Measuring Partisanship as a Social Identity in Multi-Party Systems

Abstract

There is no doubt that partisanship is a powerful influence on democratic political behavior. But there is also a lively debate on its nature and origins: Is it largely instrumental in nature and shaped by party performance and issues stances? Or is it basically a long-standing expressive identity reinforced by motivated reasoning and strong emotions? We assess the nature of partisanship in the European context, examining the measurement properties and predictive validity of a multiitem partisan identity scale included in national surveys conducted in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. Using a latent variable model, we show that an eightitem partisan identity scale provides greater information about partisan intensity than a standard single-item and has the same measurement properties across the three countries. In addition, the identity scale better predicts in-party voting and political participation than a measure of ideological intensity (based on both leftright self-placement and agreement with the party on key issues), providing support for an expressive approach to partisanship in several European democracies.

Expressive Versus Instrumental Partisanship in Multiparty European Systems

“…We thus compare the effects of partisan identity among Italian (49%), British (86%), Dutch (91%), and Swedish respondents (90%) for whom we have a valid measure of partisan identity. We previously conducted an item‐response analysis on partisan identity items in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands to confirm that the scale has similar properties in all three European countries despite differing distributions (Bankert et al, ). The scale measures partisan identity well across its range and in contrast to the traditional single item of partisan strength better identified differing levels of partisan identity across its range.…”

“…In Europe, there is greater ongoing dispute about the nature and influence of partisanship as levels of partisanship have declined over time (Dalton & Wattenberg, ; Johnston, ; Thomassen, ; Thomassen & Rosema, ). Nonetheless, there is emerging evidence that the effects of partisanship persist even in complex multiparty European settings (Bankert, Huddy, & Rosema, ; Bartle & Bellucci, ; Holmberg, ).…”

“…This scale better predicted campaign activity and emotional responses than the standard measure. We (Bankert et al, ) developed a measure of partisan identity for inclusion in election studies conducted in the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy based on the Identification with a Psychological Group (IDPG) scale created by Mael and Tetrick (; see also Greene, ). Following conventional wisdom (Keith, Magleby, Nelson, Orr, & Westlye, ), we assessed partisan identity among independent leaners, those who do not initially identify a party but report feeling closer to one party than another.…”

“…Before asking the partisan identity scale, respondents in all surveys were asked whether they were partisans. Unfortunately, this question was asked differently in each country complicating national comparisons (Bankert et al, ). In the Netherlands, respondents in the preelection survey were asked if they thought of themselves as an adherent of a political party, if so which party, and whether they would call themselves a very convinced adherent, convinced adherent, or not so convinced adherent.…”

“…In each national election study, we created a reliable scale of partisan identity, which was recoded from 0 to 1. Levels of partisan identity in each of the four countries are depicted in Figure (see also Bankert et al, ).…”