Chapter 7 Party Alignments. Change and Continuity Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm ONLINE APPENDIX 1: The fading of social structure as a direct determinant of vote choices, but the persistence of ideological orientations Consider in this regard data on Sweden from 1956 to 1999, one of the few cases where at least a time series on attitudes concerning redistribution can be related to vote choice, together with a range of socio- demographic controls that unfortunately does not include an occupational division in the manner proposed by Oesch and Häusermann/Kriesi in this volume (Figure 1 and explanatory note). If we calculate a richer model for Sweden in 2008 that includes a more sophisticated set of socio- demographic controls (including occupational experiences), as well as attitudes pertaining to distribution (greed), socio-political governance (grid) and external boundary drawing (group), the pseudo R-square of a multinomial model for Sweden exceeds an explained variance of 0.2 – more than the highest score in Figure 1.1 Figure 1: Vote choice in Sweden Sweden .2 .15 R2 .1 .05 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 Redistribution Socio-demographics (few) both Note: Data are from the Swedish Election Studies 1956-1998, as provided by Thomassen (2005, 2009). Shown are pseudo-R2 (McFadden) from multinomial estimations, with the following five parties as dependent variable: Left Party (Vänsterpartiet); Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna); Center Party (Centerpartiet); People’s Party Liberals (Folkpartiet Liberalerna); Moderate Party (Moderata Samlingspartiet). The line “both” contains both a redistribution item on the right hand side, as well as the socio-demographic variables. The socio-demographic variables are gender, age, marital status, education, and union membership. Income and labor force status are available for most, but not all years and therefore left out (but this does not change the results much). The redistribution item is based on a survey item that is fairly similar over time: 1 This is consistent with the more detailed and careful longitudinal study of Danish, British, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish vote choices by Knutsen and Kumlin (2005). “We have put together some opinions which appear in the political debate. I will read out this opinion one by one, and ask you to choose one of the answers on this card. Do you agree with the opinion or do you think it is wrong? - 1985-1998: Social reforms in this country have gone so far that the state ought to reduce rather than increase social benefits and support for citizens - 1964-1979: increase social benefits and support for people o 1 agree completely; 2 agree on the whole; 3 disagree on the whole; 4 disagree completely; 8 don’t know; 9 answer missing; 99 did not get the question There are a few deviations over time (1956, 1960, 1982). They are: - 1956 Some people think that social reforms in this country have gone so far that the government in the future ought to reduce rather than increase subsides and allowances to citizens. Do you agree with this opinion? o 1 agree; 5 disagree; 8 don’t know; 9 answer missing; 99 did not get the question - 1960: We have put together some opinions which appear in the political debate. I will read out this opinion one by one, and ask you to choose one of the answers on this card. Do you agree with the opinion or do you think it is wrong? Social reforms in this country have gone so far that the state ought to reduce rather than increase social benefits and support for people o 1 agree completely; 2 agree on the whole; 3 disagree on the whole; 4 disagree completely; 8 don’t know; 9 answer missing; 99 did not get the question - I will now read to you a list of policies which people think ought to be implemented in Sweden. What is your opinion about the proposal to: Reduce social spending (1982): o 1 very good proposal, very important that it is implemented; 2 fairly good proposal, fairly important that it is implemented; 3 does not really matter; 4 fairly bad proposal, fairly important that it is not implemented; 5 very bad proposal, very important that it is not implemented; 8 don’t know; 9 answer missing; 99 did not get the question. ONLINE APPENDIX 2: Construction of greed, grid, and group factors We use the European Social Survey 2008 (ESS 2008) to operationalize the greed-grid-group dimensions, simply not only because it is currently the cross-national survey with the most attitudinal items relevant for our purposes. It also has detailed information on respondents’ occupations, which is critical to measure our core explanatory variables. Since we derive the greed-grid-group dimensions deductively, we hand-picked potential survey items to arrive, in a trial and error process, at measures of the three dimensions. We performed extensive data reduction analyses (mainly principal component analyses and various types of factor analyses) to determine which items should make our final list. In the end, we decided to capture each dimension by three items on fairly similar scales. They are, respectively: Group: [b35=imsmetn]: Now, using this card, to what extent do you think [country] should allow people of the same race or ethnic group as most [country] people to come and live here? Answer categories (AC): 1 Allow many to come and live here; 2 Allow some; 3 Allow a few; 4 Allow none; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer. Note: Scale is reversed [b36=imdfetn]: How about people of a different race or ethnic group from most [country] people? AC: 1 Allow many to come and live here; 2 Allow some; 3 Allow a few; 4 Allow none; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer. Note: Scale is reversed [b37=impcntr]: How about people from the poorer countries outside Europe? AC: 1 Allow many to come and live here; 2 Allow some; 3 Allow a few; 4 Allow none; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know. Note: Scale is reversed Grid: [d2=schtaut]: Using this card, please say how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements: Schools must teach children to obey authority. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer [d5=hrshsnt]: Using this card, please say how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements: People who break the law should be given much harsher sentences than they are these days. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer [c13=trrprsn]: Using this card, please say how much you agree or disagree with each of these statements : If a man is suspected of planning a terrorist attack in [country], the police should have the power to keep him in prison until they are satisfied he was not involved. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer Greed: [d1=dfincac]: Using this card, please say how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. Large differences in people’s incomes are acceptable to properly reward differences in talents and efforts. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer [d4=smdfslv]: Using this card, please say how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements. For a society to be fair, differences in people’s standard of living should be small. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer. Note: Scale is reversed [b30=gincdif]: Using this card, please say to what extent you agree or disagree with each of the following statements: The government should take measures to reduce differences in income levels. AC: 1 Agree strongly; 2 Agree; 3 Neither agree nor disagree; 4 Disagree; 5 Disagree strongly; 7 Refusal; 8 Don't know; 9 No answer. Note: Scale is reversed Selecting a small set of items to represent each of the dimensions was fairly unproblematic for the group and grid dimension, but we had some difficulties with the greed dimension. This is surprising since the literature has focused almost exclusive on this dimension. The difficulties probably stem from the fact that the “redistributive” dimension can be quite multifaceted, relating to as various things as redistribution and insurance, conceptions of justice as equality of outcomes vs. opportunities, and so on. To arrive at measures of greed, grid, and group, we factor analyzed each of these sets of three items together (iterated principal factor analysis), and predict factor scores (regression scoring method). We also ran a factor analysis on all items simultaneously, which yielded a clear three-factor solution. The factor scores from this approach are almost indistinguishable from those estimated from separate factor analyses. Since our input variables are ordinal, we also compared the factor scores to those derived from factor analyses on a matrix of polychoric correlations, finding again that the results are almost indistinguishable. Finally, we also explored the results when performing the factor analyses country-by-country, and found that the patterns are fairly comparable. As mentioned before, the three dimensions are not necessarily independent. The correlation between greed and the other two dimensions is very low (-0.07 for both grid and group), while the correlation between grid and group is 0.36.