Johnston - Party ID-Unmoved Mover or Sum of Preferences

6 Apr 2006 17:31 AR ANRV276-PL09-15.
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10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170523
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2006. 9:329–51

doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170523
Copyright c 2006 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved
First published online as a Review in Advance on Feb. 17, 2006
PARTY IDENTIFICATION: Unmoved Mover or Sum

of Preferences?
Richard Johnston
Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1; email: rjohnston@politics.ubc.ca
Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2006.9:329-351. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Access provided by 100.15.180.69 on 06/10/20. For personal use only.
Key Words party loyalty, elections, opinion, political cognition

■ Abstract Are party identifications relatively fixed features on the political land-
scape in the United States and elsewhere? If they are relatively fixed, do identifications
move substantive issue preferences, perceptions of candidates, and perceptions of the
link between candidates and issues? Early studies in the United States answered these
questions in the affirmative. The track record for other systems is spotty, and each
question occasioned repeated controversy in the decades since the 1960s. Much of the
apparent lability and cross-national variation in party ties can be laid at the feet of
measurement error, but not all. The claim that party identification moves other features
on the political landscape is remarkably robust.
INTRODUCTION
The canonical view of party identification congealed in the 1960s, but the weak em-
pirical basis of the core claims made them immediately vulnerable to contestation.
Some of this contestation reflected changing intellectual fashion. Some reflected
changes—real or apparent—in the very object of study, namely electoral politics.
At the same time, the cross-national applicability of the original concept of party
identification was questioned. But both the intramural U.S. debates and the sniping
from abroad sometimes featured even less methodological self-consciousness than
the original formulation. It is natural to suspect that much of the supposed variation
in the nature of party identification is an artifact of measurement slippage. It seems
implausible, however, that all the claims are unfounded.
Why do we care? The heart of the matter is that in its original formulation, party
identification can serve as a social indicator. As an “unmoved mover,” it should be
intrinsically sticky. If it is really like this, movement in its values should bespeak
something historically important, diagnostic of a new order of things. Additionally,
to the extent that partisanship fits this model, accounts of the opinion-vote relation-
ship must be carefully qualified. The alternative view is that party identification is a
readily updated sum of preferences. If this model captures partisanship as exhibited
by many voters, it also drains the original concept of its real significance.
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330 JOHNSTON
This chapter reviews the claims and counterclaims in the United States and
abroad. Some disagreements rest on measurement divergences. The U.S. track
record of the original concept of party identification as captured by the origi-
nal measure seems pretty good, but it serves some purposes better than others.
This chapter also demonstrates how cross-national comparison is a measurement
swamp.
THE SETUP
The origins of both the concept and the indicator of party identification are slightly
odd, and some of the succeeding difficulties may stem from the circumstances of
birth. The foundational contributions are The American Voter (Campbell et al.
1960) and Elections and the Political Order (Campbell et al. 1966), the canonical
books of the “Michigan school.” These books made much of the key findings of
the earlier “Columbia school” (Lazarsfeld et al. 1948, Berelson et al. 1954) and
largely built on them. Notable in the Columbia studies was the general fixity of
voter intentions over the campaign, the role of individuals’ prior commitments to
candidates in bending political cognition, and the role of the 1948 campaign in
reconstituting a pre-existing coalition. Although Berelson and his colleagues never
used the word identification, it became the term to denote the generalized form of
the prior commitment whose effects the Columbia scholars documented.
But the Michigan group arguably overstylized the Columbia position. Although
Columbia scholars made much of the proportion of individuals who remained sta-
ble over time, they also remarked that individual instability did not necessarily
aggregate to a unstable electorate. Their true emphasis was Durkheimian: Ag-
gregate stability requires aggregate-stabilizing mechanisms. The key issue is not
so much that individuals persist in their initial preferences as that the pattern of
flow among alternatives remains stable. Among their didactically labeled exhibits
is Chart LXVIII, startlingly titled, “Within Homogeneous Social Strata, Parental
Traditions are Shared Collectively Rather than Individually” (Berelson et al. 1954,
p. 136). In fact, the Columbia group was the first to adumbrate a Markov-process
model of partisan transmission. Markov models resurfaced in Converse & Dupeux
(1966), Converse (1969), and Butler & Stokes (1969), but these forays did not
have much impact on conceptualization in the field. Also frequently cited was
McPhee & Ferguson’s (1962) account of “Political Immunization.” It was not ac-
knowledged, however, that their immunization simulation produced little actual
immunization; the concluding section of their chapter (pp. 171–79) carries the
title, “Lack of Effective Immunity.”
Be that as it may, the idea of identification with a party as a social group in its
own right quickly took hold after 1960. Identification is characterized as a simple
loyalty, learned early and largely unimpaired by subsequent learning: “[O]nly an
event of extraordinary intensity can arouse any significant part of the electorate to
the point that its established political loyalties are shaken” (Campbell et al. 1960,
p. 151). To the extent that this learning occurs early, particularly in the family
PARTY IDENTIFICATION 331
of origin, it is more social-psychological than political. It may be vulnerable to

displacement by adult experience, but the likeliest outcome is no displacement at
all. Serious displacement is likely only if a shock occurs in the period of maximum
vulnerability, the first decade or so of political life. Using the logic of immunization,
if no stimulus comes from the family of origin (Converse & Dupeux 1966, Converse
1969) or from the system at large in the critical early adult years (Converse 1969),
the likeliest outcome for the individual is no party identification at all, or only a
weak one.
Stated as propositions about individuals, this image cashes out as a critique
of policy-laden conceptions of the electoral connection. One theme is that the
prepolitical character of adolescent partisan socialization produces a loyalty with
little or no policy content (Campbell et al. 1960, pp. 164–67). Another theme
is that such policy orientations as do appear are more effects than causes of
partisanship:
[P]arty has a profound influence across the full range of political objects to
which the individual voter responds. The strength of relationship between
party identification and the dimensions of partisan attitude suggests that re-
sponses to each element of national politics are deeply affected by the indi-
vidual’s enduring partisan attachments. (Campbell et al. 1960, p. 128)
Either way, party is an object in its own right, not just a synecdoche for social
structure or ideology. Even though party identifications are themselves relatively
unmoved, they move other features of the cognitive and motivational landscape.
The image gained additional force when its aggregate implications were spelled
out in Elections and the Political Order (Campbell et al. 1966). The key claims
are that elections cannot be treated in isolation and that the surface rhetoric of any
given election is not necessarily a guide to its real significance or to any claim
about a mandate. Party identification allows us to speak of a “normal vote” and
to interpret the actual outcome in terms of its departure, if any, from the normal
prediction (Converse 1966b). Converse’s normal-vote accounting represented the
first serious use of a party identification scale, combining both direction and inten-
sity of partisanship. (Interestingly, in light of later developments, Converse uses a
five-point scale, treating all independents alike, whether or not they “lean” toward
a particular party. This echoes the pattern in The American Voter.) More crudely,
the normal-vote image allows a classification of elections (Campbell 1966). It also
points away from the conversion of adult voters as a source of aggregate electoral
change (Converse 1966a).
Instead, change must come from citizens who are new to the game. These may
be entering cohorts of young voters. Given the continued presence of older voters,
change that is localized this way must have a secular impact on the electorate
at large (Butler & Stokes 1969). Sudden, or “critical,” change must come from
the differential mobilization of the formerly inert. Andersen (1979), for example,
argues that the New Deal realignment required the recruitment to party politics
of ethnoreligious minorities and urban workers who had been demobilized in
the post-1896 era of Republican domination. A further refinement suggests that
332 JOHNSTON
critical realignments cannot be closely spaced. A generation that experiences crit-

