Conservative consensus across the collectivities is sufficiently steady that the ranks for these three values show very little variation.

36 It is also apparent in reactions to the items ‘strong government’ and ‘strong leadership’. Conservative commitments to strong government peak among the candidates and then produce the projected pattern by declining among Conservative MPs. Support for strong leadership, on which no data are available for the public, similarly falls back at Westminster. The results for strong government and strong leadership are not reported in Figure 6 in order to avoid overcrowding, but their definitions are included in the Appendix.

37 The proposition arises from Balfour's observation that ‘Our whole political machinery presupposes a people so fundamentally at one that they can safely afford to bicker’, rather than from the dominant political conflicts of his day which often cut across the economic and social status quo. It is also worth noting that, at every level of political involvement, partisan differences are smaller over constitutional norms than over policy matters. In particular, Conservative and Labour MPs are, despite their considerable constitutional disagreements, more at one behind procedural rules of the game than behind policy matters. This fits Balfour's formula for successful representative government: consensus on rules of the game unites protagonists who remain divided over significant matters of public policy. See Friedrich, Carl. J., The New Image of the Common Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950)Google Scholar, Chap. 5. Commentators do, of course, differ over what constitutes a significant matter of public policy. And, during the early 1970s, MPs did not bicker enough to satisfy keen partisans on either side.

38 Tapper, , Political Education and Stability, p. 92.Google Scholar

39 The Fabians and Bow Group are study groups with which politicians tend to be affiliates rather than active members. The Tribune Group, PEST (subsequently merged into the Tory Reform Group) and Monday Club function as ginger groups both inside and outside Parliament. Social democrats, by contrast, were at the time a political circle without formal organization and were therefore identified by reputation rather than by the formal group affiliations which were used to identify the members of the other groups. Labour MPs identified as social democrats in this analysis were: (1) well-known Gaitskellites or Jenkinsites, or (2) self-declared (during the interview) social democrats, or (3) Manifesto Group leaders. The N here is smaller than in other analyses because some respondents are not associated with any of the six groups. It will also be noticed in Table 1 that, overall, Labour support for the deliberative interpretation is much greater than Conservative support for the representational. The wider appeal of the deliberative interpretation has to do with its greater age and possibly with professional self-interest since it helps reinforce the autonomy of MPs. See Searing, , ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can the Politicians Be Trusted?’, pp. 247–8.Google Scholar

40 Norton, Philip, ‘The House of Commons and the Constitution: The Challenges of the 1970s’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXIV (1981), 253–71Google Scholar; Searing, , ‘Rules of the Game in Britain: Can the Politicians Be Trusted?’Google Scholar

41 Pure selection models are of course impossible and implausible. They are impossible because they cannot exclude socialization – beliefs must, after all, be learned somewhere. They are implausible because they stuff all learning into the earliest stages and disallow it thereafter.

42 This matched elected cohort suits the test well since none of its members had ever been MPs before, and until the general election they were, like the candidates (who by margin of victory came closest to winning in 1970), ‘serious candidates’. When interviewed, this matched elected cohort had only been in the House of Commons for two or three years, probably not long enough for extensive resocialization but certainly long enough to display signs of socialization effects if any were present.

43 ‘Freedom of speech’ is the most conspicuous exception to this generalization – and freedom of speech is the only individual rule of the game which displays clear selection effects.

44 McClosky, and Brill, , Dimensions of Tolerance, pp. 28–31.Google Scholar

45 They do not miss the Royal Family, however. And ‘accept criticisms of Queen’ is the only individual item that shows selection effects pointing to fundamentalism as a recruitment criterion for an Attentive Public.

46 The selection effects are less pronounced when the matched attentive public is constructed by criteria which, compared to those used to produce the data in Table 2, are less precise in one respect and more precise in another. Because the candidates are so much higher than the attentive publics in level of education, and considerably higher in age, many cells used to weight the attentive public included either very few cases or none at all. The remedy is to collapse the nine-cell matrix for education and age to a four-cell matrix which is less precise. But the outcome is at the same time more precise in that it eliminates a number of peculiarly deviant scores and yields smoother means. It is these smoother means for the matched attentive publics which produce a comparatively closer fit with means of the attentive publics to their left and hence somewhat less evidence of pronounced selection effects.

