Open Access‘We Don't Do God’? Religion and Party Choice in Britain
Author(s) -
James Tilley
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
british journal of political science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.364
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1469-2112
pISSN - 0007-1234
DOI - 10.1017/s0007123414000052
Subject(s) - conservatism , ideology , underpinning , social identity theory , mechanism (biology) , religious identity , political science , social psychology , preference , identity (music) , sociology , political economy , positive economics , social group , religiosity , politics , law , psychology , economics , epistemology , philosophy , civil engineering , physics , acoustics , microeconomics , engineering
This article shows that religion has been consistently important in predicting voters' party choices in Britain over time. The relationship between religion and party preference is not primarily due to the social make-up of different religious groups, nor to ideological differences between religious groups, whether in terms of social conservatism, economic leftism or national identity. Instead, particular denominations are associated with parties that represented those denominational groups in the early twentieth century when social cleavages were 'frozen' within the system. The main mechanism underpinning these divisions is parental transmission of party affiliations within denominations. These findings have important implications for how we understand both the persistence of social cleavages and the precise mechanisms that maintain social cleavages