Richard G. Niemi

Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and Their Parents

Kent Jennings and Richard Nieini arc recognized widely for their 1965 study of the development of political attitudes and behavior among a large, nationally representative sample of high school seniors and their parents (The Political Character of Adolescence, Princeton). Now they present the results of a follow-up study of these same individuals in 1973 along with a fresh study of 1973 high school seniors. Spanning a dramatic eight-year historical period and an important transitional phase in the life cycle of the younger generation, this material provides a unique opportunity to assess the development of political attitudes and participation.Originally published in 1981.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Transmission of Political Values from Parent to Child

In understanding the political development of the pre-adult one of the central questions hinges on the relative and differentiated contributions of various socializing agents. The question undoubtedly proves more difficult as one traverses a range of polities from those where life and learning are almost completely wrapped up in the immediate and extended family to those which are highly complex social organisms and in which the socialization agents are extremely varied. To gain some purchase on the role of one socializing agent in our own complex society, this paper will take up the specific question of the transmission of certain values from parent to child as observed in late adolescence. After noting parent-child relationships for a variety of political values, attention will be turned to some aspects of family structure which conceivably affect the transmission flows. I. Assessing the Familys Impact: “Foremost among agencies of socialization into politics is the family.” So begins Herbert Hymans discussion of the sources of political learning. 1 Hyman explicitly recognized the importance of other agents, but he was neither the first nor the last observer to stress the preeminent position of the family. This viewpoint relies heavily on both the direct and indirect role of the family in shaping the basic orientations of offspring. Whether the child is conscious or unaware of the impact, whether the process is role-modelling or overt transmission, whether the values are political and directly usable or “nonpolitical” but transferable, and whether what is passed on lies in the cognitive or affective realm, it has been argued that the family is of paramount importance.

Issues and Inheritance in the Formation of Party Identification

Movement of party identification, both within and across generations, is increasingly seen as responsive to current policy preferences. We explore cross-generational change using three-wave parent-offspring data. The results strongly support the revised view of a more malleable partisanship influenced by offspring issue preferences. Nonetheless, parents play a major role in determining the initial political direction of their offspring and continue to play a significant though reduced role in the over-time development of their adult children. The results are similar for presidential preferences, though parental influence is entirely channeled through offspring partisanship.

State Economies and State Taxes: Do Voters Hold Governors Accountable?

Theory: States have sufficient autonomy in the policies they adopt that voters hold state officials partly responsible for the condition of the state economy. As the best known state official, elected by a statewide constituency, governors in particular are held accountable for the economic performance of their states. With respect to taxes, the clear locus of responsibility in state actions and the high visibility of certain taxes suggest that governors will also be held responsible for increased rates. Hypotheses: The performance of the state economy, tax increases, and voters personal financial situations all influence voting behavior in gubernatorial elections. Methods: Logit equations, using 1986 ABC/Washington Post exit polls in 34 of 36 gubernatorial races, combined with economic and tax data from the states. Results: A poor state economy, increases in taxes, and lowered personal finances all contribute to votes against incumbent governors and their parties.

Constituency Characteristics, Individual Characteristics and Tactical Voting in the 1987 British General Election

In Britain in recent years the study of tactical voting has become something of a growth industry. Unresolved, however, is a key question: the number of tactical voters. Despite an election-night estimate of 17 per cent, a variety of later analysts have estimated that little more than one in twenty voters behaved tactically in 1987, a surprisingly low figure in the light of the efforts of various groups to encourage tactical voting in order to avoid fragmentation of the anti-Thatcher vote. Most recently, Heath, Curtice and Jowell, in their analysis of the British Election Study survey, report that ‘just 6.5% of major party voters indicated in their replies a tactical motivation for their vote’.

The Problem of Strategic Behavior under Approval Voting

Approval voting is being promoted as “the election reform of the 20th century” (Brams, 1980, p. 105), and indeed if voters preferences are dichotomous, approval voting has some remarkable qualities: it is uniquely strategy-proof, a candidate wins if and only if he is a Condorcet winner, and voters have simple strategies that are at once sincere and sophisticated. However, all of these results depend on the existence of dichotomous preferences, a contrived and empirically unlikely assumption. Here I show that these virtues of approval voting are replaced by some rather undesirable features under more plausible assumptions. More fundamentally, rather than promoting “honest” behavior, as is sometimes implied, the existence of multiple sincere strategies almost begs voters to behave strategically. I also examine sophisticated approval voting and show that in the general case it need not pick a Condorcet alternative. Ironically, there is a condition under which Condorcet winners may always be picked, but for this to occur, voters sometimes have to vote for candidates of whom they disapprove.

The Persistence of Political Orientations: An Over-Time Analysis of Two Generations

In this article we take advantage of a two-wave panel study of two biologically-linked generations in order to examine some prevalent conceptions about the persistence of political orientations. The nature of the study design, outlined below, is particularly suited to addressing questions about individual-level continuities as they are affected by life-cycle, generational and historical processes. Our present discussion is geared to the individual level rather than to the aggregate level of continuity and change. Although many of the terms used are the same, and although it is difficult to discuss the one level without recourse to the other, the purposes and the approaches are fundamentally different. Aggregate analysis concerns itself with net movements and with the directionality of these movements. Individual analysis, as used here, concerns itself with the magnitudes of individual-level movements and has only a secondary interest in the direction of these movements.

Emotions, Issue Importance, and Political Learning

Theory: Theories about the effects of individual or group threat (largely psychological in origin) are combined with theories about the role of issue importance and of hope of success. Hypotheses: Anxiety, or threat, has an indirect effect on political learning (through issue importance); the effects of anxiety depend, interactively, on peoples hope of success regarding the issue at hand. Knowledge and importance have a reciprocal relationship, the importance-to-knowledge connection being the stronger of the two. Methods: Two-stage least squares, using data from a 1990 survey on the linguistic behavior of young people in Quebec. Checked with an ordered probit and diagnostic tests. Results: Results confirm indirect, interactive, reciprocal effects. Standard (control) effects also found for education, gender, exposure to news on knowledge.

Party Identification at Multiple Levels of Government

Data from a local and a national survey suggest that mixed party identifiers- persons with divergent party identifications at different levels of government-represent an analytically useful addition to current party-identification classifications. Local identifications contribute disproportionately to these mixed patterns. Mixed identifiers are a hybrid type. They tend to be as highly politicized as strict partisans, but they vote more like consistent Independents. More mixed than consistent identifiers seem to be changing their basic party identifications. Federalism appears to be a contributing factor in weakening partisan loyalties and in shifting party affiliations.

PARTISANSHIP AND GROUP SUPPORT OVER TIME: A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS

parties by means of multivariate techniques that have become standard in other areas of political behavior. This approach yields improved insights into the marginal difference made by membership in each group and into the nature of a partys support coalition. As an example of this approach, we analyze the Democratic coalition since 1952. Our results differ from those of previous studies in a number of ways. Most significantly, differences with respect to the strength and timing of partisan changes lend support to Carmines and Stimsons conclusion that a realignment centering on race occurred in the mid-1960s. Our findings also indicate that the Democratic party is no longer so dependent on a few groups, as it was in the 1950s, but is now almost equally dependent on six groups.