Behavioural Thatcherism and Nostalgia: tracing the everyday consequences of holding Thatcherite values

Abstract

With the passing of time and the benefit of hindsight there is, again, growing interest in Thatcherism above all in its substantive and enduring legacy. But, to date at least, and largely due to data limitations, little of that work has focussed on tracing the behavioural consequences, at the individual level, of holding Thatcherite values. That oversight we seek both to identify more clearly and to begin to address. Deploying new survey data, we use multiple linear regression and structural equation modelling to unpack the relationship between 'attitudinal' and 'behavioural' Thatcherism. In the process we reveal the considerably greater behavioural consequences of holding neo-liberal, as distinct from neo-conservative, values whilst identifying the key mediating role played by social, political and economic nostalgia. We find that neo-liberal values are positively associated with Behavioural Thatcherism, whilst neo-conservative values are negatively associated with Behavioural Thatcherism. In exploring the implications we also reveal some intriguing interaction effects between economic nostalgia and neo-conservative values in the centre-left vote for Brexit. In the conclusion we reflect on the implications of these findings for our understanding of the legacy of Thatcherism and, indeed, for Brexit itself.

Losing the Discursive Battle but Winning the Ideological War: Who Holds Thatcherite Values Now?

“…Home ownership in the UK has reached such high rates of saturation that very few of the variables we used are associated with it, and when used as an independent variable, it fails to predict either Neo-Liberalism or Neo-Conservativism. This suggests, in keeping with our argument, that some Thatcherite values and desires have become embedded in UK society (Farrall et al, 2020d). Although home ownership was once a core part of that Thatcherite dream for the aspiration working class, it is now a much more commonly held and normalised desire (a routine expectation).…”

Nostalgic Voting? Explaining the Electoral Support for the Political Left in Post-Soviet Moldova

“…While the strong association between nostalgia and the Left falls in line with previous research in the post-Soviet region (White 2007;White 2010), it appears to contradict arguments demonstrating that nostalgic voters support populist and extreme right parties in the West (Farrall et al 2020;Norris and Inglehart 2019;Steenvoorden and Harteveld 2018;Kang 2018;Rensmann 2018;Hibbing, Hayes, and Deol 2017;Kenny 2017). A key theoretical insight concerns the weakness of class-based and economic voting (Pacek 1994;Harper 2000;Tucker 2006).…”

“…Furthermore, the narratives adopted by the Moldovan Left resemble populist discourses in the West and the authoritarian-conservative ideology in Russia. Given such ideological affinities, it should not come as surprising that nostalgia predicts the vote for the Left in Moldova, while in the West it is associated mostly with the support for the populist radical-right parties (Farrall et al 2020;Norris and Inglehart 2019;Steenvoorden and Harteveld 2018;Rensmann 2018;Hibbing, Hayes, and Deol 2017;Kenny 2017). In this sense, nostalgia functions as an emotion undergirding Euroscepticism both inside and outside the European Union.…”

Fine Moving Value in Behavioral Anomalies to Minimize Poverty in Disadvantaged Areas

“…Some studies state that behavioral impulses have previously been shown to be effectively applied, and self-monitoring is an essential component of changing behavior for the better (Borg et al, 2020). His transformation of the so-called soul is how people behave and judge the soul based on the behavior shown (Farrall et al, 2021).…”