ABSTRACT
The overall aim of this work has been to induce political science to move away from the notion that one can fruitfully analyse, on the basis of social cleavages alone, the relationship between citizens and parties in liberal democracies, especially in Europe, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The view that personalities count very little, which was put forward once more in The European Voter (see the article by Curtice and Holmberg 2005) and was reported in Chapter 1, is unrealistic in the context of developments which have taken place in a number of European countries since the 1980s: it seems therefore urgent to develop an alternative approach.
