Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T09:19:09.418Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Depolarization, Repolarization and Redistributive Ideological Change in Britain, 1983–2016

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

Gidon Cohen Open the ORCID record for Gidon Cohen [Opens in a new window]  and
Sarah Cohen Open the ORCID record for Sarah Cohen [Opens in a new window]
Gidon Cohen*
Affiliation:
School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University
Sarah Cohen
Affiliation:
Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines party sorting, elite cue and ideological polarization accounts of polarization dynamics. The study tests their differing expectations about trends in redistributive ideological polarization and partisan polarization in the British case using repeated cross-section and panel data. The authors reject party sorting accounts, which require ideology to be stable and changes in party support to drive partisan polarization, because they find that ideology trends with elite polarization and that ideological change causes partisan polarization. The authors reject elite cue accounts, which maintain that it is mainly partisans’ ideology that follows elite polarization, because they find virtually identical trends for initially ideologically similar non-partisans too. The study thus finds support for an ideological polarization account in which changes in elite polarization are associated with general changes in citizen redistributive ideology.

Keywords

polarizationpartisanshipideologyredistributioncore valuesmulti-level model
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 1181 - 1202
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, A (2010) The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization and American Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, A (2013) The Polarized Public: Why American Government is So Dysfunctional. New York: Pearson.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, AI and Saunders, KL (1998) Ideological realignment in the US electorate. Journal of Politics 60, 634–652.Google Scholar
Abramowitz, AI and Saunders, KL (2008) Is polarization a myth? The Journal of Politics 70(2), 542–555.10.1017/S0022381608080493CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J, de Vries, CE and Leitner, D (2012) Which subconstituencies reacted to elite polarization in the Netherlands? An analysis of the Dutch publics policy beliefs and partisan loyalties, 1986–1998. British Journal of Political Science 42(1), 81–105.10.1017/S0007123411000214CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J, Green, J and Milazzo, C (2012a) Has the British public depolarized along with political elites? An American perspective on British public opinion. Comparative Political Studies 45(4), 507–530.10.1177/0010414011421764CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, J, Green, J and Milazzo, C (2012b) Who moves? Elite and mass-level depolarization in Britain, 1987–2001. Electoral Studies 31(4), 643–655.10.1016/j.electstud.2012.07.008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, R et al. (2015) Measuring party positions in Europe: the Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–2010. Party Politics 21(1), 143–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldassarri, D and Gelman, A (2008) Partisans without constraint: political polarization and trends in American public opinion. American Journal of Sociology 114(2), 408–446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bale, T (2017) The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Bartle, J (2000) Political awareness, opinion constraint and the stability of ideological positions. Political Studies 48(3), 467–484.10.1111/1467-9248.00270CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, JE (2016) Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400883448CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsey, TM and Layman, GC (2006) Changing sides or changing minds? Party identification and policy preferences in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science 50(2), 464–477.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00196.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, HD (2009) Performance Politics and the British Voter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511596872CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, G and Cohen, S (2019) “Replication Data for Depolarization, Repolarization and Redistributive Ideological Change in Britain, 1983–2016”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OVLKN9, Harvard Dataverse, V1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Converse, PE (1964) The nature of belief systems in mass publics. Critical Review 18(1–3), 1–74.10.1080/08913810608443650CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, P, Evans, J and Bryson, B (1996) Have Americans’ social attitudes become more polarized? American Journal of Sociology 102(3), 690–755.10.1086/230995CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and de Graaf, ND (2013) Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199663996.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G, Heath, A and Lalljee, M (1996) Measuring left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values in the British electorate. The British Journal of Sociology 47(1), 93.10.2307/591118CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Neundorf, A (2018) Core political values and the long-term shaping of partisanship in the British electorate. British Journal of Political Science. doi: org/10.1017/S0007123418000339.Google Scholar
Evans, G and Tilley, J (2011) How parties shape class politics: explaining the decline of the class basis of party support. British Journal of Political Science 42(1), 137–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Tilley, J (2012) The depoliticization of inequality and redistribution: explaining the decline of class voting. The Journal of Politics 74(4), 963–976.10.1017/S0022381612000618CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Tilley, J (2017) The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198755753.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP (2017) Unstable Majorities: Polarization, Party Sorting and Political Stalemate. Palo Alto, CA: Hoover Institution Press.Google Scholar
Fiorina, MP, Abrams, SA and Pope, JC (2008) Polarization in the American public: misconceptions and misreadings. The Journal of Politics 70(2), 556–560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP and Abrams, SJ (2008) Political polarization in the American public. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 563–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goren, P (2005) Party identification and core political values. American Journal of Political Science 49(4), 881–896.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2005.00161.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, DP, Palmquist, B and Schickler, E (2004) Partisan Hearts and Minds: Political Parties and the Social Identities of Voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Green, J (2007) When voters and parties agree: valence issues and party competition. Political Studies 55(3), 629–655.10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00671.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, J (2015) Party and voter incentives at the crowded centre of British politics. Party Politics 21(1), 80–99.10.1177/1354068812472569CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, A, Evans, G and Martin, J (1994) The measurement of core beliefs and values: the development of balanced socialist/laissez faire and libertarian/authoritarian scales. British Journal of Political Science 24(1), 115–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hetherington, MJ (2009) Putting polarization in perspective. British Journal of Political Science 39(2), 413–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hindmoor, A (2004) New Labour at the Centre: Constructing Political Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, DE et al. (2007) Matching as nonparametric preprocessing for reducing model dependence in parametric causal inference. Political Analysis 15(3), 199–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, J and Inglehart, R (1995) Expert interpretations of party space and party locations in 42 societies. Party Politics 1(1), 73–111.10.1177/1354068895001001004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inglehart, R (1997) Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, Vol 19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inglehart, R (2018) Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitschelt, H (1993) Class structure and social Democratic Party strategy. British Journal of Political Science 23(3), 299–337.10.1017/S0007123400006633CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kitschelt, H (1994) The Transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lachat, R (2008). The impact of party polarization on ideological voting. Electoral Studies 27(4), 687–698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layman, GC and Carsey, TM (2002) Party polarization and ‘conflict extension’ in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science 46(4), 786.10.2307/3088434CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Layman, GC et al. (2010) Activists and conflict extension in American party politics. American Political Science Review 104(2), 324–346.Google Scholar
Levendusky, M (2009) The Partisan Sort: How Liberals Became Democrats and Conservatives Became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226473673.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milazzo, C, Adams, J and Green, J (2012) Are voter decision rules endogenous to parties’ policy strategies? A model with applications to elite depolarization in post-thatcher Britain. The Journal of Politics 74(1), 262–276.Google Scholar
Munzert, S and Bauer, PC (2013) Political depolarization In German public opinion, 1980–2010. Political Science Research and Methods 1(1), 67–89.Google Scholar
Polk, J et al. (2017) Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data. Research & Politics 4(1), 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, L (1999) Measuring party orientations towards European integration: results from an expert survey. European Journal of Political Research 36(2), 283–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stan Development Team (2016) Rstanarm: Bayesian applied regression modeling via Stan. R package version 2.13.1.Google Scholar
Steenbergen, MR and Marks, G (2007). Evaluating expert judgments. European Journal of Political Research 46(3), 347–366.10.1111/j.1475-6765.2006.00694.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiteley, P et al. (2013) Affluence, Austerity and Electoral Change in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaller, J (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Cohen and Cohen Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OVLKN9
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Cohen and Cohen supplementary material

Appendices

Download Cohen and Cohen supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 282.3 KB