CLASS CLEAVAGES IN PARTY PREFERENCES IN THE NEW DEMOCRACIES IN EASTERN EUROPE: A comparison with Western democracies

European Societies 2(4) 2000: 397-430 © 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd ISSN 1461-6696 print 1469-8307 online

CLASS CLEAVAGES IN PARTY PREFERENCES IN THE NEW DEMOCRACIES IN EASTERN EUROPE A comparison with Western democracies Me´ rove Gijsberts Department of Sociology, Nijmegen University, The Netherlands

Paul Nieuwbeerta Netherlands Institute for the Study of Criminality and Law Enforcement, Leiden, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT: Since 1989 the political systems in Eastern European societies have changed radically, from totalitarian regimes towards democratic regimes with free general elections and multi-party systems similar to early democracies. This paper examines whether in these new democracies the same class cleavages have become important as in longstanding Western democracies. The relation between social class, attitudes towards economic justice and voting behavior is investigated in Žve new democracies and compared with those in nine longstanding democracies. The data used are from various cross-nationally comparable and nationally representative surveys held in the 1990s (total N = 20,270). Results show that social class has clear effects on economic justice attitudes and voting behavior in Western democracies. In the post-communist societies, members of different social classes consistently differ in their attitudes towards income inequality and social security, but hardly differ in their voting behavior. Owing to the politically unstable situation in the emerging democracies in Eastern Europe, people in different classes are probably unable to translate their policy preferences into party preferences. Key words: social stratiŽcation; social cleavages; voting behavior; justice attitudes; Eastern Europe

Introduction

The question on the relation between social cleavages, in particular social class, and political outcomes is one of the classic questions of political sociology and has frequently been raised in the classic studies (Campbell

DOI: 10.1080/14616690020014343

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et al. 1960; Lipset and Rokkan 1967). But still, this question is the subject of empirical studies on the relationship between social class and voting behavior (Franklin 1985; Manza and Brooks 1999; Nieuwbeerta 1996; Evans 1999). Moreover, the question of the relationship between social class and voting behavior has recently regained interest as a result of the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. Since the velvet revolutions in 1989 and the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1991, the political systems in these countries have changed from totalitarian regimes into democratic regimes with free general elections. Because the political party structure in these nations had to be built almost from scratch, the question arises as to what extent these new political systems have developed along the cleavages characteristic of earlier capitalist democracies. At Žrst sight, it would seem that most newly founded political parties in Eastern Europe represent the same cleavages as in Western nations (Kitschelt 1994). For example, in all post-communist nations socialdemocratic as well as liberal and conservative parties have been founded and participate in elections. Furthermore, people who have lived over forty years under strong class-conscious communist regimes are fully socialized in class terms and can be assumed to act accordingly (Kitschelt 1992). On the other hand, the extent to which class cleavages play an important part in Eastern European politics has been called into question (Mateju and Rehakova 1997). As multi-party systems and free democratic elections did not exist in Eastern Europe for over forty years, voters in the new established democracies seem to be unable to assess the proclaimed policies of the various new parties. Furthermore, in the economically unclear and uctuating circumstances in Eastern European countries in transition, people can be expected to face difŽculties to assess their own position and interests and translate those into voting behavior. Empirical Žndings concerning the relation between social class and voting for former state-socialist societies are inconclusive. Evans and WhiteŽeld (1995), for example, have shown that social cleavages can be observed in Eastern European party systems which suggests that it is not merely institutional factors such as electoral systems that shape a country’s party system. However, the relation between the traditional class cleavage and voting behavior has been found to be consistently weaker in Eastern European than in Western democracies (De Graaf et al. 1994). In addition, Kitschelt et al. (1999) show that as a result of the speciŽc histories of Eastern European nations in some of these countries class cleavages did not develop. Nevertheless, most of these studies focus on a single country (e.g. Evans and WhiteŽeld (1995) on Hungary; Mateju and Rehakova (1997) and Mateju et al. (1999) on the Czech Republic; Evans and WhiteŽeld (1999) on Russia), or when focussing on several countries

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do not use comparable measures (Kitschelt et al. 1999). Furthermore, hardly any study so far directly compared the situation in Eastern Europe with that in Western nations. The present paper contributes to the recent resurgence of interest in the relation between class cleavages and politics in the new democracies in Eastern Europe. Our analyses build on earlier research but employ three signiŽcant innovations. First, a set of measures for assessing the overall magnitude of the class cleavage in party systems of democratic societies is used based on a multi-category class and political party scheme to improve upon earlier dichotomous conceptualizations of class and class voting. Second, when studying the relationship between social class and political behavior we take into account the impact of subjective class-related factors. Despite a large stream of research on the (changing) relationship between class and vote choice, relatively little attention is paid to the causal mechanisms explaining this relationship (but see: Weakliem and Heath 1994; Brooks and Manza 1997a; Kitschelt et al. 1999). Therefore, we address the question as to whether voting behavior of class members is a product of class-related mechanisms such as their attitudes towards economic justice. In doing so, we link the cleavage literature to the literature on social justice, in which the importance of the relationship between social class and justice-related attitudes has been well documented (for an overview, see Kluegel et al. 1995; Miller 1992). Finally, we include both several new Eastern European democracies and longstanding Western democracies in our analyses. This enables us not only to mutually compare the new democracies, but also to compare these new democracies with longstanding Western democracies. Social class, attitudes to economic justice and party preference s

In all Western industrialized societies, social class has turned out to be one of the prime determinants of voting behavior (Franklin et al. 1992; Nieuwbeerta 1995). There is a recent discussion in the literature focusing on the question of whether class has become less relevant over time as a source of differing political interest and behavior. For some authors, the increasingly post-industrial nature of the West has resulted in the fracturing of traditional class allegiances (Clark and Lipset 1991; Franklin et al. 1992; Nieuwbeerta and De Graaf 1999; Nieuwbeerta and Ultee 1999), while others have pointed to evidence that class position has not lost its efŽcacy as a source of divergent political attitudes and behavior (Manza and Brooks 1999; Evans 1999). Nevertheless, scholars taking both standpoints stress the importance of class for voting in present (post-) industrial societies.

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In contemporary Eastern Europe, however, questions about class interest take on a very different form: of course, not concerned with the question of whether class divisions are declining. Instead, they focus on whether or not class is likely to become a progressively more important social and political cleavage as former communist societies attempt the difŽcult process of transition to a market economy and consolidated democracy (e.g. Evans 1997). This process suggests the emergence of class-based conicts of interests associated with the workings of the market. A process that could be hindered because of the communist destratiŽcation history as well as the transitional stage in which these societies are. Nevertheless, in principle it can be expected that in both Eastern European and longstanding Western democracies political divisions are likely to arise out of the different economic interests generated by voters’ class locations (Lipset et al. 1954). Here we refer to a classical theory: the economic-interest theory of voting behavior (Downs 1957; Heath et al. 1985). Its basic idea is that voting behavior is rational and self-interested: people vote for the party whose (intended) policies will bring them the greatest utility. The idea is that people in different social positions vote differently because they have different (class) interests and, accordingly, different preferences concerning economic justice. When examining the relation between social class and voting behavior, various social classes are commonly distinguished, each having its own speciŽc socio-economic interests (Evans 1992, 2000). First, a major distinction between employer and employee classes should be recognized. On the basis of their interests, employers are not in favor of wage regulations that beneŽt the non-employer classes. Within employee classes, there are also signiŽcant differences in labor contracts and conditions of employment. On the one hand, members of the service class enjoy conditions of employment which are decidedly more advantageous than those of other grades of employees, especially when viewed over the scale of a lifetime. The service class, therefore, has a substantial stake in preserving the status quo and not in reducing inequalities in societies. Thus, this class constitutes an essentially conservative element within modern societies (Goldthorpe 1982: 179- 80). The same holds for routine non-manual workers, but to a lesser extent. On the other hand, skilled, unskilled, and agricultural laborers have the least occupational security and the lowest wages and may, therefore, be expected to be in favor of redistributive socio-economic policies. To sum up, members of the lower social classes can be expected to prefer greater equality in income and more extensive social security regulations because they believe they will gain more from these arrangements than it will cost them (Alves and Rossi 1978; Gijsberts 1999; Jasso

