the demise of party identification theory?

Electoral Studies (1988), 7:2, 95-107

The Demise of Party Identification Theory?

ANTHONY HEATH AM) SARAH-K. MCDONALD

Nilffield College, Oxford OX1 1 NF, England

The theory of party identification has lost favour in recent years, while theories of issue voting have come into prominence. Analysis of the 1983 British General Election Study and of the 1983-87 Panel Study suggests that the decline in the explanatory power of party identification theory may be relatively small. An assessment of the changing explanatory power of issue-voting theory is more difficult because of changes in question-wording and coverage of issues in the election studies. There are also doubts about the reliability of the conventional measures of attitudes towards specific political issues although the evidence of the 1983-87 Panel Study indicates that respondents’ general political principles are as stable over time as their party identifications.

Since Butler and Stokes wrote Political Change in Britain (Butler and Stokes, 1969) there has been an intellectual revolution in political science with the apparent demise of the ‘party identification’ model of political behaviour which they advanced and the rise of rational choice theories, and in particular the theory of issue voting. l Issue voting has now become

the orthodoxy of British political science, and versions of it can be seen in the work of Slrlvik and Crewe (1983), Himmelweit, Humphreys, Jaeger and Katz (1985), Franklin (1985), and Rose and McAllister (1986). Perhaps the most common view, shared by most of these

writers, is that party identification theory held true for the earlier period with which Butler and Stokes were concerned but that it has declined in explanatory value since that time.

This represents the new orthodoxy. The purpose of the present paper is to scrutinize its

claims. The theory of party identification (or partisan self-image as Butler and Stokes themselves

termed it) was developed largely in response to the evidence that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s that ordinary voters showed low levels of political information, knowledge or interest, did not have stable attitudes towards political issues, and exhibited low levels of ideological sophistication. It appeared, however, that voters did have stable attitudes towards political parties and the term party identification was coined to refer to these stable attitudes. (See in particular Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, 1960.)

The theory of party identification went on to make the following claims:

1. Most electors feel a general allegiance to a party and this allegiance is inherited through the family. 2. The function of party identification is to enable the elector to cope with political information and to know which party to vote for. Thus, party identification influences votes not only directly but also indirectly, through its influence on perceptions of policies, candidates and the links between parties and social groups. 3. Party identification strengthens with the length of time it is held . . except in

periods of realignment, changes in party identification are personal: they re5ect

0261.3794/88/02/0095-131503.00 0 1988 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd

96 The Demise of Party ~d$~t~~uati5~ Theory?

altered group memberships, often associated with geographical or social mohiiity. 4. Electors who are influenced by the short-term forces of a particular campaign to vote against the party with which they identify, normally retain their partisanship and return to it in subsequent elections (the homing tendency). (Harrop and Miller, 1987: 134)

Doubts about the explanatory power of this model came from a number of directions. First, there were criticisms of the theory itself-party id~tification theory seemed unable to explain political change (Crewe, 1974), particularly the rise of the Liberals from 7.5 per cent of the electorate in 1970 to 19.3 per cent in February 1974, which happened at a time when party identification theory predicted a rising Labour vote. More particularly, there

was a uniform swing among older and younger members of the electorate, whereas party identification theory would have led one to expect (following proposition 3) that the swing would have been greater among younger voters. Doubts were also expressed about the extent to which, in Britain, party identification (as measured by the conventional techniques) was really distinct from vote. The two seemed to change together, raising doubts about the explanatory value of the concept of party identification.

Secondly, on the technical side, it was suggested that the apparent lack of attitude stability

found by earlier studies was due to poor measurement techniques in the original research

(Bishop, Tuchfarber and Oldendick, 1978; Sullivan, Piereson and Marcus, 1978).

Converse’s claim that the mass public was characterized by ‘non-attitudes’ (Converse,

1964) appeared less and less plausible. Thirdly, on the substantive side, there was clear evidence that the strength of people’s

attachment to the Conservative and L&our parties weakened in this period (Sirlvik and Crewe, 1983) and at the same time a number of writers, particularly Franklin (1985) and Rose and McAllister (1986), claimed that issues had increased in explanatory importance. Franklin believed that this increase occurred between 1966 and 1970 while Rose and McAllister believed that there was a steady increase throughout the 1970s. Both appear to believe that this rise in issue voting was due to the erosion of class loyalties; thus Franklin: ‘the decline in the class basis of voting choice amounts to a reduction in the strength of forces that previously inhibited volatility and self-expression. The consequence has been to open the way to choice between parties based on issue preferences rather than class loyalty’ (1985: 176). Similarly, Rose and McAllister point to the restructuring of the electorate (1986: 99) which leaves a large proportion of the electorate in ‘open groups’, whose social location subjects them to conflicting electoral pressures, rather than in closed groups with uniform pressures to vote for a particular party, Such accounts imply that issue voting will be greater among those in the open groups.

