? Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2000. 3:401–17 Copyright c  by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved THE CONTINUED SIGNIFICANCE OF CLASS V OTING Geoffrey Evans Nuffield College, Oxford University, OX1 1NF United Kingdom; e-mail: geoffrey.evans@nuf.ox.ac.uk Key Words method, measurement, theory ■ Abstract Class voting is supposedly in severe decline in advanced industrial democracies. However, this conventional wisdom derives from research using prob- lematic methods and measures and an overly simple model of political change. This chapter overviews past and current comparative research into changes in and expla- nations of class-based political behavior and argues for the continued significance of class voting and, by extension, class politics in contemporary democracies. I partic- ularly emphasize the importance of using more appropriate methods and the appli- cation and testing of theories that integrate developments in this area with those in studies of voting behavior more generally. This translates into a need for the sys- tematic testing of bottom-up/top-down interactions in the relations between social structure and political preferences and the precise specification and measurement of explanatory mechanisms that can account for the association between class position and voting. INTRODUCTION Some degree of class voting occurs in most democracies (Korpi 1983, Nieuwbeerta 1995), although it is as a rule less pronounced than political cleavages associated with religion and ethnicity (Lipset & Rokkan 1967; Lijpart 1979, 1984). However, it is common for political scientists’ models of voting behavior to include measures of class position only as control variables, while focusing intellectual concern on the impact of other explanatory factors. Indeed, for many researchers it is apparently unnecessary to include class position in order to obtain well-specified models of voting behavior: Effective prediction can be obtained without it. But is this really the case? I would argue not. First, questions of causal order bedevil research based on perceptions and pref- erences: Does partisanship cause or reflect economic perceptions? Is party identity a running tally or an exogenous influence on vote? Are issue positions real and consequential or “nonattitudes”? In short, many cognitive and attitudinal con- structs are so proximate to vote choice that they constitute part of what is to be 1094-2939/00/0623-0401$14.00 401 Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 2000.3:401-417. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Oxford - Bodleian Library on 09/29/12. For personal use only.