This book provides a systematic comparative analysis of how and why voting behaviour has changed in Europe in recent decades. It has been widely argued that radical changes have occurred in the how and why of voting behaviour in Europe as a result of changes in the structure of society, most notably the rise in material affluence and educational attainment, and the decline in religious observance and the size of the working class. But most tests of this proposition have been undertaken on single countries. This book, however, systematically tests the validity of this proposition across various European countries.
The argument that social change has altered voting behaviour has been increasingly challenged on the grounds that it takes too little account of changes in the choices that are put before voters by the parties, such as the promises and proposals that are put forward at election time. This book, therefore, also assesses the relative explanatory power of claims that voting behaviour has changed because of changes in society against claims that it responds to changes in the offerings of political parties. And it is clear from the analyses reported in this book that contrary to the claims of much of the extant literature, the latter argument appears better able to account for many of the patterns and changes in European voting behaviour, and thus the book constitutes an important challenge to much current academic orthodoxy.
This is the first book to provide a systematic comparison of the long-term dynamics of the voting behaviour of individual voters across such a wide range of European countries, taking into account the dynamics of the choices put before voters by the parties and, for the first time, relating this to the way voters behave.
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Jacques Thomassen is a Dutch organisational theorist, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Twente, and member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, known for his work on the theory of political and policy representation.
Bernt Aardal is a Norwegian political scientist who is among the best known practitioners of election science in Norway. He is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo.
Kees Aarts is holds degrees from the University of Amsterdam (Ba, MA) and Twente (PhD). He is Professor of Political Science at the University of Twente and scientific director of its Institute for Innovation and Governance Studies.
Frode Berglund is a political scientist and researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Norway.
Tanja Binder is a doctoral candidate in the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, research unit Democracy: Structures, performance, challenges.
Ingvill Constanze Ødegaard (formerly Mochmann, née Ødegaard) is senior researcher at GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Cologne, Germany and Professor II at Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo, Norway.
Sir John Curtice is Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde.
Soren Holmberg is a Professor in Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Hans-Dieter Klingemann is Professor Emeritus, Social Science Research Center, Berlin. Among his recent publications are Public Information Campaigns (with A Roemmele) (Sage Publications, 2001); Mapping Policy Preferences (with I Budge et al) (Oxford University Press, 2001); Russell J Dalton and Hans-Dieter Klingemann, eds. 2007 The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior (2009); The comparative Study of Electoral Systems (2009).
Oddbjørn Knutsen was a Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Norway and distinguished member of the ECPR’s Executive Committee.
Staffan Kumlin is Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg and Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research, Oslo. Kumlin studies political behaviour and European welfare states and is the author of The Personal and the Political: How Personal Welfare State Experiences Affect Political Trust and Ideology (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004), as well as articles in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, and European Journal of Political Research.
Ola Listhaug is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Sociology and Political Science, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, and research group leader at the Centre for the Study of Civil War at the International Peace Research Institute (PRIO).
Maria Oskarson is a Professor at the University of Gothenburg. She is a member of the steering committee of the European Social Survey for Sweden, which she has led since 2014, as well as a member of the steering committee of the MEDem (Monitoring electoral democracy) project, an academic initiative aiming at building a pan-European network of electoral research projects while providing a common data collection infrastructure.
Her research focuses on the links between social position and political attitudes, electoral behavior, party systems and political institutions, with a comparative component.
Hermann Schmitt holds degrees from the University of Mannheim (Ba, Hab.), the University of Duisburg (PhD), and the Free University of Berlin (Hab.) He is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mannheim and Research Fellow at its Center for European Studies MZES.
Cees van der Eijk is Professor of Social Science Research Methods at the University of Nottingham.
Pieter van Wijnen is Assistant Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam (VU).
Bernhard Weßels is Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and Deputy Director of the Department “Democracy and Democratization” at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
Wolfgang Zenk-Moeltgen is a Researcher at GESIS, serving as the Deputy Head of the Data Services for Social Sciences team.