The theory of issue voting which these writers espouse derives largely from Downs’

economic theory of voting behaviour (Downs, 1957). Simpli~ing drastically, Downs

assumed that parties and voters could be arranged on a single issue dimension. Voters would then compare their own position on this dimension with those of the parties and would then vote for the party to which they were closest.

Himmelweit, Franklin and others generalize this analysis to the situation where there are several issues. They assume that, on each issue, the voter compares his own stance with that of the parties. The voter then, it is claimed, aggregates his preferences on the different issues and votes for the party which offers him, on balance, the largest number of preferred policies (Franklin, 1985: 132; Himmelweit e$ al., 1985: 118).

More complex variants which take account of the relative importance of the different issues could also be constructed, as could variants which take account of the perceived differences between the parties. But most variants of issue voting would seem to require not

ANTHONY HEATH AND SARAH-K. MCDONALD 97

only the existence of stable attitudes but also a high level of political knowledge and interest.

We might therefore expect issue-voting theories to work rather better for educated and

politically interested respondents (who may have become more numerous over the last

quarter century) than for the less educated or interested. On this account, the propositions of issue-voting theory are not formally contradictory to

those of party-identification theory. Party ID theory gives an account of the origins of attitudes; issue theory gives an account of the consequences of attitudes. Hence a number of

political scientists have attempted to marry the two by developing models of reciprocal

causation, and attempting to estimate the relative importance of the different causal paths

(Page and Jones, 1979). However, while they are not formally incompatible, the two theories do start from funda-

mentally different premises, namely the existence or otherwise of ‘real attitudes’. Following on from this is the suggestion that the two theories might be more appropriate for different

social groups-issue theory for the highly educated or politically interested (who might indeed display ‘real attitudes’) and party identification theory for members of solidary social

groups. We shall begin by exploring the assumptions of party ID and issue theory. We shall then

turn to the question whether their propositions hold true for certain categories of voter rather than others. And we shall move to the question of their changing explanatory force over time.

The Assumptions of the Theories

The problem of attitudes and non-attitudes has been hotly debated in the United States, although the problem we are dealing with goes somewhat broader than that of attitudes towards political issues. Thus, the assumption of party ID theory is that identifications have

a real existence independent of vote; the assumption of issue voting theory is that voters

have ‘real’ perceptions of where the parties stand as well as ‘real’ attitudes towards the issues.

One method by which the ‘realness’ of attitudes was assessed in Converse’s pioneering work was by measuring their stability over time. Of course, even ‘real’ attitudes may change over time, but Converse noted that, in a three-wave panel study, many respondents’ attitudes varied apparently randomly over tie. Thus the correlation between respondents’ positions at times 1 and 2 was of the order of 0.3; between their positions at times 2 and 3 was 0.3; and between their positions at times 1 and 3 was also 0.3. It is this third correlation

which is of crucial importance. If there had been systematic attitude change, this correlation would have been expected to fall to perhaps 0.09. The fact that it did not suggested to Converse that there were two types of respondent-some with constant ‘real’ attitudes and others with non-attitudes which varied randomly over time. He termed this the ‘black-white’ model.

While there are some technical drawbacks in using correlation coefficients in this way (particularly in asymmetrical tables), it gives us a useful starting point. Using the 1983-6-7 British General Election Panel Study we can follow Converse’s method and compute the three correlations for party identification, vote (or vote intention in the 1986 wave of the panel), respondent’s issue position, and respondent’s perception of the party’s

issue positiom2 The issue which we examine here is the one which proved to be one of the best predictors of party preference in 1983, namely nationalization (Heath, Jowell and Curtice, 1985: 126).

For simnlicitv. we Dresent the results for the Conservative nartv onlv. Thus for vote and

98 The Demise of Party Ident$ication Theory?

party identity we employ a binary variable, scored 1 if the respondent voted for or identified with the Conservative party, zero otherwise. Respondents who had no party identification or had not voted were scored 0. The only respondents who were excluded were those who refused to disclose their vote or party identification or who failed to answer the question. The questions (with the exception of the vote intention question in 1986) were asked in an identical way in each wave of the panel. We recognize that our results might be somewhat different with alternative formulations of the dependent variable, but the present strategy has the advantage of maximizing the cell sizes involved.

