Bloc Voting Research Articles

Voting Blocs, Party Discipline and Party Formation

In this paper I study the strategic implications of coalition formation in an assembly. A coalition forms a voting bloc to coordinate the voting behavior of its members, acting as a single player and affecting the policy outcome. In a game of endogenous coalition formation, I show that voting blocs form in equilibrium, and in an assembly with two parties I show how the incentives to join a bloc depend on the types of the agents, the sizes of the parties, and the rules the blocs use to aggregate preferences.

Get the Party Started

In this article, we investigate the effect of political parties on legislative behaviour. We compile and analyse a unique dataset of all roll-call votes for all the sessions of the Irish Free State Seanad (the Upper Chamber in the legislature, 1922—36). The development of legislative parties inside the Irish Seanad led to the formation of cohesive voting blocs after 1928. This caused dramatic shifts in the rank-ordering of members and changed the coalition pattern. The establishment of disciplined parties also sealed the fate of the legislature when the Fianna Fáil party, hostile to the Free State Seanad, became an organized force inside the institution.

Exit Polling and Racial Bloc Voting: Combining Individual-Level and R x C Ecological Data

Despite its shortcomings, cross-level or ecological inference remains a necessary part of many areas of quantitative inference, including in United States voting rights litigation. Ecological inference suffers from a lack of identification that, most agree, is best addressed by incorporating individual-level data into the model. In this paper, we test the limits of such an incorporation by attempting it in the context of drawing inferences about racial voting patterns using a combination of an exit poll and precinct-level ecological data; accurate information about racial voting patterns is needed to trigger voting rights laws that can determine the composition of United States legislative bodies. Specifically, we extend and study a hybrid model that addresses two-way tables of arbitrary dimension. We apply the hybrid model to an exit poll we administered in the City of Boston in 2008. Using the resulting data as well as simulation, we compare the performance of a pure ecological estimator, pure survey estimators using various sampling schemes, and our hybrid. We conclude that the hybrid estimator offers substantial benefits by enabling substantive inferences about voting patterns not practicably available without its use.

Arguments in the 2008 Presidential Election

The 2008 presidential campaign between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain broke new ground in almost every way imaginable. Most obviously, of course it resulted in the election of Barack Obama, our nation's first African-American president. But it was also the first time a post-baby boomer was elected; the first campaign in which a former first lady was a serious contender for the nomination; and the first time the Republican Party nominated a woman for national office. It was also the most expensive presidential election in history. More than $2.4 billion dollars was spent on the presidential race by all of the contenders, and Obama and McCain alone spent more than a billion dollars (Cummings, 2008). Perhaps not quite as significant, but unique nonetheless, the 2008 election was the first wide open race for the nomination-with no incumbent presidential or vice presidential candidate running-since 1952. It was also the first time that both the Democrats and the Republicans nominated currently serving U.S. senators to head their presidential tickets, and Obama was only the third person to go directly from the senate to the Oval Office (Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy preceded him on this path). This was also the first election where the internet arguably determined the outcome. In 2006, before the presidential campaign was even underway, the internet played an important role in narrowing the field of candidates. A video clip appeared and was quickly disseminated in a viral fashion of Senator George Allen (VA), who had been considered a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, making a racial slur. In the clip, Allen is heard referring to a 20-year-old volunteer for his senate opponent, who happened to be of Indian descent as a macaca, a term used in some European countries to disparage Africans. Allen apologized for his remarks but they refused to go away, and he ultimately lost his bid for re-election to the senate and chose not to enter the race for the GOP presidential nomination (Craig & Shear, 2006). The most significant impact of the internet on the race, however, was the spectacular success that the Obama campaign enjoyed using the web to get its message out to supporters, attract volunteers, and raise campaign donations. The Obama campaign especially benefited from the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace to engage possible voters. Obama ended up raising more than $500 million online in 6.5 million donations from 3 million people in increments that averaged $80 each (Vargas, 2008). This internet-driven campaign especially engaged young people. Younger Americans followed and participated in the 2008 campaign to a degree that had not been seen since the vote was first extended to 18 year olds nationwide in 1972. It is estimated that approximately 23 million Americans under the age of 30 voted in the 2008 presidential election, which represented an increase of about 3.4 million from the 2004 election. These numbers are encouraging, but they still represent only about 53 percent of eligible voters in this age group. Still, when 2008 is compared to 2000 the increase in turnout among young voters is almost 11 percent (Young Voters, 2008). It should also be added that Barack Obama received his strongest support from the 18-to-29 year-old voting bloc, as approximately two-thirds of younger voters cast their ballot for the Democratic ticket (Young Voters, 2008). Some of the increased interest in the election was certainly a result of the myriad of challenges that the nation, and indeed the world faced in 2008. The United States was embroiled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and while some progress was being touted in Iraq, in Afghanistan things actually seemed to be worsening as the enemy remained in control of much of the nation outside the capital city. In both war zones there were repeated instances of suicide bombings claiming hundreds of innocent victims. …

