Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1998. 1:357–78
Copyright © 1998 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
THE DECLINE OF PARTIES IN THE
MINDS OF CITIZENS
Harold D. Clarke
Department of Political Science, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas 76203;
e-mail: [email protected]
Marianne C. Stewart
School of Social Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75083;
e-mail: [email protected]
KEY WORDS: partisanship, party identification, independence, dealignment, instability
ABSTRACT
In recent years, volatility in the electoral fortunes of major political parties in
Western democracies has invigorated scholarly debate over the roles that
parties play in the political process and the positions that they occupy in the
public mind. Data from national election surveys and inter-election public
opinion polls reveal that parties have declined in the minds of citizens in the
United States, Canada, and Great Britain over the past 40 years. Varying
combinations of decreasing percentages of strong party identifiers, increasing percentages of independents and nonidentifiers, and increasing individual-level instability in party identifications indicate that the electorates of
all three countries have experienced significant “dealignments of degree.”
The three cases are not atypical; survey evidence indicates that partisan attachments have weakened in a wide variety of mature democracies.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, volatility in the electoral fortunes of major political parties in
Western democracies has invigorated scholarly debate over the roles that parties play in the political process and the positions that they occupy in the public
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mind, in old and new democracies alike. On the one hand, it is claimed that parties continue to discharge the responsibilities assigned to them in democratic
theory and, relatedly, to secure the steadfast loyalties of many citizens. Thus,
party identification displays the properties of the “unmoved mover,” as declared by the creators of this concept and perpetuated by its defenders in core
models of electoral choice. Skeptics, however, maintain that the decline of political parties is evident in their decreasing importance in democratic governance and downward trends in public support for them. Accordingly, the most
salient characteristic of partisanship since it was first measured in national
election surveys in the 1950s has been its long-term erosion in what has become a protracted era of dealignment in the United States and other democracies.
Since part of the debate over the decline of parties refers to disagreements
over the conceptualization, measurement, and methodology of studying partisanship, this chapter begins by reviewing several approaches to its meaning.
Next, we discuss related cross-time and cross-space issues that have dominated controversies over question wording and measurement. The debate over
party decline also requires attention to the weight of empirical evidence concerning the strength and stability of voters’ partisan attachments. We therefore
present basic findings on these properties of partisanship for three AngloAmerican democracies where aggregate-level time series and individual-level
panel data permit broadly comparable diachronic analyses spanning several
decades. Data from national election surveys and public opinion polls reveal
that parties have indeed declined in the minds of citizens in the United States,
Canada, and Great Britain over the past 40 years. Varying combinations of decreasing percentages of strong party identifiers, increasing percentages of independents and nonidentifiers, and increasing instability in party identifications indicate that all three countries have experienced significant “dealignments of degree” since the 1950s and 1960s. The three cases are not atypical;
similar analyses document that partisan attachments have weakened in a wide
variety of mature democracies.
Recent research using sophisticated time-series and latent-variable methodologies has stimulated renewed debates on the extent of instability of partisanship in the United States and elsewhere. There may be a virtuous spiral building—these debates currently are prompting further research that has strong potential to enhance understanding of the nature and dynamics of partisan attachments at the individual and aggregate levels. We suggest that investigators
pursuing these lines of inquiry might profitably employ models and methods
that can delineate how institutional configurations and contextual forces shape
short- and long-term movements in partisan attitudes and behaviors. To do so
effectively will require data-generation projects employing an expanded repertoire of measures of partisanship.
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PARTISANSHIP: DEBATES, DYNAMICS, AND
DETERMINANTS
In the United States, the evolution of voting behavior research has been associated closely with the development of the concept of party identification. Both
have been subject to explanations that accord pride of place to social, psychological, and economic variables (Dalton & Wattenberg 1993, pp. 196–202).
Explanations developed initially by sociologists and others associated with
Columbia University (Lazarsfeld et al 1948, Berelson et al 1954) have been refurbished recently by proponents of contextual analysis (Huckfeldt & Sprague
1993). In these explanations, social distinctions determine political preferences. More specifically, class, race, region, or some other dominant cleavage
constitutes an environment that conditions individual activities and group behaviors. This environment has far-reaching implications for political parties
and other organizations seeking to transmit information and mobilize participation in elections.
