Barbara G. Farah

PARTY IDENTIFICATION AND PARTY CLOSENESS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The present analysis uses data from 1974 and 1981 U. S. cross sections, which incorporate a panel, to compare the standard NES measure of party identification (ID) with a measure of partisanship derived from a party closeness question widely employed in cross-national research. Important features of the two scales are examined by transforming the closeness measure into a scale of very close, fairly close, not very close, and no preference corresponding to the seven-point ID scale. The scales are highly correlated and are similar in their reliability. More than 75% of the “independents” in the ID scale choose a party in the closeness version, and over half of these select the “fairly close” category. Respondents do not volunteer that they are independents when that alternative is not stated in the question.

Social Roles and Political Resources: An Over-Time Study of Men and Women in Party Elites

This article utilizes survey data from the 1964 and 1976 Michigan delegates to the national party conventions to demonstrate that differences between male and female elites are dwindling in the areas of social background, political status, political careers, and perceptions of the political process, thereby offering indirect support for the impact of the feminist movement and other social forces. Issue orientations, however, continue to be a matter of party rather than gender, the major exception being gender role norms. Despite growing equality with men, women elites continue to lag far behind in terms of political ambitions and expectations.

Ideology, Gender and Political Action: A Cross-National Survey

Modern democratic theory stresses the need for citizens to be able to think in abstract ways about political objects and the political system. The underlying assumption is that those with a richer guiding conceptual framework participate more, monitor and process fresh stimuli in a more systematic fashion, and are less bewildered by a complicated political environment. These are generally conceded to be good qualities for the citizen and the state. To observe that women have a less developed sense of ideological sophistication is to conclude that their political lives are at least different, if not indeed more impoverished. Writing nearly two decades ago, the authors of The American Voter1 noted that the political sophistication of men and women varied. This was most strikingly revealed in the differences found by sex in the measure of levels of conceptualization. Even at higher ranges of education women still remained at a disadvantage when it came to applying ideological concepts to broad aspects of American party politics. Although the results of these differences in the narrow practical terms of voting behaviour were not especially significant, the larger questions raised by such findings are of more consequence, all the more so since they have, by extension, been applied to other polities and to other situations. Many of the conclusions and interpretations about sex and politics have been subject to recent critical review and re-evaluation.2 Such critiques suggest a cautious approach to the received wisdom. Even though the conclusions drawn in The American Voter about ideology remain incontrovertible in their original context, there are a number of ways in which they are limited. In the first place, they are time-bound, having been based on the 1956 national election survey. Since that time most Western nations have witnessed an absolute and relative

Continuities in comparative research strategies: The Mannheim Data Confrontation Seminar

Truly collaborative comparative research is a difficult item to come by. Despite the best of intentions-both professional and personal-leadership, analysis, and authorship tend to gravitate toward the investigators from one or at most two countries. Inertia, lack of equal resources and motivation, and poor interpersonal relationships all contribute to a departure from the equal partners format. Of course, in some instances it is understood from the outset that comparative research is not to be collaborative. Perhaps the principal investigators make it quite clear that they either do not need the collaboration of scholars from the other countries or that the latter will be used as consultants, advisors, and the like, with the explicit understanding that their involvement is marginal. These patterns are especially probable when single-source funding has been obtained. In other instances it seems quite likely that breakdowns occur somewhere between the grand designs and the eventual product. Whatever the cause, we would argue here that the general desire of the scholarly community is for truly collaborative comparative research, with a division (or sharing) of the labor as well as the rewards. There are both intellectual