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Of Time and Partisan Instability in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Paul R. Abramson
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Extract

Converse's ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’ presents one of the most elegant theories in political science. Analysing the surveys collected in Almond and Verba's five-nation study, Converse explains the micro-level processes that can contribute to partisan stability among mass electorates. If, as Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes argue, partisan loyalties contribute to electoral stability, Converse's theory has important implications, not only for electoral behaviour, but for democratic political stability as well.

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Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 381 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 Converse, Philip E., ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’, Comparative Political Studies, 2 (1969), 139–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960).Google Scholar

4 Converse argued that differences in the political socialization process might affect partisan stability. Thus France, which had had universal male suffrage since 1848, had a volatile party system, partly because French children were unlikely to learn their fathers' partisan orientations (see Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’, p. 145Google Scholar). For the original argument, and additional evidence, see Converse, Philip E. and Dupeux, Georges, ‘Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’, p. 149.Google Scholar

6 Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability, p. 167.Google Scholar

7 Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’, p. 167.Google Scholar

8 For a summary of these studies, see Abramson, Paul R., ‘Generations and Political Change in the United States’, Research in Political Sociology, 4 (1989), 235–80.Google Scholar

9 For evidence on these recent trends, see Abramson, Paul R., Aldrich, John H. and Rohde, David W., Change and Continuity in the 1988 Elections, rev. edn. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Miller, Warren E. and Traugott, Santa A., American National Elections Studies Data Sourcebook, 1952–1986 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

10 For evidence, see Baker, Kendall L., Dalton, Russell J. and Hildebrandt, Kai, Germany Transformed: Political Culture and the New Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Norpoth, Helmut, ‘Party Identification in West Germany: Tracing an Elusive Concept’, Comparative Political Studies, 11 (1978), 36–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Norpoth, Helmut, ‘The Making of a More Partisan Electorate in West Germany’, British Journal of Political Science, 14 (1984), 53–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 Elsewhere Crewe argues that the decline in support for the two major parties, the fall in turnout and increasing electoral volatility call into question the Michigan Survey Research Center model of party identification. But he does not employ his cohort analyses to challenge Converse's thesis that party identification increases with age. See Crewe, Ivor, ‘Party Identification Theory and Political Change in Britain’, chap. 3 in Budge, Ian, Crewe, Ivor and Farlie, Dennis, eds, Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1976).Google Scholar

21 General election campaigns apparently stimulate partisan loyalties and the pre-election survey conducted by Butler and Stokes in 1963 reveals weaker partisan loyalties than the 1964 post-election survey. Previous cohort analyses have used the 1964 survey as their baseline, and this article follows that procedure. The British Election Study surveys include panels that allow researchers to examine individual-level change between 1963 and 1970, between 1974 and 1979, and between 1983 and 1987. They do not include a long-term panel for the entire 23-year time period.

22 The word ‘usually’ was dropped from the basic question after 1970. In both the 1974 surveys respondents who identified with the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists were not asked how strongly they supported them. About 2 per cent of the sample supported these parties and I was forced to exclude them from the analyses.

23 See Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in BritainGoogle Scholar, both editions, and LeDuc, Lawrence, ‘The Dynamic Properties of Party Identification: A Four-Nation Comparison’, European Journal of Political Research, 9 (1979), 257–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A recent paper by Heath and Pierce argues that the relatively low stability of partisan loyalties in Britain results from differences in question order between the British Election Studies and the American National Election Studies. See Heath, Anthony and Pierce, Roy, ‘It Was Party Identification All Along: Question Order Effects on Reports of Party Identification in Britain’ (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, 1991).Google Scholar

24 Heath, Anthony and McDonald, Sarah-K., ‘The Demise of Party Identification Theory?’, Electoral Studies, 7 (1988), 95–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 See Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’, pp. 149–50.Google Scholar See also, Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 531.Google Scholar

26 This decline has been widely reported. See, for example, Crewe, Ivor, ‘The Electorate: Partisan Dealignment Ten Years On’, West European Politics, 6, 4 (1983), 183–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, William L., Clarke, Harold D., Harrop, Martin, LeDuc, Lawrence and Whiteley, Paul F., How Voters Change: The 1987 British Election Campaign in Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Rose, Richard and McAllister, Ian, Voters Begin to Choose: From Closed-Class to Open Elections in Britain (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1986).Google Scholar Curtice also reports a decline in the percentage of very strong partisans between 1964 and 1983, although a translation error makes his results difficult to interpret (see ‘L'approche générationnelle’).

