Clem Brooks

The transformation of US gender role attitudes: cohort replacement, social-structural change, and ideological learning

Abstract Growing support for gender equality and a shift toward less restrictive views of gender roles suggest a significant transformation of US public opinion during the second half of the twentieth century. Following the initial discovery of these trends in the 1970s, attitudes toward gender roles received less scholarly attention in the 1980s, due in large part to questions about the relevance of this type of opinion change for understanding patterns of stability and change in behaviors and institutions related to gender. Since the early 1990s, a new generation of research has reported evidence linking changing gender role attitudes to subsequent change in the behavior of individuals and also to the level of gender inequality within specific institutions. While gender role attitudes appear to have significant effects within the context of family institutions, questions about the precise causal origins of these changing attitudes have received insufficient attention in the recent literature. This paper contributes to the sociological reconsideration of this opinion trend by evaluating competing explanations of changing gender role attitudes. We find evidence of substantial cohort replacement effects. Further analyses suggest that processes of ideological learning may mediate a large portion of the cohort replacement effect, also explaining much of the contribution of adult attitude change to opinion trends. We discuss implications of these findings for advancing the literature on gender role attitudes, and also for fruitfully revisiting questions about the role of ideology in US public opinion.

Social Policy Responsiveness in Developed Democracies

Do mass policy preferences influence the policy output of welfare states in developed democracies? This is an important issue for welfare state theory and research, and this article presents an analysis that builds from analytical innovations developed in the emerging literature on linkages between mass opinion and public policy. The authors analyze a new dataset combining a measure of social policy preferences with data on welfare state spending, alongside controls for established causal factors behind social policy-making. The analysis provides evidence that policy preferences exert a significant influence over welfare state output. Guided also by statistical tests for endogeneity, the authors find that cross-national differences in the level of policy preferences help to account for a portion of the differences among social, Christian, and liberal welfare state regimes. The results have implications for developing fruitful connections between welfare state scholarship, comparative opinion research, and recent opinion/policy studies.

THE DEMOCRATIC CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE UNITED STATES, 1948-1992*

We present evidence of a historic realignment in the relationship between class and voting behavior in U.S. presidential elections in the postwar period. We take advantage of recent advances in class analysis and statistical methodology to introduce a distinction between traditional class voting and total class voting. Neither shows a decline in the postwar era. The realignment occurred since 1968, as professionals and nonmanagerial whitecollar workers movedfrom voting for Republicans to supporting Democratic presidential candidates. Strongersupport for Republicans among the selfemployed and among managers has more than offset the shift of professionals and nonmanagerial white-collar workers to the Democrats. Skilled bluecollar workers have become volatile, moving away from their historic support for the Democratic Party withoutfirmly attaching themselves to the Republican Party. Significant class differences in voter turnout also contribute to the total association between class and voting outcomes. Scholars and political activists have long debated the role of class divisions in U.S. politics. At mid-century, research on the democratic class struggle (Anderson and Davidson 1943) was a central concern of the sociology of politics. The seminal studies of political behavior in the 1950s featured detailed analyses of the organizational and sub* Direct correspondence to Michael Hout, Sur

THE PERSISTENCE OF CLASSES IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES

Class structures have undergone important changes in recent decades with the rise of post-industrial societies. Clark and Lipset have recently interpreted these changs as evidence that class is fragmenting and losing its importance. We reject their analysis. The birth of new sources of inequality does not imply the death of the old ones. We review empirical evidence that shows how class-based stratification continues to be a central factor in social stratification. Clark and Lipset also argue that class affects politics, the economy and the family less than it used to. Their conclusion is based on a selective reading of the empirical literature. We discuss the countervailing evidence and conclude that class effects persist.

