“Values, Ideology and Party Choice in Europe”

Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops 2010, at the workshop in Electoral Change in the 21st Century: Dealignment or Realignment? Munster, Germany, March 2010.

Abstract: Empirical evidence suggests that the effects of traditional vote determinants, in particular social class, religion and left/right dimension, on party choice have weakened in Western Europe. This paper explores to what extent socio-economic, libertarian-authoritarian and integration-demarcation values structure party choice in all countries of the European Union. Distinguishing between established democracies and post-communist democracies, the paper examines how the effects of those value schemas relate to the effect of the left/right dimension on party choice, how strong those effects are and how they differ across generations. The study employs the European Election Study 2009.

“Values, Ideology and Party Choice in Europe” full abstract (107KB PDF)