The End of Class Politics?: Class Voting in Comparative Context

The last few decades has seen a prolonged debate over the nature and importance of social class as a basis for ideology, class voting and class politics. The prevailing assumption is that, in western societies, class inequalities are no longer important in determining political behaviour. In The End of Class Politics? leading scholars from the US, UK and Europe argue that the evidence on which the assumptions about the decline importance of class is based is unfounded. Instead, the book argues that the class basis of political competition has to some degree evolved, but not declined. Furthermore, the social basis of political competition and sweeping claims about the new politics of postindustrial society need to be re-examined.

Table of Contents:
1: Geoffrey Evans: Class Voting: From Premature Obituary to Reasoned Appraisal Part 1: The Broad Comparative Picture 2: Paul Nieuwbeerta and Nan Dirk De Graaf: Traditional Class Voting in 20 Postwar Societies Part II: Case Study of Western Democracies 3: John H. Goldthorpe: Modelling the Pattern of Class Voting in British Elections 4: Michael Hout, Jeff Manza, and Clem Brooks: Classes, Unions, and the Realignment of U.S. Presidential Voting: 1952-1992 5: David L. Weakliem and Anthony F. Heath: The Secret Life of Class Voting: Britain, France, and the United States Since the 1930s 6: Walter Muller: Class Cleavages and Party Preferences in Germany Old and New 7: Kristen Ringdal and Kjell Hines: Changes in Class Voting in Norway 8: Stefan Svallfors: The Class Politics of Swedish Welfare Policies Part III: The New Class Politics of Post-Communism 9: Petr Mateju, Blanka Rehakova and Geoffrey Evans: The Politics of Interests and Class Realignment in the Czech Republic 10: Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield: The Emergence of Class Politics and Class Voting in Post-Communist Russia Part IV: Re-Appraisal, Commentary and Conclusions 11: David L. Weakliem and Anthony F. Heath: Resolving Disputes about Class Voting in Britain and the United States: Definitions, Models and Data 12: Peter Mair, Seymour Martin Lipset, Michael Hout, and John Goldthorpe: Commentary: Four Perspectives on 'The End of Class Politics?' 13: Geoffrey Evans: Class and Vote: Disrupting the Orthodoxy

About the Author :
Dr Geoffrey Evans is Faculty Fellow, Nuffield College, Oxford

Review :
`Geoff Evans has topped and tailed the volume with extremely valuable introductory and concluding chapters. The former is probably the best overview I have read on the class voting debate ... This is an extremely valuable contribution to the debate. No elections specialist should be without a copy, and it provides an important benchmark (both substantive and methodological) for future analyses ... This is an important book: Geoff Evans and his contributors are to be congratulated.' Charles Pattie `Evan's collection of essays is an adroit mixture of sophisticated statistics with empirical description of the relation between class and party in the advanced industrial countries of Europe and North America.' A H Halsey, TLS `a book for the specialist ... it will have a substantial impact.' Ron Johnston, Government and Opposition. `the analyses are set within interesting general discussions of how class interests evolve in such new capitalist situations.' Ron Johnston, Government and Opposition. `an excellent, rounded introduction from Evans, who argues that much of the debate over class voting is confused by problems of measurement and analysis.' Ron Johnston, Government and Opposition.