Party Identification and Beyond

This provocative and important book sets itself three tasks: to consider the "theoretical and measurement status" of party identification as conventionally defined, to uncover the dimensionality of response to some party systems, and to consider rational choice theory and the idea of party identification in light of each other. Each task gets its own section and each section has an introductory essay. The first part of the book finds the idea of party identification as a reference group phenomenon empirically wanting in most contexts. Warren Miller begins the section with a defence of the idea, but gives so much ground to the diversity of the European evidence and to the role of party in reducing citizens' information costs that he vitiates the idea he set out to defend. Jacques Thomassen, Max Kaase, and Budge and Farlie present evidence suggesting that for Canada and a number of European countries questions about party identification and vote intention are only alternative measures of the same predisposition. The evidence is more suggestive than conclusive and the recurring explanation for America's uniqueness, the indistinctness of her parties and political cleavages, is not particularly well thought out and is confounded somewhat by the Canadian case. For their part, Budge and Farlie hesitate to abandon the idea of party identification. They do, however, propose a measurement device using background characteristics rather than response to a party identification question. They argue that the device is more appropriate than either multiple regression or discriminant analysis in assessing the effect of variation in categoric, nominal data. This may be, but no multivariate classification device will produce an estimate of long-term predispositions if, in the election studied, social groups were moved around in an idiosyncratic way: prediction of party preference from background characteristics would itself embody short-term factors. The other chapter in Part One, by Ivor Crewe, is one of the outstanding contributions to the volume. Crewe sets out the standard model of party identification fairly and shows that, in terms of it, the individual-level evidence in the Butler and Stokes panel is inconsistent with aggregate change in response to British parties. He also points out the number of alternative meanings of party loyalty compatible with a given response to the questionnaire stimulus and proposes an emphasis on political events and sociological aspects of partisanship for future research. Five of the chapters in the second part identify the evaluative dimensions in terms of which Danish, Belgian, French, and Swiss electorates respond to parties. A sixth chapter, by Ronald Inglehart and Hans Klingemann, considers a number of countries together. The chapters are all competent, but none really sheds much light on the theoretical questions raised elsewhere in the book. To the extent that they do, their arguments run against the grain of the mild rational choice bias elsewhere, a nice irony for a section containing spatial analyses. The chapters vary in the extent to which they require background in the politics of the country. The most distinguished are by Jerrold G. Rusk and Ole Borre on Denmark and by Gary A. Mauser and Jacqueline Freyssinet-Dominjon on France. The third section raises questions about the coexistence of rational choice and party identification. In looking at both party strategy and voter response in Northern Ireland, Michael Laver elaborates on Downs's spatial duopoly model in useful ways. William Irvine looks at four models of political participation and attempts a synthesis of the four, using Canadian evidence. In a second chapter, Irvine tests three models of party preference and again attempts a synthesis. Both chapters are useful beginnings. In an outstanding chapter, Peter Ordeshook synthesizes and criticizes work on the spatial theory of elections, worrying about its reliance on pure strategy solutions in election games, its failure to consider other than majority rule systems, and its inadequate treatment of attitudes and preferences. Ordeshook is also uneasy about the failure of his field to render habitual behaviour rational. In another important contribution, David Robertson rejects any attempt to smuggle party identification into a theory of rational choice. Citizens may transfer information costs to parties and so quite rationally vote the same way most or all of the time. But this is a far cry from the model which gives priority to an issueless party loyalty learned early under social influence and largely unimpaired by subsequent learning. The book yields nothing definitive about the nature of party loyalty. Indeed, it raises more questions than it answers. The views it presents often contradict each other, but not always in a conscious way. Not every contributor is quite clear what he means by party identification. In short, the book faithfully represents the current standing of the ideas it addresses. In introducing valuable European evidence and comparing popular response to different party systems, and in throwing fundamentally different theoretical perspectives into the fray, the book may move others to join its contributors in a debate over fundamental questions. -- Richard Johnston, 'Canadian Journal of Political Science'

Ian Budge is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has made major contributions both to cumulative research on democracy and to organisational developments in the discipline. His earliest research on Glasgow and Belfast focused on causes of democratic breakdown. After a period of studying elections, voting behaviour, and party competition, he turned to public policy and how it might become responsive to popular preferences - a central democratic dilemma. His research covers direct and representative democracy. Professor Budge founded the Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis in 1968, and he was Executive Director of the European Consortium for Political Research, based at the University of Essex, between 1979 and 1983. Among his recent publications are, (with Klingemann et al), Mapping Policy Preferences: Estimates for Parties, Electorates and Governments 1945–1998 (2001), Elections, Parties, Democracy: Conferring the Median Mandate (with Michael D McDonald) (2005); The New British Politics (Ian Budge, David McKay, Kenneth Newton and John Bartle) (2007).