The respondents’ attitudes to nationali~tion and their perceptions of the Conservative party’s position on nationalization were obtained using 20-point scales. Respondents were asked ‘Please look at this card. People who are convinced that we should natiomlise many more private companies will put a tick in the last box on the left-while those who are

convinced that we should se/E off many more ~t~~~~ised induftries will put a tick in the last

box on the right . . . people who hold views that come somewhere between these two

positions will tick a box somewhere along here . I . First, would you tick the box anywhere

along the scale that comes closest toyogr ou*t views about nation~ization. Now where do you think the Conservative and L&our parties stand? First, the Conservative Party. ’ These questions were asked in an identical form in each of the three waves of the panel. Three per cent of respondents did not know where their own position was on the scale, and 5 per cent did not know the Conservative Party’s position. These respondents were excluded from the analysis, along with those who did not or refused to answer.

As can be seen from Table 1, for all four variables, the pattern found by Converse hoids-the correlation for the 1983-7 period is much the same as that for the two shorter periods-suggesting that his ‘black-white’ model holds for identities, intention, values and perceptions alike.

This is not in itself damaging to the theories, for the crucial question is not whether some voters change their attitudes at random but rather what proportion of the electorate have ‘non-attitudes’. The detailed results of Table 1, however, offer much more encouragement for the party identification theory than for the issue-voting theory. Thus party identification proves to be more stable than vote, and both party identification and vote are a great deaI more stable than attitudes to nationali~tion or perceptions of the Conservative party’s

position on nationalization.

This suggests that the doubts which early writers like Converse and Butler and Stokes had about the stability of attitudes still have force in the 1980s. Despite the decline in the

strength of party identification and the alleged rise in issue voting, the question mark which

they raised against issue voting theory remains. Is it plausible to suppose that such unstable

TABLE 1. The stability of identification, vote, attitudes towards, and perceptions of party position on, the nation~ization issue.

Correlation coefficients Party’s

Respondent’s perceived Party ID Vote position position

1983-86 0.70 (868) 0.64 (867) 0.29 (832) 0.29 (821) 1986-87 0.80 (873) 0.73 (859) 0.36 (849) 0.35 (852) 1983-87 0.72 (865) 0.62 (864) 0.32 (838) 0.33 j825)

(Figures in brackets give the number of respondents included in the computation of the correlation coefficient.)


variables as, for example, attitudes to nationalization can explain the much more stable one

of voting behaviour? There must, however, be some doubt as to whether it is appropriate to compare correla-

tion between binary variables with correlations between positions on 20point scales. We are scarcely comparing like with like. We must therefore check that this initial success for party identification theory survives more rigorous testing.

One theoretically appropriate way in which we can compare like with like is to measure the respondents’ distance from each of the parties on the relevant issue. From these perceived distances we can then construct a binary variable, taking the value I if the respondent’s closest party was the Conservatives, zero otherwise. In this way we will at least be comparing the stability of binary variables over time. We can also take account of the problem that the correlation coefficient may give misleading results when the marginal distributions of the Table are asymmetrical by computing a coefficient, such as the log odds ratio, which is not affected in this way. These methodological changes do not change the

picture however. It remains the case that party identification is somewhat more stable than vote, while the binary measure of ‘closest party’ on nationalization is markedly lower in

stability. The next issue we must tackle is that of the measurement of attitudes. Of the various

criticisms of Converse’s work, two are particularly cogent. First, Pierce and Rose (1974) argued that a single item on a single interview constitutes an unreliable sampling of an indi-

vidual’s opinion. They suggested that individuals’ attitudes should not be regarded as discrete points on a scale but as ranges on a continuum. Secondly, Sullivan et al. (1978) suggested that the questions originally used were ‘one-sided’ ones which invited ‘agree’ answers irrespective of the content of the question; they showed that the use of twosided questions modified the picture which the original research had given and showed much

higher levels of attitude consistency (or attitude ‘constraint’ as Converse had called it).3 (Unfortunately, they did not use a panel design to see if it also gave higher stability over time.) Sullivan and his colleagues concluded:

The results reported above suggest that we may be overestimating the degree of real change that took place during the 1960s. Instead, the discipline of political science may have improved its techniques of measuring public attitudes during this period. This learning, in turn, may have produced different but more reliable findings as time passed, and these changes were then projected onto the public

instead of being perceived as changes internal to the discipline. This should not be pushed too far, lest we imply that electoral researchers have merely been talking to

themselves. But it does raise fundamental questions about the entire enterprise. (Sullivan et al., 1978: 248)

TABLE 2. The stability of identification, vote and closest party on the nationalization issue.

