The European voter. A comparative study of modern democracies

Abstract:

This work is published in the Oxford University Press series ‘Comparative Politics’, which is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The work seeks to fill a gap in European comparative electoral research and presents a systematic description and explanation of the electoral changes that have occurred in a number of West European countries in the second half of the twentieth century.

Contributions from a wide range of political scientists are organised over eleven chapters. The first by way of introduction considers political change in Europe and sets out the conceptual framework for the study in schematic format. The second chapter explores the development of the party system in each of the six countries featured in the study - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. The third chapter examines trends in electoral turnout and participation. The following chapters attempt to describe the explanatory power of the variables introduced in the first chapter. Chapter four addresses social structure and party choice. Chapter five looks at party identification and party choice. Value orientations are the focus of chapter six, while left-right orientations are covered in chapter seven. Chapter eight explores issue voting and chapter nine considers retrospective voting. Chapter ten examines the relationship between party leaders and party choice. Chapter eleven asks and seeks to answer the question ‘modernisation or politics?’, offering a summary of the study’s findings on the development of patterns of voting behaviour in the six countries featured.

The work will interest political scientists and students of comparative politics as well as party researchers and policy makers.

Jacques Thomassen is Professor of Political Science at the University of Twente.