POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

 Often the focus is on voting, but participation can be away from the formal political system. Feminists declared 'the personal is political' and this broadened the scope.

VOTING BEHAVIOUR

  •  Main issue is how much class determines how much class influences voting, and possible alternative influences.
  •  Social Class and Voting (Butler and Stokes)
  •  Traditional explanation is that people are socialised according to class and this is the influence of how a person votes. To explain labour losing when there was a working class majority voting, the concept of deviant voting was invented, and decided that deviant voters actually decide elections.
  •  Deviant voting means voting for a party that doesn't seem to represent your interests.


 Explanations for deviant voting are:

 

  •  The embourgeoisement of SOME of the working class (became middle class).
  •  Deferential working class, voters who voted for their superiors.
  •  Instrumental voters, who calculated their individual interests.
  •  Middle class radicals who voted labour
  •  Class Dealignment and Partisan Dealignment (Crewe 1983)
  •  Class dealignment, means that since 1974, the link between class and voting has become so weak that deviant voting theory is not so useful. The decline in permanent loyalty to one party is called partisan dealignment. The reasons for these changes are:
    • Shrinking of the working class due to division of the traditional and new working class (traditional were
    • council tennents in public sector in the north, and new working class are opposite),  which Crewe argued existed by studying the 1987 and 1992 elections.
    •   Divisions in the middle class, eg. unionised routine clerics in the public sector are less likely to vote conservative.
    •   Most people in all classes got richer, and affluence was associated with voting conservative.

Rational Choice Theories

  •  The voter is seen as a consumer, and parties market themselves to her/him.

Back to Social Class?

 Embourgeoisement theory of the fifties was revisited after four successive conservative victories starting in 1979. Heath argued that social class was still the main voting determiner, but  new classifications of socio-economic groups were required to reveal the link between class and voting.

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

 Types of political action

  •   Voting
  • Membership of parties and pressure group
  •   Holding office
  •   Decision-making
  •   Direct action

 

 Participants in mainstream politics tend to be people who feel that they are insiders, white males etc. But minorities like women's organisations and trade unions are exceptions.

 Gender and Politics

 There are more females involved now, but still less than males due to family commitments. Political battles for women need to take place in the family as well as in conventional politics.

 Ethnicity and Politics

 There are less ethnic politicians than white. Most that do enter are Asian males, who stayed with labour even when labour performed badly. Social class explains some but not all of the preference of voting for labour.

Extra Information


Don't go too far back in history
Talk mostly about voting, but not only about it

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