Class

Question 1

Butler and Stokes quote

Answer 1

in the 1960s when class was ‘pre-eminent among the factors used to explain party allegiance in Britain’

Question 2

Butler and Kavanagh quote

Answer 2

a ‘loosening’ of the social structure

Question 3

Rose and McAllister quote

Answer 3

an ‘opening up of the electorate’, in assuming that classes, particularly the working class, have lost their social cohesion and distinctiveness

Question 4

Definition of social class

Answer 4

1. Marx defines class as describing the relations to means of production, where proletarians have surplus extracted by bourgeois, and class consciousness is important for the realisation of political interests. Weber, in a more relevant definition for class voting, defines class as a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their economic life chances, represented ‘under the conditions of the commodity or labour markets’
2. Heath et al - Subjective social class? Roughly the same numbers of people identify with classes as they did in the 1960s. However, the sense of belonging to a social class has declined. Self-identification - accepts how individuals are socialised into their classes, absorbing the values to the environment in their formative years, which then tend to be stable, hence they inherit class from their parents even if they are socially mobile. Identification is also important, becuase if you don’t identify as a higher class, how do you exert power over the lower classes? BUT this goes against rational choice, interest-based theories, which work better with objective positions
3. Goldthorpe - Based on occupation, with seven types of specifications
   Occupation - individuals are socialised into different values eg. managers are more authoritarian, professionals are heavily left-wing. Managers are in charge of other people, while professionals deal more with service-based clients. BUT they may select these jobs based on their personality (confounding), and manual labour is increasingly being outsourced abroad, so are ther very few ‘working class’ individuals now? BUT there may be a new working class with the gig economy, where workers have precarious jobs with no contracts, no economic security, even though such insecurity might be temporary eg. students
4. Income - good measurement of economic security, but data issues becuase individuals do not like reporting income, and better for American literature because they discuss ‘class’ less, and also because they are influenced more by spatial, rational choice theory
5. Education - can bring in confounding non-economic considerations eg. educated individuals are more likely to be liberal. BUT too many people are going to university

Question 5

Other salient divisions related to class

Answer 5

1. Insiders-outsiders? Outsiders are the ones not protected by the system or by parties, who don’t have pensions and social security; some working class can be insiders, while some middle class don’t have such protections. This can also be generational, as newer generations are more likely to be on this than older generations. Outsiders don’t have loyalty
2. Public sector-private sector. 1) Public sector workers tend to be more left-wing, altruistic, and self-select into the public sector, 2) their job exposes them to individuals who are more economically disadvantaged, 3) vested interests in public spending and big state, 4) more highly unionised, with a decline of unions in the private sector
3. Home ownership - 1) care about property price, pursue conservative policies, 2) more well-off and economically secure, 3) more tied economically to an area
4. Rural-urban divide - also self-selecting!

Question 6

Weakliem and Heath

Answer 6

Rational choice and class voting. Explains why it is that class, instead of income, is a proxy for voting behaviour eg. working class individuals are more likely to vote left-wing, instead of lower-income are more likely to vote left-wing. Proposes that we need to go beyond Lipset et al.’s ‘simple economic self-interest’. Uses the findings to show that rational choice theory must be modified to account for the ‘irrationality’ in political behaviour. Argues that ‘social influence’ (or basically peer pressure) can affect voting behaviour more than beliefs

Question 7

Weakliem and Heath mechanisms

Answer 7

a) classes differ in the economic interests they have and that the attitudes class members hold are a reflection of those interests (Goldthorpe et al) → explains left-wing voting and intolerance toward outgroups. Blue-collar workers may be more prejudiced against immigrants because they feel more threatened by them economically
b) affects attitudes because classes may function as social groups. Social interaction occurs most often within rather than between classes → attitudes or lifestyles may be reinforced within a class
c) social nature of classes may also lead to attitude differences between classes because people can distinguish themselves from another class by expressing different values
d) classes may have their own values because they share specific job characteristics and work experiences, resulting in what has been called local occupational cultures (Grusky 1998; Kohn 1977)

Question 8

Why haven’t we seen working class individuals moving to the extreme left if there is a convergence to the middle for traditional working class parties, eg. to parties like the Communist Greens?