Supplementing the above explanations are models that ground voting behavior not only in social location but also in psychological processes. The earliest model, developed at the University of Michigan, employs reference- and
small-group theory in social psychology (Belknap & Campbell 1952, Campbell et al 1960; see also Campbell et al 1954, Butler & Stokes 1969, Miller &
Shanks 1996). Its central concept is party identification. In its original formulation, party identification is “an individual’s affective orientation to an important group-object in his environment” (Campbell et al 1960, p. 121). This identification usually develops as a result of early-life, primarily familial, socialization processes (Campbell et al 1960, Jennings & Niemi 1974). It typically is
highly stable in direction and increases in strength as a function of individuals’
occupational, partnering, and parenting experiences and their repeated exposure to the institutions and processes of the political system as they pass
through the life cycle (Converse 1969, 1976). Party identification not only influences vote choice directly, it also does so indirectly by shaping attitudes toward and opinions about parties’ issue performance and their candidates for
public office. It acts as a powerful long-term force anchoring voting behavior;
thus, a “normal vote” can be thought of as reflecting the distribution of party
identification in the electorate, adjusted for the differential turnout rates of
various groups of party identifiers (Campbell et al 1966). Finally, the stability
of party identification is a major factor in the expression of public support for,
and the persistence of, the party system and political order in which it is embedded.
Similar to the multidimensional construct of partisan attitudes centering on
candidates, groups, issues, and performance evaluations that appears in The
American Voter (Campbell et al 1960) is a newer notion of partisanship that
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owes much to schema theory in cognitive psychology. According to this body
of theory, schemas are cognitive structures that involve people’s reception,
processing, and retrieval of information on which they make decisions and
choose actions from a set of alternatives. Partisan schemas are those that consist of perceptions of partisan differences related to interest in, experience
with, and knowledge of political parties (Lodge & Hamill 1986, p. 507).
These investigations of the psychological underpinnings of partisanship
and voting have been joined by models that emphasize “economic” or “rational” considerations in party-support decisions (Downs 1957, Key 1968,
Fiorina 1981). In an early exposition of such a model, Downs argued that the
rational citizen compares his/her utility received under an incumbent with
what would have been obtained under another party. Current “party differentials” then are calculated and employed as the basis for choosing one party
among competing alternatives (Downs 1957, p. 49). Key thought along similar lines and, to some extent, foreshadowed the cognitive psychological view
of partisanship. According to Key, “the citizen does not necessarily make
party instrumental of his ends by a simple rational choice, but [people] carry
crude diagrams in their heads” (1967, p. 433) and “many persons bring parties to their service by a mental shortcut” (1967, p. 442). Key described a
connection between policy preference and party identification, which develops in two ways. People either form an identification that leads them to adopt
the preference of their party or they form a preference that grounds an identification (Key 1967, p. 443). Given the latter possibility, Key suggested that
the correlation between parental partisanship and that of children attenuates
over time. One reason is that “[l]ike or dislike of a political personality or a
party policy and many other factors bring shifts in party identification”
(1967, pp. 298–99). In the event that partisanship displays dynamic qualities,
the vote would not be a standing decision from one election to another (Key
1968).
Other than expressing their arguments in more abstract terms, most newer
versions of the economic or rational model have not strayed far from Downs
and Key. These versions argue that partisanship is the possibly mutable result
of voters acting as utility-maximizing or -satisficing information gatherers
(see Fiorina 1977, 1981; see also Franklin & Jackson 1983; Alt 1984; Franklin
1984, 1992; MacKuen et al 1989; Achen 1992). Although they differ in their
claims about the relative weight that voters place on past- vs future-oriented
judgments, these theories specify that partisanship should be conceptualized
as a summary “running tally” of current and previous party performance
evaluations (Fiorina 1981), with more weight being given to recent assessments than to earlier ones. Thus, partisanship is updated over time as voters acquire new information on parties’ actual or anticipated performance and make
additional performance evaluations.
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The alternative conceptualizations of partisanship discussed above have
been accompanied by ongoing concerns about the adequacy of the standard
measures of party identification employed in the American National Election
Studies (ANES). Since 1952, the sequence of questions has asked respondents:
(a) “Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a
Democrat, an Independent, or what?” (b) [For those mentioning a party in (a)]
“Would you call yourself a strong [Republican or Democrat] or a not very
strong [Republican or Democrat]?” (c) [For those not mentioning a party in
(a)] “Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican or Democratic
party?” (Campbell et al 1960, p. 122; Miller & Shanks 1996).
It is difficult to identify a word in (a) that has not been a source of controversy. In the “cross-time” debate, the ANES “[g]enerally speaking” lead-in is
pitted against the opening words of Gallup’s question, “[i]n politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent?”
Their seeming incompatibility has led some observers to ask whether the
ANES lead-in, which is intended “to measure enduring group identification
rather than transitory feelings of partisan preference” (Miller & Shanks 1996,
p. 125), does its job too well by prompting an over-report of stability. However, its Gallup rival presumably suffers from the opposite problem by inducing an over-report of instability. Relatedly, it is argued that the ANES question
prompts long-term thinking, whereas the Gallup question boosts the salience
of short-term considerations, particularly current vote intentions (for discussion of the controversy, see MacKuen et al 1992; see also MacKuen et al 1989,
Abramson & Ostrom 1991, Bishop et al 1994, Clarke & Suzuki 1994, BoxSteffensmeier & Smith 1996, Green et al 1997). As a result, question-wording
differences foil empirical analyses of the extent to which individual-level patterns revealed in the ANES mirror or mask the trends in macropartisanship detected by the Gallup indicator. By replicating the party-identification question
sequence used in the British Election Studies (BES) in monthly opinion surveys conducted by the Gallup organization in Great Britain, one current project seeks to avoid the question-wording problem (Clarke et al 1997a,b).