ical change will also experience polarization and therefore will be motivated to
socialize its children, the next generation, intensely. Only when memories of polar-
ization fade and socialization pressures inside the nuclear family abate will another
critical realignment be possible (Beck 1974, Sellers 1965).
Some early cross-national indications seemed to complement the U.S. picture
of party identification. Some of that complementarity has previously been outlined:
Butler & Stokes’ (1969) study of British elections is regularly cited as being rele-
vant to the U.S. case and reads even now as both the full flowering of the Michigan
school and a partial incorporation of its Columbia predecessor. Especially to the
point is the argument that party system characteristics, especially the underlying
cleavage structures, were historically frozen (Lipset & Rokkan 1967). The fixity
itself is a supportive fact but so is the periodization of the greatest change: the
enfranchisement of the European working class after World War I. This is the
European parallel to Andersen’s (1979) U.S. New Deal story, the sudden mobi-
lization of citizens new to party politics. That countries, such as Canada, with
long histories of mass enfranchisement have cleavage structures predating 1918
only reinforces the point, as does the persistence of older cleavages among social
sectors whose franchise experience also predates 1918. Converse (1969) makes a
similar case but also opens up the possibility that the extended absence of demo-
cratic politics (as, for example, in interwar Italy) leaves an electorate vulnerable
to massive change once elections resume.
The kicker in this cross-national story, of course, is that none of the evidence in
Lipset & Rokkan (1967) concerned party identification directly. The parallels were
only suggestive, but then so was much of the evidence ostensibly supporting the
original formulation. Campbell et al. (1960) reported on two elections only, unrep-
resentative ones at that. None of their evidence was longitudinal, so imputations
to processes operating in real time were leaps of faith.
CONCEPTUAL CONTESTATION
With hindsight, it is not surprising that the Michigan consensus did not last long.
The debates that swiftly ensued can be organized by the essential categories of the
original claim that party identification is an “unmoved mover.” Both the noun and
the adjective in this description have been sharply contested.
Unmoved?
Most of the action in this debate has concerned the relative fixity of identifications—
the extent to which party commitments are unmoved. No one insists that party
identification absolutely cannot be moved. Even Green et al. (1998, p. 896), who
make the strongest case for the relative fixity of identifications, concede that
it would be foolish to take the position that party attachments are altogether
unwavering. Identification with a party wanes somewhat when, year after
year, it presides over hard times or lacks effective leadership. The question
is whether shifts in partisanship are sufficiently large and abrupt to call into
question traditional views of realignment and the stabilizing role that party
identification plays in a party system.
The nub of the issue is how big a shock is required to move identification. Alter-
natively, how much does the party identification indicator move in the short run?
Even as the prepolitical and rather arational image of party identification was
solidifying, rational choice theory was on the move. In the 1960s, the rational choice
emphases were the causal priority (and, by implication, the reality) of voters’ issue
positions and the mobility of party preferences. By the 1970s, however, rational
choice scholars had made their peace with the empirical fact that voters exhibited
fewer dynamics than implied by the Downsian analytic emphasis on parties that
are both mobile and centrist. Their version of the compromise was to view party
identification as a “Bayesian prior,” a summing up of considerations accumulated to
date in the voter’s life (Ordeshook 1976, Fiorina 1981, Calvert & MacKuen 1985).
As such, identifications are susceptible to movement—at least to displacement of
intensity—in the short run, from one election to the next. The rational choice claim
is highly general, not conditional on social structural, institutional, or party system
characteristics.
Inevitably, even scholars squarely identified with the original model conceded
that events could move identifications in the fairly short run (Markus & Converse
1979; but see Miller 1991). A more refined concession is that events move identi-
fications among younger voters—and this, presumably, imparts considerable mal-
leability to the overall electorate—but diminish in relevance as the voter ages
(Franklin & Jackson 1983). This perspective is also relevant to disputes about
dealignment, to the extent that an apparent flight from partisanship as such, espe-
cially among whites (Converse 1976, Abramson 1979), was more than a genera-
tional phenomenon. To the extent that older voters were almost as likely as younger
ones to exhibit declines in partisan intensity in the 1970s, the original model was
cast in doubt.
The clearest empirical analogue of the rational choice perspective is the
“macropartisanship” claim, whereby party identification is continuously updated
as a reflection of economic performance and presidential approval (MacKuen et al.
1989). The argument was anticipated empirically by Brody & Rothenberg (1988)
and Allsop & Weisberg (1988) and paralleled by Weisberg & Smith (1991) and
Weisberg & Kimball (1995). The macropartisanship claim itself is hotly contested,
however, as are all claims about movement in party identification, especially among
older voters. One dispute is over survey measurement, specifically over the time
horizon of the party identification question (Abramson & Ostrom 1991, 1992,
1994a,b; MacKuen et al. 1992; Bishop et al. 1994); I return to this below. The
other dispute is over the proper form of the time-series model (Erikson et al. 1998,
Green et al. 1998).
The macropartisanship dispute was concerned solely with the Democratic/
Republican balance among partisans. It thus elided a major bone of contention
334 JOHNSTON
in the preceding decade and a half: the place of persons who apparently rejected
party identification tout court. In this, the macropartisanship dispute echoed the
first-generation preoccupation with partisans to the neglect of those with no par-
tisan tie. That initial neglect may have reflected the fact that nonpartisans were
generally uninvolved, much less likely to cast a vote than partisans. But no sooner
did the canonical formulation of party identification find its way to print than the
number of apparent nonpartisans began to grow (Abramson 1976), especially in
the South (Beck 1977). Growth continued into the 1980s (Clarke & Suzuki 1994)
but reversed modestly in the 1990s (Bartels 2000). Bartels (2000, p. 36) shows
that the late 1970s were “the nadir of party identification in the American public.”
The extent and the causes of the shifts need not detain us here (although I return
to the methodological dispute over the reality of dealignment below). Of present

