Party Members and Ideological Change

Farrell, David M.; Webb, Peter; Evans, Gareth; P, Norris

doi:10.4135/9781446218518.n3

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Given that the 1997 British election surveys are the only ones currently available that include all the necessary questions in both the pre-and post-election panel waves, these are not issues that we can address empirically. However, we would point out that the 1997 election was an exceptional contest because it was marked by less ideological and policy polarization between the two main parties than other elections since the 1960s (Budge 1999;Sanders 1999b;Webb and Farrell 1999). Thus, the results we obtain for 1997 are probably weaker than what they would have been in previous elections.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

2004

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Using panel surveys conducted in Great Britain before and after the 1997 general election, we examine the relationship between voting behavior and post-election economic perceptions. Drawing on psychological theories of attitude formation, we argue that those who voted for Labour and the Liberal Democrats perceived the past state of the British economy under the Tory government more negatively than they had prior to casting their ballot in the 1997 election. Similarly, we posit that Labour supporters would view the future state of the national economy under Labour more positively than they had before the election. This indicates that, contrary to many assumptions in the economic voting literature, voting behavior influences evaluations of the economy as voters seek to reduce inconsistencies between their vote choice and evaluations of the economy by bringing their attitudes in line with the vote they cast in the election. It also means that voters' post-election economic perceptions are, at least in part, influenced by and thus endogenous to their vote choice. This finding has two major implications: First, cross-sectional models of economic voting are likely to overestimate the effect of economic perceptions on the vote. Second, the endogeneity of economic perceptions may compromise the quality of economic voting as a mechanism for democratic accountability.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

2004

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“…First, there is no evidence that party loyalties in Britain are more fixed and the British party system more ideologically polarized than in other countries. By the 1997 election British politics was in many ways less polarized and British party supporters less attached, than at any previous time for which measures can be obtained (Budge 1999; Crewe and Thomson 1999; Sanders 1999b; Webb and Farrell 1999). This suggests that short‐term influences, such as the economy, might have greater latitude to cause swings in party popularity than in earlier periods (Alvarez, Nagler, and Bowler 2000; Sanders 1999a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions

Evans¹,

Andersen²

2006

The Journal of Politics

439

301

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Economic theories of voting argue that party popularity and vote are heavily influenced by the performance of the economy. Inferences about the direction of causality between perceptions of the economy and party support remain questionable, however. This article evaluates the microfoundations of economic theories of voting and party popularity using multiwave panel data. We model the dynamic relationships between party support and retrospective economic perceptions-both sociotropic and egocentric-through the 1992-97 British electoral cycle. Our findings indicate that sociotropic perceptions are strongly conditioned by prior opinions of the incumbent Conservative Party and once this temporal relationship is taken into account, they have little affect on incumbent party popularity. Throughout the electoral cycle, lagged political support has a substantially stronger effect on sociotropic perceptions than the latter have on concurrent party support. Moreover, egocentric perceptions appear to be neither strongly affected nor influenced by party support. The findings of these dynamic individual-level analyses indicate that conventional wisdom is likely to considerably overstate the importance of retrospective economic considerations for political preferences.

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“…Thus, in 1964 the ratio was one Labour employee to every 2786 individual members of the Labour Party. By 1998, the ratio was 1:1231, a net change of 56 per cent (Webb and Fisher 2001, 5; 2003, 10). For the Conservatives, the change has been even more significant.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, by using the BES, the number of cases of Labour members is limited; we are unable to use the full party membership survey since comparable questions were not asked. That said, sample sizes of this magnitude have been successfully analysed in the past (Seyd and Whiteley 1992; Webb and Farrell 1999), so again, such data should be sufficient for us to derive a broad impression.…”

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confidence: 99%

Political Participation: The Vocational Motivations of Labour Party Employees

Fisher¹,

Webb²

2003

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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Party employees are an under-researched group in political science. This article begins to address this oversight by examining Labour Party employees using new quantitative and qualitative data. It argues that party employment should be regarded as a form of political participation and as a consequence, existing models of political participation can be utilised to help explain why people work for political parties. After testing these propositions, the article concludes that existing models are indeed helpful in explaining the motivations for party employment.

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Party Members and Ideological Change

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

Endogenous economic voting: evidence from the 1997 British election

The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions

Political Participation: The Vocational Motivations of Labour Party Employees

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