Campaign Strategies of Afro-Brazilian Politicians: A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract Racial politics in Brazil have changed dramatically: the nation-state that once denied racism now enacts racial policies for Afro-Brazilians. The discourse of race has also changed: it is now common for the media to discuss Afro-Brazilians as a voting bloc. Using qualitative methods, this article tests the hypothesis that Afro-Brazilian politicians seek a racial vote from the Afro-Brazilian electorate. Analyzing campaign advertisements from select candidates in Salvador and São Paulo, this study finds that most Afro-Brazilian politicians use racial cues, and interviews show that most Afro-Brazilian politicians address racial issues during their campaigns. Not all of them seek racial votes, however: at the federal level, Afro-Brazilian politicians believe that this strategy would not get them elected. Many use campaigns nevertheless to raise racial consciousness among the electorate.

Moralistic Direct Democracy: Political Insurgents, Religion, and the State in Twentieth-Century Oregon

^3 H LAWRENCE M. LIPIN 1 AND WILLIAM LUNCH ES H Moralistic Direct I Democracy H Political Insurgents, Religion,and theState H inTwentieth-Century Oregon ^^^ OREGON'S REPUTATION FOR political innovation dates back to I^^Hi theimplementation of thesystem of "direct democracy"embodiedby the %2|gfx initiative and referendum systems thatwere established early in the twentieth I century, transforming a constitution that in its original writing reflected less originality than commitment to older, eighteenth-century ideals.1 No state has utilized these tools more than Oregon, and no other state was earlier in itsusage.2 Among the states that have had the initiative available, more have appeared on theOregon ballot, 349, than in any other since the system began in the early twentieth century; only California is close with 331.3 Yet, the patterns have not been consistent, as usage of the tools of direct democracy have waxed and waned over the century since their adoption. More precisely, there have been two significant waves of heavy usage, at the beginning and end of the twentieth century. Political scientist Richard Ellis points out thatmore measures appeared on theOregon ballot between 1906 and 1914 than for the entire period between 1920 and 1969 and thatduring the 1980s and 1990s,more measures passed than in the previous six decades.4 If Oregon has been shaped by the use of direct democracy, that formation has been within specific historical contexts. This article examines themoments of frequent recourse to direct democracy, drawing conclusions about the particular influence ofmoral beliefs on the process. Both of thesemoments have been characterized by the deployment of a populist moralism thatblended policies regarding the role of the statewith a 514 OHQ vol. 110, no. 4 ? 2o?9 Oregon Historical Society From Joseph Gaston, Portland,Oregon: Its History and Builders (Chicago, 1911); OHS digitalno. baoi9279 Critics of the initiativeand referendumargued that the public would be inundated with overlycomplicatedproposals. This 1911cartoon compares theGlasgow, Scotland, voteron the left, who votes simply for his citycouncilfrom hisward, and the Des Moines, Iowa, voter in thecenter, who votesmerelyforfive city commissioners, with the overwhelmed Portland, Oregon, voter, who contemplates a three-foot-long ballotwith a heading, uForExpertsOnly." rhetorical style that argued "natural" and "traditional" values and economic opportunities had been perverted by elites. The fight fordirect democracy at the turn of the twentieth century began in earnest when a group ofworker and farmer organizations joined together under the leadership of William S. U'Ren to form the JointCommittee on Direct Legislation. These insurgents perceived the legislature as an obstacle to reforms supported by populist voting blocs, and theybelieved the tools of direct democracy would permit "the people" to circumvent the corrupt "interests" that seemed to control the votes of legislators. These earliest proponents of the tools of direct democracy decried the growing economic power of corporations and sought to revive a form of Jeffersonian democracy they believed had once characterized Lipin and Lunch,Moralistic Direct Democracy 515 American politics by first establishing the system itself and then proposing new laws that promised a radical transformation of the structures of power and wealth in the state. Some seventy years later, use of the initiative again intensified as con servative reformers qualified for the ballot initiatives to reduce taxes and limit state spending; they calculated such measures to undo the process of state building that occurred between these two periods of extensive direct democracy. Political scientists have utilized the term "conservative popu lists" to describe some of the activists who have made frequent use of the initiative process in this latter period. Richard Clucas and Mark Henkels, for example, argue that "conservative populists believe the core problem ofmodern politics is how government agencies, politicians, and an elitist media interferewith the popular will. They fear that these groups hinder private economic choice, the effectiveness of themarket, and the public's ability to promote broadly shared conservative social values."5 Conservative populists have also favored government intervention to enforce what they perceive as traditional social relations. The advocates of suchmeasures have had strong ties to the evangelical churches, and themainstream press has often portrayed them as the shock troops forwhat Patrick Buchanan at the 1992Republican National Convention called a "religious war...