Log odds ratio Party ID Vote Closest party

1983-86 3.54 3.08 1.62 (856) 1986-87 4.61 3.74 1.90 (849) 1983-87 3.85 2.98 1.77 (864)

(Figures in brackets give the number of respondents on which the computations were based. For party identification and vote the numbers are the same as in Table 1.)

100 The Demise of Party ~de~~~~ca~i5~ Theory?

The 20 point scales described above were developed in order to deal with these points. However, we also included in the panel study a large number of further items which related to various aspects of the left-right dimension of British politics, for example income redis- tribution, private education, big business power and the like. While none of these individual items showed any greater stability over time than the nationalization question already described, somewhat more impressive results were achieved when these items were combined to form an index of what might be termed ‘left-right’ principles.4 The index has reasonably good internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.70) and also much more impr~sive stability over rime, the correlation between responses in the 1983 and 1986 waves being 0.73.

The methodological device of calculating an index of left-right values has, therefore, rescued issue voting theory from the accusation that a large proportion of the electorate exhibit non-attitudes. To be sure, the index which we have constructed should be thought of as measuring a general ~~~~~~~ prkiplk rather than an attitude to a specific issue like nationalization. In this respect our findings confirm the approach adopted by Rose and McAllister (1986) who also give primacy to political principles rather than specific issues in their formulation of issue-voting. (See also the formations in Heath, Jowell and Curtice, 1985.)

Versions of issue-voting theory, on the other hand, which assume that voters weigh up the issues of the day are stili in need of revision, or at least of me~odologi~al improvement. It may be that voters do have real attitudes towards the issues of the day, but the onus is on exponents of such versions to ~onst~te that their measures have acceptable levels of reliability and validity. The present discussion indicates that political principles can be measured with an acceptable degree of reliability, and the next section will give some indication of validity as well. To the best of our knowledge, however, the comparable task for attitudes towards the specific issues of the day remains to be carried out.

Do the Theories Apply to Different Types of Voter?

Both party identification theory and one version of issue voting theory (a version which we might term that of ‘principled voting’) have passed the first hurdle satisfactorily. Do they, however, apply to different groups of voters, party identification theory having more force for those in solidary social groups, issue voting theory for the more interested or educated voter?

We shall begin with one of the central claims of party ID theory, namely that party identity is inherited through the family. We first test the hypothesis that Conservative ID (defined and measured as in the previous section) depends on whether the respondent’s mother and/or father voted for the Conservatives when he (the respondent) was growing up. Following Rose and McAllister we shall define solidary social groups as unionized council tenants and non-union owner-occupiers respectively. ‘Open’ groups constitute the remainder of the population.

Since we are concerned to test whether parental partisanship affects the probability of the respondent identi~ing with the Conservative party, it is approp~ate to use logit analysis (Aldrich and Nelson, 1984). We therefore fit the equation

~~(~~~/~~~) = w+ufAi+utBj

where A represents the party which the respondent’s father usually voted for and B represents the party which the respondent’s mother usually voted for when the respondent was growing up. We shall report the coefficients for ‘closed’ and ‘open’ groups respectively.


The data come from the 1983 British General Election Study.5 As expected, the results of this test confirm the main claim of party ID theory, namely that party identification is

inherited from one’s parents. But it gives no support at all to the idea that the theory is more

appropriate for members of closed than for members of open groups. The differences

between the coefficients for the two groups are well within sampling error.

An alternative definition of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ groups would be in terms of class

mobility. Thus we could define people who are intergenerationally stable as belonging to ‘closed’ or solidary groups, while the intergenerationally mobile could be defined as belong-

ing to ‘open’ groups. We shall therefore repeat the analysis of Table 3, but using this new definition. (Classes are defined as in Heath, Jowell and Curtice, 1985.) This time we get a somewhat different picture. Among the intergenerationally stable respondents, the inheritance of partisanship is noticeably higher than among the mobile. This is of course entirely in line with party identi6cation theory, but it also suggests that the definition of solidary social groups in terms of patterns of mobility is more fruitful than Rose and McAllister’s definition in terms of housing tenure and union membership.