Answer 8

1) electoral systems eg. majoritarian systems, 2) far-left parties are middle-class based, 3) parties are keeping the salience of cultural-based issues high. Instead, they vote for far-right parties partly because they are the economic losers of globalisation, and because of labour market competition eg. immigration

Question 9

How to measure class voting?

Answer 9

Measured by 1) loyalty of individuals to party, 2) voter turnout for elections and parties, 3) size of electorate. Can mean 1) splintering of a vote within a class, or 2) decreased size of the entire class, even though they are as loyal and have same turnout, or 3) same loyalty but decreased turnout

Question 10

Is class voting rational?

Answer 10

1. Lowers information cost by providing a heuristic
2. Allows individuals to form closer ties with their group
3. If their entire class or group benefits, the individuals also benefit

Question 11

Evans and Tilley quote

Answer 11

‘the vitiating effects of the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial society on the distinctiveness of social classes, resulting in the blurring of differences between them’

Question 12

Wright

Answer 12

Five mechanisms for why class heterogeneity has increased in the recent economic system -
a) there exists contradictory locations within class relations, which means individuals cannot be divided into ‘capitalists’ and ‘workers’, such as managers; academics through control of credentials;
b) there exists increased self-employment and small workers distinct from working class;
c) there exists a diffusion of stock ownership, such as corporate investment or pension funds, which blurs the distinction between the ‘proletariat’ and the ‘bourgeoisie’;
d) the relatively recent entry of women into the labour force leads to cross-class households; and
e) the increasing stratification within the working class itself means it is internally differentiated

Question 13

Benedetto et al

Answer 13

1. Public sector spending and the size of the manufacturing sector is correlated with higher support for social democratic parties.
2. When these parties moved to the centre, they gained more votes, and the larger the district magnitude (more proportional), the lower the support for a social democratic party as it moves rightwards, because they are outflanked by left-wing parties.
3. The decline in the number of industrial workers, and the decline in the propensity for core voters (industrial workers and public sector employees) to vote for social democratic parties is linked to a fall in their support.

Question 14

Gingrich and Häusermann

Answer 14

1. The Left has lost support among the traditional working class but has substituted it with an expanding middle class
2. the welfare support coalition has been stabilised because the right-wing parties do support the welfare state

Question 15

Kitschelt and Rehm

Answer 15

Occupations are the site of political preference formation. People use generalisation and transposition, and apply the reasoning, heuristics, and problem-solving techniques they learn in work to the rest of their life.

Question 16

O’Grady

Answer 16

1. Only large changes in economic circumstances provide the information and motivation for people to change their preferences for redistribution. Stable long-run preferences are shaped by early socialisation by the family, with economic and ideological influences and early labour market experiences.
2. Enduring shocks, low intergenerational mobility, and the tendency of left-wing parents to be poorer, make circumstances correlated to preferences.
3. Since preferences are stable, greater inequality may not increase aggregate support for redistribution.

Question 17

Is everyone just richer?

Answer 17

1. Embourgeoisement and mobility mean class is less relevant for determining economic life-chances. As incomes increase, individuals care less about redistributional policies.
2. As incomes increase, manual labourers can start identifying as middle class
3. But there has been increasing inequality! And salience of class as a cleavage and form of self-identity is still very high SO if society has not changed much, then political elites must be changing it

Question 18

Inglehart

Answer 18

1. Theory of postmaterialism, with social democratic parties responding to the declining size of the working class by adapting policy platforms to attract postmaterialist middle-class voters.
2. HOWEVER, if this has caused dealignment then we should have seen centre-left parties gaining middle-class postmaterialist voters and losing materialist working-class ones over time, but this has not happened. ??
3. Post-materialist values of liberalism and environmentalism are particularly strong among socio-cultural professions and their movement to social-democratic parties broadly fits the Inglehart argument.

