Government Popularity and the Unemployment Issue, 1966-1983

Abstract

Sociologists have neglected the implications for their subject of the various factors that determine the level of popularity of governments. Whether the rate of unemployment, for example, is related to government popularity may sometimes be an indicator of the existence of `communalism' in a society. For three of the four full-term or near-full-term governments since 1966 the rate of unemployment has been a predictor of month-by-month government popularity, as measured by the Gallup Poll; the exception was the period of Labour government between 1974 and 1979. The relationship between the unemployment rate and government popularity before 1974 is interpreted as indicating the existence of a degree of social communalism. This was eroded by events between 1974 and 1979. However, it is unlikely that the re-emergence of the unemployment rate as a predictor of government popularity since 1979 is to be explained by a revival of communalism; rather, it shows that the current high levels of unemployment are having direct political effects in a now substantial proportion of the electorate who are personally or vicariously affected.