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1978, 1980; Kelley and Evans 1993; Kluegel and Smith 1986; Marshall and Swift 1993; Svallfors 1997). Subsequently, people who favor a more equal income distribution and more extended social security regulations, are more likely to vote for political parties that prefer these, i.e. communist and socialist parties (Evans et al. 1996; Kelley and Evans 1993, 1995; Kluegel and Mateju 1995; Lipset 1983). Class cleavages in new and early democracies

Having discussed the theoretical relations between social class, economic justice attitudes, and voting behavior, what can be expected on differences between classes in their voting behavior in the new Eastern European democracies and earlier Western democracies? Since the end of 1989, over forty years of state-socialist rule have been overturned in Eastern Europe. At Žrst, optimism prevailed with respect to a quick transition of these societies into democracies and market economies. But soon it turned out that the transformation caused a period of economic and political instability. Adaptation to the new situation obviously differed among the different former state-socialist societies, but overall one can speak of an unstable situation in the Žrst years after the transition. Several authors refer to this situation as a situation of ’transformation anomie’ (Arts et al. 1995; Arts and Gijsberts 1998; Srubar 1994). In such a situation characterized by economic and political uncertainty - the degree of general confusion is relatively high. Since the end of 1989, the economic systems in Eastern Europe have been restructured and free-market economies were established. In a very short period, large parts of the industrial and agricultural sector have been reformed or privatized, private ownership reintroduced, banking systems established, prices set free and many other far-reaching economic reform policies implemented. It soon turned out that the economic reforms had introduced a period of economic instability, increasing unemployment, and high rates of ination in Eastern Europe. The consequence of this unstable economic situation was that members of different classes probably were less able to recognize their class interests and were, accordingly, uncertain whether they should prefer more (or less) income inequality and social security regulations. Moreover, the transformation ended major destratiŽcation policies. As was the case, the Marxist governments in all the Eastern European countries underlined the importance of a ’just’ and ’equal’ allocation of material wealth and living conditions. To achieve a ’attened society’, several destratifying policy measures were implemented, such as income redistribution, the abolition of private property, and negative discrimination

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against traditionally privileged social groups (the bourgeoisie) together with positive discrimination in favor of traditionally underprivileged social groups, especially manual workers (Ganzeboom et al. 1990; Peschar 1990). The communist political ideology, for example, favored greater rewards for blue-collar workers as compared with white-collar professionals. As a consequence, the economic interests of the different social classes will probably diverge less under state socialism. Therefore, differences between classes in how they value equality can be expected to be smaller in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the radical egalitarian ideology of communism. Before the transformation, in general, egalitarian norms were widely held because of common socialization, and this egalitarian ideology could have produced its after-effects in the postcommunist period. Therefore, it can be expected that people’s economic justice attitudes will be less related to social stratiŽcation in Eastern European than in Western nations (see, for similar reasoning: Gijsberts 1999; Kluegel and Mateju 1995). Other important changes took place within the political domain. Following the breakdown of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe, political party systems had to be created from scratch. After the major transitions, many new political parties were established and former communist parties were abolished, restructured, or forbidden. The Žrst general elections in Eastern Europe were held about two years after the major breakdowns. These Žrst elections were not so much a choice between parties, but more ’referenda on democracy’ or ’referenda on stateness’ (Linz and Stepan 1992). The subsequent elections centered more on a choice between political parties. Thus, the new party systems were rather labile, creating a situation of political uncertainty. On the one hand, parties were unable to make clear what their standpoints were and what section of the electorate they aimed to represent. On the other hand, voters themselves were confused about the new parties, unable to identify themselves with the new parties and their leaders. Furthermore, in many cases voters were not familiar with the policies formulated by both the newly founded and the restructured old communist parties. Voters in these countries could no longer rely on their past experience of the policies of communist parties (see also De Graaf et al. 1994). Concluding, in former state-socialist societies, it may be expected that the situation of economic uncertainty has made people from different classes uncertain of their class interests and, thus, whether they ought to prefer more or less income inequality and redistribution. Furthermore, high levels of political uncertainty in these countries ensure that people from different classes are uncertain as to which political parties serve their class interests best. In addition, members of the working class in former state-socialist societies will - on the basis of their experience with the

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former communist regime - have less conŽdence in the intentions of socialist and social-democratic political parties, and are also less likely to be convinced that these parties represent their class interests. Therefore, it is to be expected that political class cleavages - measured by the effects of (a) social class on economic justice attitudes, (b) economic justice attitudes on voting, and (c) social class on voting - are smaller in new Eastern European democracies than in early Western democracies. Differences among new democracies

In addition to distinguishing between Eastern European and Western democracies, distinctions also should be drawn within the bloc of former state-socialist nations. The paths of history, the swiftness of the transformation process, and the development of party systems vary signiŽcantly between the different Eastern European societies. Kitschelt et al. (1999), for example, state that the development of party systems after the regime breakdown has been determined to a large extent by the former communist institutions and resource distributions. Three different types of communist rule are distinguished. Patrimonial communism relied on vertical chains of personal independence between leaders in the party apparatus, accompanied by extensive patronage networks. Power is concentrated around a small ruling clique. An example is Bulgaria. National-accommodative communism produces regimes with more developed formal-rational bureaucratic governance structures that partially separated party rule and state administration. These regimes permitted modest levels of civil rights, relying more on cooperation than repression. This type of communist rule prevailed in countries that emerged from semi-democratic inter-war policies and a certain degree of industrialization, such as Hungary and Poland. Bureaucratic-authoritarian communism came closest to a totalitarian model of a party state with an all-powerful bureaucratic machine governed by a planning technocracy and a disciplined, hierarchically stratiŽed communist party. The Czech Republic and the GDR are examples of this kind. These different types of communist rule are expected to inuence party alignments as well as cleavage voting (Kitschelt et al. 1999: 77). The bureaucratic-authoritarian type (Czech Republic, GDR) will promote one single salient dimension, i.e. the economic divide, and considerable polarization between the most extreme parties (see also Mateju et al. 1999). Also, patrimonial communism (Bulgaria) will lead to considerable polarization, but economic and political- cultural divides will reinforce each other. By contrast, national-accommodative communism (Hungary, Poland) will cause cross-cutting dimensions of competition over both

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economic and political- cultural issues. Moreover, democracies after bureaucratic-authoritarian rule (Czech Republic, GDR) develop strong market-liberal parties, while formerly patrimonial communist nations (Bulgaria) produce weak and divided market-liberal parties. In democracies after national-accommodative rule (Hungary, Poland) postcommunist or Christian-national parties will emerge. So, following Kitschelt et al. (1999) we assume that the economic divide will differ among the party systems of post-communist democracies. Political class cleavages - measured by the effects of (a) social class on economic justice attitudes, (b) economic justice attitudes on voting, and (c) social class on voting - will be highest in the Czech Republic and the GDR, little less in Bulgaria, and lowest in Poland and Hungary. Data and measures Data