Turning next to issue-voting theory, the most persuasive test is to see whether, controlling for party identity, attitudes in 1983 predict vote in 1987. In this way, we can be sure that our measure of attitudes is temporally prior to that of vote. As with the inheritance of party identity, we shall compare the coefficients for different groups of elector, first of all comparing those who said, in 1983, that they ‘cared a good deal’ which party won the election with those who said that they ‘didn’t care very much’. Since interested respondents will be more likely to have ‘real’ attitudes, these attitudes might be expected to play a larger role in determining voting behaviour. Our measure of attitudes will be the Liken scale

measuring the left-right dimension described above.

Table 5 provides a rather stringent test of issue-voting theory, but it is one that it passes.

It is striking, however, how modest the impact of 1983 attitudes is on 1987 vote in

comparison with the impact of 1983 party identity.

TABLE 3. The inheritance of partisanship in closed and open groups.

Logit coefficients Closed groups Open groups

Father’s party 0.19 (0.04) Mother’s party 0.24 (0.04) Unweighted N 1926

(Figures in brackets give the standard errors.)

0.16 (0.04) 0.28 (0.04)

1845

TABLE 4. The inheritance of partisanship among intergenerationally stable and mobile respondents.

Logit coefficients Stable Mobile

respondents respondents

Father’s party 0.22 (0.05) Mother’s party 0.32 (0.05) Unweighted N 1400


0.16 (0.03) 0.22 (0.03)

2371

102 The Demise ofParty Ide~ta~~cut~o~ Theory?

TABLE 5. The effect of attitudes on 1987 vote among interested and uninterested respondents.

Logit coefficients Interested Uninterested

respondents respondents

1983 identity party 0.74 (0.05) 0.44 (0.10) 1983 political principfes -0.06(0.01) -0.04 (0.02) Unweighted N 669 186


It is also striking that the effects of both party identity and principles are much weaker among respondents who did not care very much about the election outcome. There is no sign here that issue voting (or principled voting) applies to the politically interested while party identification applies to the uninterested. The most plausible interpretation of Table 5 is that the uninterested are simply more random in their voting behaviour (a conclusion which would also conform with Converse’s black-white model). While the interested respondent may have rather more stable principles, they also have more stable identities too.

An alternative comparison is between more and less educated respondents. It is generally expected that the more educated will display greater political sophistication, and might therefore vote more according to principles than to identities. We accordingly ~stinguish ‘qualified’ respondents (those with degrees, A level or its equivalent) and ‘unqualified’

respondents (those with no formal school qualification). Here we see no statistically signifi- cant difference between the two categories of respondent. Qualifications, unlike political interest, do not appear to affect the nature of political decision-making.

It follows from this that the great expansion of educational qualifications which we have witnessed over the last quarter-century cannot be expected to have made any great contribu-

tion to the alleged rise of issue voting. To be sure, there has been some increase in total rates

of class mo~ity (although not in relative mobility rates), and this might be expected to lead to some decline in the overall level of inheritance of partisanship. Table 4, however, suggests that even this decline will be modest. It is to this question that we now turn.

Has Inheritance Decreased or Issue-voting Increased?

To answer the question whether issue-voting has increased over the last twenty-five years (the period covered by the British Election Studies) is not a str~gh~o~ard matter. The problems are both technical and theoretical. First, on the technical side, the ways in which attitudes to the issues have been measured, and the types and numbers of issues covered, have all changed markedly over the years. These changes have been due to a number of factors-improvements in questionnaire design, the changing theoretical interests of the researchers, and the changing nature of the issues themselves.

As a result of this, it is not possible to determine whether issue-voting has increased over the period. If, for example, we found that the variance in vote explained by issues had increased, it would be open to the critic to suggest that this merely reflected the improve ments in measuring attitudes or the improved coverage of issues in the later surveys. Given the methodological work of American political scientists such as Sullivan and his colleagues (1978) and Bishop and his colleagues (1978) referred to above, there would be considerable force in such criticisms.


TABLE 6. The effect of attitudes on 1987 vote among qualified and unqualified respondents.

Logit coefficients Unqualified Qualified respondents respondents

1983 identity party 1983 political principles Unweighted N

0.76 (0.08) 0.68 (0.13) -0.04 (0.02) -0.02 (0.02)

316 127

(Figures in brackets give standard errors.)

An alternative strategy is for the researcher to restrict himself to shorter periods during which the measurement techniques and the coverage of issues stayed more or less constant. Thus we could restrict ourselves to issue voting in the period 1964-70, the period covered by the Butler and Stokes surveys, or to 1974-79, the period covered by the SPrlvik and Crewe surveys. This is essentially the strategy followed by Franklin (1985) and by Rose and McAllister (1986).

