Partisan Orientation and Political Socialization in Britain, France, and the United States

Abstract

This article deals with adults' and pre-adults' psychological orientations to political parties in the United States, Great Britain, and France. These three nations are particularly fruitful settings in which to study citizens' partisanship for at least three reasons: variations in the institutional properties of their parties are well known; a scholarly debate over findings on partisanship in each of these nations is currently unfolding; and important changes in public orientations toward political parties appear to have developed in each nation in recent years. The United States and Britain have shown striking continuities in the number and labels of their parties; France, in contrast, has had numerous and mutable political parties. But the British and American party systems differ from each other substantially. The American system aggregates a far more heterogeneous citizenry and, for this reason-as well as for a variety of other social-psychological and institutional reasons-has been weakly linked to the making of public policy. Britain, on the other hand, has traditionally been the textbook example of governing through political parties. Based on survey research, the literature on citizens' orientations toward political parties in each of the nations that began to emerge in the early 1960s constitutes a major source of insight into the systemic properties of the political parties in Britain, France, and the United States. The literature, especially on