Social groups in electoral politics

Abstract

Going back 60 or 70 years, social groups – not least social classes or religious groups – featured prominently in (West) European electoral politics as well as in the nascent scholarship about voter behaviour. The decades since have seen a gradual weakening of the previously strong ties between specific social groups and specific parties. In the scholarly literature, this development was accompanied by extensive discussion of whether the development should be seen as reflecting a dealignment potentially resulting from increasing individualization and a concomitant increased focus on voting based on factors like (single) issue attitudes or the qualities of the candidates running for office. The most recent decade has, however, seen a revival of interest in social groups as an influence on vote choice. Partly, this development has been driven by renewed interest in groups in US scholarship as evidenced, e.g., in the influential book Democracy for Realists by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels. Further, European scholars have reinvigorated interest in the field, e.g., by examining the development of new cleavages in contemporary societies. Likewise, the COVID 19 pandemic has, among other factors, served to highlight the continued existence of conflicts between social groups – conflicts that have probably further intensified during the pandemic with different groups being hit to different degrees. The panel takes up the lead of these lines of research with a broad-angle perspective on the role of social groups in current electoral politics. Thus, the panel includes papers focusing on a range of topics like, group perceptions as aspects of cleavage realignments, the continued electoral relevance of social class, parties’ role in developing and/or exploiting group conflicts, the challenges to parties’ group coalitions brought by the advent of new cleavages as well as the mechanism linking social groups and political parties. Methodologically, the contributions are almost as diverse in drawing on observational, experimental as well as comparative data.

Title	Details
Identity Formation between Structure and Agency – How 'Us' and 'Them' Relates to Voting Behavior in Contexts of Electoral Realignment	View Paper Details
The Effectiveness of Group Appeals	View Paper Details
A New Dilemma of Social Democracy? The British Labour Party, the White Working Class and Ethnic Minority Representation	View Paper Details
Geographic Identities and Affective Polarization in Norway	View Paper Details
Social group perceptions and party choice	View Paper Details