Class Theorists and the Debate about the End of Class

Abstract

In the early 1990s, the concept of class came under resolute criticism from political scientists and sociologists; both questioned the relevance of class for the understanding of contemporary societies. Verdicts ranged from a cautious expression of the decline of class politics (Dalton, 1996) to a blunt statement of the imminent death of class (Clark and Lipset, 1991). Initially, the debate was opened by a series of electoral studies, which reported that the salience of social divisions for voting was declining. According to these studies, class-based voting was regressing in almost all modern democracies (Dalton et al., 1984; Crewe and Denver, 1985; Rose and McAllister, 1986; Franklin, 1992). Known as the ‘dealignment’ argument, these studies concluded that traditional linkages between classes and parties were replaced by new (and volatile) associations based on voters’ issue positions or sympathy for candidates. The dealignment literature provided several explanations for the loosening of the link between class position and voting choice. A first explanation highlighted the change in values over the post-war period: growing affluence and rising education were seen to have led to a shift from an economic cleavage rooted in class differences to a conflict about value priorities, opposing holders of materialist and post-materialist values (Inglehart, 1984, 1990).