Party attachment as a source of political cues: A priority variable in comparative perspective.

Abstract

Political parties play a crucial role in interest articulation and aggregation in modern mass democracies. At the individual level they supply their followers with political cues for activities, evaluations, choices and even the organization of beliefs about politics. The stronger the partisanship, the more effectively the party gives cues. Party identification continues to have high priority in political behavior research in the United States, while applications of the concept elsewhere have had mixed success. Where class or religious cleavages are strong, partisanship seems to yield little more than alternate measure of current vote. Researchers have started to explore the partisan strength dimension in Western Europe, but the future functionality of partisanship itself is now questioned for well-educated "cognitive mobilizers" in a "New Politics" world where parties themselves perhaps have less relevance. This thesis explores the utility of partisan strength in studying political attitudes and behavior in six Western nations. The validity of a new party closeness measure is examined in the 1974 Political Action surveys. In factor analyses, party closeness shares meaning with indicators of participation, party evaluation and organizational memberships, without being limited to any one of these dimensions. The analysis of criterion variables like age and partisanship transfer confirms that the closeness measures in the various countries are indeed functionally equivalent. The cue-giving function of partisan closeness is examined for conventional participation, unconventional (protest) activities, and political beliefs. Attachment strength is consistently and positively related to performing conventional activities, even controlling for factors like education and party type. Such relationships do not exist with protest, except in Italy; the strongest partisans elsewhere protest less than other groups, as non-Italian parties have perhaps not incorporated protest into their action repertory to the same extent. In all nations the degree of constraint in individuals' political belief systems increases with party closeness, as parties help their followers organize the political world. Finally, limited over-time analyses do not find evidence of actual or impending dramatic reductions in the analytic utility of partisanship, confirming party attachment as "a forgotten priority variable.".