BARACK IS THE NEW BLACK

AbstractBarack Obama's political strategies during the 2008 presidential election were those of a cohort of younger, new Black politicians, who have rewritten the playbook by which Blacks can win election. Their success suggests that White racism is no longer the insuperable barrier to Black success that it has been for all of American history and that the old style of Black politics, which relied heavily on racial bloc voting and influence peddling within the Black community, may be obsolete. However, Obama's strategy of not appealing to narrow racial solidarities but instead of drawing broad support from voters of all races cast a shadow of doubt on Obama's racial loyalties. It remains unclear whether the Obama phenomenon will mark the renewal of civil rights or the repudiation of its historical commitment to the most disadvantaged.

A mixture of experts model for rank data with applications in election studies

A voting bloc is defined to be a group of voters who have similar voting preferences. The cleavage of the Irish electorate into voting blocs is of interest. Irish elections employ a “single transferable vote” electoral system; under this system voters rank some or all of the electoral candidates in order of preference. These rank votes provide a rich source of preference information from which inferences about the composition of the electorate may be drawn. Additionally, the influence of social factors or covariates on the electorate composition is of interest. A mixture of experts model is a mixture model in which the model parameters are functions of covariates. A mixture of experts model for rank data is developed to provide a model-based method to cluster Irish voters into voting blocs, to examine the influence of social factors on this clustering and to examine the characteristic preferences of the voting blocs. The Benter model for rank data is employed as the family of component densities within the mixture of experts model; generalized linear model theory is employed to model the influence of covariates on the mixing proportions. Model fitting is achieved via a hybrid of the EM and MM algorithms. An example of the methodology is illustrated by examining an Irish presidential election. The existence of voting blocs in the electorate is established and it is determined that age and government satisfaction levels are important factors in influencing voting in this election.

Exploring Voting Blocs Within the Irish Electorate

Irish elections use a voting system called proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote (PR–STV). Under this system, voters express their vote by ranking some (or all) of the candidates in order of preference. Which candidates are elected is determined through a series of counts where candidates are eliminated and surplus votes are distributed.The electorate in any election forms a heterogeneous population; that is, voters with different political and ideological persuasions would be expected to have different preferences for the candidates. The purpose of this article is to establish the presence of voting blocs in the Irish electorate, to characterize these blocs, and to estimate their size.A mixture modeling approach is used to explore the heterogeneity of the Irish electorate and to establish the existence of clearly defined voting blocs. The voting blocs are characterized by their voting preferences, which are described using a ranking data model. In addition, the care with which voters choose lower tier preferences is estimated in the model.The methodology is used to explore data from two Irish elections. Data from eight opinion polls taken during the six weeks prior to the 1997 Irish presidential election are analyzed. These data reveal the evolution of the structure of the electorate during the election campaign. In addition, data that record the votes from the Dublin West constituency of the 2002 Irish general election are analyzed to reveal distinct voting blocs within the electorate; these blocs are characterized by party politics, candidate profile, and political ideology.

