Until the last quarter of the 20th Century, Western party systems appeared to be frozen and stability was generally taken to be the central characteristic of individual-level party choice. But during the 1970s and 1980s, in a spasm of change that appeared to occur in all countries, this ceased to be true. Voters in Western countries suddenly demonstrated an unexpected and increasing unpredictability in their choices between parties, often to the extent of voting for parties that are quite new to the political scene. Understanding these fundamental changes became a pressing concern for political scientists and commentators alike, and a matter of extensive controversy and debate. In the middle 1980s, an international team of leading scholars set out to explore the reasons for these shifts in voting patterns in sixteen western countries: all those of the (then) European Community (except for Luxembourg and Portugal), together with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States. In this book they report their findings regarding the connections between social divisions and party choice, and the manner in which these links had changed since the mid-1960s. The authors based their country studies on a common research design. By doing so, they were able to focus on the characteristics that the sixteen countries had in common so as to evaluate the extent to which the changes had a common source. The passage of time has not dated this book, and in this edition the original text is augmented by a new Preface that describes the ways in which the book's findings retain their relevance for contemporary scholarship, and by an Epilogue in which the main analyses reported in the book are brought up to date.

Preface to the ECPR edition Mark Franklin and Thomas Mackie 1 2 Preface PART I DESCRIPTION 3 Introduction Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, and Henry Valen 15 4 Electoral change and social change Tom Mackie and Mark Franklin, with contributions from authors of all the country chapters 43 PART II ANALYSIS 5 Australia Ian McAllister 69 6 Belgium Anthony Mughan 91 7 Britain Mark Franklin 109 8 Canada Harold Clarke and Marianne Stewart 131 9 Denmark Ole Borre 153 10 France Michael Lewis-Beck and Andrew Skalaban 173 11 Germany Franz Urban Pappi and Peter Mnich 185 12 Greece Panayote Dimitras 209 13 Ireland Michael Marsh 223 14 Italy Tom Mackie, Renato Mannheimer, and Giacomo Sani 241 15 The Netherlands Cees van der Eijk and Kees Niemoller 257 16 New Zealand Clive Bean 285 17 Norway Henry Valen 307 18 Spain Tom Lancaster 327 19 Sweden Maria Oskarson 339 20 The United States of America Arthur Miller and Brad Lockerbie 361 PART III ASSESSMENT 21 The decline of cleavage politics Mark N. Franklin 381 22 Cleavages, confl ict resolution and democracy Cees van der Eijk, Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, Henry Valen 403 NEW EPILOGUE Cleavage politics in the 21st century Mark Franklin 427 APPENDICES A Variables employed in the country chapters Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie 437 B Methodological considerations Mark Franklin 439 References 441 Index 465