Search

This article employs the October 1974 British Election Study to examine the level and nature of political ideology among British political activists, the effects of socioeconomic characteristics on these attitudes, and the impact of the attitudes on political behaviour. On balance, the activist group closely resembles the non activist population. Activists are somewhat more ideological in their thinking than non- activists, but the differences are quite small. Demographic attributes affect the policy attitudes of the elite slightly more than the non activists, but again differences are small. The influence of issue attitudes on voting is about the same for activists and non activists. These results stand in contrast to studies showing large élite-mass policy differences in the United States and other work documenting ideological orientations in higher levels of the Labour Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the British Election Studies of 1974 and 1979, patterns of nonvoting among the British public are explored. Nonvoters are much like voters in specific issue opinions and in social class. They do not have a strong ideology or a markedly different attitudinal structure than their fellow citizens. Implications of this for British democracy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender gap in British public opinion is explored using data from the 1983 British Election Study. Differences in opinions between men and women are examined in light of three explanations frequently offered to explain gender differences in political behavior: socialization, situational factors such as employment and marital status, and structural factors. Findings indicate that there appears to be no major gender gap on basic ideology, but that women are more liberal than men on issues relating to force, the environment, and women's issues and more conservative on morality issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As in most countries of the Western world, the number of women holding elected office in Britain is small. This article explores some reasons for the paucity of women in elected office by examining voting records for over 2,800 candidates for Scottish district elections in 1984. We found that women candidates are less likely to win election than are male candidates and they poll somewhat fewer votes. These differences can be almost entirely explained by the fact that women candidates are much less likely to enjoy personal or party incumbency, slightly more likely to run against incumbents, and less likely to be unopposed. In areas of Labour Party strength, however, Scottish women candidates fare slightly worse than comparable men candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the authors' comments on the effects of candidate gender on voting for local office in Great Britain. Their analysis focused on the point that few women are selected by political parties to run for local office. According to the authors, once incumbency is achieved, women are as hard to dislodge as men, whatever party they represent. They emphasize that parties and socio-economic characteristics are two features in the political culture in the country.