The “cross-space” controversy hinges on the wisdom of exporting concepts
and measures of party identification, partisanship, and independence to nonAmerican settings. Outside of the United States, notions of party identification
or partisanship may not have a meaning independent from that of a current
vote (see Dalton & Wattenberg 1993, pp. 204–6) or ideology (see Fleury &
Lewis-Beck 1993 vs Converse & Pierce 1993). Moreover, the “do you usually
think of yourself ” probe in question (a) may assume a sense of personal political identity that is lacking outside the United States. It also is argued that the
rest of the ANES question, which states the names of both parties and independence, is problematic in countries where multiple parties exist and the concept of political independence lacks the currency it has in American political
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discourse (Budge et al 1976, Barnes et al 1988, Johnston 1992; see also Heath
& Pierce 1992).
In the United States, possible “intransitivities” in relationships involving
the ANES summary identification measure and other measures of party support also have stimulated controversy. Particularly noteworthy is the propensity of “independent leaners” to display more party-oriented voting records
than do weak identifiers. The debate thus focuses on whether independent
Democrats or independent Republicans are genuine independents or “closet
partisans” (Keith et al 1992, Dennis 1992). More recently, it has been suggested that people who do not express a party preference but are attuned to
politics differ from true partisans or independents (Wattenberg 1994).
These debates have prompted efforts to improve the indicators used in the
ANES. It has been suggested that multiple measures of the direction and
strength of party identification, and of partisanship and independence, are necessary to encompass the variety of ways in which people feel and think about
parties as objects of support and as institutions in politics (Wattenberg 1994, p.
5; see also Campbell et al 1960, Weisberg 1980, Lodge & Hamill 1986, Niemi
et al 1991). To date, the most innovative project remains one that injected new
and varied questions on partisan support and political independence into the
1980 ANES (Dennis 1988a,b, 1992).
At present, two considerations recommend the continued use of the standard measures in the ANES, BES, and elsewhere. One is that they are deemed
acceptable by many investigators (Beck 1986, pp. 253–55). Another is that
they are available over a lengthy period of time and hence are useful in analyses of the (in)stability of partisanship. Some of these analyses have attempted
to advance the essentials of the social-psychological approach to party identification. Particularly noteworthy is their emphasis on its longer-term stability
among Anglo-American and other electorates (Heath & McDonald 1988, Rose
& McAllister 1990, Heath et al 1991, Miller 1991, Miller & Shanks 1996). In
this regard, some researchers recently have reported that structural equation
models taking account of measurement error in survey responses provide evidence of high levels of over-time stability (e.g. Green & Palmquist 1990,
Schickler & Green 1997).
However, another growing body of research has documented volatility in
partisan ties, which can be understood with reference to three developments.
One is the erosion of the traditional social anchors of partisanship (Lipset &
Rokkan 1967, Franklin et al 1992), such as the class-party nexus in Britain
(Crewe et al 1977, Sarlvik & Crewe 1983) or party switching by white males in
the American South (Miller & Shanks 1996, pp. 140–43, 159–61). A second
development consists of momentous events that replace or convert parties’ cohorts of identifiers in the electorate. A third is the changing mix of salient
forces that operate in the electoral arena at various points in time (see Dalton &
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Wattenberg 1993, pp. 203–6). Paramount among these forces are the images of
party leaders or candidates who present themselves for public approval, the issues that they champion, and the policies that they espouse.
In sum, change in party identification and accompanying high levels of volatility in party support over successive elections have become characteristic
signatures of an era of partisan dealignment (Dalton 1996, Dalton & Wattenberg
1993, pp. 203–6). In the United States, partisan change has been detected at both
the individual and aggregate levels (e.g. Franklin & Jackson 1983, Beck 1984,
MacKuen et al 1989). The dominant long-run pattern has been one of weakening identifications and a substantially increasing number of Americans who report that they are independents (Brody 1991, Clarke & Suzuki 1994). In comparative perspective, analysts report that partisanship has weakened in several
Western European countries including, among others, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, and Sweden (Dalton 1996, 1997)
as well as Australia and New Zealand (Dalton 1997), Canada (Clarke et al
1979, 1996; Clarke & Stewart 1985, 1987; Clarke & Kornberg 1993, 1996;
Stewart & Clarke, 1998), and Great Britain (Crewe et al 1977, Sarlvik &
Crewe 1983, Alt 1984, Clarke & Stewart 1984; see also Clarke et al 1997a,b).