The hypotheses concerning the relations between social class, economic justice attitudes, and voting behavior are tested using data from fourteen countries in the 1990s. The countries pertain to Žve new democracies Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, and Poland - and nine longstanding Western democracies - Australia, Canada, Great Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the USA (total N = 20,270). For all these countries, multiple data sets are brought together from three internationally comparative projects: the Social Inequality Modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the International Social Justice Project (ISJP), and the International Survey of Economic Attitudes (ISEA). The ISSP, ISJP, and ISEA are all international consortia of survey organizations that collect comparable cross-national data on social attitudes and justice beliefs. The data were in most countries gathered using self-completion questionnaires left behind by the interviewers or Žlled in in the presence of the interviewer. Each survey is a large representative national sample of adults (the number of cases is around 1,000 in each survey). The advantage of the ISSP, ISJP, and ISEA modules for cross-national research is that the modules are Želded using fully comparable question wording, response categories, and sequencing in all countries. Appendix A indicates from which sources and for which years data are available. For detailed documentation of the surveys we refer to the original codebooks (Zentralarchiv 1989, 1994; ISJP 1993, 1998; Gijsberts and Ganzeboom 1996; Kelley et al. 1998; Zagorski et al. 1997).

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Social class

To measure social class, the manual versus non-manual class distinction is traditionally used in research on the relation between social class and voting behavior. In this paper, this tradition is followed, but a more elaborate conception of class is used: a Žve-class version of the EGP-class schema, developed by Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarrero (1979), elaborated by Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992: 38- 9). This class scheme distinguishes between two manual classes - i.e. the unskilled manual workers (including agricultural laborers) and the skilled manual workers and three non-manual classes - the routine non-manual class, the service class, and the self-employed (both the ’petty bourgeois’ and the farmers).1

Economic justice attitudes

To measure economic justice attitudes, two different measurement instruments have been used: attitudes towards the role of government in social security and the degree of support for equalizing the existing income distribution. These measurement instruments theoretically measure different dimensions of attitudes towards economic justice (see Mason 1995; Kluegel et al. 1995; Svallfors 1997).2 Attitudes towards the role of government are measured by presenting the following two items to respondents: ’The government should provide a job for everyone who wants one’ and ’The government should provide everyone with a guaranteed basic income’. Respondents could indicate to what extent they agreed with both items: (1) ’strongly disagree’ to (5) ’strongly agree’. By computing the mean of the answers to these two questions, an adequate scale has been constructed, which we label the welfare state index (Cronbach’s alpha is 0.71). To simplify the interpretation of the scale, the items have been transformed to a range between 0 and 100. The higher the score on the welfare state index, the more people prefer an active role of government in social security issues. Following earlier research (Headey 1991; Kelley and Evans 1993; Rainwater 1974; Szirmai 1986), people’s support for equalizing the 1. In order to obtain a comparable operationalizatio n of social class in all countries and years, respondents were coded into EGP classes on the basis of data on their occupation, self-employment, and supervisory status. First, the original occupation codes were recoded according to the International Standard ClassiŽcation of Occupation (ISCO) codes (International Labour OfŽce 1969). Then these ISCO codes were translated into EGP scores through the Ganzeboom et al. (1989) recoding scheme. 2. These measures are of course correlated, but analysis reveals that they indeed cover separate dimensions.

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existing income distribution is measured by questions about the perceived and legitimate earnings of an unskilled worker and a chairman of a large national company. People were asked: ’What do you think people in these jobs actually earn each year before taxes?’, and, subsequently, ’What do you think people in these jobs ought to be paid - how much do you think they should earn each year before taxes, regardless of what they actually get?’ Based on people’s answers to these questions, the usual egalitarianism index has been constructed (Jasso 1980; Szirmai 1986): Egalitarianism index = perceived income inequality/legitimate income inequality = (perceived earnings of chairman/perceived earnings of unskilled worker)/ (legitimate earnings of chairman/legitimate earnings of unskilled worker)3 A score of 1 on this index indicates that, according to the respondent, income differences can remain as they are. The higher the value of this variable, the larger the difference between perceived income inequality and legitimate inequality of income, and, thus, the more people are inclined to equalize the (perceived) income distribution.

Party preference

Although for most of the variables the ISSP, ISJP, and ISEA data are cross-nationally comparable, party preferences of respondents have been measured in several ways in the different surveys. In the surveys used in this study, respondents were sometimes asked to name the political party they would vote for if there were national elections tomorrow; while in others respondents were asked to name the party they voted for at the most recent national election, while in still others respondents were asked which political party they preferred or identiŽed with. The limitations introduced by such different measures of voting behavior are potentially signiŽcant. However, analyses comparing the different measures produce similar outcomes. The multi-party system format is the characteristic mode in most of the 3. In this formula, the natural logarithm of the earnings is taken, in order to take into account the facts that income distributions approximate a lognormal distribution, that absolute income differences at the bottom of the income distribution are felt more keenly than differences at the top, and that people think more in percentage terms than in absolute changes (Jasso 1978).

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countries under investigation. In order to produce a meaningful classiŽcation of parties that would allow for cross-national comparisons we categorized individual political parties into distinct party families. Following the approach of Lane and Ersson (1999), political parties are classiŽed into a speciŽc party family on the basis of their name, ideology, program, appeal, historic tradition, and relation to international political organizations. For example, most liberal parties named themselves liberal party, are members of the International Federation of Liberal and Democratic Parties, and their party manifestos clearly show a liberal ideology. For other types of parties - also in Eastern Europe - the same applies. The Žve distinct party families are: (1) Communist, (2) Green (Environmental), (3) Socialist, (4) Liberal (including Agrarian), and (5) Conservative (including Religious).4 Ethnic, ultra-right and (one-issue) protest parties are coded as ’other parties’. Typically, these parties get only a very small part of the votes. In Appendix B we list which parties are included in which party family.5 An important feature of this party family scheme is that within the left bloc we distinguish between communist, green and socialist parties. The communist parties have - especially in Eastern Europe - a rather distinct history. Furthermore, although the green parties could be regarded as left-wing, in general their focus is more on non-economic issues like the environment, women’s rights, etc. Moreover, distinguishing within the right-wing bloc between liberal parties and conservative or religious parties gives us the possibility to take into account the effects of the religion cleavage. In most of the analyses in this paper we use this Žve-party family scheme. In additional analyses, however, we also use a two-party scheme, dichotomizing political parties into left-wing and right-wing parties. This distinction can be seen as the most relevant distinction between political parties, when investigating class-based voting. In deciding whether a speciŽc party should be included in the left-wing bloc, we followed the 4. Unfortunately, since agrarian parties and religious parties in most countries are too small to distinguish separate party families for these types of parties, we had to combine these parties with, respectively, the liberal and conservative parties. Given their ideology, history and left- right position (see Appendix B) this seemed the best way to deal with this situation. 5. In earlier versions of this paper we also used alternative categorizations of political parties in multi-party systems (Gijsberts and Nieuwbeerta 1999). We, for example, used the ’International Social Justice Project (ISJP)’ categorization of political parties, giving parties a score on a left- right Žve-point scale (ISJP 1993, 1998). The coding is based on the political knowledge of national experts in the various countries. The use of the ISJP categorizatio n led to similar conclusions as those obtained in this paper. We feel, however, that the party families used in this paper are theoretically more sound.

