Class voting in the West and East Europe. What is the difference?

VODA, Petr. Class voting in the West and East Europe. What is the difference? In The 4th ECPR Graduate Student Conference, Graduate School of Jacobs and the University of Bremen, Germany. 2012.

Basic information

• Original name: Class voting in the West and East Europe. What is the difference?
• Authors: VODA, Petr.
• Edition: The 4th ECPR Graduate Student Conference, Graduate School of Jacobs and the University of Bremen, Germany. 2012.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50601 Political science
• Country of publisher: Germany
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: International Institute of Political Science
• Keywords (in Czech): třídní hlasování, volební chování, postkomunismus, Střední Evropa, komparace
• Keywords in English: class voting, voting behavior, post-communism, Central Europe, comparison

Abstract

There are different voices about role of class in electoral behavior in Europe. In many articles in early 90’s, the gap between Western and Eastern European countries were identified in this aspect of electoral behavior. According several authors (e.g. Franklin et al. 1992) there has been decline of class voting in Western Europe, whereas according others (e.g. Evans 1999) only nature of class has changed. On the eastern side the specific conditions emerged. They could be defined mainly by the lack of awareness of voters about their social position. However, a series of changes driven by a series of processes has taken place on both sides of former iron curtain after the fall of communism. The outcomes of these processes are not clear and visible. On the base of individual data from electoral studies and European Values Study, it will be showed how class influence choice of party in Germany and Austria as the cases of Western Central European countries and in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia as cases of Eastern countries and whether is possible to use the same class schema on all these cases and whether is possible to assume the same mechanism between class, voters’ values and their electoral choice.