Electorates, new cleavages, social structures
Résumé
That advanced post-industrial democracies have been subject to massive
social change in the postwar period is a given of the sociological and political
science literature (Dalton, Flanagan and Beck, 1984; Franklin, Mackie and
Valen, 1992). Indeed, the emphasis that the latter discipline in particular
places on the link between social structure and electoral behaviour can
obscure the undoubtedly greater importance that such changes have had on
the quotidian as well as on mass politics. The fundamental restructuring
of Western economies towards service economies, away from traditional
industrially oriented infrastructures; the associated expansion of education
in secondary and tertiary levels; social mobility among new white-collar
classes bridging the traditional opposition of 'lower' and 'middle' class;
geographie mobility, as the foci of economie activity have migrated from
industrial heartlands to tertiary sector business-parks - these new patterns
of sociological strata have engendered large-scale changes in lifestyles
which, while not necessarily apparent at the micro-level to the individuals
themselves, are nonetheless undeniable at the macro-level. [First paragraph]