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How Parties Shape Class Politics: Explaining the Decline of the Class Basis of Party Support

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  • Evans, Geoffrey
  • Tilley, James

Abstract

Why has the association between class and party declined over time? Contrary to conventional wisdom that emphasizes the fracturing of social structures and blurring of class boundaries in post-industrial society, it is argued here that class divisions in party preferences are conditioned by the changing shape of the class structure and the effect of parties’ strategic ideological responses to this transformation on the choices facing voters. This thesis is tested using British survey data from 1959 to 2006. We demonstrate that increasing class heterogeneity does not account for the decline of the class–party association, which occurs primarily as a result of ideological convergence between the main parties resulting from New Labour's shift to the centre.

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  • Evans, Geoffrey & Tilley, James, 2012. "How Parties Shape Class Politics: Explaining the Decline of the Class Basis of Party Support," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(1), pages 137-161, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:42:y:2012:i:01:p:137-161_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Montagnoli, Alberto & Moro, Mirko & Panos, Georgios A. & Wright, Robert E., 2016. "Financial Literacy and Political Orientation in Great Britain," IZA Discussion Papers 10285, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Christoph Arndt, 2016. "Issue evolution and partisan polarization in a European multiparty system: Elite and mass repositioning in Denmark 1968–2011," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(4), pages 660-682, December.
    3. Nils D. Steiner & Lucca Hoffeller & Yanick Gutheil & Tobias Wiesenfeldt, 2022. "Class voting for radical-left parties in Western Europe: The libertarian vs. authoritarian class trade-off," Working Papers 2207, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    4. Levy, Gilat & Razin, Ronny, 2019. "Echo chambers and their effects on economic and political outcomes," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101413, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Daryna Grechyna, 2023. "Political polarization in the UK: measures and socioeconomic correlates," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(2), pages 210-225, June.

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