scholarly journals Policy Representation, Social Representation and Class Voting in Britain

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Heath
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Political Choice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Representation ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Over Time

Why does the strength of class voting vary over time? Recent research has emphasized factors related to the structure of political choice at the party level. This article examines different aspects of this choice, and investigates whether voters are more likely to respond to the social or policy cues that parties send voters. The results from the British context suggest that the former are more important than the latter. The central implication of this finding is that social representation matters, and that the social background of political representatives influences how voters relate to political parties.

8. Political Parties

2021 ◽  
pp. 132-154
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries ◽  
Sara B. Hobolt ◽  
Sven-Oliver Proksch ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cleavage ◽  
Over Time

This chapter looks at the nature and evolution of political parties in a number of European democracies. It analyses the important functions of political parties. It charts how they have developed over time. Starting with the social cleavage approach, the chapter addresses the origins of European party families and party systems. It then turns to the transformation of European party families and systems. It considers this both nationally and within the European Union (EU). It provides evidence of the ‘unfreezing’ of European party systems and thinks about whether a dealignment of traditional cleavage patterns can currently be witnessed. It asks: is there also a realignment along a new ‘cultural’ dimension of politics? Finally, the chapter addresses the evolution of party types from cadre over catch-all to modern entrepreneurial challenger parties.

The unequal crime drop: Changes over time in the distribution of crime among individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 586-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Nilsson ◽  
Felipe Estrada ◽  
Olof Bäckman
Keyword(s):  
General Trend ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Socioeconomic Background ◽  
Crime Trends ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Crime Drop ◽  
The Social ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

Since the 1990s, many countries, including Sweden, have seen declining crime levels. In this article, we study whether this general trend is concealing differences between different social groups. In contrast to the few studies that have to date examined the issue of inequality in the crime drop, we focus on the social background of offenders rather than crime victims. We analyse register data covering three entire Swedish birth cohorts, in which convictions data have been linked to data on parental incomes. In this way, we are able to examine changes over time in the distribution of crime among individuals from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Our results show that crime trends differ by socioeconomic background: decreases in crime (theft offences) are greater among the more affluent, and increases (violent crime) are primarily located among the lower levels of the income distribution. This produces an increasing inequality in the conviction risk, primarily among men. Different mechanisms that can contribute to an understanding of why crime has become increasingly concentrated among less affluent social groups are discussed.

Irish Home Rule and the Social Basis of the Great Separation in the Liberal Party in 1886

1985 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. C. Lubenow
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
British History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Class Voting

Though Mr Gladstone was speaking of the opposition to home rule in the country, rather than in the parliamentary Liberal party alone in the statement quoted above, this has become the rather standard interpretation of the great separation in the Liberal party in 1886. As one modern historian of the Liberal disruption puts it, ‘a striking characteristic of modern British history has been the class alignment of political parties… The Liberal Unionist party (those who seceded on the home rule question) was a half-way house, which entertained for a time much of the wealth and territorial influence which had been Liberal and was to be Conservative.’ One of the most influential historians of late-nineteenth-century Britain puts the issue in broader terms. The origins of Conservative dominance as well as the leakage of the landed and business classes to the Conservative party, Sir Robert Ensor argues, are to be found in the undermining of English and Irish agriculture by the invasion of North American wheat. This produced, in turn, agrarian revolution in Ireland, the rise of violent nationalism in Ireland, the growth of social and political conflict, and, ultimately, the rejection of Irish political demands by the English. Yet another attributes the fall of Gladstone's third ministry to a general revolt against the Liberal party by railway directors and other businessmen who had been alerted to the dangers to property which the government's railway policies implied. This theme has been taken up and many have come to argue that class voting emerged in 1886 when the upper – and middle-class Liberals, taking home rule as an excuse, departed to the Conservatives in a reaction against growing social radicalism.

The Social Background of Prussian Inventors and Entrepreneurs during the First Industrial Revolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-41
Author(s):  
Alexander Donges ◽  
Felix Selgert
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
Inventive Activity ◽  
Over Time

Abstract In this paper, we study the social background of Prussian inventors in the mid-19th century, using biographical information for over 1,500 individuals that filed a patent in Prussia. There are four major findings. First, there is evidence for broadly based inventive activity, including a large number of inventors from middle- and lower-class backgrounds. Second, concerning the role of human capital, we argue that a combination of formal and informal education was crucial for the generation of innovation, though the importance of formal education increased over time. Third, we provide evidence that inventive activity fostered social mobility. Many inventors founded companies after they had filed a patent, suggesting that they could exploit their inventions commercially. Fourth, we show that inventors were highly mobile. Inventors migrated to the commercial centers of Prussia, in particular to Berlin and to the booming cities of the Rhine Province. In this regard, migration of highly skilled individuals may provide an explanation for the strong path-dependency that we observe when studying the geography of innovation and patenting.