Even with this strategy, however, there are problems. In particular, the issues of the day will almost certainly change. It is not obvious, for example, that the salient issues of 1970 were the same as those of 1966. The fact that the same range of issues was covered at both time points does not therefore mean that the issues of the day were equally well tapped at both time points. It follows that all we can ever reasonably conclude is that a specific issue or set of issues explained more of the variance at one time than another. We could, for example, say whether attitudes to trade unions explained more of the variance in vote in 1970 than they did in 1966, since the same question was asked in standard form in both surveys. But

we cannot say whether issue-voting in general increased. In the case of party identification theory, however, the problems are rather simpler. Since

the crucial variables-vote, party identification and parental party-do not change their

meaning from one election to another, it is possible to examine in a relatively unambiguous

way the changes in their importance over time. Thus, while there is no sure way of determining whether issue voting in general has become more important over the last quarter

century, it is possible to say whether the claims of party identification theory receive less support than they did formerly.

First, we shall examine the relative stability of party identification and vote at different periods. In Tables 1 and 2 we showed that, as predicted by the theory, identification was somewhat more stable at the individual level than was vote over the four years of the 1983-87 panel. But it is quite possible that the difference in stability had been even greater in an earlier period such as the 1960s. Indeed, if party identification has lost some of its force, we would surely expect the gap between identity and vote to have narrowed.

In order to compare like with like, we shall use the 1966-70 panel study, which covers a similar length of time as the 1983-87 panel. We shall measure variables in the same way as in Tables 1 and 2. We should, however, note that, according to Franklin’s argument, the rise of issue voting had already occurred by 1970. To test Franklin’s argument we should need a panel study from an even earlier period, and unfortunately we do not have one of the

appropriate length for a comparison with 1983-87. Table 7 reports both the correlation coefficients and the log odds ratios, but as we can see

they tell the same story: the relative stability of party identification and vote was almost

exactlv the same in the late 1960s as it was in the mid-1980s. If anvthing the difference

104 The Demise of Party Iden~z~c~~~o~ Theory?

TABLE 7. The stability of party identification and vote: 1966-70 and 1983-87.

party m Vote J..og odds Log odds

Correlation ratio Correlation ratio

1966-70 0.71 3.67 (1088) 0.65 3.27 (1097) 1983-87 0.72 3.85 (865) 0.62 2.98 (864)

(Figures in brackets give the unweighted Ns.)

between the two concepts has tended to widen. In this respect at least, there has been no tendency for party identification theory to lose its force.

A second way to look at the changing force of party identification theory over time is to look at the extent to which party identity is inherited. Again, if the theory is weakening in its force, we should expect inheritance to weaken over time.

The 1974 surveys did not obtain information on mother’s party preference and we shall therefore, in order to provide a full time series, use father’s party only. (Since mother’s and father’s party preference are quite closely associated, with a correlation of around 0.7, the measure of father’s party will pick up much of the effect of mother’s party.) As before we shall construct binary variables measuring whether or not the respondent identified with the Conservative party and whether or not his or her father supported the Conservatives.

We should, however, note that a change in question wording was introduced in 1974. In their surveys, Butler and Stokes asked their respondents: ‘Did [your father1 have any particular preference for one of the parties when you were young? (If Yes) Which party was that?’ Sarlvik and Crewe, however, asked their respondents in 1974: ‘Do you remember

what party your father usually voted for when you were growing up? (If Yes) Which party was that?’ The latter formulation (with the substitution of ‘which’ for ‘what’) has been con-

tinued in subsequent studies. The Butler and Stokes formulation might be thought slightly closer to the notion of party identification than is Sarivik and Crewe’s, and it might be

expected to result in a siightly stronger association between father’s and respondent’s measured partisanship.

As in the case of Table 3, we shall use logit coefficients to assess the strength of the relationship between respondent’s and father’s party. The data come from the British

Election Studies conducted by Butler and Stokes, Sarlvik and Crewe, and Heath, Jowell and Curtice.

The overall picture from Table 8 is fairly clear. In the three Butler and Stokes studies of 1964, I966 and 1970 the ‘inheritance of party identity’ was somewhat stronger than in the subsequent studies. The decline in inheritance is relatively small and in most cases is within the 95 per cent confidence interval. The 1983 coefficient, for example, is not signifi- cantly lower than that for 1964. Still, the pattern is clear and it would be fair to conclude that, post-1964, the inheritance of party identity has been slightly weaker.

