Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-National Perspective

Geoffrey Evans has co-edited a new book with Professor Nan Dirk de Graaf of the Universitys Department of Sociology titled Political Choice Matters: Explaining the strength of class and religious cleavages in cross-national perspective (OUP, 2013).

The project investigates the extent to which class and religion influence party choice in contemporary democracies. Rather than the commonly-assumed process in which a weakening of social boundaries leads to declining social divisions in political preferences, this books primary message is that the supply of choices by parties influences the extent of such divisions: hence, political choice matters.

The authors show that although there has been some overtime decline in the strength of association between social class and party choice, this is far smaller than the amount of change in the relationship occurring as a result of party movements on questions of inequality and redistribution. The strength of the religiosity cleavage is also influenced by changes in party positions on moral issues - changes that can be understood as a strategic response to a process of secularization that has weakened the electoral viability of parties deriving support from appeals to religious values.

The book is available for purchase from Amazon here.