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The process of electoral change is accelerating in contemporary democracies, and this book explains why. The emergence of Green parties in the 1980s and recent far right parties, Brexit and Trump's 2016 victory are parts of this overall process. Political Realignment tracks the evolution of citizen and elite opinions on economic and cultural issues from the 1970s to the 2010s-and the impact of these changes on electoral politics and public policy. Citizen positions on these cleavages have realigned over time, producing a similar realignment in the structure of the party systems to represent these demands. Economic issues remain important, now joined by divisions on cultural issues as a backlash to modernization. Assembling an unprecedented time series of empirical evidence, this study explains the new forces of elector change in both Europe and the United States.

In this study of the breakdown of traditional party loyalties and voting patterns, prominent comparativists and country specialists examine the changes now occurring in the political systems of advanced industrial democracies.Originally published in 1985.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Party identification is often considered the most important concept in modern electoral research—yet Americans′ party ties have eroded. Today, independents comprise the largest portion of voters, outnumbering either Democrats or Republicans. This provocative book sheds new light on the dealignment trend with the emergence of an independent voter Dalton is calling the Apartisan American. Utilizing 60 years of electoral surveys, Dalton′s friendly and concise narrative shows students just who these apartisans are and how they′re introducing new volatility into electoral politics, changing the calculus of electoral decision making, and altering the behavior of political parties. Dalton also shows the same dealignment trend happening in other established democracies. Understanding these apartisans is key to understanding the 2012 election as well as party and electoral politics into the future.

A large body of electoral studies and political party research argues that the institutional context defines incentives that shape citizen participation and voting choice. With the unique resources of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this book provides the first systematic evaluation of this topic. A distinguished international team of electoral scholars finds that the institutional context has only a modest impact on citizen political choices compared to individual level factors. Furthermore, the formal institutional characteristics of electoral systems that have been most emphasized by electoral studies researchers have less impact than characteristics of the party system that are separate from formal institutions. Advanced multi-level analyses demonstrate that contextual effects are more often indirect and interactive, and thus their effects are typically not apparent in single nation election studies. The results have the potential to reshape our understanding of how the institutional framework and context of election matters, and the limits of institutional design in shaping citizen electoral behavior.

Assessing the trajectory of democratization in East Asia, this volume offers a systematic and tightly integrated analysis of party-system development in countries across the region. The authors utilize unprecedented cross-national survey data to examine the institutional structure of party systems, the range of choices these systems represent, and their connection to voting preferences. They also investigate the consequences of partisanship for citizen support of the democratic process. While revealing that party development in the region is still incomplete, the book highlights areas of progress as it explores the potential for enhanced representation.