Abstract
In this chapter, the impact of the whole conflict model comprising both social structure and value orientations and the relationship between their impacts on party choice is examined. Central in the empirical analysis is the degree to which value orientations are mediating in the relationship between social structure and party choice. A major finding in this chapter is that the whole conflict model has a large explanatory power on party choice. Without any controls, value orientations have larger explanatory power than social structure. This changes significantly when the socio-structural variables are considered prior to value orientations in a causal sense. Social structure then has largest explanatory power. A large portion of the impact of social structure is mediated via value orientations.
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Notes
- 1.
”Pure structure” voting is similar to that of Parisi and Pasquino’s three ideal types of voting behaviour; the so-called “vote of appartenenza” in Italy, based on “an organic liaison with the social group to which the voter belongs” which is “manifested by the exclusion of any assessment of the programmatic position of parties.” (1979: 14–18)
- 2.
Pure value voting is identical to the impact of value orientations in addition to social structure in Table 6.2C but is treated here in another context and it is therefore not referred to in the table below.
- 3.
See Knutsen and Scarbrough (1995: 493–495) for a discussion of the role of value orientations in the discussion of cleavages in Lipset and Rokkan’s work.
- 4.
For general principles for decomposing variance, see Cohen et al. (2003: chapter 5). For an analysis of decomposition of variance of two types of independent variable in the left–right self-placement scale based on the two models in Fig. 6.2, see Knutsen (1997).
Fig. 6.2 is based on Venn diagrams for decomposition of variance in the dependent variable. Frequently, circles for the whole variance of the independent variables (in addition to the dependent variable) are included in figures for illustrating decomposition or mediation, but I find focussing of the explained pseudo-variance in the dependent variable more pedagogic and illustrative.
- 5.
Equations for the unique and compounded components can be found in Cohen et al. (2003: chapter 5) and Fairchild et al. (2009). In practice, the components are calculated in the following way:
-
a)
The unique socio-structural component is the total explanatory power of the whole model minus the total explanatory power of value orientations.
-
b)
The unique value orientation component is the total explanatory power of the whole model minus the total explanatory power of social structural variables.
-
c)
The compounded component is then the explanatory power of the whole model minus a plus b.
-
a)
- 6.
The standard deviations of the absolute explanatory power for the pure structural component for the 18 countries (Table 6.3A) and for the regions are 0.044 and 0.027, respectively. The corresponding standard deviations for the relative components in Table 6.3B are 0.144 and 0.101, and while the variation in the size of the coefficients was smallest compared to the two other voting types in Table 6.3A, the variation becomes larger than the other components in Table 6.3B for the relative components.
- 7.
The portions of the pseudo-R 2 measure for the pure structural and pure value orientation components are 0.458 and 0.266 for Old Politics, respectively, and 0.525 and 0.255 for New Politics orientations.
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Knutsen, O. (2018). The Impact of Social Structure and Value Orientations Compared. In: Social Structure, Value Orientations and Party Choice in Western Europe. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52123-7_6
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