The most bizarre thing about the recent British general election was how a campaign could be both fascinating and boring at the same time. There was definitely something interesting going on, partly due to the closeness of the race and partly just because it amounted to the end of an era in electoral politics. But it was also dreadfully dull – with the various political parties being more bland than ever, and the austere policies of Labour, Lib Dems and Tories converging into an unattractive centre. It’s not surprising therefore that despite the heightened public interest in the campaign, voter turnout didn’t improve much at all. In fact, the real winner of the campaign was “The Abstention Party” – due to the fact that more of the electorate choose not to vote than the numbers that voted Conservative. [Read more below]
In the 2008 general election, half of voters (51%) thought there were only ‘minor differences’ between the parties during the campaign, while only 38% thought there were actually major differences between the parties. Furthermore, when survey respondents were asked to place the parties on the left-right spectrum, ‘A third could not place Labour or National’. These findings from the New Zealand Election Survey surely reflects the policy convergence of the parties, and are detailed in Jack Vowles’ new academic chapter about the election. Entitled ‘The 2008 Election: Why National Won’, Vowles’ chapter is in the just published fifth edition of New Zealand Government and Politics, edited by Raymond Miller. Vowles provides many other interesting statistics about voters and the parties. This blog post highlights some of these things. [Read more below]
In the 1996 general election the Act Party came in at 5th place with 6.2% of the party vote. The result was somewhat victorious in the context of the fact that Act ‘had been averaging only about 2.5 per cent in the polls in the first half of 1996' (Fraser and Zangouropoulos, 1998: p.55). However, the 6% vote was unimpressive in the context of Prebble stating that Act would get 15%. Analysis of Act’s election support shows some interesting issues about Act’s support base. [Read more below]
Prof Jack Vowles used to be New Zealand’s preeminent political sociologist, but has recently left the University of Auckland for the UK’s University of Exeter. He’s still analyzing New Zealand politics, however, and has written a review of ‘The 2008 General Election in New Zealand’ (to be published in an upcoming edition of Electoral Studies). You can download a PDF of the paper from his website. Vowles’ paper is a good solid descriptive account of last year’s election, but it also contains the following more analytical points. [Read more below].
The Sydney-based Kortlang Group was employed to help reconfigure the languishing Act Party in 1996. One of Kortlang’s most visibly apparent recommendations was the advice to feminise the party’s image. Act had obviously become associated with its prominent male leadership and much of the party’s propaganda contained messages that were supposedly more orientated to males. According to Act organiser Brian Arps, ‘We've been selling it with the numbers. Men are more linear thinkers, and women are more inspirational in how they think' (quoted in Campbell, 19 Nov 1994: p.16). [Read more below]
There’s been very little insightful or interesting analysis of the New Zealand general election results from the left of the political spectrum. This is partly because much of the left is so strongly tied to either the Labour Party or the Greens – both losers in the election. However, John Braddock’s socialist analysis is fairly solid. Writing on the World Socialist Website, Braddock’s article Labour government dumped in New Zealand elections is a hard-hitting explanation of Labour’s loss, which he explains as a clear ‘clear repudiation of Labour and its pro-business orientation by significant layers of the working class’. [Read more below]
This series of blog posts has detailed one way in which the New Zealand parties are becoming less connected with civil society. The social constituencies are clearly being detached from the parties. This is because of the declining influence of class (in particular) and social structure (more generally) in shaping voting behaviour. And while class has become less important in New Zealand party politics, it is significant that there has been no alternative social cleavage emerging to configure and shape the party system. In this environment the differences between parties have narrowed and the parties compete without any strong coherence. [Read more below]
The detachment of political parties from their social constituencies described in previous blog posts has obviously resulted in a reduction of pressure on political parties to act on behalf of particular social groups. This has pushed political parties in New Zealand to become (a) more pragmatic, and (b) more politically centrist [Read more below]
Due to the declining salience of social structure (and class in particular) in structuring party competition, more than ever before electors in New Zealand now making voting choices on the basis of trivialities such as leadership charisma, parliamentary scandals, and general personality-driven politics. [Read more below]
This series of blog posts has shown that the relevance of the class cleavage has declined for party politics in New Zealand, and that while the ‘alternative’ cleavages based on social groups have become more relatively more significant, these dimensions remain weak. Apart from the Maori Party, no other political party has succeeded by competing purely on any of these social cleavages. (All the parties have, however, increasingly used the political cleavage of postmaterialist issues and values to define themselves). The detachment of party politics from social cleavages contributes to a number of negative aspects in the party system, and the next blog posts will outline three negative implications of the declining influence of the class cleavage as well as the failure of alternative social cleavages to replace it. This first one, argues that voter volatility increases in tandem with decreasing party alignments. [Read more below]
Increasingly the politics of industrialised democracies are based around a set of issues that do not directly relate to the traditional class-economic-materialist left-right cleavage, but which fit broadly into a postmaterialist cleavage, in that they are not concerned with the struggle for material security (as seen in conflicts over income, tax, state social support and so forth), but with issues relating to ethnic culture, gender discrimination, personal behaviour, policies on age, and so forth. This type of ‘new politics’ is characterised by identity, values, culture and psychology rather than social background. Instead of being understood by the polarities of left and right, the terms of liberal and conservative are more useful in deliniating differences. The increase in the significance of this cleavage, and the decline of other traditional social cleavages signals the decline of politics, as structured by social division. [Read more below]
