Social Structure, Value Orientations and Party Choice in Western Europe

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.--

Social Structure, Value Orientations and Party Choice in Western Europe -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- List of Appendix Tables -- 1 Introduction and Presentation of the Research Problems -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Stable Alignment, Dealignment and Realignment -- 1.3 Preference Formation and Party Choice in Advanced Industrial Societies -- 1.4 Cognitive Mobilisation and Political Sophistication -- 1.5 Social Structure, Value Orientations and Party Choice -- 1.5.1 The Party Choice Variable -- 1.5.2 Social Structure -- 1.5.3 Value Orientations -- 1.6 Explanatory Macro-Level Variables -- 1.6.1 Advanced Industrialism and Post-industrialism -- 1.6.2 Party System Polarisation -- 1.6.3 Party System Fragmentation -- 1.7 Methodological and Statistical Considerations -- 1.7.1 General Considerations -- 1.7.2 Multinomial Logistic Regression -- 1.7.2.1 Description of the Statistical Method -- 1.7.2.2 Pseudo-R2 as a Measure of Goodness-of-fit -- 1.7.2.3 The Use of Log Odds Ratios as a Basis for Calculating Cleavage Strengths -- 1.7.3 Conclusions -- 1.8 Organisation of This Book -- Notes -- 2 The Data Set and the Party Systems of the 18 Countries -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 About the European Values Study 2008 -- 2.3 The Countries and Grouping of Countries into Regions -- 2.4 The Party Choice Variable in EVS 2008 -- 2.5 Party Families -- 2.6 The Structural Macro Variables for Advanced Industrial Societies and Wealth -- 2.7 Party System Fragmentation and Polarisation -- 2.7.1 Fragmentation -- 2.7.2 Polarisation -- 2.7.3 Correlations Between the Various Macro-Level Variables -- 2.7.4 The Analyses Based on the Macro-Level Variables -- Notes -- 3 Socio-structural Variables and Value Orientations -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Socio-structural Variables -- 3.2.1 Introduction -- 3.2.2 Religious Denominations -- 3.2.3 Urban-Rural Residence