Dealignment

Dealignment

Dealignment, in political science, is a trend or process whereby a large portion of the electorate abandons its previous partisan affiliation, without developing a new one to replace it. It is contrasted with realignment.

Many scholars argue that the trends in elections in the United States over the last several decades are best characterized as dealignment. It is also believed the United Kingdom has become dealigned from social class over the past three decades.

Class dealignment

Class dealignment is a term used to describe a situation where members of a social class stop aligning themselves in terms of class and believe that they no longer belong to a certain class. An example of this would be if the working class began to view themselves as lower middle class.

Class dealignment took place in Britain post-1960s, when people were more likely to pursue tertiary education, have professional jobs and consequently more affluence.

Partisan dealignment

Partisan dealignment is quite similar to class dealignment. Partisan dealignment is the process whereby people no longer vote according to their social class (i.e. in the UK, working-class voters voting Conservative or Liberal Democrat instead of Labour). This happens as people lose their traditional class loyalties to a particular party. An example of this would be the Barking and Dagenham results in the 2006 local elections, in which a traditional Labour area voted for the extreme-right British National Party.

Also the term refers to a decline by voters to their political party; that is a decrease in party loyalty and voters be less attached to their party. This dealignment shows that short term factors might play a larger role than usual in whether a candidate receives a vote from someone of his party. Several factors can be attributed to partisan dealignment such as a greater political awareness and socialisation, intensive mass media coverage and decline of deference; disillusionment both with parties and politicians, and most importantly, the poor performance of government.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем сделать НИР

Look at other dictionaries:

  • dealignment — dealignment, dealignment thesis See consumption sectors …   Dictionary of sociology

  • Dealignment — bezeichnet in der Wahlforschung den über Staatsgrenzen hinweg feststellbaren Prozess des Abnehmens von Parteiidentifikationen. Nach dem Ann Arbor Modell ist damit mit einem Steigen der Wechselwähler, zumindest aber mit einem Ansteigen des… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • dealignment — de·a·lign·ment (dē ə līnʹmənt) n. A movement among voters toward nonpartisanship, resulting in a weakening of party structure. * * * …   Universalium

  • dealignment — noun a process whereby voters are moved toward nonpartisanship thus weakening the structure of political parties • Hypernyms: ↑process, ↑physical process …   Useful english dictionary

  • class dealignment —    The process of decline in the social classbased strength of attachment and in the sense of belonging to class based political parties that became a feature of the period from the 1970s onwards. Explanations for class dealignment include:… …   Glossary of UK Government and Politics

  • partisan dealignment —    Refers to the weakening of traditional bonds between the electors and parties and social groups and parties which have occurred to some degree in many democracies. Sharp declines in party identification have been apparent in countries such as… …   Glossary of UK Government and Politics

  • class dealignment — See consumption sectors ; voting behaviour …   Dictionary of sociology

  • partisan dealignment — See voting behaviour …   Dictionary of sociology

  • Independent (voter) — Not to be confused with Independence Party, Independent Party, America s Independent Party, or American Independent Party. Part of the Politics series …   Wikipedia

  • voting behaviour — Voting is the main form of political participation in liberal democratic societies and the study of voting behaviour is a highly specialized sub field within political science . The analysis of voting patterns invariably focuses on the… …   Dictionary of sociology

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”