Money Talks: Discourse, Networks, and Structure in Militant Organizations

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 976-994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Friendship Networks ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Organizational Membership ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Over Time

Scholarship on militant organizations and rebel movements emphasizes the effects of fragmentation and disunity on military and political outcomes. Yet this scholarship’s focus on formal, durable, and externally observable aspects of organizational structure omits the social practices that constitute, reinforce, and reproduce intra-group schisms. How do intra-organizational divisions calcify into permanent cleavages? What processes reproduce factions over time? Using the case of Fatah in Lebanon, I argue that informal discursive practices—e.g., gossip, jokes, complaints, storytelling—contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of intra-organizational factions. Specifically, I focus on how networks of meaning-laden, money-centric discourse structure relations among militants who identify as being “Old Fatah.” I demonstrate that while these practices frequently originate in the organizational realm, cadres subsequently reproduce them within kinship, marriage, and friendship networks. This “money talk” between age cohorts within the quotidian realm connects younger members of Fatah to older cadres through collective practices and conceptions of organizational membership. These practices both exemplify an intra-organizational schism and constitute, in part, the faction called Old Fatah. Examining how symbolic practice comprises social structure thus provides important insight into the politics of organizations such as militant groups, social movements, and political parties.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

Social transmission bias and the cultural evolution of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Over Time

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.

Commitment to pro- versus counter-attitudinal behavior and the dynamics of social representations

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tafani ◽  
Lionel Souchet
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Cognitive Restructuring ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Two Dimensional Model ◽  
Students Attitudes

This research uses the counter-attitudinal essay paradigm ( Janis & King, 1954 ) to test the effects of social actions on social representations. Thus, students wrote either a pro- or a counter-attitudinal essay on Higher Education. Three forms of counter-attitudinal essays were manipulated countering respectively a) students’ attitudes towards higher education; b) peripheral beliefs or c) central beliefs associated with this representation object. After writing the essay, students expressed their attitudes towards higher education and evaluated different beliefs associated with it. The structural status of these beliefs was also assessed by a “calling into question” test ( Flament, 1994a ). Results show that behavior challenging either an attitude or peripheral beliefs induces a rationalization process, giving rise to minor modifications of the representational field. These modifications are only on the social evaluative dimension of the social representation. On the other hand, when the behavior challenges central beliefs, the same rationalization process induces a cognitive restructuring of the representational field, i.e., a structural change in the representation. These results and their implications for the experimental study of representational dynamics are discussed with regard to the two-dimensional model of social representations ( Moliner, 1994 ) and rationalization theory ( Beauvois & Joule, 1996 ).

Domestic Integration and Suicide in the Provinces of Canada

Crisis ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoon A. Leenaars ◽  
David Lester
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Negative Association ◽  
Birth Rates ◽  
Marriage Rates ◽  
Suicide Rates ◽  
The Social ◽  
Divorce Rates ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Over Time

Canada's rate of suicide varies from province to province. The classical theory of suicide, which attempts to explain the social suicide rate, stems from Durkheim, who argued that low levels of social integration and regulation are associated with high rates of suicide. The present study explored whether social factors (divorce, marriage, and birth rates) do in fact predict suicide rates over time for each province (period studied: 1950-1990). The results showed a positive association between divorce rates and suicide rates, and a negative association between birth rates and suicide rates. Marriage rates showed no consistent association, an anomaly as compared to research from other nations.

Social Representations and Commitment

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bonetto ◽  
Fabien Girandola ◽  
Grégory Lo Monaco
Keyword(s):  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
First Line ◽  
Research Perspectives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Bibliographic Search ◽  
English Articles

Abstract. This contribution consists of a critical review of the literature about the articulation of two traditionally separated theoretical fields: social representations and commitment. Besides consulting various works and communications, a bibliographic search was carried out (between February and December, 2016) on various databases using the keywords “commitment” and “social representation,” in the singular and in the plural, in French and in English. Articles published in English or in French, that explicitly made reference to both terms, were included. The relations between commitment and social representations are approached according to two approaches or complementary lines. The first line follows the role of commitment in the representational dynamics: how can commitment transform the representations? This articulation gathers most of the work on the topic. The second line envisages the social representations as determinants of commitment procedures: how can these representations influence the effects of commitment procedures? This literature review will identify unexploited tracks, as well as research perspectives for both areas of research.

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