Social cleavages and political change : voter alignments and U.S. party coalitions

Introduction 1. The Sociological Tradition in Political Behaviour Research 1. Social Cleavages and American Politics 3. Class 4. Religion 5. Gender 6. Race and the Social Bases of Voter Alignments 7. Party Coalitions 8. Social Cleavages in the 1996 Elections 9. Third Party Candidates 10. Conclusion

Why Do Welfare States Persist

The shape and aggregate output of welfare states within many developed democracies have been fairly resilient in the face of profound shifts in their national settings, and with respect to the global environment of the past 20 years. This contrasts with once-widespread predictions of universal retrenchment, and it has broadened debates over trends in social policymaking to focus on the phenomenon of welfare state persistence. Research on persistence has not, to date, directly considered the possibility that welfare states survive because of enduring popular support. Building from recent welfare state theory and the emerging literature on policy responsiveness, we consider the possibility that mass public opinion—citizens aggregate policy preferences—are a factor behind welfare state persistence. We analyze a new country-level data set, controlling for established sources of welfare state development, and buttressing estimates by testing for endogeneity with respect to policy preferences. We find evidence that the temporal distribution of policy preferences has contributed to persistence tendencies in a number of welfare states. We discuss results in conclusion, suggesting the utility of further consideration of linkages between mass opinion and social policy in cross-national perspective.

The Gender Gap in U.S. Presidential Elections: When? Why? Implications?1

Social scientists and political commentators have frequently pointed to differences between men and women in voting and policy attitudes as evidence of an emerging gender gap in U.S. politics. Using survey data for 11 elections since 1952, this study develops a systematic analysis of the gender gap in presidential elections. The authors find evidence that womens changing rates of labor force participation explain the origins of the gender gap. Additional analyses show that attitudes toward social service spending mediate the interrelationship of womens labor force participation and vote choice. In the 1992 election, feminist consciousness also emerged as a significant factor shaping womens voting behavior.

The Religious Factor in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1960–1992

This study analyzes the relationship between religion and political behavior in recent presidential elections in the United States. The magnitude of the religious cleavage remains substantial but has declined during the past nine presidential elections. The single factor behind this decline is the reduction in support for Republican candidates among denominationally liberal Protestants, whose changing voting behavior is a function of their increasingly liberal views of social issues. The political alignments of Catholics and conservative Protestants have been very stable relative to the electorate‐wide mean over this time period, and the authors find no evidence of increased political mobilization among conservative Protestants.

RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE AND THE POLITICS OF FAMILY DECLINE CONCERN: TRENDS, SOURCES, AND U.S. POLITICAL BEHAVIOR

One of the most widely debated issues in contemporary sociology has been how to interpret patterns of family change in the United States during the past four decades. Much of these debates focus on a thesis advanced by a number of scholars and political activists-that such features of family structure as high divorce rates and an increasing proportion of single-parent families have led to the decline of the family. Although past research has examined the causes and historical trends involved in family change, scholars have neglected important questions about family attitudes that have been raised in recent debates. Have levels of public concern with family decline increased over time? If so, what are the sources of these attitudes? And have changing levels of public concern with family decline led to the emergence of a new political cleavage? This study applies a theory of religious influence to answer these questions. Results show that public concern with family decline increased steadily after 1980, leading to a new and increasingly large cleavage in presidential elections. The analyses also find that high levels of concern with family decline are concentrated among evangelical Protestants who attend church regularly. In addition to extending sociological research on family change in new and fruitful directions, these results bear productively on theory and research in political sociology and the sociology of religion. I discuss their relevance to long-standing debates over political trends among evangelical Protestants and the influence of Christian Right movement organizations.

Social cleavages and political alignments: U.S. presidential elections, 1960 to 1992

The classics of postwar political sociology argued that a key to understanding political divisions in democratic polities lies with membership in social groups. Much recent scholarship, however, has argued that political cleavages arising out of social group memberships have declined. This study investigates these claims, analyzing the magnitude of and interrelationship among four major social cleavages - race, religion, class, and gender - in U.S. presidential elections since 1960. They improve over dichotomous measures of religion and class and introduce statistical models that permit measurement of relative shifts in the vote choice of the core groups making up each cleavage. Their results do not support claims about the declining magnitude of social cleavages. The race cleavage has increased considerably since 1960, and the gender cleavage more modestly during this period, while the class cleavage has remained stable, and the religion cleavage has declined slightly. They find evidence of a slight increase in social group cleavages in presidential elections from 1960 through 1992. Net of change in the race cleavage, the overall social cleavage has been stable during this period