Chapter 3

 Voting not as a decisionmaking process per se but as a preetermined

expression of the important political elements wich predispose the voter
to a party or candidate
 In this chapter the author says that we are going to see the elemenst
wich are the basic predispositions which are passed to us by our position
in society and that the scholars and supports of social structural models
of voting agree
 Why does society matter?
o The social context in which we grow up
o The different groups in society: age, education, gender,
occupation, sexuality
o Political parties use these social groups for mobilizing support.
Since parties have limited resources, they can’t provide tailormade
arguments and policies to mobilise each and every voter.
o Key social groups define the major lines of division. Zerosum
game in the competition for such scarce resources.
 Interaction between social groups and political system and its results =
socialization or political socialization
 Political cleavages
 Sartori (1960) said that too much research was being relied too heavily
upon idead taken from sociology and then imposed upon political
systems, rather than showing how the two relate and how political
systems might equally impose themselves upon social structure.
 Class differences dominated the social structural accounts of voting for
years
 The sociology of politics can be seen in early studies
 Studies such as the Columbia school look at various social indicators
and look for association between these groups and Democrats and
Republican vote.
 Indicators as: socioeconomic classes (occupation, income, and
education), religion and ethnicity were found and highlight inn three
 fundamental process where these indicators maintain longstanding
association with vote choice
 Sociology of politics explanations
 Social transmission of political choice
o Differentiation: individuals with shared characteristics often share
a common interest in how policy affects them. This way, those
belonging to a different group will also have a different (opposing)
interest.
o Transmission: intergenerational transmission of values which
remain with the voters for their entire lives
o Contact: individuals must spend more time in the presence of
members of their own social group otherwise, the contact with
other groups could provide dissenting views which weaken a
voter’s socialized beliefs
 Research has shown that the beliefs and values imbued at an early age
withstand changes in context with offer competing perspectives
(crosspressures)
 Age do not have much effect on voting
 Individuals integration into society, that is, the organisations they belong
to and in which they mays discuss politics or simply engage in social
interaction which generally reinforces their beliefs (trade unions and
religion)
 In class voting, contextual effects have been seen over time which vary
according to the “class profile” of the area in which an individual lives.
That is an invisible communicative network between inhabitants which
influences social and political values and behavior
 In Italy the effects of regional subcultures used to be more important in
how people voted than their individual characteristics
 According to Sartori it does not tell us if the political parties are
representing the different social groups
 In voting as democratic representation, we want to know whether parties
are representing their voters, as well as knowing that voters are voting
for their parties out of a perception of interest
 The same social division may not have influence in some countries: In
France religion and class mattered; in Switzerland and Belgium class,
language and religion are before class; in UK only class matter.
 Political sociology explanations
 Lipset and Rokkan’s work (1967): the first comparative analysis to
provide a framework linking social structure to party system format and
electoral behavior
 Instead of taking a microsociological approach ˜that is, identifying the
mains patterns in individual voters’ social profiles and their party choice
˜the work adopted a historical macro~sociological approach
 Politics rather than being the simple reflection of social structure that
Sartori objected to, became a dependent and independent variable. That
way, social clevages could be used for mobilisational purposes by elites
 They adapted Talcott Parson’s theory of differentiation, which looked at
how different subsystems within society (economic system, political
system, family…) serve to orient individuals in their decision and
behavior. These subsystems are linked to functions that the system must
fulfil if it is to survive, and of which there are four A G I L
 The most important are G I L
o G = goal attainment The system must decide which aims are to be
given priority in its maintenance and development = polity
o I = Integration = The systems must arrange and regulate the
interactions between its different components = communities,
asociations, churches, legal frameworks
o L = latency = The systems must ensure that individuals maintain
the values and motive which sustain it = families, schools, etc
 These interactions contribute to the shape of the political system via the
process of nationstate building and democratization
 In terms of mass electoral behavior, the I~L and L~G interactions are
clearly of the greatest importance
o I~L = organizational groups and individuals’ involvement = party
formation
o L~G = political leaders and support of individuals = elections
 In democratization process there is compettion between the “new”
national party and the “old” groupings which exercise influence and
power at the local level
o I = the elites is based in capital, being the symbolical and territorial
“heart” of the national characterized by greater urban development
and secularization. The peripheral areas and their characteristics
social groups not always are allowed access to representation
o II = Church~Estate relationship = In counterreformation countries
such as France, Italy and Austria religions was still counted in
cleavage terms. In Reformed Nordic countries such as Norway
and UK, the religion was part of the state and no separate
religious cleavage developed.
 National Revolution = the very formation of the state promotes conflicts
which until that point have remained latent.
 However, there are two threshold of democratization that Lipset and
Rokkan found indispensable to the formations of the parties: the
possibility to manifest opposition without threat of state repression;
extension of suffrage to allow these groups to compete.
 The third threshold is representation in Parliament
 Second critical juncture = Industrial Revolution
o Primary/Secondary sector division = agricultural x industrial sector
(specific interests)
o Workers/Employers (class cleavages)
 In Uk there was no room for an agricultural party because of the
correspondent Tory/Whig
 Scandinavian states = close alliance between the centrebased elite and
an urban economic elite