Abstract
There has been a natural inclination in electoral studies to consider single elections. While the focus is a useful one, it is important to see that one election with all its preliminaries is but a moment in the life of the nation or the individual citizen and that much is to be gained by taking a longer view. The processes of change are hardly to be understood without doing so. We begin here with the development of political attitudes during the lifetime of the individual voter, identifying several phases of the political “life cycle.”
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Notes
From a nationwide survey undertaken in France in 1958 and reported in P. E. Converse and G. Dupeux, ‘Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962), pp. 578–99.
See W. N. McPhee and J. Ferguson, “Political Immunization,” in W. N. McPhee and W. A. Glaser, eds., Public Opinion and Congressional Elections, New York, 1962, pp. 155–79.
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© 1971 David Butler and Donald Stokes
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Butler, D., Stokes, D. (1971). The Political Life Cycle. In: Political Change in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00140-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00140-8_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-00142-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-00140-8
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