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The welsh veto: The Wales act 1978 and the referendum
ElectoralStudies (1983), 2,'2, 184 183
Book Notes Edited by Bo SARLVIK
Rudy B. Andeweg, Dutch Voters Adrift." On Explanations of Electoral Change 1963-1977, (Doctoral thesis, Leiden University, 1982. The book may be ordered from R. Andeweg, Schelpendam 24, Katwijk a/Zee; price: US $8.00, 237 pp.) The turbulence in the Dutch electorate in the 1960s and early 1970s affected a party system in which the pattern of cleavages seemed to have been 'frozen' (to use Lipset and Rokkan's term) for several decades. The five main parties each had a distinctive base, defined by a combination of religious and social dividing lines: the Catholics, the two Protestant denominations, the secularized middle class and the secularized working class. At the time of the election of 1977 the party system had returned to a more stable state; the main parties again held over 80 per cent of the vote. But in one respect a significant change had occurred. The religious parties (from 1977 amalgamated in Christian Democratic Appeal) which had attracted a majority or a near majority of the vote in the first post-war decades had declined to hold a share of the vote only slightly above 30 per cent. The Liberal Party and--to a lesser extent--the Labour Party had gained ground. A number of explanations of this change have been offered, and the main task that Andeweg has set himself is to confront each of them with data drawn from a series of interview surveys. In many instances the result is negative--but no less interesting for that reason. Class voting has not increased; only to a small extent can the decline in support for religious parties be attributed to any changes in the numerical size of the various denominations; the change was more marked among the youngest voters, but it affected all age groups; the correlation between religion and voting remained much the same at each level of regularity in church attendance. What had changed, however, was church attendance itself (which Andeweg takes as one indicator of religious orthodoxy). The connection between denomination and voting had always been strongest among the regular churchgoers, and the size of that part of the population had diminished dramatically. Hence a much larger portion of the electorate came to be made up of voters with less close ties to the church to which they belonged, and among these voters the impact of denomination on voting had always been weaker. This, apparently, was the main cause of the decline in voting support for the religious parties. David Foulkes, J. Barry Jones and R. A. Wilford (editors), The Welsh Veto: The Wales Act 1978 and the Referendum, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1983), vii + 238 pp. Through the referendum in March 1979 the voters of Wales rejected the Wales Act 1978 which would have established an elected assembly for Wales and a measure of devolution of powers from central government to that assembly. The collection of papers in this book examines the background and the constitutional issues involved but focuses on the referendum itself: the organization of the 'yes' and 'no' camps, their campaigns, the role of the mass media, the trends in public opinion, and voting in the referendum.
Index to International Public Opinion 1980-1981, prepared by Survey Research Consultants Inter national, Inc., edited by Elisabeth Harm Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, (Oxford: Clio Press, 1982), xxviii + 584 pp. This is the third volume of the Index which is published annually (see Book Note in Electoral Studies 1982, 1:1, p. 129). The Index contains opinion questions and response distributions drawn from surveys conducted in more than a hundred countries and regions, including some Third World and Eastern European 0261-3794/83/02/0184~02/$03.00 © 1983 Butterworth & Co (Publishers)Ltd
Book Notes Edited by Bo SARLVIK
Rudy B. Andeweg, Dutch Voters Adrift." On Explanations of Electoral Change 1963-1977, (Doctoral thesis, Leiden University, 1982. The book may be ordered from R. Andeweg, Schelpendam 24, Katwijk a/Zee; price: US $8.00, 237 pp.) The turbulence in the Dutch electorate in the 1960s and early 1970s affected a party system in which the pattern of cleavages seemed to have been 'frozen' (to use Lipset and Rokkan's term) for several decades. The five main parties each had a distinctive base, defined by a combination of religious and social dividing lines: the Catholics, the two Protestant denominations, the secularized middle class and the secularized working class. At the time of the election of 1977 the party system had returned to a more stable state; the main parties again held over 80 per cent of the vote. But in one respect a significant change had occurred. The religious parties (from 1977 amalgamated in Christian Democratic Appeal) which had attracted a majority or a near majority of the vote in the first post-war decades had declined to hold a share of the vote only slightly above 30 per cent. The Liberal Party and--to a lesser extent--the Labour Party had gained ground. A number of explanations of this change have been offered, and the main task that Andeweg has set himself is to confront each of them with data drawn from a series of interview surveys. In many instances the result is negative--but no less interesting for that reason. Class voting has not increased; only to a small extent can the decline in support for religious parties be attributed to any changes in the numerical size of the various denominations; the change was more marked among the youngest voters, but it affected all age groups; the correlation between religion and voting remained much the same at each level of regularity in church attendance. What had changed, however, was church attendance itself (which Andeweg takes as one indicator of religious orthodoxy). The connection between denomination and voting had always been strongest among the regular churchgoers, and the size of that part of the population had diminished dramatically. Hence a much larger portion of the electorate came to be made up of voters with less close ties to the church to which they belonged, and among these voters the impact of denomination on voting had always been weaker. This, apparently, was the main cause of the decline in voting support for the religious parties. David Foulkes, J. Barry Jones and R. A. Wilford (editors), The Welsh Veto: The Wales Act 1978 and the Referendum, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1983), vii + 238 pp. Through the referendum in March 1979 the voters of Wales rejected the Wales Act 1978 which would have established an elected assembly for Wales and a measure of devolution of powers from central government to that assembly. The collection of papers in this book examines the background and the constitutional issues involved but focuses on the referendum itself: the organization of the 'yes' and 'no' camps, their campaigns, the role of the mass media, the trends in public opinion, and voting in the referendum.
Index to International Public Opinion 1980-1981, prepared by Survey Research Consultants Inter national, Inc., edited by Elisabeth Harm Hastings and Philip K. Hastings, (Oxford: Clio Press, 1982), xxviii + 584 pp. This is the third volume of the Index which is published annually (see Book Note in Electoral Studies 1982, 1:1, p. 129). The Index contains opinion questions and response distributions drawn from surveys conducted in more than a hundred countries and regions, including some Third World and Eastern European 0261-3794/83/02/0184~02/$03.00 © 1983 Butterworth & Co (Publishers)Ltd