Losing the Voters' Trust: Evaluations of the Political System and Voting at the 1997 British General Election

Pattie, Charles; Johnston, Ron

doi:10.1111/1467-856x.00057

Cited by 40 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Citizens who distrust elected politicians or parties, or are unhappy with their previous performance, are not automatically critical of political institutions, the political system or how democracy works in practice. Inversely, citizens who mistrust politicians in general are not necessarily unhappy with their own parties or representatives (Dalton 1999; Norris 1999; Klingemann 1999; Pattie & Johnston 2001).…”

Section: Retrospective Voting and Political Dissatisfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Satisfaction with the performance of democracy falls within the regime performance category, satisfaction with political parties and other political institutions belong to the regime institutions category, while evaluations of the performance of particular political leaders, representatives and parties are found within the category of political actors . See also Pattie & Johnston (2001) and Klingemann (1999) for discussion and analysis of different forms of political support.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective

Söderlund

2008

Scand Pol Stud

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This article examines why people vote for the same party, switch parties or move from voting to non‐voting at consecutive elections. By using post‐election survey data from Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden in the beginning of the 2000s, the main aim is to model the impact of retrospective evaluations of party performance while controlling for theoretically relevant variables. The results of the multinomial regression analyses confirm that dissatisfaction with the performance of a party correlates strongly with party defection, and that the relationship is not weakened with the inclusion of variables for general dissatisfaction with the political system and its actors, standard background factors and political variables. This suggests that many voters are concerned with valence issues and value the overall competence of politicians and parties when they are making a decision whom to vote for.

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Section: Retrospective Voting and Political Dissatisfactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective

Söderlund

2008

Scand Pol Stud

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“…But the strength of this link seems to vary from election to election, and indeed is never particularly strong. This may help explain why sometimes researchers have doubted whether any link exists at all (Heath and Taylor, 1999;Pattie and Johnston, 2001). Our findings suggest that, although a link exists, it is only amongst the minority with the lowest possible levels of personal efficacy that turnout is noticeably different from the norm.…”

Section: Electoral Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Crisis of Political Participation?

Curtice¹,

Seyd²

2003

British Social Attitudes: Continuity and Change Over Two Decades

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There appears to be a crisis of political participation in Britain. Turnout at the last UK general election was, at 58 per cent, lower than at any other general election since 1918. Moreover, voters have been reluctant to go to the polls in every other kind of election held over the last six years. Unsurprisingly, then, politicians of all political persuasions have been asking themselves how they can 're-engage' the public with the political process.This decline in electoral participation might seem particularly surprising given one of the key social changes to have occurred in Britain over the last two decades -the expansion of educational attainment. Education is supposedly a 'democratic good', meant to encourage adherence to democratic values, a sense of political competence and thus a greater propensity to vote (Almond and Verba, 1963;Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980). As Almond and Verba's study of The Civic Culture put it:The educated classes possess the keys to political participation and involvement while those with less education are less well equipped.As Table 5.1 shows, in the mid-1980s nearly half the adult British population had no educational qualifications. Now, less than a quarter are in this position. Over the same period, the proportion with a degree has more than doubled (to 16 per cent), while those with at least an A level or its equivalent now comprise well over two-fifths of the adult population (rather than just over a quarter as they did two decades ago). So Britain has experienced a substantial increase in overall levels of educational attainment, something we might expect to produce an increase in electoral participation. That the very opposite seems to have happened is nothing less than a 'puzzle of participation ' (Brody, 1978).

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“…The vote of the traditional third party -the centrist Liberal Democrats -collapsed following the party's stint in government as coalition partner to the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats had long been a haven for protest votes (Bélanger, 2004;Kang, 2004;Pattie and Johnston, 2001), but with a vote 4 E.g. Bélanger and Aarts, 2006;Bergh, 2004;Betz, 1994;Fennema, 1997;Lubbers, Gijsberts and Scheepers, 2002;Norris, 2005;Oesch, 2008.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How protest voters choose

Birch

Dennison

2017

Party Politics

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How Protest Voters ChooseMuch ink has been spilt in recent years on political disaffection. Research has grappled with the impact of popular disenchantment with politics on electoral turnout 1 and on unconventional forms of political participation. 2 Political scientists have also pointed to protest voting -voting for an anti-establishment party as a protest against mainstream politics -as a consequence of dissatisfaction with traditional political options, 3 but we know far less about the phenomenon of protest voting than we do about the effects of disaffection on participation. Although there is some existing evidence that disillusionment with mainstream parties can cause people to vote for minor and/or extreme parties in protest, there is a paucity of both theory and empirical evidence on the factors that condition the decision to vote for an anti-establishment party as a form of protest. We also know little about why some voters choose one protest option over the other (a decision we label the 'protest choice'). The party spectra of most parliamentary democracies include minor parties on both the left and the right that are potential recipients of the votes of those whose decision is motivated primarily by disillusionment with a particular party, with certain policies or, more generally, with the existing political establishment or with political institutions. There is also evidence from studies of radical right-wing and anti-immigrant politics that parties in this portion of the political spectrum tend to draw support from those who are 1

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Losing the Voters' Trust: Evaluations of the Political System and Voting at the 1997 British General Election

Cited by 40 publications

References 33 publications

Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective

Retrospective Voting and Electoral Volatility: A Nordic Perspective

Is There a Crisis of Political Participation?

How protest voters choose

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