Urbanization and Party Competition: A Note on Shifting Conceptualization and a Report of Further Data

Abstract

Five studies purportedly assessing the hypothesis that urbanization is positively related to the competitiveness of party systems at the county level are briefly reviewed to demonstrate a shift in the conceptualization of party competition. It is argued that in the initial statement of the hypothesis, competitiveness was conceptualized as a structural characteristic of a party system, but that through attempts to refine measurement procedures an undetected conceptual shift to competitiveness as a characteristic of a political contest occurred. This conceptual shift renders invalid many of the inferences drawn in the more recent of these studies. Employing the conceptual definition of competitiveness as a characteristic of a political contest, data concerning the relationship between urbanization and party competition for four statewide and national offices for all counties in the United States for the decade 1946-56 are presented. The most general finding is that urbanization is of little utility in predicting the competitiveness of political contests at the county level. There is, however, considerable variation in this regard by office and historical voting block. * The election data utilized in this study were made available (in part) by the Inter-university Consortium for Political Research. The data were supplied in partially proofed form and the Consortium bears no responsibility for either the analyses or interpretations presented here. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.137 on Fri, 27 May 2016 06:21:25 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Urbanization and Party Competition / 545 Is urbanization positively related to party competition at the county level in the United States? Such a relationship was hypothesized by Eulau in 1957. The theoretical basis for the hypothesis is that urban ecological structures are characterized by a greater range of individual variations, a more pervasive segmentalization of human relationships making for memberships in widely divergent groups as well as for divided allegiances, a more complicated class structure and heightened social and physical mobility, a greater division of labor and more intense economic rivalry, a wider range of ideas and more secular attitudes (p. 127). These characteristics are, in turn, assumed to contribute to the development of competitive