It is rather unfortunate, however, that the decline in inheritance occurs at exactly the same time as the change in question wording. The possibility therefore that the decline is a methodological artefact cannot be ignored. We would not, however, wish to press this point

too hard, since the timing of the decline in inheritance matches rather neatly the decline which writers such as Sarlvik and Crewe have documented in the s&ength of party identification (SIrlvik and Crewe, 1983: 334-6).

The occurrence of a modest, once-for-all decline in inheritance in 1974 thus seems the safest conclusion. And while this conforms with the evidence on the decline of the strength

ANTHONY HEATH AND SARAH-K. MCDONALD

TABLE 8. The relationship between respondent’s and father’s party 1964-1983.

Logit 95% confidence Unweighted coefficient interval N

105

1964 0.42 (0.03) 0.36-0.48 1716 1966 0.48 (0.03) 0.42-0.54 1806 1970 0.45 (0.03) 0.38-0.51 1814 Feb 1974 0.38 (0.02) 0.33-0.42 2462 1979 0.36 (0.03) 0.31-0.42 1847 1983 0.37 (0.02) 0.33-0.41 3779

(Figures in brackets give standard errors.)

of party identification, it provides a marked contrast with some other conclusions that have been drawn. For example, 1970 has often been pin-pointed as the election in which class voting declined and issue voting increased, but the evidence of Table 8 shows that inheritance of partisanship remained as strong in 1970,as it had been in the 1960s.

Again there is no parallel in Table 8 to the continuing erosion of class voting and rise of issue voting which writers such as Rose and McAllister (1986) claim to have found. We do not dispute Rose and McAllister’s finding that the specific political principles which have been measured in standard form in the 1974, 1979 and 1983 surveys explain, in a statistical sense, an increasing proportion of the variance. But the interpretation of their

finding is open to question. Thus, if the variance explained in vote by a specific set of issues increases over time, we

might plausibly attribute this increase either to a change in the electorate-their increased political sophistication perhaps-or to a change in the political situation facing the

electorate-a shift in the positions taken by the parties on the issues for example. These two possibilities were a major focus of Nie, Verba and Petrocik’s, The Changing

Americm Voter (1979). They rejected the explanation that the rise in issue voting which

they had detected was due to an increased political sophistication on the part of the electorate (1979: 152), but rather attributed the low level of issue voting in the 1950s to the ideological blandness of Eisenhower. They wrote:

The nature of the issue choices offered the public also appears to be a likely explanation of variations in the amount of issue voting one finds. In the New Deal era, citizens cast issue votes in relation to those domestic economic issues for which the New Deal stood. By the fifties, those issues had faded. The times were prosperous and the candidates in 1952 and 1956 were not perceived as polarized on those issues. Nor were there any other issues to take their place. (p. 192)

While there are technical problems with Nie, Verba and Petrocik’s work, it is likely that a similar interpretation would be appropriate for Britain too. As the Labour and Conservative parties became more sharply polarized on a number of issues in the late 1970s and 198Os, so the variance explained in vote by the specific set of issues covered in the relevant election studies might be expected to increase too. The increase in variance explained may well tell us more about the changing character of the parties or the changing nature of the issue choices facing the public than about changes in the public’s disposition towards politics. Indeed, party identification theory itself would predict that, if the parties became more sharply differentiated on the issues, their respective identifiers would follow suit (and Rose and McAllister do give some evidence consistent with this). Such movements would result in

106 The Demise of Party ~~~t~~~atio~ Theory?

these issues ‘explaining’ a greater proportion of the variance in vote, but we would not be

entitled to conclude that, in a causal sense, issues had become more important in determining vote. The changing variance explained is entirely consistent with the claim that party identification has continued to be of unchanged importance in determining vote.

We do not wish to claim that party identification theory will suffice on its own to explain

political behaviour, much less political change. Rather, the evidence we have reported suggests that political principles must be taken seriously as influences on the vote. What the paper does suggest is that the changes over time in the relative importance of political principles and party identifications in determining vote may be much less than is commonly supposed. There may have been an intellectual revolution in political science, but we should beware of supposing that there has been an equivalent revolution in the behaviour of the electorate. To paraphrase Sullivan and his colleagues:

The results reported above suggest that we may be overestimating the degree of real change that has taken place since the 1960s. Instead, the discipline of political science may have learned new theories. This ‘learning’, in turn, may have produced different findings as time passed, and these changes were then projected

onto the public instead of being perceived as changes internal to the discipline.

