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The Social Bases of Political Parties: A New Measure and Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2022

Gary Marks Open the ORCID record for Gary Marks [Opens in a new window] ,
David Attewell ,
Liesbet Hooghe ,
Jan Rovny Open the ORCID record for Jan Rovny [Opens in a new window]  and
Marco Steenbergen Open the ORCID record for Marco Steenbergen [Opens in a new window]
Gary Marks*
Affiliation:
1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA and European University Institute, Florence, Italy
David Attewell
Affiliation:
2University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Liesbet Hooghe
Affiliation:
1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA and European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Jan Rovny
Affiliation:
3Sciences Po, Paris, France
Marco Steenbergen
Affiliation:
2University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
*
*Corresponding author. Email: marks@unc.edu
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Abstract

This article proposes a measure of the social structuration of political parties. The measure has some distinctive virtues. It assesses the social bases of partisanship from the standpoint of the political party, and it provides a simple and transparent method for assessing the relative weight of social-structural and behavioral factors for party composition. We illustrate the power of this measure through a comparison of political parties in 30 European countries since 1975.

Keywords

political partycleavagedealignmentsocial democracyChristian democracytraditionalauthoritariannationalist partiesgreenalternativelibertarian parties
Type
Letter
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 249 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Supplementary material: Link

Marks et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TAI0UW
Link
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Marks et al. supplementary material

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