Question 19

Elff

Answer 19

Social cleavages have not disappeared, and are not universally declining. Religious-secular voting is mostly stable, and class voting is only declining in some countries. Neither rising levels of cognitive mobilisation nor postmaterial values can account for the changes in class voting

Question 20

Gingrich

Answer 20

While combined support for social-democratic, left, and green parties is strong, the composition of the left’s electorate has changed radically, as they rely on a coalition of new middle-class voters and traditional and new working-class constituencies, which is coherent on economic redistribution but not on social and cultural issues

Question 21

Beck and Beck-Gersheim

Answer 21

Social atomization, increasing social heterogeneity, ultimately structural dissolution means traditional cleavages are no longer as salient

Question 22

Beck

Answer 22

what has declined is more the “attachment of people to a social class”. Class has become “less corporate, less collective and less communal in nature”. The welfare state and labour market have encouraged people to act as individuals rather than guided by class-based institutions – as such, “community is dissolved in the acid bath of competition”

Question 23

Heath et al

Answer 23

Supports Beck, argues that subjective class is in decline, because social inequities have been remarkably stable, even in post-industrialist societies. Argues:
1) Social class no longer provides as strong a basis of social identity as it once did” – even if they claim to associate with a certain class, they are less likely to have a “strong sense of belonging to that class.
2) Class identities have “reduced force and are less influential for social action”.
3) Class identity is less inherited than before; people now more frequently choose their “life-worlds” and “biographies”.
4) Occupations are more weakly related to class identity

Social classes are relics of stage in history containing traditional manufacturing industries. As trade unions decline, social mobility and affluence increase, and so such classes become less relevant

New Labour stopped promoting working-class politics and shifted from a traditional left-wing party to a centre-left party

Question 24

Pakulski and Waters

Answer 24

Values, lifestyles and consumption themselves have become sources of social identity, rather than the underlying structural factors such as class

Question 25

Oesch and Vigna

Answer 25

Disprove the theory subjective social status of low-skilled workers had declined, causing a rise in support for the radical right. Find that unskilled workers perceive their status to be lower than members of the middle class in Europe and the US, but no relative or absolute fall in their subjective social status over time. This indicates that a decline in social status may not be a reason for radical right voting.

Question 26

Best

Answer 26

1. Declining electoral relevance of traditional cleavage groups. The behaviour and size of working class and religious citizens reveal significant declines in the contributions of these groups to party vote shares.
2. Group size is important and there are likely long-lasting alterations in the electoral landscape of Western democracies.
3. Notes that in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, the contribution of manual workers to social democratic parties has declined, yet the vote shares of these parties display no evidence of these declines (hence other people have filled in the gaps)

Question 27

Przeworski and Sprague

Answer 27

Social democratic parties may be particularly adept at finding new constituencies, since the manual working class has never constituted a majority

Question 28

Oesch

Answer 28

While the traditional working class was comprised of a roughly homogenous group of male, unionized, industrial manual labourers, the new ‘service proletariat’ is more different in both composition and political interests than the traditional working class

Question 29

Evans and de Graff

Answer 29

Class or religion are no longer monolithic sources of identity and interests, but are cross-cut by other influences and have thereby lost their distinctiveness as sources of political preferences. Few individuals now possess exclusively middle class or working-class social characteristics

Question 30

Bean

Answer 30

In New Zealand, the level of class voting has declined because of new age cohorts with weaker class-party alignments replacing older cohorts with stronger class-party links

Question 31

Goldberg

Answer 31

1. There is a decline in cleavage voting, but the focus was been on structural dealignment (decreasing size) and behavioural dealignment (decreasing loyalty).
2. Goldberg studies political dealignment (decreasing turnout) where voters abstain. These underlying mechanisms for the decline in social class and religious cleavage voting are studied in the UK, US, Netherlands and Switzerland.
3. There are large turnout gaps and political dealignment, due to changes in a group’s behaviour but not because of changing social structures!