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criteria given by Bartolini and Mair (1990: 42- 3) and included all parties which were members of the Socialist International or the Communist Third International. So, in practice those parties that were classiŽed as ’communist’ or ’socialist’ are categorized as left-wing, and all other parties as right-wing. Since according to these criteria hardly any left-wing voters would exist in the United States, for that country an exception to the criteria was made, and the Democratic Party was deŽned as a left-wing party. The left-right distinction clearly is the most relevant distinction between political parties, when investigating class-based voting. To oversimplify, left-wing - i.e. communist and socialist - parties prefer a change in the direction of greater social equality, i.e. their policies are in favor of the manual classes, whereas right-wing parties are against such changes, i.e. their policies are in the interests of non-manual classes (Lipset 1983). These differences in ideology and policy preferences between communist and socialist parties on the one side and other parties on the other in both Eastern European and Western democracies, are commonly acknowledged by voters, political experts, and politicians. Huber and Inglehart (1995), for example, interviewed political experts in forty-two countries and asked them to place all parties in their country on one of the ten spaces on a left- right scale. For each of the party families we list these scores in Appendix B of this paper. Clearly, communist and socialist parties are regarded by these political experts as more left-wing than other types of parties in both new and longstanding democracies. In addition, Kitschelt et al. (1999) interviewed politicians from various political parties in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. They also reported communist and socialist parties in their country to be signiŽcantly more left-wing, and in favor of a larger role of the government in social inequality than other parties. Control variables

We control the analyses for people’s age, sex, and religiosity. Age is measured in years and runs from 18 years and older. Sex is a dichotomous variable (0 = female, 1 = male). Religiosity is measured by asking people’s frequency of church attendance (coded from (1) ’never’ to (5) ’at least once a week’). Furthermore, we add education (measured in years of education) and subjective social class (measured by asking people to rank themselves on a ten-point scale from bottom to top). Finally, all analyses are controlled for the year the survey took place.

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Statistical models and analytical strategy

F

The level of class voting in a country at a certain point in time can be operationalized in various ways. Traditionally, simple bivariate measures using dichotomous variables, like the Alford index have been used (Alford 1963). The Alford index is obtained by taking, for a two-by-two table cross-classifying class (manual/non-manual) and voting behavior (leftwing/right-wing), the difference between the percentage of manual workers that voted for traditional left-wing (communist and socialist) parties on the one hand and the percentage of non-manual workers that voted for these parties on the other hand. Recently, however, more adequate ways to examine the relationship between cleavage characteristics and voting have been developed. First, scholars have proposed using log-odds ratios, when measuring the strength of the class- vote relationship instead of differences of proportions (Heath et al. 1985; Manza et al. 1995; Nieuwbeerta 1995, 1996). Log- odds ratios have the advantages that these are insensitive to changes in the general popularity of the political parties and distribution of classes, religious groups, or any other cleavage under investigation (for a discussion see: Heath et al. 1985, 1991; Brooks and Manza 1997b). Successively, these analytic models based on log- odds ratios were extended to enable the use of multinomial explanatory and dependent variables (e.g. Hout et al. 1995). In this paper, we use a detailed, Žve-class scheme, originally developed by Erickson and Goldthorpe (e.g. 1992). In this scheme, there are three non-manual classes (routine white-collar, service class, and the selfemployed (including farmers)) and two manual classes (skilled and unskilled workers). Our dependent party choice variable distinguishes in some analyses between two types of parties - i.e. left- and right-wing - but more often between Žve types of political parties - communist, socialist, environmental, liberal, and conservative parties. To model the effects of class on party preference and to test cross-national variation in levels of cleavage voting, we therefore use the recently developed multinomial logistic regression models of vote choice (Hout et al. 1995; Brooks and Manza 1997b; Evans 1999). In these models, the dependent variables are the log of the odds of choosing for a certain type of party over another type of party for each person i. If, for example, we restrict ourselves and examine only the class- vote relationship, this model would look like:

ij

=a

j

+

S

K k=1

b

T kj Cik

+

S

L l=1

b

R lj Dil

K

+

S S

L

b

RT klj DilCik

(1)

k=1 l=1

where Cik are dummy variables for the k countries in the analyses, and Dil

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are dummy variables for the Žve distinguished classes. The parameters to be estimated in this model are the constant a j , the b kj term for the effect of each of the k countries on vote choice (the T superscript designates this as the country variable), and the b lj term for the effect of the l class categories on vote choice (with the R superscript designating this as the class variable). The b s superscripted by RT to indicate a class by country interaction represent hypotheses about cross-national variation in class voting for each of the speciŽc classes. Of course, this model can be expanded by adding terms for other factors, like religion, and gender (e.g. Manza and Brooks 1999). These models enable us to describe cross-national variation in levels of class voting in a detailed way. However, our major aim is also to explain the variation in levels of class voting. To ensure that it is not a matter of differences between countries in their social structure, we therefore Žrst of all include people’s age, sex, religiosity, education, and subjective social class (as well as the survey year). Next, we include measures of respondents’ attitudes towards economic justice into our model. Including these measures and their interaction terms with country enables us to test to what extent classes differ in their attitudes toward these issues, and how that affects vote choice. For example, the extent to which cross-national variation in class voting is due to variation in (a) the strength of the relation between class and economic justice attitudes, and (b) the strength of the relation between these attitudes and voting can be represented in equation (2): ij = a

F

j+

+

S

S

K

b

T kj Cik

+

k=1

M m=1

b

N m j Xim

S

L

R lj Dil

l=1

K

+

b

S S

K

+

S S

L

b

RT klj DilCik

k=1 l=1

M

b

MT km j Xim Cik

(2)

k=1 m=1

where the Žrst three parameters to be estimated are the same as in equation (1) (a j , b kj , and b lj ), the b m j term represents the effect of economic justice attitudes on vote choice (the N superscript designates this as the attitude variables), and the b s superscripted by MT indicate an attitude by country interaction. The Xim denotes the variables measuring respondents’ economic justice attitudes (note that control variables are not shown in this equation).

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An index of class voting

Using the coefŽcients of the models of vote choice, we can construct a measure of the magnitude of the class voting cleavage in a given country. Because class effects are measured in standard deviations, this measure enables us to directly compare the magnitude of the cleavage across the countries (see Hout et al. 1995). Our measure is calculated as the average deviation of a given class category from the overall mean. This kappa index is summarized in equation (3), where the s are the coefŽcients of the model, and the k subscript for the index indicates that there is a single score for each of the countries: L

Class voting index (Kk ) =

J

(

R lj

+

l=1 j=1

LJ

RT 2 klj )

(3)

In this equation, L equals the number of classes and J equals the voting outcomes.6 Note that the kappa index can be calculated both when distinguishing two (left/right) and Žve (i.e. party families) types of political parties in our analyses. Scores for this index measure the magnitude of the class effects for a given election in deviations from the mean. When the voting behavior of classes diverges, the standard deviation of the groupspeciŽc coefŽcients (i.e. the index) will increase. Conversely, when the voting behavior of classes converges, the index score will approach zero. By examining whether these scores vary across countries, we investigate the extent to which cross-national variation exists in the political class cleavage.