The following section provides empirical evidence of the dealignments of degree that have transpired in three Anglo-American countries.
DEALIGNMENTS OF DEGREE: THE UNITED STATES,
GREAT BRITAIN, CANADA
Time series data are crucial for measuring aggregate-level changes in the
strength of voters’ partisan attachments. Because such data are sparse or
wholly unavailable for many countries, global generalizations concerning the
dynamics of partisanship lack a firm empirical foundation. Three exceptions
are the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Access to the requisite time
series of surveys for these countries enables us to conduct parallel analyses of
long-term trends in the strength and durability of partisan attachments in their
electorates. We begin by considering over-time changes in the intensity of partisanship in the United States. The ANES surveys (currently spanning the
1952–1996 period) are the canonical source of data on partisanship in this
country. However, other time-series data on party identification in the United
States are available; best known are the lengthy Gallup Poll series used by
Converse (1976) and then by MacKuen et al (1989) in their widely cited research on “macropartisanship.” Unlike the ANES surveys, the administration
of which is geared to presidential and congressional elections,1 the Gallup sur1 1The ANES also has conducted several “pilot” surveys in nonelection years, but these do not
enable one to construct a consistent annual time series of ANES party identification data gathered
from representative samples of the national electorate.
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veys have measured party identification at least quarterly since the early
1950s.
The time-series data provided by the ANES and the Gallup party identification measures tell the same basic story about the evolution of partisanship in
the American electorate. Since the early 1950s, there has been a sizable increase in the percentage of voters who decline to label themselves as Democrats or Republicans. The ANES data indicate that the percentage of independents (including those who say they “feel closer” to a party) has increased from
23% to 33% over the 1952–1996 period; the latter figure signifies a slight decline from a high of 37% reached in 1988 and 1978 (Figure 1). The ANES series, which enables one to assess the strength as well as the direction of party
identification for respondents who consider themselves Democrats or Republicans, also shows a small net decrease in the percentage of “strong” identifiers
(from 36% in 1952 to 33% in 1996). Similarly, the Gallup series (available to
us from the first quarter of 1953 to the fourth quarter of 1992) shows an upward
movement in the percentage of independents (Figure 2). Time-series data on
party identification in the United States thus document an erosion—not a
wholesale abandonment—of partisan attachments over the past half-century.
As discussed above, there is a substantial literature chronicling the weakening of partisanship in the American electorate. As Converse (1976) and others
have documented, both the ANES and Gallup series indicate that a substantial
proportion of this partisan dealignment occurred between 1965 and 1975,
when events such as the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate made this era a very troubled and turbulent one in American political history. In this regard, a “dual regime” switching regression model shows that the
crucial period for the long-term upward shift in independence was early
Figure 1
Strong party identifiers and independents, United States, NES, 1952–1996.
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1967— before the vast majority of American casualties in Vietnam, six years
before the Watergate scandal erupted, and nearly seven years before the oilprice shocks precipitated an era of stagflation (Clarke & Suzuki 1994, pp.
71–77). As Figure 2 illustrates, fitting a Hodrick-Prescott trend (Enders 1995,
p. 210) to the series reveals that a second sharp upward swing in independence
began in the mid-1980s and continued into the early 1990s.
Clarke & Suzuki’s analyses also reveal an ongoing “political economy of
independence” whereby short-term variations in the size of the independent
group are driven in predictable ways by salient economic and political events
and conditions. Among the political events and conditions are presidential and
off-year congressional elections. Although the relationships are not significant
before the mid-1960s, afterward the percentage of independents varies inversely with the occurrence of presidential and off-year congressional elections. This finding is consistent with classic hypotheses concerning the partisan mobilization functions of elections (e.g. Key 1964, p. 484; see also Campbell et al 1966), and it underscores the importance of measuring partisanship in
nonelectoral as well as electoral contexts. The short-run fluctuations in independence caused by elections and other transient political and economic forces
overlay the long-term upward shift in independence documented by Clarke &
Suzuki and earlier analysts. Such short-term movements in independence are
obscured by the ANES surveys, which are infrequently administered and
driven by the national election timetable, but they are clearly visible in the
more closely spaced observations from Gallup polls (Figure 2). Partisanship in
the American electorate thus has displayed both long- and short-term variation
in the proportion of independents, with the underlying trajectory over the past
half-century being toward the weakening of party ties.