Question 32

Evans and Tilley

Answer 32

1. Ideological convergence and the decline of class voting in Britain.
2. The declining size of the working class has led to a strategic move to the centre by the Labour Party, which has resulted in a blurring in the ideological distinctiveness of the choices offered to voters. Hence party ideological convergence rather than increasing class heterogeneity accounts for the decline in class voting, and parties’ centrist convergence weakens class voting through its effects on the political relevance of voters’ left-right values
3. Working class voters are less able to vote for working class parties.
4. ‘British Labour party accordingly followed several other West European left parties down the road to centrist social democracy by moving to the ideological centre in an attempt to become a ‘‘catch-all’’ party appealing far beyond its traditional class base’.
5. Argues that the relationship between class position and values remained relatively unchanged: the latter simply mattered much less for party choice
6. Dealignment is not due to the decreasing social relevance of class because major differences in economic life chances between the middle and working classes persist, along with class identification and distinct policy preferences.
7. Instead attribute decline in class voting to 1) Labour’s move to the centre and declining numbers of working class MPs, and 2) changes in the extent to which Labour are seen as the party of the working class and politics is talked about in class terms in the media.

Question 33

Heath

Answer 33

1. The class divide in voting participation is larger than the class divide in vote choice between Labour and the Conservatives
2. The social background of MPs influences how voters participate in the political process. The fewer working-class MPs there are, the more working-class abstentions. The decline in the number of working class candidates for Labour in Britain led to decline in class voting a widening of the turnout gap. There is good evidence and working-class Labour candidates associated with greater perceptions that the party is left wing.
3. Voters respond to the social cues that parties send, more so than the policy cues, so social signals are more important.
   HOWEVER, there is the danger of correlation due to trending phenomena (working-class candidates and both weakening class voting and widening class turnout gap)
   BUT one challenge/problem re party choice theories is that party programmes have not been entirely endogenously generated; that is, there must be some input from the outside into what their policy offerings are. Thus to explain class voting with regard to part choice is to ignore the reasons behind party choice
   AND there is clearly a big unexplained decline in class voting even accounting for this

Question 34

Kirchheimer

Answer 34

1. Parties of mass integration were transforming themselves into ideologically bland catch-all parties. Parties were abandoning previous efforts and ideology, instead seeking support wherever it could be found.
2. The success of one party would motivate other parties to imitate it, leading to contagion.
3. The catch-all party came into being due to the erosion of traditional sectors (making social identification difficult), economic growth, the extension of the welfare state, and the development of mass media.

Question 35

Bell and Inglehart

Answer 35

1. Postmaterialism thesis has led to “issues publics” (aggregates of citizens especially interested in certain issues) displacing passive, uninvolved polity
2. The middle class is more electorally relevant, so traditional working class parties have shifted to support the middle class. As there is no party representing the working class anymore, they hence do not vote.
3. OR if they do vote, they have different cultural values, such as those which have been co-opted by the populist right, adopting welfare chauvinism and appealing to economic values eg. ‘immigrants stealing your jobs’ rhetoric
4. Parties converging means that economic policies become less relevant and less of a differentiating factor, so they have to differentiate themselves by cultural divisions now. As parties diverge economically, we should expect more cultural polarisation
5. Parties are bundling up issues, eg. environmentalism with the rest of the ‘liberal’ values, because they have to compete on the low dimensional space, OR people derive their position on environment after their position on gender

Question 36

Langsæther

Answer 36

1. Political values, including non-economic values, play a central role in accounting for the association between class and voting, even though substantial class differences persist even when holding political values constant.
2. Political values account for class voting to the extent that parties give the voters clear signals on issues of relevance of value orientations; so party behaviour not only affects the level of class voting, but also the nature of the link between class and voting.

Question 37

O’Grady (the other one)

Answer 37

Career politicians are more likely to adopt policies for strategic reasons, whereas working-class politicians are more likely to represent the interests of the working class. Representation matters when the strategic concerns contradict the interests of the working class. Using a scaling method applied to all speeches on welfare in the House of Commons, the policy positions within the Labour party during the welfare reforms of the 1990s and 2000s differ between career and working-class politicians. These results carry over to voting behaviour and are robust to other explanations. Therefore, that fewer Labour MPs are working class reduces the political power of the working class.