Class Voting in the New Political Culture

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate how the political cultures of 20 western countries have changed in the postwar period and how these changes are related to differences in class voting in these countries. To answer these questions, first political party manifestos are analysed in order to show that class issues have neither decreased nor increased in importance and that new - cultural and environmental - issues have risen in importance. Second, using data provided by the World Values Surveys (1990-2000), it is demonstrated that the observed changes in political cultures have led to lower levels of class voting. Third, it is demonstrated that the importance of old and new issues conditions individual voting motives. It is concluded that the rise of new issues undermines traditional class-party alignments. At the end of the article the implications of these findings for the realignment-dealignment debate are discussed.