Figure 2
Percentage of independents, United States quarterly Gallup polls, 1953:1–1992:4
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The American “dealignment of degree” has a counterpart in Great Britain
and, in fact, the term was originally coined by the authors to refer to the British,
not the US, case (Clarke & Stewart 1984). The British evidence is provided by
data gathered in the series of national election surveys (the BES) conducted
over the 1964–1997 period. The British and Canadian party identification
question batteries are similar, but not identical, to the one employed in the
ANES, so precise comparisons of the strength of partisanship in the three
countries are not possible. In particular, the “independent” option is missing
from the first question in the BES, the 1965–1984 Canadian National Election
Studies (CNES), and the 1983–1997 “Political Support in Canada” (see e.g.
Kornberg & Clarke 1992) party identification batteries. For example, the BES
question is: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, or what?” (In Scotland and Wales, the Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru, respectively, also are mentioned.)
Some analysts (Johnston 1992; see also Green & Schickler 1993) have investigated whether the absence of the “independent” option in such questions
inflates the number of respondents classified as party identifiers. Johnston’s
(1992) analyses led him to claim that one should replace the “or what” language with “none of these” to obtain a more accurate measure of the incidence
of nonidentification and, hence, the strength of partisanship in the electorate.
In response, Clarke & Kornberg (1993) observed that “none of these” does not
necessarily imply a lack of partisanship. Absent an exhaustive list of parties in
the question, some of the “none of these” responses will come from identifiers
with various minor parties. Clarke & Kornberg (see also Clarke et al 1997) also
demonstrated that differences in the percentage of nonidentifiers as measured
by the revised and the traditional CNES party identification batteries are statistically insignificant and substantively trivial (<2%) for 1988 and 1993 Canadian post-election survey data, when the traditional summary partisanship
measure is constructed using the two question batteries. Additionally, it bears
emphasis that there is no canonical standard by which to judge the utility of
survey questions for measuring the “true” incidence of nonidentification and
the intensity of partisanship more generally.2 In this regard, question-wording
differences that may inhibit comparisons of the strength of partisanship in
various Anglo-American countries are minor compared to the differences between these questions and the ones used to measure partisanship in such countries as Germany or France (see e.g. Baker et al 1981, Dalton 1996, LewisBeck 1996). Difficulties in cross-national comparison aside, the requisite for
2 2Johnston (1992, p. 558) cautions that his proposed new measure may produce “measurement
difficulties in its own right.... A new wording might, for instance, create a category of spurious
nonpartisans” (emphasis in original).
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accurate measures of over-time trends in partisanship in a particular country is
a lengthy time series assembled using the same measuring instrument.3
Figure 3 displays data on party identification in Britain as measured by the
standard BES question battery for the 1964–1997 period. The figure shows
that the percentage of “very strong” identifiers moved sharply downward between the 1970 and February 1974 elections and has not recovered since then.
More detailed analyses of the dynamics of British party identification during
the 1970s and early 1980s reveal that the erosion of partisan ties affected both
major parties, with the percentages of very strong Conservative and Labour
identifiers declining substantially (Clarke & Stewart 1984, p. 693). Although
the 1997 BES data are not available as of this writing, a Gallup survey that we
conducted two weeks before the 1997 election shows the percentage of very
strong identifiers at 21%—less than half what it was (45%) in 1964. Concomitant with this long-term decrease in the percentage of strong partisans, Figure 3
shows that the “not very strong” identification group has doubled, from 14% in
1964 to 28% in 1997. However, as in the United States, relatively few British
voters have abandoned partisan attachments completely; the percentages of
nonidentifiers4 in 1964 and 1997 are 3% and 6%, respectively.
Weakening partisanship also characterizes the Canadian voter. Data on
party identification in Canada are available in a series of national surveys conducted since the mid-1960s. As indicated above, such surveys have been the
centerpieces of an ongoing series of national election studies initiated in 1965.
Starting in 1983, others have been commissioned as parts of the aforementioned Political Support in Canada project. Since several of the latter surveys
have been conducted in nonelection as well as election years, we may investigate if elections mobilize partisanship and, thus, if surveys conducted in election years provide an incomplete picture of strength and dynamics of party
ties.5
Although LeDuc (1984) has claimed that Canada is an example of the politics of “stable dealignment,” Figure 4 suggests that the strength of party identification has not been constant. Rather, the percentage of “very strong” identifi3 3The lengthy party-identification time series that are available for the US, Britain, and Canada
do not have equivalents in many other major Western democracies (see e.g. the discussion of party
identification measures in Germany and France in Baker et al 1981, Dalton 1996, and Lewis-Beck
1996.
4 4To maximize comparability with how party identification has been measured in the Canadian
case, British nonidentifiers are persons who do not adopt a party label in response to the first
question in the BES battery and also say that they do not “think of themselves as a little closer” to
any of the parties.
5 5Analysis of the partisan mobilization effects of elections is difficult for the British case
because few nonelection year surveys contained the BES party-identification battery prior to the
mid-1980s, and some of these data for the 1990s (i.e. those gathered by CREST project) have not
been released for secondary analysis.