Results Social class and party preferences

First, we turn to the relation between social class and party preferences in Eastern European and Western democracies. The expectation was that both in the new democracies in Eastern Europe and in longstanding Western democracies manual classes would be more likely to vote leftwing than non-manual classes. However, the strength of the relationship 6. In practice, however, not all Žve voting outcomes exist in each country (or only a few respondents voted for certain party groups). These cases inate the measures of class voting in a spurious way. Therefore, following Hout et al. (1995), we leave these ’extra’ parameters out of the calculation.

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between social class and voting behavior was expected to be higher in Western democracies than in Eastern European ones. This expectation was based on the assumption that the political systems in Eastern Europe were still in a phase of development and that the major transitions created many economic uncertainties and anomie. Table 1 shows the differences between classes in their voting behavior for the distinguished political party groups in all Eastern European and Western countries under investigation. Table 2 presents summary measures for levels of class voting in the various countries: the kappa index measuring traditional class voting (left/right), and the kappa index measuring total class voting (distinguishing between the Žve-party families). These indices were calculated based on our individual-level data by means of multinomial logistic regression analysis. Both measures were calculated uncontrolled and controlled for effects of age, sex, church attendance, education, subjective class, and year of survey. All measures yield very much the same conclusions: the Spearman rank correlation between the indices in the fourteen countries has values between 0.6 and 0.8 ( p < 0.01). After controlling for background characteristics (like education and religiosity) the effects of class on voting largely remain. Moreover, the rankings of the countries on the two measures of class voting stay very similar. This means that differences between countries in the distribution of background variables are not responsible for differences between countries in levels of class voting. For longstanding Western democracies, the picture is much as expected. Unskilled and skilled manual workers mostly vote left-wing (communist and socialist), followed by the routine non-manual and service classes. The petty bourgeois and farmers vote left-wing least. Instead, they mostly vote for conservative or religious parties (see Table 1). In all Western democracies, members of the manual class are substantially more apt to vote for left-wing parties than members of the non-manual classes. This is reected in the fact that for all Western democracies (except Canada) the kappa indices are substantial (Table 2). There are, however, differences in the strength of the relationship between class and voting among Western democracies. In Great Britain, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries levels of class voting are highest, whereas in the other countries levels of class voting are lower, and in the US and Canada class voting is at the lowest level. These results are in agreement with previous cross-national studies (e.g. Nieuwbeerta 1995, 1996). For the new democracies in Eastern Europe, however, a totally different picture emerges. Hardly any signiŽcant differences between classes in their voting behavior exist (Table 1), and - except for the Czech Republic - levels of class voting are low (Table 2). Moreover, in some

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TABLE 1. Voting behavior (in %) in different social classes (EGP) in Žve Eastern European and nine Western industrialized countriesa Selfemployed

Service class

Routine non-manual

Skilled workers

Unskilled workers

Bulgaria Communist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

26 12 62

39 5 56

44 9 47

33 12 56

38 10 52

Czech Republic Communist Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

11 41 48

6 1 13 32 47

7 3 16 33 42

12 2 17 31 39

11 4 10 39 36

Germany East Communist Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

2 18 21 16 44

9 24 29 11 27

3 15 33 14 35

5 13 32 9 42

5 13 30 10 42

Hungary Communist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

15 80 5

19 73 8

15 80 5

14 81 4

9 81 10

Poland Communist Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

25 18 54 3

23 16 57 4

30 13 52 5

24 24 49 4

33 18 47 2

Australia Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

27 24 49

43 12 45

45 13 42

63 9 28

61 10 29

Britain Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

24 16 60

27 19 54

30 16 54

52 14 34

49 17 34

Canada Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

31 31 37

33 36 32

33 33 34

24 45 31

27 40 33

Germany West Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

21 23 12 43

20 37 10 32

12 43 8 37

8 53 7 32

9 45 8 38

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Continued Selfemployed

Service class

Routine non-manual

Skilled workers

Unskilled workers

Netherlands Communist Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

2 3 21 44 30

2 9 20 43 26

3 4 31 29 33

0 3 34 24 38

6 1 40 20 33

New Zeal and Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

4 28 5 64

7 43 2 48

5 53 3 39

6 69 2 24

10 47 1 42

Norway Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

33 46 21

44 13 44

57 13 31

58 19 23

61 23 17

Sweden Communist Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

18 71 11

6 6 29 51 7

1 1 33 59 4

11 51 34 4

4 7 36 45 7

United States Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious

25 75

37 63

42 58

46 54

50 50

Note: a Column percentages add to 100 per cent in each country. N.B. The ‘other’ category for voting is not included in the analyses. Classes in which less than 2 per cent of the people voted for a party are left out of the analyses.

former state-socialist societies, patterns of class voting are counter to the general pattern seen in Western nations. In countries like Bulgaria and Hungary, members of the non-manual classes on average vote more leftwing than members of the manual classes. Overall, these results corroborate the expectation that the political structure in the new democracies in Eastern Europe not (yet) follows the same political class cleavages as in early Western democracies.

Social class and economic justice attitudes

The question then arises as to why people in Eastern Europe (so far) vote so little according to their social class position. Do they - possibly as a

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GIJS BER TS & N IEUWBE ERTA

TABLE 2. Kappa indices measuring the level of EGP class voting in Žve Eastern European and nine Western industrialized countriesa Left/right voting

Voting for Žve party families

Uncontrolled

Controlled b

Uncontrolled

Controlled b

Bulgaria Czech Republic Germany East Hungary Poland

0.19 0.28 0.19 0.11 0.08

0.20 0.33 0.18 0.07 0.07

0.25 0.25 0.39 0.22 0.18

0.22 0.29 0.29 0.15 0.15

Australia Canada Britain Germany West Netherlands Norway New Zealand Sweden United States

0.35 0.11 0.31 0.31 0.21 0.28 0.39 0.45 0.24

0.32 0.14 0.27 0.31 0.11 0.24 0.30 0.45 0.23

0.30 0.12 0.29 0.26 0.46 0.44 0.40 0.44 0.24

0.28 0.16 0.26 0.23 0.45 0.39 0.36 0.53 0.23

Notes: a Parameter s from Multinomial Logistic Regression Analysis for Levels of EGP Class Voting in fourteen countries. b Controlled for the effects of age, sex, church attendance, education, subjective social class, and year of survey.

consequence of economic anomie - have difŽculties perceiving their class interests and accordingly do not differ in economic justice attitudes, or are they - possibly due to political anomie - unable to translate their attitudes and policy preferences into party preferences? To answer this question, Žrst, the relation between social class and economic justice attitudes needs to be examined. It is to be expected that differences between social classes’ attitudes toward economic justice will be smaller in new Eastern European than in early Western democracies. In general, however, one might expect that manual classes would be more in favor of reducing existing income differences and a redistributive government than non-manual classes. As a Žrst test of these hypotheses, Table 3 presents the support for a stronger role of government (the welfare state index) and the support for equalization (the egalitarianism index) for the various social classes in all nations. It is remarkable that in all societies, i.e. both Eastern European and Western societies, there is an overall tendency to equalize the income distribution. In all countries, the egalitarianism index has a value larger than 1, implying that on average people think that inequalities of income in their society are greater than they consider legitimate. Even members of the social classes that are relatively least in favor of income equalization

415

416

47 46 60 66 62 73 49 53 45

Australia Canada Britain Germany West Netherlands Norway New Zealand Sweden United States