interest is how the shifts affected the very conceptualization of partisanship.
An early warning signal was launched by Petrocik (1974), who queried the
unidimensionality of the scale. He noted that, in some respects, independents who
admitted to leaning toward a party looked more partisan than outright partisans
who reported only a weak identification. And “leaners” were the growth point; the
“pure” independent share grew hardly at all in the 1970s, and by the 1990s it had
retreated to 1960s levels. Much hinged on what drove respondents into the leaner
category. Weisberg (1980) wondered if both the anomaly identified by Petrocik
and the decline in the proportion of outright party identifiers reflected the fact
that, all along, party identification was multidimensional. The original formula-
tion clearly presupposes polarization, in which a voter identifies with one or the
other party, or with neither, but not with both. Weisberg raises the possibility that
some voters are designated independent because they identify positively with both
parties. Others may identify with independence as such—perhaps as an expression
of individualism—while holding policy commitments that incline them to one side.
Notwithstanding similar claims by Craig (1985) and Dennis (1988a,b), Weisberg’s
initiative seems to have gained more ritual genuflection than widespread accep-
tance. Curiously, the debates over “divided government,” a cottage industry of a
later decade (Fiorina 1992), seem not to have revived Weisberg’s insights, despite
their pertinence. His ideas have resonated outside the United States, however, in
analyses of multiparty systems.
This brings us to comparative accounts. Much of the controversy over the
conceptual status of party identification is cross-national rather than intramural to
the United States. Cross-national accounts tend to concede the applicability of the
Michigan model to the United States but to deny its relevance elsewhere. Broadly,
the arguments fall into two groups. One set focuses on the ubiquitous multipartism
of non-U.S. cases. The other emphasizes the distinctive institutional complexity
of the U.S. scene, in contrast to the relative simplicity of the closest comparators.
MULTIPARTISM Multipartism arguments take four forms, with overlap among the
four. One argument focuses on the closeness of the fit between individual parties
and elements in the social structure. The second considers systems in which more
than one party represents an ideological tendency, or “family.” The third raises the
possibility that a voter may identify with more than one party. The fourth considers
what strategic voting implies for identification with each of the broadly acceptable
alternatives.
FIT TO SOCIAL STRUCTURE Non-U.S. systems typically feature a tighter fit be-
tween parties and the social structure, which is facilitated by the fractionalization
of the systems. This argument is also, in effect, about the electoral system. In a
fractionalized context, parties do not face the imperative of electoral brokerage (in
contrast to parliamentary brokerage at the government-formation stage). Where
the party-society fit is tight, a party as such has less independent cognitive or mo-
tivational significance. The primary identification is with the social group, and the
party is only an auxiliary. In the short run, apparent identification with parties can
be very stable. But the stability is deceptive, as it depends on the stability of the
background party-society link. If the party shifts its policy profile or the underlying
demography changes, revealed party identification should also shift. This argument
originates with Campbell & Valen (1966), who compared the United States and
Norway. Their argument was more indicative than empirically dispositive, but it
seemed to gain support from the focused multicountry comparisons of Budge et al.
(1976). Especially pertinent are the chapters by Farlie & Budge (1976), Inglehart
& Klingemann (1976), and Rusk & Borre (1976). Most celebrated is the claim
by Thomassen (1976) that Dutch voters changed their identification more readily
than their vote.
IDEOLOGICAL FAMILIES A similar but distinguishable argument focuses on multi-

party articulation of broad ideological (including religious) tendencies. These ten-
dencies are the true fixed points on the landscape, and parties may come and go
as effective representations of interests. The first empirical exploration of this in-
sight seems to be that of Shively (1972). This argument cuts two ways on the
question of stability. On the one hand, it cautions against expecting indefinite per-
sistence with any particular party. Bakvis (1981) provides an especially telling
example of the evanescence of the “pillars” of the postwar Netherlands party sys-
tem, a story that complements Thomassen (1976). On the other hand, it cautions
against overinterpreting the partisan change that does appear (Bartolini & Mair
1990).
MULTIPLE IDENTIFICATIONS The multiple-identifications argument overlaps the

preceding one, especially where more than one party articulates an ideological
family. In this situation, a voter might be able to identify with more than one party.
If so, is it possible that each identification will be more mobile than when the
system is bifurcated and multiple identification is less plausible? At first blush,
the relevant contrast is between the U.K.-derived systems, including the U.S. sys-
tem, and most of the rest of the world. Put another way, the comparison is among
electoral formulae. Proportional representation (PR) formulae facilitate movement
336 JOHNSTON
between ideologically adjacent parties. If such movement undermines identifica-

tion with any single party (as argued in the preceding paragraph), it may also
facilitate identification with more than one party. A first-past-the-post (FPP) sys-
tem encourages consolidation of parties and raises the stakes of movement among
them, so it might encourage psychological identification with one and only one
party. The claim for FPP systems might break down when parties organize politics
in multiple jurisdictions, as in a federal system. Canada may be the extreme case,
in that some provinces exhibit striking divergences within the same electorate be-
tween the federal and provincial electoral arenas. Clarke et al. (1979) and Stewart
& Clarke (1998) certainly make this argument. Blake (1982), however, finds strong
evidence for cognitive separation between arenas with little concomitant tension.
And, as mentioned above in connection with Weisberg (1980), the possibility of

multiple identifications has been claimed for the United States itself.
STRATEGIC VOTING Strategic voting only makes sense under multipartism and
really only when multipartism is conjoined with a strong FPP electoral system.
Traditionally, this is the case only in Canada and India, but it increasingly describes
Great Britain as well. This is a special case of the multiparty framework in which
some voters are encouraged to be instrumental about their preferences, tending
perhaps to multiple and weak identifications. The strategic issue highlights another
possibility, that identification can be more negative than positive: Aversion to the
far side is stronger than attraction to the near side. Crewe (1976) develops this
theme.
The literature on these claims is vast and confused. The comparative literature
slights similarities to the U.S. case and commonly ignores the intramural U.S.
debate. That literature also slights plausible counter tendencies, such as the fact
that list PR systems typically force the voter to choose by party only; the voter’s
calculus is not confused by the conflation in a single choice of potentially divergent
party and candidate assessments.
INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY Institutional complexity claims take two forms,