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Figure 3
Strength of party identification, Britain, 1964–1997.
ers has decreased gradually between 1965 and 1997, reaching its lowest level
(19%) at the time of the most recent (June 1997) national election. However,
this downward movement is accompanied by the hypothesized election-year
effects; partisanship is stronger in election than in nonelection years. Regression analysis estimates are consistent with these hypotheses; controlling for
possible election-year effects, the size of the very strong identifier group has
decreased by about 0.19% per year since the mid-1960s. The former are significant as well, with the very strong identifier group being nearly 7% larger in
election than in nonelection years.
The conclusion that the strength of partisanship has decreased in Canada
since the 1960s is buttressed by an analysis of nonidentification. As in Britain,
Canadian nonidentifiers are classified as persons who do not declare a party
identification and then, in response to a follow-up question, deny that they
think of themselves as “closer” to one of the parties. In terms of an absence of
professed partisanship, these nonidentifiers are analogous to persons classified
as “pure independents” in the American ANES surveys. Although the term
“independent” has little resonance in Canadian politics and very few survey respondents refer to themselves this way, in every survey conducted since 1965 a
sizable minority of respondents refuse to label themselves as party supporters.
The size of the nonidentifier group increased markedly in some surveys conducted in the 1980s (Figure 5). This tendency has continued in the 1990s; in
three of seven surveys in this decade, including a 1997 national election campaign survey, the percentage of nonidentifiers reached 30%. This figure is
much greater than the percentages of American pure independents (9%) or
British nonidentifiers (6%) recorded in the most recent election surveys in the
latter two countries (Figures 1 and 3). Again, regression analysis estimates are
consonant with the hypothesis that party ties have loosened in Canada—net of
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Figure 4
369
Percentages of “very strong” federal party identifiers, Canada, 1965–1997.
election-year effects, the percentage of nonidentifiers has trended upward at
slightly less than 0.5% per year since the 1960s. Elections also make a difference, however; the number of nonidentifiers drops by 3.5% in election-year
surveys.
There are, then, important commonalities and interesting differences in the
evolution of the strength of partisanship in these three Anglo-American countries. As the above analyses demonstrate, all three countries have experienced
significant erosions of the intensity of partisan attachments in their electorates
since party identification was first measured in national election studies in the
1950s and 1960s. In the United States, the mid- to late1960s was a crucial period of partisan dealignment and, as illustrated above, there is some evidence
that a second upward surge in dealignment began in the mid-1980s. In Britain,
the 1970s were the “decade of dealignment” (Sarlvik & Crewe 1983). Recent
surveys in both of these countries suggest that the erosion of partisanship has
slowed or perhaps even halted in the mid-1990s. The Canadian pattern is different. Not only is partisan volatility—as measured by the percentage of nonidentifiers in successive surveys—markedly greater than in the American and
British cases, but the percentage of persons indicating a total absence of party
ties has reached much higher levels than in the United States or Britain.6
Stability
Over-time measures of the stability of partisanship provide another important
measure of the centrality of party in the political psychology of the electorate.
6 6Note that, if Johnston (1992) is correct, the effect of the US-Canada question-wording
difference is to discount, not exaggerate, the percentage of Canadian nonidentifiers.
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Figure 5
Percentages of federal party nonidentifiers, Canada, 1965–1997.
Although it is logically possible that an electorate might be characterized by
partisan attachments that are weak but stable, if parties have declined in the
minds of citizens, then one might anticipate that partisan attachments would
show increasing instability as well as growing weakness. Simply put, since
party identifications don’t mean as much to voters as they used to, they can be
changed more easily. Panel surveys, i.e. surveys that interview the same respondents two or more times, are required to measure the individual-level instability of partisan attachments. Although such surveys are generally in short
supply, several have been conducted in the United States, Britain, and Canada.
It is important to examine these panel data in terms of the alternative conceptions of party identification discussed above. If, as the Michigan social psychologists long have insisted, party identification is a stable psychological attachment in the minds of the vast majority of voters, one would find relatively
little individual-level instability when respondents are asked about their partisan attachments in repeated surveys. A second possibility is that high levels of
stability did, in fact, obtain in the era of The American Voter (Campbell et al
1960) but that the dealigning tendencies discussed above have significantly
weakened party identifications and, in consequence, individual-level instability is now widespread. However, a third possibility is that party identifications
were never as stable as originally hypothesized. Many voters’ party ties are unstable in the 1990s, but this was the case in the 1950s and 1960 as well. The latter two possibilities contradict arguments that the Michigan model adequately
describes the political psychology of contemporary electorates, but they are
consonant with the conceptions of party identification advanced by theorists
who view it as a summary of present and discounted past performance evaluations of parties and party leaders. Because these evaluations can be highly mu-
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table and previous evaluations are (perhaps heavily) discounted, changes in
voters’ partisan attachments are ongoing possibilities.