Notes

1. In America theories of retrospective voting have become even more popular than issue voting theory. See for example Fiorina, 1981; Kiewiet, 1983. The problems raised by retrospective voting are rather different from those dealt with in this paper and we shall be treating them in subsequent publications.

2. The 1983-6-7 Panel Study is directed by Anthony Heath (Nuffield College, Oxford), Roger Jowell (Social and Community Planning Research), Julia Field (SCPR) and John Curtice (Liverpool University). It is funded by the ESRC and by Pergamon Press. Technical details of the study can be obtained from the Directors.

3. The ‘one-sided’ question wording used in 1956 was: ‘The government in Washington ought to see to it that everybody who wants to work can find a job’ Now would you have an opinion on this or not? (E Yes): Do you think the government sbouM do this?

The ‘two-sided’ wording used in 1964 was: ‘In general, some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living. Others think the government should just let each person get ahead on his own.’ Have you been interested enough in this to favor one side over the other? (If Yes): ‘Do you think that the government should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living OY should it let each person get ahead on his own?’

4. The items from the 1983 British General Election Study used to construct the Liken scale were:

Please say whether you agree or disagree with each of these statements, or say if you are not sure either way . . Q30d . . The government should spend more money to create jobs?

Q34a . Income and wealth should be redistributed towards ordinary working people?

Do you think the government should or sboukl not do each of the following things, or doesn’t it matter either way . . Q35a . . get rid of private education in Britain?

Q35b . . , spend more money to get rid of poverty?

Q35d . . ~ encourage the growth of private medicine?

Q35e . . . put more money into the National Health Service?

437 Just to clarify your views on nationalisation, please tell me from this card which of the four statements comes closest to what you think should be done, or say if you can’t choose any?


A lot more industries should be national&d only a few more industries should be nationalised No more industries should be national&d, but industries that are now nationalised should stay nationalised Some of the industries that are now national&d should become private companies

Thinking now of trade unions and big business in this country: Q38a Fist do you think that trade unions have too much power, or not?

Q38b Do you think that big business in this country has too much power, or not?

Do you think the government sbouM or sbouM not do each of the following things, or doesn’t it matter either way . . . Q40a . . . Introduce stricter laws to regulate the activities of trade unions?

Q40b . . Give workers more say in running the places where they work?

5. For technical details of the 1983 British General Election Study see Field (1985). The 1983 study was funded jointly by the ESRC, Pergamon Press and Jesus College, Oxford.

6. The Butler and Stokes and the Sarlvik and Crewe surveys have been made available to us through the ESRC Data Archive, whose help we wish to acknowledge. The original investigators are of course in no way responsible for the conclusions we have drawn from their material.

References

J. H. Aldrich and F. Nelson, Linear Probability, Logit andProbit Models, (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984). G. F. Bishop, A. J. Tuchfarber and R. W. Oldendick, ‘The nagging question of question wording’,

American Journal of Political Science, 22: 1978, pp. 250-69. D. Butler and D. Stokes, Political Change in Brituin: The Evolution of Electoral Choice (2nd edn.),

(London: Macmillan, 1974). A. Campbell, P. E. Converse, W. E. Miller and D. E. Stokes, The American Voter, (New York:

Wiley, 1960). P. E. Converse, ‘The nature of belief systems in mass publics’, in D. E. Apter (editor), Ideology and

Discontent, (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1964). I. Crewe, ‘Do Butler and Stokes really explain political change in Britain?’ European Journal of

Political Research, 2: 1974, pp. 47-92. A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, (New York: Harper & Row, 1957). J. Field, The 1983 Britisb General Election Study: Methodological Report, (London: SCPR, 1985). M. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections, (New Haven: Yale University

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Academic Press, 1985). D. R. Kiewiet, Macro-economics and Micro-politics: the Electoral Effects of Economic Issues,

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). N. H. Nie, S. Verba and J. R. Petrrxik, The Changing American Voter, (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1979). B. I. Page and C. C. Jones, ‘Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote’,

American Political Science Review, 73: 1979, pp. 1070-89. J. C. Pierce and D. D. Rose, ‘Nonattitudes and American public opinion: the examination of a thesis’,

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(London: Sage, 1986). B. Sarlvik and I. Crewe, Decade of Dealignment: The Conservative Victory of 1979 and Electoral

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the demise of party identification theory?

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