again with overlap. Awkwardly, the polar case for both is the United States.
The U.S. ballot is more complex than all others. This is mainly because more
races are conducted simultaneously in the United States than elsewhere, and the
sheer ubiquity of choice may be the critical fact. Given their information burden,
U.S. voters may have a greater need than others for an internal guide to choice
(Butler & Stokes 1969, p. 43). Certainly, the greater the informational premium—
the further down the ballot, typically—the more party identification dominates
choices, especially when the ballot form facilitates this (Campbell et al. 1960).
A less awkwardly functionalist argument says that U.S. residents have more, and
more closely spaced, opportunities than others for self-attribution of partisanship.
A U.S. voter may make as many choices on a given day as a British (or even a
Canadian) voter makes in a lifetime. The opportunity for self-attribution may itself
strengthen the habit of partisanship (Johnston 1992).
Mover?
If party identification is a mover (unmoved or otherwise), one obvious question
is: Mover of what? The ultimate target is the vote, independent of and potentially
in contradiction to other forces. But party identification, it is claimed, also moves
substantive opinion. Most contentious is the proposition that party identification
warps political cognition.
The minimal argument is that identification moves the vote in the absence of
competing information. As already noted, down-ballot choices, where substantive
information about candidates is scarce, are driven chiefly by party identification
(Campbell et al. 1960). Similarly, where other considerations are balanced, party
identification exerts a huge impact (Markus & Converse 1979, Miller & Shanks
1996); this proposition is not restricted to low-information races. Less clear is
how far party identification reaches when it is plainly contradicted by rival con-
siderations. Johnston et al. (2004) show, however, that conflict between party
identification and liberal-conservative ideology tends to be resolved in favor of the
party. More generally, if party identification in the U.S. lost power relative to other
factors in the late 1970s, it seems to have made a full recovery (Bartels 2000).
Dynamic data are particularly relevant here, and the evidence seems clear:
Party identification both responds to substantive opinion and shapes it, but the lat-
ter is more impressive than the former. Ideally evidence on voters’ opinions would
stretch back to their adolescence, but we settle for panels of shorter duration. These
at least allow party identification and its rival considerations to compete directly
over two- and four-year intervals. Markus & Converse (1979), for instance, use
panel data to show that issue positions are updated according to partisan priors,
although this seems more true for low-salience issues than for high-salience ones.
Even a high-salience issue can respond to partisan priors if it is novel, as Johnston
et al. (2004) showed with rolling cross-section data for the 2000 campaign and
the Bush Social Security investment proposal. An even stronger claim is that of
Layman & Carsey (2002), who use panel data to show that sharp divergences be-
tween Republican and Democratic elites produce follow-on divergences between
Republican and Democratic identifiers. By this means, they claim, the system has
produced “conflict extension” rather than “conflict displacement,” as the invoca-
tion of new issues increases the system’s overall polarization rather than merely
shifting it from one dimension to another. A similar conclusion is strongly im-
plied by Bartels (2002a). The strongest claim of all (Goren 2005) is that party
identification even moves core values.
Arguably, the most striking early observations in the whole electoral field were
for selective processes in cognition. Respondents whose own positions contra-
dicted their preferred candidate’s tended to misperceive the candidate or not to
know the candidate’s position in the first place (Berelson et al. 1954). These find-
ings were among the anomalies that led Festinger (1957) to formulate his theory
of cognitive dissonance, and they clearly influenced Campbell et al. (1960). Evi-
dence for the Columbia and Michigan formulations, however, was not conclusive.
The same was true for the first attempts to conceive of voters’ and candidates’
338 JOHNSTON
positions and voters’ choice as part of a nonrecursive triangular system (Page &
Brody 1972, Jackson 1975). By the time these formulations were in place, psycho-
logically cooler models of electoral action and cognition were gaining the upper
hand. The 1970s, of course, were the years in which the idea of party identification
as a Bayesian prior, little more than the “sum of preferences,” was first fronted.
That party identification could be directive in its own right was difficult for early
Bayesian advocates to swallow. Deep skepticism was expressed even by scholars
who otherwise saw partisanship as a simple social identity, as more than a reversion
point (Gerber & Green 1999).
In fact, the evidence for cognitive impact is quite strong. It clearly affects per-
ceptions of “valence” considerations, about which consensus is possible at least
in principle. For instance, party identification conditions perception of the pres-

idential administration’s performance. This is even true for management of the
economy, an issue on which objective evidence is available (Bartels 2002a). And

over the course of an election campaign, economic judgment becomes more parti-
san, not less (Johnston et al. 2004). Party identification also conditions perceptions
of candidate traits (Bartels 2002b, Johnston et al. 2004); here, of course, objec-
tive information is harder to come by.1 Finally, there is evidence that reinforces
the original claim of Berelson et al. (1954) about issue perception. Markus &
Converse (1979) suggested that “projection” on issues was an even stronger force
than “self-persuasion.” [The terminology seems to have originated with Page &
Brody (1972).] Brady & Sniderman (1985) made projection a central element in
a literature that has since come to be characterized as studying “low-information
rationality.” Persons can use feelings about political objects to triangulate the land-
scape. For the most part, such cognitive bending exaggerates summary differences
among political objects without actually reversing positions. But there is also a
dark hint that Republicans and conservatives deploy negative affect more than
Democrats and liberals do, and that this creates a strategic advantage for the for-
mer. Ansolabehere & Iyengar’s (1995) findings of partisan asymmetry in response
to negative advertising reinforce the Brady-Sniderman intuition.2
MEASUREMENT
Although one can work out sensible reasons for fluctuation or variation in party
identification, focused plausible comparisons are rare. The heart of the problem is
1
The claim about traits is self-referential, in that respondents assimilate or contrast trait
imputations by reference to their own partisanship. The claims should not be confused
with indications that certain traits are “owned” by certain parties and that transgressing trait
boundaries opens up interesting strategic possibilities (Hayes 2005). These latter arguments
are more about stereotyping than about self-directed bias.
2
Once again, such self-directed bias must be distinguished from issue stereotyping, as found
for instance by Conover & Feldman (1989).
measurement. The canonical U.S. measure is controversial at home, and matters