46 50 56 64 57 67 54 56 43

84 69 85 76 69

52 57 66 66 62 78 57 62 52

88 75 86 83 80 59 59 71 70 66 80 64 67 53

89 79 88 86 82 58 54 76 73 66 81 70 70 59

91 80 88 87 85 6.3 5.2 8.0 3.5 3.6 5.7 8.2 7.1 6.4

2.8 5.2 2.9 4.4 6.3 13 13 20 9 9 14 21 17 16

7 11 7 11 16 1.9 2.0 3.0 2.5 2.2 2.0 2.1 1.8 3.0

2.7 1.7 2.1 3.1 2.5 1.8 2.2 2.7 2.7 1.9 1.7 2.0 1.7 2.9

2.0 1.5 2.7 2.8 2.2 1.9 1.8 2.7 2.6 1.9 1.9 2.0 1.6 2.9

2.5 1.8 2.9 3.0 2.3 1.9 1.7 3.1 2.9 2.1 1.9 2.1 1.7 2.7

2.4 2.1 2.8 3.6 2.8

1.9 2.0 3.3 2.5 2.1 2.0 2.1 1.8 3.0

2.9 2.1 2.8 3.8 2.8

0.04 0.18 0.30 0.15 0.14 0.11 0.04 0.09 0.13

0.31 0.25 0.31 0.41 0.31

Routine Skilled Unskilled Spread Distance Self- Service Routine Skilled Unskilled Spread non-man. workers workers of between empl. class non-man. workers workers of classes extremes classes

Egalitarianism indexb

Notes: a The mean score on the welfare state index on a scale from 0 to 100. The larger the score, the more government intervention in social security people prefer. b The mean score on the egalitarianism index. The larger the index, the more equalization people prefer.

88 69 81 80 78

Self- Service empl. class

Welfare state indexa

Economic justice attitudes in different social classes (EGP) in Žve Eastern European and nine Western industrialized countries

Bulgaria Czech Republic Germany East Hungary Poland

TABLE 3.

0.1 0.5 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.3

0.9 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.6

Distance between extremes

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GIJS BER TS & N IEUWBE ERTA

- the service class and self-employed - still prefer a reduction in existing income differences. Nevertheless, economic justice attitudes differ substantially between different societies. In general, the egalitarianism index is higher in Eastern European than in Western societies. Furthermore, in Eastern Europe, people, on average, are much more of the opinion that the government should provide extensive social security. Presumably, attitudes towards the role of the state are heavily inuenced by the attitudes towards and experiences with the former communist regimes. Furthermore, Table 3 reveals that in both new Eastern European and early Western democracies, economic justice attitudes differ systematically between social classes. In almost all countries, manual workers are more of the opinion that the government should intervene in social security, followed by routine non-manual workers. Members of the service class and the self-employed are much less in favor of an active role of the government in the area of social security. Members of the manual classes also show the highest tendency to equalize, followed by the service class and the self-employed. Finally, to examine whether class differences in attitudes to economic justice differ between Eastern European and Western democracies, two summary measures are shown: the spread of the EGP classes on the indices (the standard deviation of the averages), and the distance between the extreme values. The larger both measures, the less consensus exists between various social classes on economic justice issues and, thus, the more these attitudes are class-based. Overall, Table 3 shows that regarding the welfare state index differences between social classes in Eastern European democracies are similar to those in Western democracies, whereas regarding the egalitarianism index social classes differ even more in Eastern European than in Western democracies. The results, thus, do certainly not corroborate our expectation that the differences between social classes in their economic justice attitudes would be smaller in new Eastern European democracies than in early Western democracies. So, regardless of the presumed anomic and/or ’attened’ situation in Eastern Europe after the transition, people seem to be able to recognize their class interests in these countries.

Economic justice attitudes and party preferences

The question now becomes to what extent people recognize which political party best furthers their interests. To answer this question, the relation between economic justice attitudes and voting behavior is investigated. It is expected then that the effects of these attitudes on party

417

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preference will be smaller in new Eastern European than in longstanding Western democracies. Table 4 presents attitudes to economic justice issues distinguishing for the parties people voted for. The results show that in all Western democracies there are substantial differences in party preference between people who differ in their economic justice attitudes. The more people favor an active role of government in regulating social security and the more they tend to support equalization of income distribution, the more they vote for communist, green, or socialist parties and the less they vote for liberal or conservative parties. These substantial effects of economic justice attitudes on voting behavior as found in Western democracies are to a much lesser extent found in the new democracies in Eastern Europe. In these nations, the tendency to equalize hardly differs between people of different party preferences. And in those Eastern European nations where it does differ, unexpectedly, it is not strictly so that people who vote left-wing score higher on the egalitarianism index. Furthermore, hardly any effects of the welfare state index are evident. Only in the Czech Republic, people who preferred a more active government role are signiŽcantly less likely to vote right-wing and more likely to vote left-wing. In all other Eastern European nations, there were hardly any differences. To examine whether the relation between attitudes to economic justice issues and party preference differs between new Eastern European and Western democracies, again two summary measures are constructed: the spread of economic justice attitudes over party choice, and the distance between the extreme values (see Table 4). The larger both measures are, the more party choice is based on attitudes towards economic justice. The summary measures show that especially the welfare state index varies much less between the different party choices in Eastern European democracies (with the exception of the Czech Republic) than in Western nations. So, the relation between attitudes to economic justice issues and voting behavior is considerably weaker in Eastern European than in Western democracies, with the exception of the Czech Republic. People in the new democracies in Eastern Europe seem not to know (yet) how to translate their economic justice attitudes into their voting behavior, or perhaps parties are not (yet) able to make their policy issues clear to them. Social class, economic justice attitudes and party preferences

Finally, we examine the relation between social class and party preference and the extent to which class-related attitudes mediate this relationship. The strength of the relation between social class and voting behavior was

418

419

75 81 -

Australia Canada Britain Germany West Netherlands Norway New Zealand Sweden United States

71 76 65 71 -

88 90 -

58 61 80 72 71 78 66 66 -

83 88 85 50 50 68 62 58 72 68 54 58

89 78 86 84 77 46 40 55 62 60 67 52 61 39

86 68 85 75 78 6.1 10.0 12.3 5.6 8.4 5.6 7.0 10.3 13.1

2.2 8.5 2.0 5.2 4.0 12 21 25 10 18 11 16 27 19

5 21 5 9 9 3.3 2.4 -

2.7 2.0 3.2 3.4 2.4 3.2 2.8 2.3 1.6 -

1.8 3.4 -

Socialist Liberal/ Cons./ Spread Distance Comm. Green Agrarian Religious of between parties extremes

2.0 2.5 3.6 2.8 2.3 1.9 2.2 1.7 -

2.9

-

1.8 2.8

1.9 1.9 3.0 2.3 1.7 1.9 2.2 1.6 3.4

2.0 1.8 3.3 3.4 2.4

1.7 1.8 2.4 2.3 1.8 1.5 1.8 1.5 2.4

2.9 1.7 2.8 2.6 2.3

0.15 0.37 0.59 0.43 0.68 0.22 0.20 0.35 0.65

0.49 0.09 0.27 0.46 0.24

0.3 0.7 1.2 0.9 1.6 0.4 0.5 0.9 1.0

0.9 0.3 0.6 0.8 0.6

Socialist Liberal/ Cons./ Spread Distance Agrarian Religious of between parties extremes

Egalitarianism indexc

Notes: a Other parties are not shown. Classes in which less than 2 per cent of the people voted for a party are left out of the analyses. b The mean score on the welfare state index on a scale from 0 to 100. The larger the score, the more government intervention in social security people prefer. c The mean score on the egalitarianism index. The larger the index, the more equalization people prefer.

