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Effects of authoritarian and libertarian values on Conservative and Labour party support in Great Britain
Author(s) -
PALMER HARVEY D.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1995.tb00471.x
Subject(s) - authoritarianism , divergence (linguistics) , politics , multivariate statistics , multivariate analysis , value (mathematics) , dimension (graph theory) , economics , empirical evidence , demographic economics , political science , sociology , positive economics , law , democracy , statistics , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , epistemology , pure mathematics
. While there is strong evidence that a libertarian‐authoritarian dimension exists in Great Britain, there is only weak evidence that it contributed to the Conservative Party's electoral victories in 1979, 1983, and 1987. The present paper addresses this empirical divergence by presenting new evidence. Using a multivariate statistical analysis of British respondents in the 1979–1987 Eurobarometers, the paper estimates the impacts of political values and class‐based demographic characteristics on individual‐level support for the Conservative and Labour parties. The multivariate model is estimated separately for each year in order to compare the explanatory variables' effects over time. The paper's findings demonstrate that authoritarian and libertarian values significantly influenced party support, with the strongest effects occurring in 1983 and 1984. In addition, they show that class‐based support was negatively correlated with value‐based support during 1979–1987.