How the West was Won: Regional Politics and Prophetic Promises in the 2007 Kenya Elections

In the 2007 Kenya elections, the violent clashes and allegations of electoral fraud that engulfed the country served to overshadow, and thus mask, the underlying causes of the opposition and disillusionment that had produced such a closely contested presidential election. The success of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in challenging the incumbent government, despite the outcome, rested in its ability to mobilise support across regional and ethnic lines throughout the country. This paper demonstrates how ODM mobilised coalition strategies, regional arguments and historical justifications to court a particular regional vote, the Luyia of the Western Province. As the second largest ethnic group in Kenya, the Luyia have, in every election since independence, represented a crucial battleground in the hunt for votes, as a large yet unwieldy and unpredictable voting bloc. However, the opposition's strength, and indeed the post-election chaos, cannot be explained simply by reference to political tribalism or inter-ethnic conflict alone. Rather, this case study reveals the ways in which ODM used promises of succession, power-sharing and regional devolution of authority and resources to create a broad-based, multi-ethnic coalition.

Party preferences and political participation: the emergence of the Turkish-origin German voter

The article examines trends in voting preferences and voting behavior of Turkish-origin German voters. Despite only representing a small percentage of the total German electorate, Turkish-origin voters are gaining an opportunity to shape the future political landscape. While the Social Democrats have benefited most directly from the minority constituency so far, this author suggests that the Green Party is poised to attract the younger, better educated, and German-born segment of the Turkish-origin voters. All other dominant national parties have ignored this emerging voting bloc, and missed opportunities to appeal to Turkish-origin voters by disregarding community-specific interests.

Misperceptions of Climate Change Damage Coastal Tourism: Case Study of Byron Bay, Australia

Local politics at Byron Bay on Australia's east coast have led to misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the likely effects of climate change on sea-level and coastal erosion. A voting bloc of self–proclaimed “green” members of the local government authority (LGA) has adopted policies and planning instruments that have affected tourism by: placing severe and irrational restrictions on development of residential and holiday accommodation; reducing the opportunities for holiday letting; increasing rates and costs for businesses that provide services to tourists; and creating community division and dissent, which drives away higher yield family tourists. This is occurring even though the LGA acknowledges the town's dependence on tourism. The key issue is that the LGA has prevented beachfront landowners from protecting their own properties against erosion, which the LGA now claims, incorrectly, to be due to climate change but which is in fact caused by a groyne built to protect facilities owned or managed by the LGA itself. Addressing this erosion is completely straightforward from a technical perspective, but is prevented by political power plays. Through this political mechanism, misperceptions of climate change have hence damaged the town's tourism industry and investment, which have moved to neighboring local government areas.

United We Vote

AbstractThis paper studies the advantages that a coalition of agents obtain by forming a voting bloc to pool their votes and cast them all together. We identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent to benefit from the formation of the voting bloc, both if the agent is a member of the bloc and if the agent is not part of the bloc. We also determine whether individual agents prefer to participate in or step out of the bloc, and we find the different optimal internal voting rules that aggregate preferences within the coalition.

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 384. $29.95 cloth.

Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy. By Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 384. $29.95 cloth. Add mass disenfranchisement of felons to the list of penal outcomes that distinguishes contemporary U.S. penality from other developed nations. Within this context of American penal severity, and especially the growing literature on collateral or invisible consequences of contemporary penal policy, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy examines the practice of excluding persons from the polls on the basis of a felony conviction-a practice that other developed nations have shed, much like capital punishment. What rationales justify felon disenfranchisement? Who is disenfranchised, and with what measurable effects? How and how much does race matter? Overall, the book supplies rich empirical assessments of the scope and impact of felon disenfranchisement that ultimately challenge the normative bases upon which the United States continues the practice. The book begins by problematizing disenfranchisement within a modern democratic polity. Customary rationales premised on the inability of felons to vote responsibly, for example, stressing the general unfitness of criminal minds or the potential power of felon voting blocs (such as the fear that felons will vote for excessively lenient penal policies), do not survive the basic principle that how one votes never provides a legitimate basis for determining whether one may vote. In a particularly interesting section on re-enfranchisement opportunities, the authors lament a troubling example of fitness tests found in the reliance upon, in some re-enfranchisement proceedings, evidence of improved character, such as sobriety, anger management, or job stability-qualities never required of the general population. Even more troubling is that some proceedings require payment of outstanding legal debts before restoration, also not a general requirement and that imposes a kind of poll tax on felons. Nor does disenfranchisement seem to achieve any standard penal objectives. It certainly fails to rehabilitate or incapacitate, and its blanket application likely conflicts with demands for graduated sanctions by deterrence and retribution. Later, in Chapter Five, the authors test the hypothesis that voting may actually reduce recidivism by fostering community and civic ties (the civic re-integration hypothesis). While the authors identify a basic correlation between voting and criminal behavior (first-time and re-offending), voting falls below statistical significance when they control for demographic factors. The authors turn to history and race in Chapters Two through Four, assuming the related tasks tracing race to the passage of early disenfranchisement laws and estimating the size and makeup of the currently disenfranchised population. While disenfranchisement laws typically accompanied statehood outside of the South, functioning as property requirements to exclude undesirable whites, it only overtook the former slave states immediately after the Civil War. Still, African Americans are currently disenfranchised at shockingly high rates throughout the country. The authors conservatively estimate the current disenfranchised population at 5. …

