Class Voting in Western Europe provides a rare, systematic, longitudinal, and cross-national study of social class and party choice in eight Western European, democratic countries: Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, (West) Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. This highly accessible and engaging work is based on data from the Eurobarometer surveys, conducted from 1975-1997. Class Voting in Western Europe outlines the theories of changes in class voting and provides and empirical analysis of class voting. This study differentiates between traditional class voting, total class voting, and overall left-right voting. Knutsen's thorough study will provide a new, straightforward understanding of social class and party choice to anyone interested in the complex relationship between modern society and politics.

This book analyses the impact of socio-structural variables, such as social class, religion, urban/rural residence, age and gender, on influencing an individual's voting preferences. There have been major changes in recent decades both to social structure and how social structure determines people's voting behaviour. There has also been a shift in value orientations, for example from religious to secular values and from more authoritarian to libertarian values. The author addresses the questions: How do social structure and value orientations influence party choice in advanced industrial democracies?; To what extent is the impact of social structure on party choice transmitted via value orientations?; To what extent is the impact of value orientations on party choice causal effects when controlled for the prior structural variables? The book will be of use to advanced students and scholars in the fields of comparative politics, electoral politics and political sociology.

Class Voting in Western Europe provides a rare, systematic, longitudinal, and cross-national study of social class and party choice in eight Western European, democratic countries: Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, (West) Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands. This highly accessible and engaging work is based on data from the Eurobarometer surveys, conducted from 1975-1997. Class Voting in Western Europe outlines the theories of changes in class voting and provides and empirical analysis of class voting. This study differentiates between traditional class voting, total class voting, and overall left-right voting. Knutsen's thorough study will provide a new, straightforward understanding of social class and party choice to anyone interested in the complex relationship between modern society and politics.