Explaining the Religious Basis of the Canadian Partisan Identity: Success on the Third Try

1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Irvine

The various subtables of Table i, or some variant of them, must be familiar to every teacher and to every student of Canadian voting behaviour. While most of our history books, and certainly all of our current concerns, focus on cultural differences in Canada, all our voting and party identification data suggest that the primary line of political division is between Roman Catholics and non-Catholics. The leftmost tables in the two rows of Table i indicate that religious differences are approximately three times as strong as ethnic ones, regardless of the index chosen. The percentage difference in Liberal identifiers is 20 across religious categories, but only 6 across the ethnic ones; the phi coefficient is.21 as compared to.06, while Yule's Q is.42 as opposed to.13. Nor is this simply an artifact. The same finding shows up for vote as for party identification, for a linguistic dichotomy as for an ethnicity dichotomy, and for undichotomized as for dichotomized variables. Similarly, the religious dichotomy need not be imposed, but emerges quite freely when similar data are analysed with the aid program. Indeed, one need not depend on using dichotomies at all, though the analysis becomes more complex. In each case, however, the basic generalization holds.

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Searing ◽  
Gerald Wright ◽  
George Rabinowitz

The ‘primacy principle’ comprises three assumptions about political orientations. The first is that they are learned during childhood. The second is that this childhood learning further shapes any subsequent modifications of them. The third is that the scale of any such subsequent modifications is small: fundamental political orientations tend to endure through life. We propose, using cohort analysis, to examine the extent to which three political orientations – party identification, political efficacy and political trust – do, as a matter of fact, endure through adulthood.


In 1882 modern education in both France and the Galilee began a massive and continuous penetration into rural zones, followed by deep tensions between modernist teachers and local conservative populations. Many similarities existed between those two seemingly unconnected rural environments. This article analyzes the essence and the significances of similar features of the above processes and considers whether they might be the result of transnational influences. In both arenas, tensions between teachers and peasants reflected open and hidden social, political, and cultural differences. Peasants could hardly understand the efforts teachers were required to invest; they saw in them threatening representatives of external authorities—the Third Republic in France or the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), the dominant philanthropic association in the Galilee. Main contestations concerned religion, which, for the teachers, became a symbol of all the negative aspects of peasant societies. Teachers also made great efforts to implant notions of romantic nationalism into societies to which such concepts were alien. Such attitudes were translated into thorny conflicts of influence between teachers and parents in rural communities. Consequently, teachers remained in practice socially semi-excluded.


2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Costa Lobo

This article reviews books which test the personalization of politics, looking at different dimensions of the growing importance of leaders over time, namely for political parties, in electoral behaviour and in the media. Only recently have wide-ranging comparative longitudinal studies on leaders been carried out. The personalization thesis is not equally demonstrated across all dimensions. Indeed, we find something of a puzzle: There is no strong trend towards personalization of party organizations, whereas in electoral behaviour the evidence points to the increasing use by voters of leaders as heuristics. This attests to the decline of the importance of parties. The personalization of media may be the mechanism which explains the change in voting behaviour, and the third and final section of the review looks into that arena. We conclude with some suggestions on further research on the personalization of politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cletus Famous Nwankwo

Abstract This article examines the influence of religion on voter choice homogeneity (VCH) in the Nigerian presidential elections of the fourth republic (1999–2015). The result indicates that in the first two elections, religion did not have a significant impact on VCH but had increasing influence from 2011. Thus, compared with the 1999 and 2003 elections, the effect of faith in 2011 and 2015 elections was positive, but the impact of religion was highest in 2015, having a significant and robust effect on VCH. Thus, the paper demonstrates that impact of faith in the presidential elections in the fourth republic has strengthened over time. This finding is, however, put in the context of each election regarding the role of candidates’ popularity, party-identification, ethnicity, candidates’ performance, the number of candidates contesting the election and the position of prominent leaders of the different regions of the country. The paper demonstrates that placing the influence of religion on vote choice in the context of each election and place-specific manifestation of VCH is pertinent in understanding better how religion shapes voting behaviour in Nigeria.