Considering the American case, Figure 6a presents data from four ANES
panel studies conducted since the mid-1950s. Three of these panels are threewave studies spanning multi-year periods (1956, 1958, 1960; 1972, 1974,
1976; 1990, 1991, 1992), whereas the fourth is a four-wave campaign-year
study carried out in 1980. Three points about these data bear emphasis. First,
they reveal that there always has been substantial individual-level instability in
the measured responses to the ANES party identification questions. In the
original 1956–1958–1960 panel, only 57% indicated that they were stable
identifiers, and an additional 12% indicated they were stable independents.
Thus, nearly 30% of the electorate exhibited directional instability in their
party identifications over a four-year period. Second, the percentages of stable
identifiers are smaller in all post-1960 panels, and the percentages of stable independents are larger. However, there is no indication of a negative trend in
stability; rather, there is a downward “step” from the 1956–1958–1960 panel
to the later ones. Third, and in sharp contradiction to the British and Canadian
cases, very few (5% or less) of the respondents in any of the ANES panels indicate that they actually switched parties. The dominant pattern of instability is
to move to or from identification and independence. Nor is independence a
“halfway house” for voters who later switch partisan allegiance; Clarke &
Suzuki (1994) show that the dominant dynamic for “multiple movers” in
multi-wave panels is to shuttle between a particular party and independence.
The British case (Figure 6b) resembles the American one in certain respects, but it is different in others. The most basic similarity is that in every
panel over one third of the British respondents manifest unstable party identifications. A second similarity is that there is no downward trend in stability; indeed, the percentage of stable partisans in the three panels conducted in the
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is identical (64%). However, as noted above, the British data differ from the American ones in that substantial minorities (ranging
from 19% to 28%) state that they actually switch their identifications from one
party to another. Another salient difference is that vanishingly small percentages of the British panelists indicate that they are stable nonidentifiers. Nonidentification is not a stable resting place for British voters.
The large percentage of unstable partisans in the Canadian panels (Figure
6c) echoes both the American and British cases. In other respects, Canada appears more similar to Britain than to the United States. Like the British, substantial numbers of Canadians state that they switch identifications from one
party to another, and very few are stable nonidentifiers. However, there appears to be a progressive dynamic to the Canadian panels that is absent from
the American and British ones. As Figure 6c illustrates, the percentage of stable identifiers has fallen from 60% to 41% across the 1974–1979–1980 to the
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CLARKE & STEWART
Figure 6a
Stability of party identification, United States, three- and four-wave panels.
Figure 6b
Stability of party identification, Britain, three- and four-wave panels.
Figure 6c
Stability of party identification, Canada, three- and four-wave panels.
1988–1990–1993 panels, and the percentage of party switchers has grown
from 22% to fully 45%. Although the 41% stability figure is not markedly
smaller than the 46% stability rate for the 1990–1991–1992 US panel, the 45%
party-switching figure is dramatically larger than any comparable number in
the American and British panels. The large number of Canadians reporting that
they had changed their party identifications between 1988 and 1993 is consistent with the dramatic successes enjoyed by two new political parties (Bloc
Québécois, Reform) and the massive losses of support experienced by two old-
THE DECLINE OF PARTIES
373
line ones (Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party) in the 1993 federal election (Clarke et al 1996).
In terms of their expressed responses in national cross-sectional and panel
surveys conducted over the past 30–40 years, large numbers of voters exhibit
flexible rather than durable partisan attachments. In the 1990s, many voters in
the Anglo-American and other Western democracies indicate that they have
weak and unstable partisan attachments.7 Substantial, but smaller, numbers
also did so 30 years ago. If we think of strength and stability as key indicators
of the importance of partisan attachments in the matrix of forces affecting electoral choice, then the data reviewed here indicate that such attachments long
have failed to live up their original billing as fundamental organizing elements
in mass political psychology. If the survey evidence can be taken at face value,
the decline of parties in the minds of citizens began from a much lower level
than many observers have thought. In the concluding section, we briefly review some significant issues that need to be addressed before this conclusion
can be accepted with confidence.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE STUDIES OF
PARTISAN DYNAMICS
Nearly a century ago Wallas (1920) remarked that voters believed political
parties were objects that “could be loved and trusted.” Would Wallas reach this
conclusion today? Partisanship, as measured by responses to standard questions on party identification, appears to have weakened appreciably in the
United States, Britain, and Canada since the first major national election surveys were conducted several decades ago. The same can be said about the evolution of partisan attachments in a variety of other advanced industrial societies. The survey data also seem to testify that partisanship was never as strong
or as stable as the Michigan model predicted. This is true not only in the United
States, but in Britain and Canada as well.
