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This chapter considers what happens after parties negotiate a government. How far do they succeed in carrying out their original intentions and thereby effectuating the preferences of the median voter? The analysis of government declarations gives mixed signals about who is in control of policy. On a general Left-Right orientation, the policy position marked by a country's median voter is the most reliably consistent indicator of what a government intends to do. If this effect is causal, it would have to be due to parliaments and governments looking over their shoulders at what the election communicated about the median voter Left–Right position and anticipating policy benefits at the next election, as opposed to the median voter effectively selecting a median parliamentary position that then takes control of the general tenor of policy. If the parliamentary median were the major influence, it would be the variable that withstood controls for the government and electorate. It does not come close to this however. And, while the government's Left–Right position nearly withstands statistical controls, the magnitude of its effect pales in comparison to that of the electorate's position.

The authors focus on the principal aspects of the Thatcherite economic reform programme and assess to what extent they were accepted by the British electorate. The analysis shows that the electorate accepted the Conservative reforms on privatization and trade union legislation and that, during her time in office, Margaret Thatcher won public backing for the changes. But in two other respects, Margaret Thatcher failed to carry the country with her; once the problem of inflation was solved at the beginning of the 1980s, the electorate wanted the government to pay more attention to the high level of unemployment and did not appear to accept Thatcherite policies in this area. The electorate showed no enthusiasm for the Thatcherite philosophy of reduced government spending on public services. The analysis of the Thatcherite economic reform programme gives support to the thesis that a political party does not need to be closely in tune with the electorate's policy preferences in order to win an election.

Offers brief definitions of political representation and legitimacy: the former is loosely defined as the concept of representative democracy, including both the institutions of responsible government and the process of political representation, i.e. the political process by which the making of government policy is related to the wants, needs, and demands of the public; the latter is defined as the belief that the existing political order is right. Four sections follow, the first of which tries to explain what is meant by political representation and legitimacy in the context of the EU. The next two sections explore the concepts of legitimacy and political representation in greater detail; these sections include outlines of the later chapters on these subjects in Parts I and II of the book, respectively. The section on political representation introduces the three main models of representative democracy: the Responsible Party Model (a coercive model in which political representatives are forced to take the policy preferences of the electorate into account at the penalty of being voted out of office); the intergovernmental model (which involves national systems of political representation); and the federal model (which operates at a European rather than a national level). Despite various caveats, the Responsible Party Model is viewed as a useful benchmark. The final section of the introduction briefly discusses the research design on which the book is based and notes that it is part of the publication programme of the European Representation Study 1994.

This is the second of three chapters on the role of economic interests, and of systems for representing those interests, in the politics of welfare state reform. They explore the linkages between national welfare states and national economies, and examine the processes through which economic actors press their interests on policy makers. Section 1 of Manow's chapter offers a critical account of contributions that predict the formation of new political coalitions along the cleavage line between those firms and workers that are forced to adjust to international market pressures and those that enjoy domestic shelter from globalized markets; a brief discussion is included of the relative importance of the electorate in current welfare reforms as compared with the role played by organized interests of capital and labour. Section 2 presents a transaction cost argument that seeks to identify one central logic linking production and protection in continental welfare states and coordinated market economies, respectively; the central argument is that generous welfare state programmes may enhance and not diminish international competitiveness and can be part of the comparative institutional advantage of an economy rather than solely contributing to its comparative cost disadvantage. Section 3 concludes by briefly discussing the implications of the argument presented in Sect. 2 for the present debate on the compensatory role of the welfare state in a globalized economy.

Discusses the many important functions that parties play within the democratic process, classifying them according to V.O. Key's general framework of parties in the electorate, as organizations, and in government. The chapter then asks whether social and political changes in advanced industrial democracies are eroding these roles. Two competing hypotheses are outlined to possibly account for these trends—dissatisfaction with party performance and the process of modernization.

Social choice theory helps to design a research strategy. Three institutional variables producing different degrees of stability and different amounts of social utility are: (1) the dispersion of voters’ preferences, corresponding to simple and complex electorates; (2) the inclusiveness of different voting and electoral rules; and (3) the number of issue dimensions in single and separate elections, corresponding to schemes of unity and division of powers.

Small, homogeneous communities in medieval and early modern times were able to make consensual social choices by voting with relatively broad voting rights. In complex societies in modern times, the enlargement of the electorate until introducing universal suffrage rights was developed with different enfranchisement paces, electoral rules, and party systems, producing different degrees of political instability.

Argues that despite voluminous evidence of party decline in the electorate, parties in government can survive, even prosper, because the core of the party is and always has been located at the level of government. As long as the organizational structure of the government party serves members in their attainment of policy goals, the parties will survive, irrespective of the strength of partisan loyalties. Thus, the observed decline of partisan attachments in the electorate does not spell doom for the partyness of government. Instead, it may simply mean that the core issues that define the current slate of parties in government are not as salient to voters as in the past. If partisan cues do not help voters to choose whom to support at election time, party in the electorate might seem to decline without any particular consequences for party in government.