27 See Converse, Philip E., The Dynamics of Party Support: Cohort-Analyzing Party Identification (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976).Google Scholar

28 See Crewe, , Särlvik, and Alt, , ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain’.Google Scholar

29 Converse, , ‘Of Time and Partisan Stability’.Google Scholar

30 Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, both editions.Google Scholar

31 Crewe, , Särlvik, and Alt, , ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain’.Google Scholar

32 I began by replicating the four-year cohort categories employed by Crewe, , Sarlvik, and Alt, , in ‘Partisan Dealignment in Britain’Google Scholar, but altered these categories slightly to differentiate clearly between respondents old enough to have voted in 1964 and those who were not. I present the results according to eight-year categories to make them more readable. The 1964 sample includes no respondents below the age of 21, although the 1966 sample includes five 20 year olds; 18–20 year olds were enfranchised in 1969, and from 1970 on the samples include them.

33 I also examined the relationship between age and partisan strength by examining the combined percentage that identified ‘very strongly’ or ‘fairly strongly’ with a political party. The results for that analysis are very similar to those obtained by examining the percentage of very strong partisans.

34 Converse, , The Dynamics of Party Support.Google Scholar

35 Estimates of change over time using this procedure were first employed by Converse, , The Dynamics of Parly Support.Google Scholar

36 Alternatively, this population turnover can be labelled cohort succession. See Riley, Matilda White, ‘Age Strata in Social Systems’, chap. 8 in Binstock, Robert H. and Shanas, Ethel, eds, Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences (New York: Van Nostrand, 1976).Google Scholar

37 See Abramson, Paul R., Political Attitudes in America: Formation and Change (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983).Google Scholar

38 For the term ‘immortalize’, I am grateful to Crewe, Ivor, Särlvik, Bo and Alt, James, ‘Reply to Abramson’, British Journal of Political Science, 8 (1978), 509–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 For older cohorts that had too few cases to be included in Tables 2 and 3, the partisan strength score was assigned according to all the surviving respondents, plus the oldest cohort still included in the table. As the cohorts that left the electorate through death had high levels of partisan strength, using data from the oldest surviving cohort tends to lower the overall estimated level of partisan strength. This conservative procedure may somewhat underestimate the impact of generational replacement.

40 See Butler, and Stokes, , Political Change in Britain, 2nd ednGoogle Scholar; Franklin, Mark N., The Decline of Class Voting in Britain: Changes in the Basis of Electoral Choice, 1964–1983 (Oxford University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Särlvik, Bo and Crewe, Ivor, Decade of Dealignment: The Conservative Victory of 1979 and Electoral Trends in the 1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

41 See Rose, and McAllister, , Voters Begin to ChooseGoogle Scholar; and Rose, Richard and McAllister, Ian, The Loyalties of Voters: A Lifetime Learning Model (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1990).Google Scholar

42 See Crewe, , ‘The Electorate’.Google Scholar

43 See Miller, , Clarke, , Harrop, , LeDuc, and Whiteley, , How Voters Change.Google Scholar

44 British leaders also faced intractable problems in Northern Ireland. Direct rule from London began in 1972, and, since then, the party system in Northern Ireland has been transformed. This does not affect these results, however, because the British Election Study surveys exclude Northern Ireland.

45 See Converse, , The Dynamics of Party Support.Google Scholar

46 See Beck, Paul Allen, ‘A Socialization Theory of Partisan Realignment’, chap. 10 in Niemi, Richard G., ed., The Politics of Future Citizens: New Dimensions in the Political Socialization of Children (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1974).Google Scholar Beck's chapter is also available as chap. 23 in Niemi, Richard G. and Weisberg, Herbert F., eds, Controversies in American Voting behavior (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).Google Scholar See also Beck, , ‘The Electoral Cycle and Patterns of American Polities’, British Journal of Political Science, 9 (1979), 129–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a test of Beck's thesis employing the US National Election Studies, see Claggett, William, ‘Partisan Acquisition, Policy Relevant Parties and Realignments’, Western Political Quarterly, 42 (1989), 225–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In fact, Claggett finds little support for Beck's model of generational differences in the political socialization process.

47 See Harrop, Martin and Miller, William L., Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Beck, , ‘A Socialization Theory’, p. 216.Google Scholar