But can we believe what the survey data tell us? Green and colleagues contend that we need to study the dynamics of partisanship using structural equation models that allow for measurement error (e.g. Green & Palmquist 1990,
Green & Schickler 1993, Green et al 1997). Their analyses indicate that partisanship as a latent variable is much more stable than the observed panel survey
responses, such as those presented here, would suggest. Although these results
sound a useful cautionary note, they do not constitute conclusive counterevidence. A significant problem is that structural equation modeling tech7 7In a four-wave national panel conducted in West Germany in 1990, 50% reported stable
partisan attachments, 21% switched parties, 27% moved once or more between a party and
nonpartisanship, and 2% consistently refused a party label.
374
CLARKE & STEWART
niques provide limited analytic leverage in the absence of multiple indicators
of the latent variables—in this case, party identification.8 Also, as BoxSteffensmeier & Smith (1997) have demonstrated, electorate-wide estimates
of the persistence of partisanship at the latent-variable level may be biased upward by response heterogeneity across various subgroups. Recognition of heterogeneity in processes generating survey responses is not new (e.g. Converse
1964), but, as Box-Steffensmeier & Smith observe, much remains to be
learned about its effects on parameter estimates in latent-variable models.
Box-Steffensmeier & Smith’s interest in individual-level heterogeneity
flows from their aggregate-level analysis (1996) of the persistence of macropartisanship in the American electorate. This study, like those of MacKuen et
al (1989) and others, utilize the Gallup party-identification time series.
Abramson & Ostrom (1991) have insisted that the Gallup measure is not an
adequate surrogate for the ANES battery. Although we find their argument unconvincing (Clarke & Suzuki 1994), we are concerned that the quarterly timeseries data used in most macropartisanship studies may mislead. Inferences
about the length of the “memory” in macropartisanship data and, hence, the
persistence of shocks (i.e. factors affecting the strength and direction of party
identification across the electorate) might be quite different if monthly, or even
weekly, measures of aggregate party identification were available. In this regard, we are currently administering the standard BES party identification battery in Gallup surveys to provide monthly macropartisanship measures in Britain. This project will take several years to complete, but patience is warranted
because the payoffs are potentially handsome.
Gathering party identification data on at least a monthly basis also is important for mapping the characteristics of partisanship in nonelection periods. Despite their many virtues, the ANES and other national election surveys are inherently unable to provide these data. As discussed above, controlling for
long-term trends, the measured strength of party identification in Canada is
significantly lower in nonelection periods. Similarly, since the mid-1960s, the
incidence of independents in the US Gallup party identification series has declined when presidential and off-year congressional elections are not being
held. These findings suggest that the accuracy of portraits of aggregate
changes in the strength of partisanship are enhanced by repeated soundings of
voters’ party identifications taken at times when the efforts of parties and candidates to mobilize partisanship are in abeyance.
8 8For example, with a single measure of party identification in a three-wave panel study, a Wiley
&Wiley (1970) structural equation model allowing for measurement error can be identified only by
making very restrictive assumptions, and there will be no degrees of freedom available for testing
the goodness-of-fit of the model. Multiple indicators of partisanship (see e.g. Green & Schickler
1993) and additional panel waves provide additional degrees of freedom as covariances among
indicators increase geometrically.
THE DECLINE OF PARTIES
375
Studying how institutional configurations condition the development and
dynamics of partisanship is another promising area for future inquiry. Canadian findings illustrate the importance of such contextual factors. Canada’s
highly decentralized federal system encourages voters to develop partisan attachments that differ in strength and direction at the national and provincial
levels, and partisanship at one level is influenced by that at the other (Stewart
& Clarke 1998). The emergence of new democracies in Central and Eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union, with embryonic party systems embedded
in varying institutional contexts, offers researchers intriguing opportunities to
pursue this line of inquiry in comparative perspective.
In conclusion, we contend that more and better data are important for yet
another reason. The utility of sophisticated models of the individual- and
aggregate-level dynamics of partisanship, such as those recently advocated by
Box-Steffensmeier & Smith (1996, 1997) and by Green and his colleagues
(1990, 1993, 1997), necessarily is inhibited by single measures of party identification. Transcending this limitation requires more than the funds to do additional panel studies; it entails a willingness on the part of investigators to develop and use new measures. The venerable ANES seven-point party identification battery and its cousins in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere need not be jettisoned, but they must be supplemented. Thus far, very few investigators have
endeavored to do so. In a prescient volume published two decades ago, Budge
et al (1976) encouraged scholars of partisanship to pursue this line of inquiry,
and Dennis (1988a,b, 1992) has done so in a pathbreaking 1980 ANES study.
It is now time for others, guided by theoretically interesting rival models and
the data requirements imposed by sophisticated methodological techniques, to
follow their lead.
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http://www.AnnualReviews.org.
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