The gender cleavage in New Zealand society plays only a small role in party politics. Few political parties or candidates campaign on gender issues, and it appears unlikely that this social cleavage will become sufficiently politicised to make viable the establishment of a gender-specific political party. [Read more below]
Differences between age groups have become relatively more important in New Zealand electoral behaviour. There is now a discernable political fracture between young and old, and for many commentators this age axis has become a significant factor in explaining modern New Zealand politics. [Read more below]
There is a myth that the Green Party is full of ‘youthful exuberance, reckless idealism and what might almost be called political gaiety’ says Chris Trotter in his latest Independent Financial Review column. This he states has always been a ‘mirage’, but that the situation is getting worse now that ‘the Greens have taken on a distinctly middle-aged appearance’. He points to the fact that the average age of those at the top of the party new list is 52 years. Shining a light on the newcomers to the list, Trotter shows the Greens to be angling for a more middle-class respectability. Apart from the normal Green candidate backgrounds of ‘Small business and teaching’, the apparent new stars come from ‘the not-for-profit and public sectors of the economy’. Ex-student politician (and supposedly ex-young Nat) Kevin Hague and Kennedy Graham (brother of former National Party attorney-general, Sir Douglas Graham) are ‘unlikely to attract a very big chunk of the youth vote’ but ‘will bring an aura of upper- middle-class respectability to the Greens’. Trotter says this could all be ‘fatal’ and laments the departure of Nandor Tanczos (to whom Russel Norman is no real match), which could mean that in the coming election ‘the party will struggle to cross the 5% MMP threshold’.
New Zealand politics have always been influenced by the spatial cleavages in society. These are seen in two ways: regional cleavages and the urban-rural cleavage. It seems likely that the decline in the significance of class as a determinant of voting has meant that the geographical cleavage in particular has grown in relative importance in structuring party politics in New Zealand. [Read more below]
The social cleavage of ethnicity has not been strongly politicised in New Zealand, apart from a significant tendency in the past for Maori to vote for the Labour Party and now for the Maori Party. And although the ethnic cleavage has been heavily overshadowed by the economic left-right dimension, in recent years – especially since the introduction of MMP – a number of political analysts point to the growing in significance that it has in party competition. [Read more below]
Previous blog posts in this series about the social bases of political parties in New Zealand have concentrated on the traditional class cleavage which relates to the economic left-right ideological spectrum. Changes in society and politics suggest that, at least for the time being, class is not the all-dominant cleavage structuring the party system. But while the relevance of the class cleavage has declined for party politics, are there now alternative societal cleavages relating to geography, ethnicity, gender, age, religious, or even postmaterialism that are now structuring the political party competition in New Zealand? [Read more below]
Despite common impressions, the Alliance and Progressives have always had a core middle class element to them, and have obtained votes from throughout the class structure. [Read more below]
The United Future party is very deliberately a party of the middle class. Its leader, Peter Dunne, was determined to establish such a party since the early 1990s when he broke away from the Labour Party. [Read more below]
There should be no doubt that the appeal of the Act party has been stronger amongst wealthy voters – yet there is evidence that such support has not always been as uneven as many political commentators make out. [Read more below]
The Green Party is one of the more elusive parties when it comes to clarifying its social base, but in general the Greens are a party of middle class politicians and supporters. [Read more below]
The National Party has traditionally been most strongly supported by farmers and wealthy urban dwellers. But as with the Labour Party, National has been highly affected by class dealignment in New Zealand politics. Studies show that National’s withering employer support is being steadily replaced by voter support from across the socio-economic spectrum. [Read more below]
For nearly half a century the Labour Party was solidly a party of the working class. Established in 1916 as the political wing of the trade union movement, it aimed to increase ‘the visible, physical presence in Parliament of representatives of the working class’ (Gustafson, 1989: p.211). It now functions to give a presense in Parliament for politicians from the middle classes and to formulate and market policies that are attractive to voters from all classes and income groups. [Read more below]
For decades political scientists agreed that politics in New Zealand was nearly exclusively either concerned with economic issues or based around the left-right class divide. That class and a basic economic cleavage underpin the way New Zealand politics is carried out has become an almost unchallenged assumption for some. This blog post discusses how and why the left-right class cleavage is in decline in NZ parliamentary politics. [Read more below]
The social bases of the party system have been measured in a number of ways in New Zealand. This post sets out the methodological basis of how this series of blog posts is measuring the social support bases of the political parties. [Read more below]
The connection between New Zealand’s political parties and their social bases of support is often stressed by political scientists and commentators. This is because Labour has traditionally derived most of its support from lower socioeconomic voters in the cities, while wealthier voters in both urban and rural areas have formed National’s voter base. This new series of blog posts challenges the idea that such a relationship between parties and social structure still exists, and suggests that party competition is structured less-and-less by this traditional socioeconomic left-right cleavage. Increasingly, other social cleavages (based on characteristics such as ethnicity, gender and location) shape party politics – but even these are weak. The notion that Labour is a party of working people and National is the party of farming and business is thus disputed, and instead, it is shown that these parties, as well as the newly-established ones, increasingly find their support in all sections of society. This trend plays an important part in the decline of the institution of party in New Zealand and the erosion of ideology in particular. [Read more below]
