Social Bases of Geographies of Voting

In this chapter we continue to employ Rokkan’s model of party evolution as a framework for studying geographies of voting. This is because we continue to be interested in cross-national com­ parisons. In the last chapter this framework was used to make some sense out of election results from the American frontier to Austria’s Burgenland. All the analyses in that chapter, how­ ever, were concerned with the voting data alone. Either the pat­ terns of votes for single parties were used or else party votes were combined to form measures of polarization and turnout in the periphery studies. In this chapter we move on to consider the relationship of these voting patterns to a variety of social characteristics. These ‘social bases’ of voting will relate directly to the cleavages that Rokkan has identified plus the particular ethnic bases of much voting behaviour in North America. We can illustrate the relationship between Rokkan’s cleavages

and voting behaviour by using the work of Lijphart (1971). He uses indices of voting behaviour originally devised by Alford (1963), which we can illustrate in terms of class voting. The strength of class voting in a country is found as follows. From survey data on voting and occupations we find that x per cent of the non-manual workers vote for the party of the left and y per cent of the manual workers similarly vote for the left party. The difference between these two percentages i y-x) constitutes Alford’s index of class voting. If voting is unrelated to class x = y and the index is zero. If all manual workers vote left and all nonmanual voters vote right then the index is a hundred per cent, which signifies ‘pure’ class voting. Most countries will score

between zero and a hundred depending on their degree of class voting. (Notice that negative values are possible where more nonmanual voters support left parties.) Similar indices can be derived for religious voting, in terms of church attenders voting for rightwing parties, and urban/rural voting, in terms of rural residents voting for right-wing parties. In both cases, if these criteria are independent of voting behaviour, indices of zero will result, other­ wise the relative strength of these two factors within countries will be indicated. These indices of religious, urban/rural and class voting corres­

pond to Rokkan’s three major cleavages that succeed the ‘pure’ territorial conflicts - the religion, commodity market and labour market conflicts respectively. Table 4.1 shows these three indices

Table 4.1 Cleavages and the social bases of voting c. 1960

Country Religion* Ruraljurban Class

A. Anglo-American countries Britain 7 10 37 U.S.A. 16 11 20 Canada 22 — 8 Australia 14 — 33 B. Scandinavian countries Sweden 16 - 8 53 Norway 21 2 46 Denmark — — 44 Finland — — 59 C. Other European countries France 59 11 15 Italy 51 12 19 West Germany 40 17 27 Netherlands 73 10 26 Belgium 72 7 25 Austria 54 22 31 Switzerland 59 — 26

of voting for a selection of countries. The size of the indices within each country indicates the relative importance of Rokkan’s cleavages in modem voting behaviour. In all cases the rural/urban cleavage seems to be the least important. We may conclude that this economic conflict over the commodity market has largely given way to economic conflict over labour market issues. These class-based issues have not invariably superseded religious con­ flicts, however. Class-based voting only (dominates the pattern of indices in Britain, Australia and the Scandinavian countries. In the U.S.A. and Canada no one index dominates. In the other Euro­ pean countries, in contrast, it is religious voting that dominates. This is particularly true of countries straddling Europe’s Protes­ tant/Catholic divide, such as the Netherlands and Switzerland, but religious voting also dominates in the Catholic countries. This suggests that instead of the most recent cleavage (labour market) superseding the earlier religious factor, in these countries religion remains the most important social basis of voting. Table 4.1 illustrates how Rokkan’s cleavages are reflected in

voting behaviour. This forms the starting point to our investiga­ tions into the social bases of geographies of voting. It is only a starting point, however. Table 4.1 treats each factor separately whereas it is highly likely that cleavages interact to produce great variety in the social bases of voting. In particular, Rokkan’s model implies differences within countries as well as between them. This was discussed in the last chapter in terms of spatial lags in mobilization. Regional variations within countries may be far more complex than such simple core-periphery patterns imply, however. Regional differences in voting behaviour can include much more than the standard, extreme cases such as the Irish, in British politics, Quebec voters, in Canadian politics, or the stubborn southerners who refuse to conform to the American party system. Even in a relatively integrated nation state, the voters’ reactions to party labels may vary from one region to another. These differences may be related to economic or cultural differences. Sometimes they are distinctively geographical and relate to the contrasting political experiences of different regions as the national political parties evolved. Such situations can lead

to subtle differences in geographies of voting for parties between regions. These differences may J>e just as important to their res­ pective national elections as the aforementioned extreme cases. The major purpose of this chapter is to describe such regional differences in the social bases of voting. A second purpose of the chapter is to illustrate the variety of

types of data and analyses employed in modem electoral research. In Chapter 2 we distinguished between actual voting records and survey data, and commented on their respective limitations. In this chapter we illustrate the complementary uses of different types of data and analyses to supplement and substantiate find­ ings. The results of such comprehensive studies are far more useful than any single analysis of a single source of data. Hence a secondary purpose of this chapter is to illustrate, where possible, the integration of alternative sources and analyses to produce a more reliable body of knowledge on the geography of voting. The chapter is divided into three main sections based on the

simple typology of countries employed in Tables 3.1 (p. 110) and 4.1. These three sets of countries do seem to display some con­ sistent differences in terms of voting systems, political parties and voting behaviour and hence form convenient categories within which to describe social bases of geographies of voting. Within each section, however, we do not attempt a ‘complete’ geography of the voting - the sources are just not available. Instead we con­ centrate on themes which are particularly relevant to that set of countries and we treat each topic in some detail in just one or two countries. Since the cleavage framework that we use is most explicity associated with Scandinavian countries, we begin with this group of countries and the emphasis falls, inevitably, on Norway once again.