This summarizes the findings of this book. Partisanship in the electorate is clearly declining in many respects, but there has been little impact on parties in government to date. In the meantime, parties as organizations have neither declined nor stayed stable, but rather adapted to a much‐changed political environment. Thus, V.O. Key's distinction between the three different levels of parties becomes crucial to keep in mind when considering the topic of partisan change in advanced industrialized democracies. The chapter offers several scenarios concerning how foreseeable changes in communication technology may affect parties in the near future.

The chapter identifies the conceptual building blocks which will underpin the rest of the study: these are electoral institutions, two models of electoral outcomes, two models of party responsiveness, and type of party (niche and mainstream groupings). The chapter discusses these concepts, assesses the significance of the study, and sets the plan for the book. Figure 1.2 depicts an overview of relationships that are explored in the subsequent chapters. Additionally, the introductory chapter identifies core questions about political representation which will be addressed. Do voting rules affect whether it is electorally advantageous for parties to advocate centrist policy positions? Do these rules affect the average distinctiveness of policy alternatives that parties offer citizens? Do they affect the configuration of niche and mainstream party families that exist or compete within a political system? Finally, how do niche and mainstream party families matter for patterns of political representation, with respect to responsiveness and election outcomes?

This chapter considers the bodies charged with organizing the local electorate and the changing nature of their role. Local organizational efforts were directed simply towards voter registration in the years between 1832 and 1867, ensuring that those friendly to the party were included on the register and those hostile to it were not. After 1867, although the business of registration remained central to the work of the local party organizations, a much greater effort was made to integrate supporters more fully into the life of the constituency party, through the development of clubs which allowed party supporters to socialize together between elections. However, there were considerable differences between the approaches taken by the parties in this respect. The chapels provided the Liberal party with a ready-made associational network which made the creation of newer clubs less urgent. For the Conservatives, the drift of tenant farmers away from the party after the introduction of secret voting in 1872 meant that new groups of supporters had to be wooed and organized. The result was the creation of new clubs: workingmen's clubs to cater for the labouring classes, and the Primrose League for those of slightly higher social standing.

This chapter discusses what happened to the Liberals' new rural strategy after their party's sweeping victory in the general election of 1906. It specifically evaluates the response of the rural electorate to the radical land valuation schemes put forth in Lloyd George's ‘People's Budget’ of 1909 and to the two general election campaigns that were fought in 1910 over the passage of the Budget and the powers of the House of Lords. It argues that far from alienating voters in the countryside, radical Liberal attacks on aristocratic wealth and privilege actually continued to garner considerable popular support. This chapter suggests that it would be a mistake to read the 1910 elections as clear evidence of a rural Liberal decline.

This chapter begins by discussing the reasons for the prevailing historiographical neglect of rural politics. It clarifies several points regarding the relationship between the rural voters and the Liberal party, and the differences between the semi-official political culture of the late Victorian Liberal party and the more informal, but no less strongly ingrained, political culture of the radical rural electorate. It also focuses the discussion on case studies in North Essex, South Oxfordshire, and the Holmfirth division of the West Riding of Yorkshire by taking a look at their economic, political, demographic, and religious conditions. It notes that this study relied heavily on sources such as rural press; the private papers of three Liberal politicians: Herbert Samuel, Joseph Albert Pease, and Henry Joseph Wilson; and the sparse official party records on rural Liberalism.

This chapter discusses how the growing frustrations and shifting votes of African Americans were not representative of a larger ideological realignment. Over the next three decades, the black electorate would be substantially divided as African Americans were in no way a “monolithic Democratic voting bloc.” Despite Franklin Roosevelt's Black Cabinet, the Democratic Party during and immediately after the New Deal offered few bold civil rights initiatives. The programs and agencies of the New Deal were rife with discrimination; in this sense, the Republican and Democratic parties of this era did not display clear-cut differences in their civil rights policies. The result, then, was a surge in Democratic support among the black electorate but not the total liquidation of Republican backing.

This chapter returns to broader questions of representation and inequality in U.S. presidential elections. The present analysis of turnout in U.S. presidential elections since 1972 proceeded against a backdrop of seismic changes in economic inequality, and with a particular interest in the income bias of voters. The importance of the substantial and sustained income bias documented is underscored by findings on the consistent differences in the policy preferences of voters and nonvoters. This is the study's most important empirical finding is that voters are significantly more conservative than nonvoters on redistributive issues, and they have been in every election since 1972. Voters may be more liberal than nonvoters on social issues, but on redistributive issues they are not. These redistributive issues define a fundamental relationship between citizens and the state in a modern industrialized democracy and are central to ongoing conflicts about the scope of government. It is on these issues that voters offer a biased view of the preferences of the electorate.