47 Conservatives have already learned about ‘parliamentarism’, for example; while on the Labour side it is ‘accept criticism of Queen’ which most strongly reflects the recruitment effects. But once inside the new collectivities, they learn more. In the extra-parliamentary party organiza tions, and in local government, Conservatives absorb less palatable norms such as ‘concession’, and Labour candidates examine more problematic perceptions such as ‘perceive class conflict’. See DiPalma, , Surviving Without Governing, pp. 77–9Google Scholar; Clarke, Harold, Price, Richard and Krause, Robert, ‘The Role Socialization of Freshman Legislators: The Case of Canadian MPs’, in Pammett, Jon and Whittington, Michael S., eds, Foundations of Political Culture: Political Socialization in the Canadian Context (Toronto: Macmillan, 1976).Google Scholar

48 Whiteley, Paul, ‘The Structure of Democratic Socialist Ideology in Britain’, Political Studies, XXVI (1978), 209–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Rose, Douglas, ‘Comment on Searing’, American Political Science Review, LXXVIII (1984), p. 204–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Searing, Donald. D., ‘Response to Rose’, American Political Science Review, LXXIX (1985), 510–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 Labour's struggle was an old and familiar one, distinguished now by the fact that the traditional losers began to win. More extraordinary was the situation on the Conservative side where the parliamentary party, which once smugly characterized itself as ‘the stupid party’, became absorbed in the abstractions of Hayek, Friedman and the Institute of Economic Affairs. See Beattie, Alan, ‘Macmillan's Mantle: The Conservative Party in the 1970s’, Political Quarterly, L (1979), pp. 273–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Whiteley, , ‘Who Are The Labour Activists?’Google Scholar, Arblaster, Anthony, ‘Anthony Crosland: Labour's Last “Revisionist”?’, Political Quarterly, L (1979), 425–7Google Scholar; Mackintosh, John. P., MP, ‘Has Social Democracy Failed in Britain?’, Political Quarterly, IL (1978), 259CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bradley, Breaking the Mould?, pp. 49–51.Google Scholar The vanguard was a new sub-group of party activists which called itself the ‘Outside Left’. The key unit was the CLPD, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which was organized in 1973 and which planned, launched and sustained a movement for delivering power to the activists by changing the Labour party's constitution. See Kogan, David and Kogan, Maurice, The Battle for the Labour Party (London: Kogan Page, 1982), pp. 15–19.Google Scholar

51 Kogan, and Kogan, , The Battle for the Labour Party, pp. 45–8Google Scholar; Crouch, Colin, ‘The Peculiar Relationship: The Party and the Unions’, in Kavanagh, Dennis, ed., The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), pp. 171–90.Google Scholar

52 Berrington, , ‘The Labour Left in Parliament: Maintenance, Erosion and Renewal’, in Kavanagh, Dennis, ed., The Politics of the Labour Party (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), p. 70.Google Scholar In the 1980 Party Conference, and the Wembley Conference of 1981, they also took away from MPs the right to elect the Leader of the party and turned it over to an electoral college which would be dominated by the unions and the activists.

53 Berrington, , ‘The Labour Left in Parliament: Maintenance, Erosion and Renewal’, pp. 69–94.Google Scholar

54 The shock of three defeats in four general elections between 1964 and 1974 undermined the confidence of many MPs and party activists. Moreover, when the Conservatives were in government from 1970–4, Heath pressed policy initiatives on the EEC, immigration, and Northern Ireland, and executed policy U-turns in industrial relations and on wages and prices, which created considerable dissatisfaction among backbenchers. See Beattie, ‘Macmillan's Mantle: The Conservative Party in the 1970s’; Seyd, Patrick, ‘Factionalism in the 1970s’, in Layton-Henry, Zig, ed., Conservative Party Politics (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 234.Google Scholar

55 Aughey, Arthur, ‘Mrs Thatcher's Philosophy’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXVI (1983), 391–2.Google Scholar

56 King, Roger, ‘Petit-Bourgeois Conservatism’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXIV (1981), 308–21.Google Scholar See also Seyd, Patrick, ‘Factionalism in the 1970s’, pp. 234–5.Google Scholar

57 Behrens, , The Conservative Party from Heath to Thatcher, pp. 60–2Google Scholar; Seyd, , ‘Factionalism in the 1970s’, pp. 238–9.Google Scholar The effort to reach party activists was carried forward by the Daily Telegraph which became a supporter of Thatcher's version of Conservatism, and by Free Nation the fortnightly newspaper of the National Association for Freedom which was formed in 1975 to promote right-wing policies for the economy, society and defence and to fill a gap left by the weakness of the Monday Club.

58 Burch, Martin, ‘Mrs Thatcher's Approach to Leadership in Government: 1979–June 1983’, Parliamentary Affairs, XXXVI (1983), 399–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 No matter how Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph became converted to their fundamentalism (they had been prominent members of the previous Heath Government), the important point is that they did suddenly become believers and then set out to convert their colleagues and the world outside.

60 Agree/disagree labels which accompany each item indicate the direction of response interpreted as support for rules of the game.