Oddbjørn Knutsen

The Partisan and the Value-based Component of Left-Right Self-placement: A Comparative Study:

This article takes Ronald Ingleharts and Hans-Dieter Klingemanns (1976) study regarding party and ideological components of left-right identification as a point of departure for a comparative analysis of the relationship between party choice, value orientations and left-right self-placement. The empirical analysis is based on eight and thirteen countries from 1981 and 1990, respectively. Party choice is still the dominant predictor of left-right self-placement although its dominance is not as large as was shown in Inglehart and Klingemanns analysis. However, if value orientations are considered prior to party choice in a causal sense, value orientations have a larger impact than party choice in most countries. Fragmentation of the party system and the division between advanced and less advanced societies are used to explain the cross-national variations. When the explained variance in the left-right scale is decomposed into unique components explained by party choice and value orientations and a compounded component, a strong compounded component is characteristic in advanced societies, while a strong partisan component is found in less advanced societies and in less fragmented party systems.

Religious Denomination and Party Choice in Western Europe: A Comparative Longitudinal Study from Eight Countries, 1970–97

In this article, the impact of religious denomination on party choice is studied in eight western European countries from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. The research problems are (1) to examine the strength of the correlation between party choice and religious denomination over time, and (2) to analyze which political parties those who are affiliated and those who are unaffiliated to a religious community vote for, and how this has changed over time. The denominational cleavage varies considerably in strength in the eight countries. It is strongest in the Catholic and religiously mixed countries of Continental Europe. There is stability in the correlation between party choice and religious denomination in most countries. The main polarization involves, to a large degree, voters for parties on the left versus voters for parties on the right. It varies considerably, however, as to which parties on the left and the right have voters who contribute comparatively to polarization. Green parties are making inroads among the unaffiliated sections of the population. This changes the polarization caused by religious denomination in the sense that denominational differences become smaller for some other parties, first and foremost, the socialist and the communist parties.

Social Class, Sector Employment, and Gender as Party Cleavages in the Scandinavian Countries: A Comparative Longitudinal Study, 1970–95

This article studies the changing impact of social class, sector employment, and gender with regard to party choice in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, from the 1970s to the 1990s, using election survey data. Political parties in the three countries are grouped into four party groups: left socialist, social democratic, centrist, and rightist parties. Class voting has declined in all three countries. The focus on the four party groups shows that differences between the wage-earner classes have declined for the social democratic and rightist party groups. By contrast, ‘class voting’ has increased for the left socialist parties, which increasingly have concentrated their support among the new middle class. Sector employment became an important party cleavage in all three countries in the 1990s. The impact of sector was generally largest in Denmark and Norway in the 1980s and 1990s. The sector cleavage also follows the left–right division of parties to a greater degree than previously. Sector differences in voting behaviour are most pronounced with regard to voting for the left socialist and the rightist parties. Gender differences in voting behaviour have increased and changed character in all three countries. In the 1970s, men supported the socialist parties to a greater extent than women; in the 1990s men supported the rightist parties to a greater extent than women in all three countries, whereas women supported the left socialist parties and (in Sweden) the Green Party to a greater degree than men. The effects of gender are generally reduced when sector employment is introduced into the multivariate analysis, indicating that the different sector employment of men and of women explains part of the gender gap in voting behaviour.

Cleavage Dimensions in Ten West European Countries: A Comparative Empirical Analysis

The present article discusses different approaches for identifying empirical cleavage dimensions and concludes that a so-called cleavage-defined approach is most appropriate for identifying and interpreting party dimensions. It is further argued that discriminant analysis is a powerful statistical tool for analyzing cleavage dimensions in accordance with a cleavage-defined approach. Using different structural variables that are incorporated in the Lipset-Rokkan model for party cleavages in Western Europe, and two ideological dimensions (called left-right materialism and materialism/postmaterialism) as “input” for the dimensional analyses, data from Norway and the European Community countries (based on Euro-Barometer 16 from 1981) are analyzed and related to the comparative literature on cleavage structure in Western Europe.