1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Brody ◽  
Lawrence S. Rothenberg

Scholars have long assigned a key role to party identification as an explanation of voting behaviour. In doing so, they have assumed that individuals' partisan affiliations remain unchanged for long periods of time. But is partisanship sufficiently stable to justify this assumption? At the very least, to be considered a long-term force party identification cannot change during an election. Yet the intra-election stability of party affiliations has been accepted on faith, rather than examined empirically.Our analysis tests this assumption by looking at the evolution of partisanship over the course of the 1980 election. We find that many citizens do alter their partisanship over a single electoral period. These changes in party identification follow a systematic - and not a random - pattern. Both cognitive and affective factors account for this intra-election partisan lability. These findings suggest that much of the previous research on voting behaviour has been seriously misspecified.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 104-111
Author(s):  
David Johnston

Books Reviewed: Jack Goody, Islam in Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press,2004; Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization. NewYork: Columbia University Press, 2004; James A. Bill and John Alden Williams,Roman Catholics and Shi’i Muslims: Prayer, Passion, and Politics.Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.There can be no doubt that the twenty-first century has begun – and continues– under the ominous cloud of enmity between Muslim groups or nationsand western ones, from the attacks on American soil on 11 September 2001to those in Madrid and London, to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, andnow in the growing tension with Iran. Unsurprisingly, this has spurred amushrooming of publications on the troubled relations between “Islam andthe West,” with almost every book pointing out the bold Christian rhetoricemanating from a militarily aggressive White House.Kenneth Cragg, the veteran Christian expositor of the Qur’an, more prolificthan ever in his nineties (seven titles since 2002), astutely named one ofhis latest books The Qur’an and the West (Georgetown University Press:2006). Not only is “Islam” misleading in terms of the wide diversity of cultures,sects, and spiritualities inspired by the Qur’an and the Hadith literature,but for Cragg, Muslims in today’s globalized world, whether living as“exiles” in the West or within Muslim-majority states, will have to choosebetween the vulnerable faith proclaimed in the early years in Makkah andthe religion cum political rule exemplified by the Prophet in Madinah. Asusual, Cragg also challenges the Christian side, which, in its American incarnation,largely rationalizes the use of power to extend its hegemony fromIsrael-Palestine to Central Asia in the name of democracy.Though all three books under review here share Cragg’s motivation toreduce tension and foster greater understanding between Muslims andChristians, only the third (on Shi`ites and Catholics) represents the kind oftheological dialogue that Cragg and others have nourished over the years ...


Author(s):  
Spyros Kosmidis

The chapter reviews studies and shows evidence related to several aspects of the voting behaviour of Greek citizens, in contrast to other similar and dissimilar democracies. It begins with a historical overview of social cleavages and their role in determining coalitions amongst different segments of the electorate. It continues to evaluate the role of group (i.e. party identification) and class membership by reviewing national and cross-national research. It also shows empirical evidence using the available data sources. The chapter continues with a review of studies looking into the role of economic conditions in shaping vote choices, and aims to identify a future research agenda.


Author(s):  
Michael Marsh

This chapter explores the extent to which the cleavages underlying voting behaviour in the Irish party system have changed since the 1970s. The divisions within the party system can be seen as between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, between Fianna Fáil and the rest, between Fine Gael and the rest (leaving aside Fianna Fáil), and between left and right. The basis for voting analysed are class, religion, party identification, and ideology. The weight of each on each division is traced over time. While the party system has clearly fragmented, and the left has grown in size, the importance of each of these factors has not changed significantly, either since the 1970s, or just since the economic crisis. Various explanations for the lack of change are discussed, including the persistence of candidate centred voting, localism, and how party competition has tended to obscure real policy differences.


1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Wahass ◽  
Gerry Kent

Auditory hallucinations comprise the most common symptoms of schizophrenia. Although antipsychotic medications are helpful, in that they reduce symptoms and the likelihood of relapse, many patients do not benefit from their use. In recent years, psychological interventions have been developed in the West to help such patients. However, cross-cultural studies have shown that the nature and form of auditory hallucinations are affected by cultural differences, suggesting that a patient's cultural background needs to be considered when applying psychological methods. In this study, three schizophrenic patients from Saudi Arabia whose auditory hallucinations persisted despite the administration of antipsychotic medications were given a modified psychological intervention designed to alter the characteristics and content of their hallucinations. The modifications included an emphasis on Islamic doctrine and religion. Two patients benefited from the interventions. The third patient was reluctant to engage with the therapist, probably because the content of his voices was benign. The importance of such modifications when employing psychological intervention for patients from non-Western backgrounds is discussed.


1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BARTLE

Social class has long been assumed to be the predominant social or structural determinant of voting behaviour. This article assesses the effect of class on voting behaviour at the 1992 general election by adopting the causal modelling perspective developed by Warren E. Miller and J. Merrill Shanks. It explores two mechanisms (party identification and left–right ideological positions) which may mediate the effect of class on voting behaviour. However, it demonstrates that wherever class is assumed to be located in the causal order, it does not dominate analysis of voting behaviour and left–right positions.


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