ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors review variation in voter ideology reported in Kim and Fording. The manifesto data set is based on an exhaustive content analysis of manifestos issued by all significant parties competing in each postwar election and employs a total of 56 categories. There is no reason to believe that all Western democracies have followed the same pattern as that of the United States. Indeed, though the majority of countries examined do show some type of movement toward the left during the 1960s, in general there are significant differences across countries in the magnitude of such ideological shifts, not only during the 1960s, but throughout the entire period of analysis. An extremely large literature exists which has examined the effects of aggregate economic conditions on politics in Western democracies. Recent evidence suggests that a conceptualization may be overly simplistic.