91 89 89 84 76

Comm. Green

Welfare state indexb

Economic justice attitudes by voting behavior (party families) in Žve Eastern European and nine Western industrialized countriesa

Bulgaria Czech Republic Germany East Hungary Poland

TABLE 4.

E UROP EA N SO CIE TIE S

expected to be less in new Eastern European democracies than in longstanding Western democracies. Moreover, after controlling for attitudes to economic justice issues, differences in voting behavior between social classes can be expected to reduce, although class differences in these attitudes in Eastern European nations would not explain as much as in Western nations. These hypotheses are tested by estimating parameters of multinomial logistic regression models with voting behavior as a dependent variable and both the class dummies and measures of economic justice attitudes as explanatory variables. In these models, respondents’ age, sex, church attendance, education, subjective social class, as well as the year of survey were included as control variables. Table 5 summarizes the relevant Žndings.7 First, also after controlling for economic justice attitudes substantial differences across countries in the total effects of social class on voting behavior remain. Furthermore, comparing the Žgures in Tables 2 and 5 reveals that class differences in voting behavior in Western democracies in general decrease once people’s economic justice attitudes are controlled for. This indicates that these attitudes indeed mediate the relation between class and voting behavior, and conŽrms the expectations. In most new Eastern European democracies, however, the situation is different. In these societies, there were hardly any differences between the voting behavior of different social classes at Žrst, and controlling for inequality attitudes hardly changes the parameters measuring the effects of social class. Thus, the results conŽrm the hypothesis that, in Eastern European democracies, differences in voting behavior between social classes depend less on attitudes to economic justice than in Western nations. However, this does not hold for the Czech Republic, where the political system seems to have become more crystallized. In this country, economic justice attitudes (and, especially, the welfare state index) do have a substantial mediating role in the relation between social class and party preference.

Conclusions

The aim of this paper was to examine the effects of social class and attitudes towards income inequality and social security on voting behavior in the newly founded democracies in Eastern Europe after the major transitions, and to develop a comparison with longstanding Western 7. Multinomial logistic regression models result in a large number of parameter estimates. To save space only those relevant for testing our hypotheses are presented. Full results can be obtained from the authors.

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TABLE 5. Parameters from multinomial logistic regression analysis for the effects of social class a and economic justice attitudes on voting behavior in Žve Eastern European and nine Western industrialized countriesb Left/right voting

Voting for Žve party families

Social class

Social class

Welfare Egalitarianism state index index

7

0.15 0.16 0.04 7 0.03 0.18

0.24 0.26 0.31 0.15 0.14

0.13 0.27 0.23 0.24 0.13

0.17 0.08 0.08 0.03 0.10

0.16 0.05 0.23 0.14 0.47 0.29 7 0.28 7 0.18 0.24

0.25 0.17 0.20 0.22 0.45 0.37 0.34 0.52 0.23

0.19 0.32 0.47 0.12 0.47 0.16 0.31 0.13 0.38

0.14 0.19 0.18 0.09 0.44 0.28 0.18 0.08 0.12

Welfare Egalitarianism state index index

Bulgaria Czech Republic Germany East Hungary Poland

0.20 0.31 0.17 0.07 0.06

0.25 0.62 0.12 0.11 0.11

Australia Canada Britain Germany West Netherlands Norway New Zealand Sweden United States

0.29 0.23 0.21 0.30 0.10 0.24 0.24 0.40 0.23

0.40 0.28 0.91 0.27 0.56 0.30 7 0.03 0.04 0.76

7

Notes: a Effects of social class are measured as kappa indices. b Controlled for the effects of age, sex, church attendance, education, subjective social class, and year of survey.

democracies. We also considered how far the relation between social class and party preference is mediated by people’s attitudes toward economic justice. To answer these questions, we used data from several surveys held in both various Eastern European and Western societies. The results show that in longstanding Western democracies manual classes tend more to favor equalization of income distribution and extensive regulation of social security, and consequentially are more likely to vote left-wing than non-manual classes. However, in the new democracies in Eastern Europe, there is hardly any effect of social class and class-based attitudes towards economic justice on party preference. What we found in most new Eastern European democracies is that there is an effect of social class on attitudes about economic justice issues, but not on party preference. The major conclusion of this paper is that voting in the Žrst years after the transition in Eastern Europe was hardly based on the class cleavage as known in longstanding democratic societies. The most important reason for this would seem to be the political unstable situation in Eastern Europe: either voters did not know which parties would best represent their class interests, or the parties were unable to make clear to voters what their policies were or which part of the electorate they

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represented. In fact, the degree of economic uncertainty as well as the after-effects of the destratiŽcation history are rather less than might have been expected: people of different social classes seemed to know what their class interests were, but were as yet unable to determine which political parties would look after those interests. The Czech Republic, however, forms an exception. In this nation, political class cleavages are almost similar to those in longstanding Western democracies. So, this result supports the ideas of Kitschelt et al. (1999) on the effects of historic trajectories of Eastern European nations on cleavage voting. A second conclusion is that attitudes towards economic justice mediate the relation between social class and voting behavior, but that part of the effect still remains unexplained. Apparently, class voting implies more than merely interest in income equalization and a redistributing government. Future research should look at other reasons for voting for particular political parties. Especially in Eastern Europe, divisions other than class cleavages, e.g. religious or ethnic cleavages, are probably of greater importance. An analysis of non-voters - particularly in Eastern Europe would also seem worthwhile, in relation to the issue of ’transformation anomie’ suggested in this study. For example, one might ask whether people who do not report their voting behavior in Eastern Europe, are the people who are confused about the new political order.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Dutch Sociological Association, May 2000, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments of Wil Arts, Harry Ganzeboom, Jeff Manza, Wilfred Uunk, Karin Wittebrood, and two anonymous reviewers. The research for this article was done when both authors were afŽliated to the Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

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Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 231-53. Miller, D. (1992) ’Distributive justice: what the people think’, Ethics 102: 555- 93. Nieuwbeerta, P. (1995) The Democratic Class Struggle in Twenty Countries 19451990, Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers. Nieuwbeerta, P. (1996) ’The democratic class struggle in postwar societies: class voting in twenty countries, 1945- 1990’, Acta Sociologica 39: 345-83. Nieuwbeerta, P. and De Graaf, N. D. (1999) ’Traditional class voting in twenty postwar societies’, in G. Evans (ed.), The End of Class Politics?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23- 58. Nieuwbeerta, P. and Ultee, W. C. (1999) ’Explaining differences in the level of class voting in 20 Western industrial nations, 1945- 1990’, European Journal of Political Research 35: 123- 60. Peschar, J. L. (ed.) (1990) Social Reproduction in Eastern and Western Europe. Comparative Analyses on Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland, Nijmegen: Institute for Applied Social Sciences. Rainwater, L. (1974) What Money Buys. Inequality and the Social Meanings of Income, New York: Basic Books. Srubar, I. (1994) ’Variants of the transformation process in Central Europe: a comparative assessment’, Zeitschrift fu¨ r Soziologie 23: 198-221. Svallfors, S. (1997) ’Worlds of welfare and attitudes to redistribution: a comparison of eight Western nations’, European Sociological Review 13: 283- 304. Szirmai, A. (1986) Inequality Observed: A Study of Attitudes towards Income Inequality, Enschede: Febodruk. Weakliem, D. and Heath, A. (1994) ’Rational choice and class voting’, Rationality and Society 6: 243-70. Zagorski, K., Kelley, J., Evans, M. D. R. and Frentzel-Zagorska, J. (1997) Poland 1997: International Survey of Economic Attitudes, Round 3, Warsaw: Center of Public Opinion Research. Zentralarchiv fu¨ r Empirische Sozialforschung (1989) International Social Survey Programme, Social Inequality, Codebook ZA - No.1680, Ko¨ ln. Zentralarchiv fu¨ r Empirische Sozialforschung (1994) International Social Survey Programme, Social Inequality II, Codebook ZA - No.2310, Ko¨ ln.