Leading the Way

To examine the impact of religion on the Latino vote, we draw on data from a pre-election survey of 1,603 Latino registered voters conducted in October 2004. We advance the argument that religious identity is politically salient only among Latino evangelicals. Controlling for a host of voting determinants, we show that religious identity has an independent effect on the vote among Latino evangelicals. Furthermore, Latino evangelicals who identify with the Republican Party are found to be more-committed supporters of the incumbent president. The existence of a religion gap suggests that the Latino electorate may become much less cohesive as a voting bloc as religious affiliation becomes more pluralistic in the Latino community.

The Myth of “Security Moms” and “NASCAR Dads”: Parenthood, Political Stereotypes, and the 2004 Election*

Objective. The objective of this article is to explore the impact of being a parent on political views and to test the accuracy of the “Security Mom” and “NASCAR Dad” labels that were pervasively applied in the context of the 2004 presidential election.Methods. The methods we employed consist of using data primarily from the 2004 National Election Study to determine whether parents differ from nonparents in terms of their political attitudes on a wide range of issues. We argue that parenthood affects women and men differently, so we analyze the sexes separately.Results. Mothers have important political distinctions from women without children, mostly in the case of social welfare issues. They do not, however, appear to be “Security Moms” in the post‐9/11 world. As for fathers, for the most part it makes little sense to talk about dads as a distinct voting bloc, as in very few cases do their political attitudes differ from men without children.Conclusions. The media's use of the labels “NASCAR Dad” and Security Mom” promoted an inaccurate understanding of the political preferences of parents. Beyond debunking these media myths, our results provide one of the first comprehensive looks at the impact of parenthood on political attitudes, an overlooked area in the adult socialization literature.

Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship in Multicultural Democracies

One under-theorized aspect of "multiculturalism and the antidiscrimination principle" is religious and ethnicity based political parties. With political organization, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. When the struggle for empowerment is "waged within the world of democratic politics" it is waged through parties. That is the associational form modern democracies have settled on for participation, representation, and governing, and for countervailing power and regular opposition. Particularist parties and bloc voting are key instruments of political conflict and, as important, of political integration. This Paper looks at the challenges these parties pose to democracy; specifically, at the principal reasons given for banning parties from participation in electoral politics. I identify four categories of justification for disqualification: violent overthrow, incitement to hate, altering the character of the nation, and outside support or control. This is a preliminary to setting out regulative principles of "defensive democracy."

Banning Parties: Religious and Ethnic Partisanship in Multicultural Democracies

One under-theorized aspect of "multiculturalism and the antidiscrimination principle" is religious and ethnicity based political parties. With political organization, the fact of pluralism is made concrete for democratic purposes. When the struggle for empowerment is "waged within the world of democratic politics" it is waged through parties. That is the associational form modern democracies have settled on for participation, representation, and governing, and for countervailing power and regular opposition. Particularist parties and bloc voting are key instruments of political conflict and, as important, of political integration. This Paper looks at the challenges these parties pose to democracy; specifically, at the principal reasons given for banning parties from participation in electoral politics. I identify four categories of justification for disqualification: violent overthrow, incitement to hate, altering the character of the nation, and outside support or control. This is a preliminary to setting out regulative principles of "defensive democracy."

