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Do Frozen Cleavages Ever Go Stale? The Bases of the Canadian and Australian Party Systems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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The title of this paper derives from two sets of observations. The first, from Lipset and Rokkan, asserts that Western party systems reflect (or, at least, reflected in the mid-1960s) a congealment of political conflicts dating from the 1920s or earlier. The second, taken generally from the growing concern about political ungovernability, suggests that contemporary party systems are losing their capacity to structure choice effectively in Western polities. Since it is one of the defects of frozen food storage that any food, no matter how well frozen, will eventually become unappetizing if not downright unwholesome, it is worth enquiring whether the two sets of observations are interconnected. In a fast-changing world, party systems reflecting the shape of conflict over past problems may appear to the voter as out of touch with newer problems. Indeed, the party systems observed by Lipset and Rokkan have all been challenged subsequently by new forces.
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References
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24 We continue to exclude, as we did earlier in the paper, those who have no partisan identity and can recall none for either parent.
25 This is similar in conceptual status to our previous variable which we labelled ‘class integration’. That variable, it will be recalled, was coded ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’. In this case, we code the environment as ‘working class’ if the respondent identifies with and draws the majority of his friends from that class; as ‘middle class’ if this is the course of his friends and identification, and ‘mixed’ in all other cases. In this section of the paper, we have sought to preserve the directionality of all the variables.
26 To obtain the estimates in Panel 2 of Table 10 (but not for Panel 1), a small constant (0·5) was added to each cell of the cross-tabulation to deal with seven zero marginals encountered there. Goodness-of-fit tests, however, were carried out on the actual cell observations but the degrees of freedom were adjusted to take account of zero marginals.
27 In an early test, we found a weak effect whereby Roman Catholic non-Labor identifiers displayed less voting fidelity than other religious groups. On inspection, this effect was found to depend entirely on sixteen respondents who had switched from the Australian Labor Party to the Democratic Labor Party when the split between the two occurred. It is very difficult to consider these as floating voters, given that they simply followed a party schism, so we excluded them from the analysis of Table 10 (2). On doing so, the religious effect disappeared. Even in the earlier version, there was no evidence of any effect from frequency of religious practice, either directly or in interaction with other variables.
28 As for Table 10, Panel 2, a small constant (05) was added to each cell of the cross-tabulation to obtain the estimates in Table 11. Three zero marginals had been obtained in the cross-tabulation. Goodness-of-fit tests were carried out on actual observations with adjusted degrees of freedom.
29 We did estimate the parameters for a model containing an interactive effect between religion and party. Summing the effect on voting fidelity of being a Roman Catholic, plus the effect of being a Roman Catholic Liberal, we obtain the following effects: R.C./Lib. = ·068; R.C./non-Lib. = –·040; non-R.C./Lib. = –·068; and non-R.C./non-Lib. = ·040. Although the signs are all consistent with a model of social reinforcement or cross-pressures, the effects are not significantly different from zero.
30 Burnham, , ‘Politial Immunization and Political Confessionalism’, p. 16.Google Scholar
31 Epstein, , ‘A Comparative Study of Australian Parties’, p. 9.Google Scholar
32 Unless, of course, the splitters aim to defeat their former partners. By directing second preferences to the Liberal or Country Parties, the DLP was able to weaken the ALP's presence in the House of Representatives below what would have been obtained in a first-past-the-post system. By winning Senate seats on its own account, the DLP helped to deny control of the Senate to Whitlam's Labor government.
33 For a discussion of Australian third parties up to 1975 and a similar argument about the effect of the electoral system, see Reynolds, Paul, ‘The Role of the Minor Parties’, in Penniman, Howard, ed., Australia at the Polls (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1977), pp. 159–69.Google Scholar
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