Me´rove Gijsberts is a researcher at the Department of Sociology, Nijmegen University, The Netherlands. She wrote her dissertation on attitudes towards inequality in a cross-national perspective. Her current research interests are social attitudes, ethnic prejudice and behavior. Paul Nieuwbeerta is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Criminality and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Leiden, The Netherlands. His research interests are crime, social stratiŽcation and voting behavior.

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Address for correspondence: Dr Me´rove Gijsberts, Department of Sociology, Nijmegen University, Postbox 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

Appendix A. Data sources by countries and years 1987 Bulgaria Czech Republic Germany East Hungary Poland Australia Canada Britain Germany West Netherlands Norway New Zealand Sweden United States

1991

1992

1996

ISJP ISJP ISJP ISJP ISJP

ISSP ISSP ISSP ISSP ISSP

ISJP ISJP ISJP ISJP ISEAa

ISSP ISSP ISSP ISSP

ISEAb

ISSP ISSP ISSP ISSP

ISSP

ISJP ISJP ISJP

ISJP

SIN96c

ISSP ISSP ISSP ISSP

Notes: a The ISEA data for Poland were collected in 1997 as a third round of the International Survey of Economic Attitudes (Zagorski et al. 1997). b The ISEA data for Australia were collected in 1995 by the Internationa l Social Science Surveys (ISSS) as the second round of the International Survey of Economic Attitudes (Kelley et al. 1998). c The data for the Netherlands in 1996 stem from the survey Social Inequality in the Netherlands 1996 (SIN96). This survey contains a replication of both the Social Inequality-II module of the ISSP and the second round of the ISJP (Gijsberts and Ganzeboom 1996).

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Appendix B. Party families, left- right positions and political parties per country Left- right positiona

Political partyb

Australia Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Conservative Green

4.8 5.8 7.1 -

Australian Labor Party Australian Democrats (3.0)/National Party (8.5) Liberal Party of Australia The Greens

Bulgaria Communist Liberal/Agrarian Conservative

4.0 5.5 6.3

Ethnic

8.0

Bulgarian Socialist Party Bulgarian Agrarian National Union Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), Union of Democratic Forces Center (UDF-C) Movement for Human Rights and Freedoms, Kingdom of Bulgaria Confederation, Bulgarian Business Bloc (8.0)

Canada Communist Socialist Liberal Conservative Other

2.9 5.1 7.3 6.3

Communist Party New Democratic Party Liberal Party Progressive Conservative Party Parti Nationaliste du Que´bec, Western Party, Reform Party (9.0), Bloc Que´be´cois (3.5)

Czech Republic Communist

1.3

Green Socialist Liberal/Agrarian

2.8 5.6

Cons./Religious

7.5

Other

9.8

Communist Party of Bohemia & Boravia, Movement for Social Justice, Left Bloc Party (1.3) Green Czech Social Democrats (2.8), Czechoslovak Socialist Party Civic Forum, Free Democrats- Liberal Social National Party, Civic Democratic Alliance (7.4), Club of Active NonPartisans, Independent Initiative/Liberal Social Union (3.7) Civic Democratic Party (7.3), Democratic Union/Christian and Democratic Union- Czech People’s Party (7.6) Alliance of Peasants and Countryside, Assiocation for the Republic- Czech Republican Party (9.8), Friends of Beer Party, Movement of Pensioners for Social Guarantees, Party of Entrepreneurs and Farmers, Movement for SelfGoverning Moravia and Silesia

Germany Communist Green Socialist Liberal Cons./ Religious

1.5 2.9 3.8 5.6 6.9

Other

9.3

Party family

428

German Communist Party, Party of Democratic Socialism Greens Social Democrats Free Democrats Christian Democratic Union (6.4), Christian Social Union (7.3) National Democratic Party, Republicans (9.3)

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Left- right positiona

Political partyb

Hungary Communist Socialist Liberal/Agrarian

2.1 7.0

Conservative

7.7

Hungarian Socialist Party (2.1), Socialist Workers’ Party Social Democratic Party of Hungary, SDP Alliance of Free Democrats (3.7), Hungarian Civic Party/ Independent Smallholders (9.6), Christian Democratic People’s Party (7.6) Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF)

The Netherlands Communist Green Socialist Liberal

1.8 4.2 6.0

Cons./Religious

8.3

Other

9.5

New Zeal and Green Socialist

4.3

Liberal Cons./Religious Other

7.3 -

Green- Aotearoa Labour Party (5.8), New Labour Party (3.5), People’s Alliance (3.7) New Zealand Democratic Party, Social Credit National Party (7.3)/New Zealand Party Mana Motuhake

Norway Socialist Liberal/Agrarian Cons./Religious Other

3.4 5.5 7.3 9.2

Socialist Left Party (2.6), Labour Party (4.1) Agrarian Party (5.4), Liberals (5.9)/Centre Party (5.3) Conservatives (8.0)/Christian People’s Party (6.6) Progress Party

Poland Communist Socialist Liberal/Agrarian

2.0 4.9

Cons./Religious

6.0

Other

6.3

Democratic Left Alliance (2.0), Democratic Party Solidarity, Union of Labour Freedom Union (5.0), Liberal Democratic Congress (5.8), Party X, Electoral Action Solidarity/Polish Peasant Party (4.0), Peasant Alliance Centre Alliance (6.0)/Christian National Union- Homeland, Christian Democracy Confederation for an Independent Poland (6.3), Polisch Beer-Lovers’ Party, Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland, German Minority, Movement for Autonomy of Szelezia, Realpolitik Union

Sweden Communist Green Socialist

2.6 4.3 4.1

Party family

Communist Party Netherlands Green Left Labour Party People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (7.2), Democrats ’66 (4.8) Political Reformed Party (9.0), Reformed Political Union (8.9), Christian Democratic Appeal (6.3), Reformed Political Federation (9.0) Centre Democrats

Left Party Communists Greens Social Democrats

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Appendix B. Continued Party family

Left- right positiona

Political partyb

Liberal/Agrarian

6.7

Cons./Religious

7.0

Moderate Unity Party (8.3), People’s Party- The Liberals (5.9)/Centre Party (5.9) Christian Democrats

United Kingdom Green Socialist Liberal Conservative Other

4.4 5.2 7.7 -

Green Party Labour Party, Social Democratic and Labour Party Liberal Party, Liberal Democrat Party (5.2) Conservative Party Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru (Party of Wales)

United States Liberal Conservative

4.2 6.9

Democratic Party Republican Party

Notes: a Left- right positions are obtained from Huber and Inglehart (1995); in case of more parties in a party family the average left- right position is taken; - indicates ‘not available’. b Party families are obtained from Kitschelt et al. (1999: 142) and Lane and Ersson (1999).

430