only get worse when analysts cross borders.
U.S. Issues
In the United States, two related issues dog empirical claims. One is whether
intensity, as opposed to direction, belongs in the party identification indicator. The
other is the location of the boundary between partisans and nonpartisans.
DIRECTION VERSUS INTENSITY The most commonly used form of the U.S. indi-
cator is a compound of several questions, which purports to reveal the direction
and intensity of party identification at the same time. It seems fairly clear, however,
that intensity varies more than direction does, and analyses that put the seven-point
scale on the right-hand side simply remove critical short-term variation from the
account. These analyses thus overestimate the role of the long-term variation. This
seems true even for accounts that correct for measurement error, such as those of
Green & Palmquist (1990, 1994) and Green & Schickler (1993). In correcting for
attenuation, these accounts assert that relative proximities are highly stable. What
they do not show is stability in the location of the overall distribution. Where in-
tensity forms part of the indicator, the center clearly moves (Brody & Rothenberg
1988). This lability should make us ask what role intensity should play in the
account anyway. That partisan defection rates shift with changes in short-term
forces does not contradict the core of the theory. Putting intensity into the estima-
tion merely obscures this natural variation. But removing intensity casts a shadow
on the original formulation of the normal vote, which based its analysis on a five-
point rendering of the underlying landscape. (The place of intensity in non-U.S.
accounts is mostly obscure. Often, intensity is simply not considered because, for
multiparty reasons, it cannot be forced onto a single dimension.)
THE BOUNDARY OF PARTISANSHIP Closely related to the general question of in-

tensity is the specific one of the true identity of partisan leaners. Are they just less
intense partisans? Are they instead a weighted combination of strong and weak
identifiers who happen to be unable to utter a commitment? Are they really inde-
pendents who happen to support one party this time but are available to swing the
other way? Or are they qualitatively different from both partisans and independents,
subject to competing pro- and antiparty pressures? But then, what are indepen-
dents? Are they centrists? Are they ambivalent, such that they see positives—or
negatives—in both parties? This would exemplify multiple identifications, or neg-
ative ones. Are independents just cultural weaklings? Are independents alienated
from party politics as such? Each of these is a qualitatively different claim.
Why should we care? Sometimes all these issues seem like angels dancing on
the head of a pin. Sometimes measurement error fix-ups seem to be introduced
to save a hypothesis. The controversies are all driven, arguably, by the fact that
45 years ago a single indicator called party identification was commissioned to
340 JOHNSTON
perform too many tasks. But we did commission it, and it has become a critical
social indicator. It is a gauge of the health of the party system, and thus shifts
in its values merit attention (the problem, of course, is how to interpret those
shifts). As an indicator of long-term orientation, where the relative balance of
the long and the short term is an important fact about elections, how it is de-
ployed in concert with other variables is interpretively critical. But it does seem
clear that real heterogeneity—beyond that of direction and intensity—is being
shoehorned into a single procrustean indicator. This bedevils interpretation in the
United States.
It also seems clear from empirical work that when party identification is de-
ployed as a social indicator, intensity should not be part of the measurement and
independent leaners should not be classed as partisans (Allsop & Weisberg 1988,
Miller 1991, Miller & Shanks 1996; however, see Keith et al. 1992). In short,
what Campbell et al. (1960) conceived as the root indicator is still our best bet for
that role. The root indicator itself is not immune to impact from short-term forces
(Bartels 2000, Johnston et al. 2004), such that its inclusion in multivariate setups
will lead to overcontrol. The alternative of omitting the indicator may lead to even
worse misspecification, but we should at least be self-conscious about the choice.
The suspicion lingers that control for the seven-step party identification indicator
has been too robust a reflex.
Comparative Issues
There is no exact cross-national analogue to the canonical U.S. measure of party
identification. It may even be impossible to reproduce or adapt the original. The
closest analogues, not surprisingly, appear in Anglo-American systems. Even there,
the standard questions fatally depart from the original in failing to prompt for non-
partisanship (except for the Canadian Election Studies since 1988). Table 1 chron-
icles wording variation across the major, multiple-shot national election studies.
In general, there are four dimensions of cross-national variation in wording of
the party item itself and four in its questionnaire context. These dimensions are
discussed below.
NATURE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONNECTION TO A PARTY The original U.S.

question invites respondents to “think of” themselves “as” something. This formu-
lation has traveled to the Anglo-American countries (Australia, Britain, Canada,
and New Zealand) and to Japan, but elsewhere, the cues for partisan orientation
vary remarkably. Subject to the vagaries of translation and in descending order of
attachment, these cues are as follows: “strongly convinced adherent” (Sweden),
“adherent” (Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden), “feel attached” (Denmark), “sup-
port” (Israel), “a supporter of” (Sweden, Eurobarometer), “feel closest to” (France,
Italy), “think of yourself as close” (Comparative Study of Electoral Systems), and
“lean toward” (Germany). Some of these renderings (“lean toward,” “feel closest
to”) seem as weak as the “leaning” follow-up for self-described independents in
TABLE 1 Party identification: stems and probes for leaning, by country and year
Country Years Wording
Australia 1987–2001 Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as

Liberal, Labour, National, or what?
Britain 1963–2001 Generally speaking do you think of yourself as a
Conservative, Labour, Liberal, or what?
If none or don’t know: Do you generally think of yourself
as a little closer to one of the parties than the others?
Which party?
Canada 1965–1968 Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as
Conservative, Liberal, Social Credit, Creditiste, NDP,

Union Nationale, or what?
For identifiers: When you say you are a [name of party]

are you thinking of national politics, politics here in this
province, or both?
[Follow-up for federal versus provincial.]
For nonidentifiers: Well, do you generally think of
yourself as a little closer to one of the parties than the
others? Which party is that?
[Follow-up for federal versus provincial.]
1974–1984 Thinking of federal politics, do you usually think of
yourself as a Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Social Credit,
or what?
Nonidentifiers: Still thinking of federal politics, do you
generally think of yourself as being a little closer to one
of the parties than to the others? Which party is that?
1988–1997 Thinking of federal politics, do you usually think of
yourself as a Liberal, Conservative, NDP, [Reform/Bloc
Quebecois] or none of these?
Nonidentifiers: Do you generally think of yourself as
being a little closer to one of the federal parties than to
the others? Which party is that?
2000 Experiment: 2 treatments.
1. In federal politics, do you usually think of yourself as a
Liberal, Bloc Quebecois, Alliance, Conservative, NDP,
or none of these?
Nonidentifiers: Do you generally think of yourself as
being a little closer to one of the federal parties than to
the others? Which party is that?
2. Generally speaking, in federal politics, do you usually
think of yourself as a Liberal, Bloc Quebecois, Alliance,
Conservative, NDP, or do you usually think of yourself
as not having a general preference?
(Continued )
342 JOHNSTON
TABLE 1 (Continued )
Nonidentifiers: Generally speaking, in federal politics, do

you usually think of yourself as more inclined to support
the Liberal party, Bloc Quebecois, the Alliance Party, the
Conservative Party, the NDP, or do you usually think of
yourself as not being inclined to support any of these
parties?
2004 Experiment: 2 treatments.

Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, or none of

these?

Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, another
party, or no party?
Do you generally think of yourself as being a little closer
to one of the federal parties than to the others? Which
party is that?
Denmark 1971–1981 Many people consider themselves to be adherents of one
particular political party. However, many people do not
consider themselves to be adherents of any party. Do you
for example regard yourself as a Social Democrat, a
Radical Liberal, a Conservative, a Liberal, a People’s
Socialist or something else, or don’t you feel an adherent
of any party? (If not an adherent or don’t know:) Is there
after all a party which you are closer to than to other
parties?
If yes: Which party?
Some people are strongly convinced adherents of their
party, while others are not so strongly convinced. Do you
consider yourself a strongly convinced or not strongly
convinced adherent of your party?
1998 Do you generally feel attached to a particular party?
Which party is that?
All the same, is there one of the parties which you feel
more attached to than the other parties? Which party?
Finland 1991 How established would you say your party preference has
become? Absolutely well established, rather established,
not very established, not at all established.
France 1967 To which party do you usually feel the closest?
1988 Which is the party that you habitually feel closest to?
1997 Here is a parties and political movements list. Could you
tell me the one you feel the closest to or in any case the
least remote?
France 1958 What is the political party to which you feel the closest?
(Referendum)
Germany 1976, 1987 Many people in the Federal Republic lean toward a
particular party for a long time, although they may
occasionally vote for a different party. How about you?
Do you in general lean toward a particular party? If so,
which one?
Israel 1969 Do you support any party, or are you a member or an
official in a party?
Which party do you support more than all the others?
Italy 1968, 1972 To which party do you habitually feel closest?

Japan 1967 Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a
Liberal-Democrat, Socialist, Democratic Socialist, or
what?
Do you generally feel closer to one of the parties than the
others?
Netherlands 1986, 1998 Many people think of themselves as being adherents of a
particular political party, but there are many other people
who do not regard themselves as such. How about you,
do you regard yourself as an adherent of a political party,
or don’t you? Of which party are you an adherent?
Is there any party to which you feel more attracted than to
other parties, or not? Which party is that?
New Zealand 1993–2002 Generally speaking do you usually think of yourself as
National, Labour, Alliance, New Zealand First, or some
other, or don’t you usually think of yourself in this way?
Do you generally think of yourself as a little closer to one
of the parties than the others?
Sweden 1956 As you know, some people consider themselves adherents
of the party which they intend to vote for. But there are
also many others who do not have such an attachment to
any of the parties. Do you yourself belong to the
adherents of any party? [No prompt for party label]
1960, 1964 Some people are strongly convinced adherents of the party
they intend to vote for. Others are not so strongly
convinced. Do you yourself belong to the strongly
convinced adherents of any party?
1968–1985 Many people think of themselves as adherents of a certain
party. But there are also many people who don’t have any
such attitude towards any of the parties. Do you usually
think of yourself as, for instance, an adherent of [list
varies]? Or don’t you have any such attitude to any of the
parties?
(Continued )
344 JOHNSTON
Is there any party that you are closer to than the others?
(Which party?)
1988, 1991 Many people consider themselves as supporters of a
specific party. But there are many others who don’t feel
such an attachment to any of the parties. Do you
generally think of yourself as a supporter of, for
example, the People’s Party, Social Democrats, Moderate
Party, VPD, Green Party, or KDS? Or do you feel no
such attachment to any of the parties?
Is there still a party that you consider yourself closer to

than any of the other parties? Which party?

Eurobarometer 5:1976 Do you consider yourself a supporter of any particular
political party? If so, do you feel yourself to be very
involved in this party, fairly involved, or merely a
sympathizer?
10:1978 Do you consider yourself to be close to any particular
party? If so, do you feel yourself to be very close to this
party, fairly close or merely a sympathizer?
20:1983 Do you feel closer to any one of the parties on the
following list than to all the others? If so, which ones?
30:1988, Do you consider yourself to be close to any particular
35:1991, party? If so, do you feel yourself to be very close to this
40:1993 party, fairly close, or merely a sympathizer?
Comparative Do you usually think of yourself as close to any particular
Study of political party? What party is that? Do you feel yourself
Electoral a little closer to one of the political parties than the
Systems others? Which party is that?
the United States.3 The strongest renderings might even imply closer identification
with a party than the U.S. original does.
TIME HORIZON The original U.S. question states the time horizon as “generally
speaking.” Time horizon is already an issue in U.S. debates, as the macroparti-
sanship claims rest on the Gallup variant of the question that refers to “politics
3
Barnes et al. (1988) argue that a “closeness” query is substantially identical to the U.S.
original, but they overstate their case. Although the closeness query combined with a three-
level intensity measure (see below) produces a distribution of direction and intensity that is
close in the aggregate to the distribution produced by the classic National Election Studies
sequence, the individual-level correspondence between the measures exhibits considerable
slippage.
as of today.” In any case, “generally speaking” migrated to the Anglo-American

studies. Only in Britain, however, has this wording stabilized. In Australia it is sup-
plemented by the adverb “usually.” Australian usage mimics the original Canadian
question (see Table 1), which employed both “generally speaking” and “usually.”
When the Canadian question split into federal and provincial variants in 1974,
“generally speaking” fell away, leaving “usually” to carry the burden. Most other
countries—if they mention time horizon at all—try to convey a sense of duration,
e.g., “habitually,” “for a long time.” These studies typically embody an attempt to
render the original concept faithfully. Some arguably capture the concept better
than the U.S. original does. The fact remains, however, that the exact rendering of
time is highly variable, with uncertain implications for systematic comparison.
PROMPT FOR NAMES OF PARTIES Not all studies mention parties by name. Pre-
sumably this reflects ease of administration: The larger the number of parties, the
harder it is to contain them in a crisp query. The problem is obvious, however:
With no prompt for parties, the estimate of nonpartisans will be inflated, and the
commitment of those who do name a party will probably be greater than is typical
of, say, a U.S. respondent who is not required to recall a party name but needs only
to recognize it.
PROMPT FOR NONPARTISANSHIP In many countries, there is no prompt for non-