The Strength of the Partisan Component of Left-Right Identity A Comparative Longitudinal Study of Left-Right Party Polarization in Eight West European Countries

This article examines left-right party polarization among the mass publics in a longitudinal comparative perspective. The analysis comprises eight countries - Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands - and trends are analysed from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. The strength of the relationship between party choice and left-right self-placement is analysed by three different measures: a standardized measure and two alternative unstandardized measures. The standardized measure produces a high degree of stability in the strength of the partisan component, while the unstandardized measures show that the partisan component has declined. The analysis shows that party voters locate themselves, quite consistently, more centrist. It is the changing left-right location of voters for the larger established parties in the party system that accounts for most of the change in the partisan component. The centrist tendency is particularly large for voters of the larger established parties in Belgium, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Postmaterialism in a Social Democratic State An Analysis of the Distinctness and Congruity of the Inglehart Value Syndrome in Norway

The purpose of this article is to establish empirically the status of Ronald Ingleharts postmaterialist syndrome in Norway. As a prototypical social democratic state, and one of the only European countries yet to be adequately tested for postmaterialism, Norway represents a particularly interesting case for the Inglehart thesis. On the basis of a national sample survey carried out in 1981 (N = 1, 170), the analysis focuses on two major questions: the distinctness of postmaterialism in a left-right context, and the congruity between different value domains. Of particular importance is the finding that there exists a postmaterialist profile for democratic values that is much more distinct than the literature has allowed for up to now.

Social Class, Gender, and Sector Employment as Political Cleavages in Scandinavia:

Political cleavages in Western democracies have traditionally been connected to positions in the labour market. Dunng the last 10-15 years, research has established that the explanatory power of hierarchical status variables has been markedly reduced. The present study examines the relative importance of social class and two other structural cleavages which have been emphasized in recent political sociology: sector employment and gender. These vanables are studied in relation to vanous measures of political value priorities (interest-based left-right values, support for the welfare state, and materialist/post-materialist values) and party preference in a comparative Scandinavian context (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). It is concluded that social class still has considerable impact. Sector employment has, however, approached social class as an important cleavage, while the impact of gender is relatively small.

Leftist and Rightist Ideology in a Social Democratic State: An Analysis of Norway in the Midst of the Conservative Resurgence

The re-emergence and political re-establishment of conservatism in a number of leading western welfare states has provided the empirical dots on the ‘is’ of the ideology-is-not-dead-argument. Political issues have clearly become more technical, but their resolution has become anything but consensual. The current political dialogue may be tortuously symbolic, masking more than it reveals and more than technicians feel is good for us all, but this is perhaps more an indication of the balance of power between politicians and technicians than a sign of ideological deflation. We are not concerned in the present paper, therefore, with whether ideology is alive and kicking, but rather with who is kicking for what.

The Impact of Old Politics and New Politics Value Orientations on Party Choice – A Comparative Study

Relationships between five central value orientations and party choice are examined in a comparative West European setting by using the second wave of the European Values Study from 1990. These orientations comprise two central conflict lines related to the Old Politics model for political cleavages, namely religious/secular and left-right materialist value orientations, and three new sets of value orientation which, according to theories of New Politics, should become important in advanced industrial society. The research problems are: To examine the comparative strength of the impact of the various value orientations on party preference in a comparative West European setting; To examine how voters of different party families are grouped along the various value orientations. Which parties have the most secular or religious, leftist materialist and post-materialist electorate, and are there consistent comparative patterns concerning where the voters for given party families are placed?; To focus upon the impact of the New Politics value conflicts.

The Regional Cleavage in Western Europe: Can Social Composition, Value Orientations and Territorial Identities Explain the Impact of Region on Party Choice?

In this article regional differences in party support are analysed by means of comparative survey data from 15 West European countries. The main research question is: How can we explain that people in different regions vote for different political parties? On the basis of the literature on new regionalism and old and new politics, this article formulates two sets of hypotheses which are considered related to new regionalism and new politics, and old regionalism and old politics, respectively. A causal model is formulated which includes three groups of explanatory variables, namely, (other) socio-structural variables, value orientations and territorial identities. The main findings support the old regionalism and old politics notions of how we can explain the regional cleavage. Social structure is the most important explanatory variable, and, among the various value orientations, old politics values are most important. There is, however, some evidence that values and territorial identities are important explanatory variables in three of the countries where the regional cleavage has increased since the 1970s: Belgium, Italy and Spain.