Electoral geography and political geography

Abstract

Neither electoral geography nor political geography has attracted a large number of practitioners in recent decades. The quantitative, positivist reorientation of human geography in the 1950s and 1960s could have attracted attention to the study of electoral issues, for these produce large volumes of data that can be analysed within both the positivist method and the spatial viewpoint then adopted. But the ethos of that period was closely associated with neo-classical economics and a liberal belief in the role of the state. Thus, although a few individuals analysed electoral patterns it has only been in recent years, with a growth of interest in the role of the state, that political geography has attracted researchers; even so, there has been little integration of electoral and political geography.Within the broad sweep of the social sciences, to study disciplines and sub-disciplines as ends in themselves is to paint at best partial and at worst misleading pictures of reality.Further, it promotes disciplinary imperialism, and claims such as this -Geography is particularly important in that it can add an entirely new dimension to the study of elections. The geographer brings a characteristic emphasis on spatial location, distribution, and spatial inter-relationships to the study of electoral behaviour, aspects not normally considered by other disciplines . . . by the very nature of his subject, the geographer is probably the best equipped of all to undertake the delicate task of subdividing a state area into precisely delimited electoral districts for purposes of representation (Busteed, 1975, p. 3). The approach favoured here accepts that geographers traditionally begin with a focus on placesusually on differences between places as represented on maps. From these maps they then ask three types of question: 1) what are the determinants of such patterns?; 2) what are their consequences?; and 3) how might these patterns be altered to achieve certain ends? In seeking their answers, geographers moveacademicallywherever it is necessary t o go, obtaining the necessary expertise to interpret the writings o f specialists trained with different viewpoints of the same phenomena. In this sense, anybody who starts from a map is a geographer; those officially titled geographers are simply the group most likely to start from that point. T h e result should be the same, wherever the origin, however.The focus here is electoral geography, that field of study which asks questions of the maps of voting patterns. The papeL begins with a brief review of published work in this field, and

The Changing Electoral Geography of the Netherlands: 1946–1981

“…Electoral geographers argue that the study of place must not be excluded from electoral studies (Johnston 1980), since without this element accounts of voting behaviour are likely to be incomplete. Thus the analyses of survey and ecological data must be inteaated.…”