Racial Polarization or Biracial Coalition? An Empirical Analysis of the Electoral Coalition of Winning Candidates in Urban Elections

Inspired by deracialization and black threat theories, this research uses the racial context of American cities to explain winning electoral coalitions in urban elections. A total of 137 municipal elections in New Orleans and Memphis between 1969 and 2003 are examined. The multiple regression results confirm the previous findings that black candidates are more likely than white candidates to win urban elections based on racial bloc voting, urban elections are more likely to be racially polarized in mayoral races than in city-council contests, and the competitiveness of elections reflected by the size of candidate pool shapes the needs for winning candidates to build biracial elections. The most important finding, however, is a nonlinear, half U-shaped relationship between racial polarization and the electorate’s racial makeup. This suggests that the deracialization strategy designed to reduce the negative effect of race in urban electoral campaigns is especially important when the electorate is heavily black. In this electoral setting, a substantial level of electoral support from voters of both racial groups is necessary for victory.

Thatcher (review)

Reviewed by: Thatcher Rodney Barker Thatcher. By E.H.H. Green. London: Hodder Arnold. 2006. x, 244 pp. £12.99 (paperback). ISBN 0340759771. Green's account begins after 1979 with an economy and a party in decline, and a prime minister with the worst public rating since polls began. It ends with a world where Thatcher has already moved to the lecture circuit, and the audience primed by her being given a play both continuous and distinct by another charismatic politician, Tony Blair. In between, from the fillip provided by the FalklandsWar to the downfall over Europe and the poll tax, Green charts the slow rise and growing and ultimately destructive confidence of the most successful British prime minister and party leader of the twentieth century, who presided over an economic and political revolution, and set the environment for those who followed her. Tony Blair's brief dalliance with 'communitarianism' had as much in common with Thatcher's 'our people' as it did with any of his socialist predecessors. Green charts the shifts in Margaret Thatcher's reputation, and of that reputation's creation and presentation, the public face and its private construction. It is a compelling account, from the spin put on her younger life by the aspirant politician, to the early hesitations over how to respond to grass roots Conservative hostility to organized labour. With success in office Thatcher developed not only her confidence but her perspective. When she first came to power she was neither familiar with nor greatly interested in the rest of the world. This changed, as she slowly realised it was there but that she did not much care for most of it. The performance on stage is interpreted by an extensive use of statements, speeches, and the (relatively sparse) writings, the preparation behind the proscenium and in the dressing room by a meticulous use of archives and private papers. The book is a relaxed and authoritative use of an impressive foundation of evidence and research which, like its protagonist, conceals the substance of the construction in the elegant precision of the presentation. In telling this story, Green has an often deliciously neat turn of phrase. He comments on the consequences of Thatcher's privatisations and the concentration [End Page 273] of shares in a few corporate hands that when it came to shareholders' meetings ' "capitalist democracy" faced the same bloc vote issue as had so often been the basis of Thatcherite criticism of the TUC'. He observes that when forming her cabinets she had thought it 'essential to have "six good men and true", which indicated to some that she felt Jesus Christ had been overmanned'. Just as Green is good on the cultivation of reputation, so he is on the role of myth, the first being the Selsdon myth, where a meeting in a Croydon hotel came to represent a range of hopes, particularly of the liberal economic right, which would not have been justified by what was actually agreed at Selsdon Park. But it was the reputation, the myth, that mattered. Green sees Thatcher as if not the assassin, then at least the undertaker, of Conservatism, undermining and eroding organic, traditional conceptions and values, and dismissing conciliation and moderation in favour of liberal economics. But there was a strand of tory paternalism in Thatcher, although it had become strident and intolerant, and this organic element lay in a feature of her political persona that Green presents with great skill. She was a populist, but for a precisely located people: not the people, but our people. Where socialists had had the working class, Thatcher had the middle class, and all those who aspired to be part of it. This provided plenty of aversions and aspirations which had little to do with market individualism and did indeed conflict with it. New Age travellers were definitely not free individuals who could be left to pursue their own goals without the paternal hand of the state, any more than were trade unionists, whilst immigrants with alien customs were people who might 'swamp' the world inhabited by ordinary folk. To talk of 'enemies' within is to depart some way from any kind of liberalism. But Thatcher...