partisanship. The worst offenders are most Anglo-American studies, which other-
wise come closest to mimicking the U.S. original. In these countries, party names
are listed but the question then ends. This leads to underestimation of the frequency
of nonpartisanship (Barnes et al. 1988, Kenney & Rice 1988, Johnston 1992). No
less seriously, it produces systematic measurement error: Vote and party identi-
fication appear to be closely related statically and dynamically, but only because
nonpartisans are falsely classified as partisans (Johnston 1992). It is a reasonable
inference that some of the claims about the inapplicability of the core U.S. concept
result from this measurement blunder. Prompting for nonpartisanship is not sim-
ple, however, as the U.S. formulation of “independent” truly does not travel well
(Butler & Stokes 1969, p. 43; Johnston 1992). There is a small amount of system-
atic comparison in this domain (see, in particular, Blais et al. 2001). As Table 1
indicates, comparisons are an almost exclusively Anglo-American business. Vari-
ants include the following: “none of these” (Canada), “no party” (Canada), “not
having a general preference” (Canada), and “or don’t you usually think of yourself
in this way” (New Zealand).
Some studies attempt to validate nonpartisanship with a whole sentence. This
is common where the question attempts to capture the spirit of the original in a
context-setting preamble. For example, the German question that employs the weak
orientation of “leaning” embeds that word in a context that points to an indefinitely
long term and allows occasional defection: “Many people in the Federal Republic
lean toward a particular party for a long time, although they may occasionally vote
for a different party.” This wording may capture the concept of party identification
346 JOHNSTON
as developed in the United States with considerable precision. Again, however, the
wording drift renders cross-national comparison difficult.
An additional problem in this domain is the follow-up for the possible partisan
leaning of ostensible nonpartisans. My sense is that this is rarely done. Either the
question is not asked or the response is not analyzed. Often this is because leaners
are already captured, in a manner of speaking, by the ubiquitous failure to prompt
for nonpartisanship. Leaners may also be captured when leaning or “closeness” is
the psychological orientation in question from the start. The neglect of the follow-
up question reflects the fact that no study gauges intensity using the U.S. original’s
two alternatives of weak versus strong. Where intensity is gauged, three alternatives
are typically offered: “very strong,” “strong,” and “not very strong.” The result is
a four-category gradient of intensity (where nonpartisan is, in effect, the lowest

intensity), akin to the four categories created by the multipath U.S. instrument.
Potential leaners in non-U.S. settings, hidden in the nonpartisan category, are left
in measurement limbo.
ORDER WITHIN THE QUESTIONNAIRE The U.S. original questionnaire always

places the party identification question before any capture of vote or vote intention.
Indeed, the standard treatment uses a pre-election indicator of identification and
a postelection indicator of the vote. Non-U.S. practice is not always so careful.
McAllister & Wattenberg (1995) find, using U.S. and British data, that order does
not seem to matter. Johnston (1992) is not so sanguine.
PRE/POST TIMING OF THE PARTY IDENTIFICATION QUESTION Not all election

studies are conducted before election day. Generally, this reflects the unpredictabil-
ity of election dates (in contrast to the U.S. case), and it may be unavoidable where
fieldwork involves face-to-face interviews. But the timing of fieldwork may be
important to the distribution and the nature of response. Postelection samples may
yield a higher percentage of identifiers, a closer correspondence of vote to identi-
fication, and bias toward the winner.
MODE For its entire history, the U.S. National Election Study (NES) has admin-
istered a face-to-face questionnaire to a spatially clustered sample. Increasingly,
however, studies are using random-digit dialing to reach geographically dispersed
samples. The quality of telephone samples undoubtedly varies considerably from
country to country, partly as a reflection of the penetration of telephones them-
selves. The shift to the telephone is typically made as a cost-saving measure.
Ironically, it may also be the necessary condition for bringing the national study
in line with another feature of the U.S. standard-bearer: pre-election fieldwork.
As it happens, the 2000 U.S. study enables controlled comparison, which shows
that telephone samples yielded a much more balanced distribution of partisanship
than did the standard NES in-home study that year. This dovetails with evidence
reported about Gallup telephone samples (Green et al. 2002) and the 2000 Na-
tional Annenberg Election Study sample (Johnston et al. 2004). Some countries
use self-completion questionnaires; Australia seems to be the most notable exam-

ple, although New Zealand also occasionally goes this route. The response rate
in Australia seems remarkably high, but it is not clear how comparisons with that
country should be handled.
LANGUAGE Obviously, most election studies are not conducted in English, and
readers of translations see wording variation through a glass darkly. The impli-
cation is staggering and disheartening, yet there is, for the most part, nothing to
be done about it. Canada offers a glimmer of insight, but only for French-English
comparisons: Some Francophones complete English interviews and some Anglo-
phones complete French ones, and these are quasi-random outcomes, so context
and language can be controlled simultaneously. For party identification, however,

such comparisons have yet to be ventured, and they may not tell us much about
the rest of the range of linguistic variation.
CONCLUSIONS
Party identification, at least in the United States and as measured, is a mover but not
entirely unmoved. Strong evidence indicates an impact of partisan predisposition
on opinion and values, on perceptions of performance and of candidates, on issue-
position imputations for candidates, and on the vote itself. Although its power
as a mover may wax and wane with the clarity of cues from rival party elites,
the psychological influence of party seems as great now as at any time since the
Second World War. Less clear is the resistance of party identification itself to
external forces. It is natural to wonder whether the stability, on the one hand, and
the exogenous power of party ties, on the other hand, are dynamically linked. If they
are, the nature of the links cannot be simple. One could imagine, for example, that
the sorting required to get from the incoherent system of the 1950s and 1960s to the
sharply divided one of the present would cause movement of respondents across
intensity levels and across directional boundaries—and so seem to weaken the hold
of party—even as it ultimately increases the dynamic and directive significance of
the party ties that are actually formed or retained.
But it also seems clear that some of the confusion arises from the indicator.
Too many disparate considerations have been shoehorned into an ostensibly uni-
dimensional measure. The indicator is not going to change, however; too many
decades of analysis and diagnosis are invested in it. Party identification is proba-
bly the most highly leveraged measure in all of political science. But the record
counsels prudence in its deployment. When Campbell et al. (1960, 1966) used the
measure to describe the basic distribution of long-term ties, they chose correctly,
it seems, not to delve further into the pool of independents. Even so, their use
of the intensity follow-up among the self-identified was not always well-advised.
All the more problematic is the routine conflation of response from three separate
questions into a single seven-point scale. Correction of this scale for measurement
348 JOHNSTON
error does not get around the fact that the aggregate distribution so generated shifts
back and forth with the morning and afternoon breezes; it does not signal climate
change. But climate change is the point, metaphorically speaking.
The cross-national picture is even murkier. Here the record is a mess, and recent
attempts at standardization under the aegis of the Comparative Study of Electoral
Systems are not much help. The CSES indicator may be the only one that can
realistically be asked everywhere, but in this it succeeds only by being the lowest
common denominator: Ostensibly partisan response to the indicator is too easy.
Indeed, it reproduces some of the problems of the follow-up “leaning” question in
the original U.S. battery. And yet, as Barnes et al. (1988) inadvertently show, those
who respond to a “closeness” cue when it is the initial one are not the same individ-
uals who respond to it only when they have resisted a stronger cue. The problem is
compounded by the reliance (again, inescapable) on postelection instruments. At
a minimum, extending the leverage of the U.S. original indicator from its current
role in over-time diagnosis within the United States to true cross-national com-
parison requires deeper analysis where the two versions are juxtaposed, such as in
recent installments of the NES. In the meantime, we are left with supposition. The
arguments for why party identification might vary cross-nationally in its cognitive
and motivational dynamics seemed sensible when they were first formulated, and
they still seem sensible. Forty years on, however, they are still just arguments.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks Amanda J. Bittner for unstinting assistance in preparation of
this manuscript. All responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation lies with the
author.
The Annual Review of Political Science is online at

http://polisci.annualreviews.org
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P1: JRX
April 5, 2006 20:54 Annual Reviews AR276-FM
Annual Review of Political Science

Volume 9, 2006
CONTENTS
BENTLEY, TRUMAN, AND THE STUDY OF GROUPS, Mika LaVaque-Manty 1
HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF LEGISLATURES IN THE UNITED STATES,
Peverill Squire 19
RESPONDING TO SURPRISE, James J. Wirtz 45

POLITICAL ISSUES AND PARTY ALIGNMENTS: ASSESSING THE ISSUE
EVOLUTION PERSPECTIVE, Edward G. Carmines and Michael W. Wagner 67
PARTY POLARIZATION IN AMERICAN POLITICS: CHARACTERISTICS,
CAUSES, AND CONSEQUENCES, Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey,
and Juliana Menasce Horowitz 83
WHAT AFFECTS VOTER TURNOUT? André Blais 111
PLATONIC QUANDARIES: RECENT SCHOLARSHIP ON PLATO,
Danielle Allen 127
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND ITS POLITICAL DISCONTENTS IN
CHINA: AUTHORITARIANISM, UNEQUAL GROWTH, AND THE
DILEMMAS OF POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT, Dali L. Yang 143
MADISON IN BAGHDAD? DECENTRALIZATION AND FEDERALISM IN
COMPARATIVE POLITICS, Erik Wibbels 165
SEARCHING WHERE THE LIGHT SHINES: STUDYING
DEMOCRATIZATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Lisa Anderson 189
POLITICAL ISLAM: ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS? Yahya Sadowski 215
RETHINKING THE RESOURCE CURSE: OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE,
INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY, AND DOMESTIC CONSTRAINTS,
Pauline Jones Luong and Erika Weinthal 241
A CLOSER LOOK AT OIL, DIAMONDS, AND CIVIL WAR, Michael Ross 265
THE HEART OF THE AFRICAN CONFLICT ZONE: DEMOCRATIZATION,
ETHNICITY, CIVIL CONFLICT, AND THE GREAT LAKES CRISIS,
Crawford Young 301
PARTY IDENTIFICATION: UNMOVED MOVER OR SUM OF PREFERENCES?
Richard Johnston 329
REGULATING INFORMATION FLOWS: STATES, PRIVATE ACTORS,
AND E-COMMERCE, Henry Farrell 353
vii
P1: JRX
April 5, 2006 20:54 Annual Reviews AR276-FM
viii CONTENTS
COMPARATIVE ETHNIC POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES: BEYOND

BLACK AND WHITE, Gary M. Segura and Helena Alves Rodrigues 375
WHAT IS ETHNIC IDENTITY AND DOES IT MATTER? Kanchan Chandra 397
NEW MACROECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE, Torben Iversen
and David Soskice 425
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CASE STUDY
METHODS, Andrew Bennett and Colin Elman 455
FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ELECTORAL CONNECTION, John H. Aldrich,
Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, Jason Reifler,
and Kristin Thompson Sharp 477
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY, James A. Robinson 503

INDEXES
Subject Index 529
Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 1–9 549
Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 1–9 552
ERRATA
An online log of corrections Annual Review of Political Science chapters
(if any, 1997 to the present) may be found at http://polisci.annualreviews.org/

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Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2006. 9:329–51

PARTY IDENTIFICATION: Unmoved Mover or Sum

Key Words party loyalty, elections, opinion, political cognition

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 331

of origin, it is more social-psychological than political. It may be vulnerable to

critical realignments cannot be closely spaced. A generation that experiences crit-

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 333

to the methodological dispute over the reality of dealignment below). Of present

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 335

IDEOLOGICAL FAMILIES A similar but distinguishable argument focuses on multi-

MULTIPLE IDENTIFICATIONS The multiple-identifications argument overlaps the

between ideologically adjacent parties. If such movement undermines identifica-

And, as mentioned above in connection with Weisberg (1980), the possibility of

INSTITUTIONAL COMPLEXITY Institutional complexity claims take two forms,

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 337

in principle. For instance, party identification conditions perception of the pres-

economy, an issue on which objective evidence is available (Bartels 2002a). And

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 339

measurement. The canonical U.S. measure is controversial at home, and matters

THE BOUNDARY OF PARTISANSHIP Closely related to the general question of in-

NATURE OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONNECTION TO A PARTY The original U.S.

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 341

Australia 1987–2001 Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as

Conservative, Liberal, Social Credit, Creditiste, NDP,

For identifiers: When you say you are a [name of party]

Nonidentifiers: Generally speaking, in federal politics, do

2004 Experiment: 2 treatments.

Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, or none of

2. In federal politics, do you usually think of yourself as a

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 343

Italy 1968, 1972 To which party do you habitually feel closest?

Is there still a party that you consider yourself closer to

than any of the other parties? Which party?

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 345

as of today.” In any case, “generally speaking” migrated to the Anglo-American

PROMPT FOR NONPARTISANSHIP In many countries, there is no prompt for non-

a four-category gradient of intensity (where nonpartisan is, in effect, the lowest

ORDER WITHIN THE QUESTIONNAIRE The U.S. original questionnaire always

PRE/POST TIMING OF THE PARTY IDENTIFICATION QUESTION Not all election

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 347

use self-completion questionnaires; Australia seems to be the most notable exam-

and language can be controlled simultaneously. For party identification, however,

the rest of the range of linguistic variation.

The Annual Review of Political Science is online at

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 349

Behav. 24:117–50 ing and the dynamics of public opinion. Pre-

traits in American presidential elections. In Assoc., Chicago

Dennis J. 1988a. Political independence in J. Polit. Sci. 49:908–23

PARTY IDENTIFICATION 351

Cross National Perspectives. ed. SM Lipset, Petrocik J. 1974. An analysis of intransitivi-

Annual Review of Political Science

RESPONDING TO SURPRISE, James J. Wirtz 45

COMPARATIVE ETHNIC POLITICS IN THE UNITED STATES: BEYOND

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY, James A. Robinson 503

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