THE CATCH-ALL PARTY AND CLASS VOTING BEHAVIOR: THE CASE OF NEW LABOUR

Por Ignacio Mamone, Director de AgoraXXI. Washington College, Maryland. Octubre 2007.

RESUMEN Este corto ensayo pretende determinar si la nocin de partido catch-all se aplica al Nuevo Laborismo desde su cambio de estrategia electoral usada en las elecciones de 1997, y que concluyeron con un perodo de 18 aos de dominio Conservador en Gran Bretaa, apoyndose en el argumento de que el voto de clase no ha desaparecido todava de la poltica europea contempornea.

ABSTRACT This short essay intends to determine if the notion of catchall party applies to New Labour since its change of the electoral strategy used in the 1997 election that concluded a 18-year period of Conservative rule in Great Britain, while supporting the argument that class voting has not disappeared yet from contemporary European politics.
Key Words: Catch-all Party Class voting New Labour Social Democrats

1.- Social Democrats, Class Voting and Campaign Strategies Incentive-based studies of political parties emphasize the key role political actors, especially party leaders, play in shaping party-voters bonds, by reinforcing or weakening these. Calculations on electoral gains by partisan leaders may lead to reinforce the strength of party-voters ties through bonding appeals, or reversely, to

weak these ties through bridging strategies (Norris, 2004, p.98). This includes to what extent European social democratic parties make class appeals. Historically, parties had an incentive to foster close links with their social bases among its electorate, which evolved into a sense of one-of-us belonging to a partisan organization, building a them VS us barrier of ideological and programmatic association in the postwar era, the so-known two-class/two-party tradition. This situation changed when Western Europe went under the secular wave of postindustrialization, accompanied with shrinkage in the size of the working class because of the rise of the third sector. Consequently, for many authors, based on the use of the Alford index1, the social basis of social democratic parties eroded. However, others argue that research does not support the thesis of a generalized decline in class voting in industrial democracies, because former communist countries in Eastern Europe displayed signs of class-based political polarization along the classic left-right axis (Evans, 2000, p.410). This leads to think that class divisions in political orientations may remain relatively constant, but that because of changing class sizes, parties change their strategies, which eventually changes class-votes relations. Whether there is a decline in class voting or just a class size reconfiguration, social democrats had to modify their strategies in order to win votes. The literature on the topic agrees that European Socialist parties adapted by altering the basis of their electoral appeals beyond their traditional blue-collar base. Successful strategies were stimulating a catch-all appetite for voters and bridging moves to attract diverse constituencies by selecting moderate leaders and addressing a wide public on centrist projects beyond the traditional economic issues (wealth redistribution, housing and full employment policies). Bridging strategies involve the dissolution of the them and us traditional ties by pursuing pragmatic policies under more practical rhetoric. They also include a different type of partisan coalitions, being informal understandings and programmatic alliances of easy-entry, easy-exit around particular issues, allowing parties to break out of dependence upon limited sectors of the electorate. By these means political actors create, reinforce and maintain the links between their parties and the electorate, rather than being these shifts an inevitable sociological process as modernization theories suggest. Furthermore, some authors theorize that the type of electoral formula, majoritarian, proportional representation or combined, significantly

The Alford index measures the difference between the percentage of manual workers that voted for left-wing political parties and the percentage of non-manual workers that voted for these parties. The use of this index, established in 1962, became standard practice in the studies that followed, concluding that class voting is in decline, without taking account for it obscures variations in the composition of the manual and non-manual classes.

shape the incentives for parties to adopt different strategies to win votes (Norris, 2004, p.100). When Otto Kirchheimer introduced the concept of catch-all peoples party, he described the mass party as focusing in the electoral scene in the pursuit of short-term electoral success by catching if not all categories of voters, more voters in all those categories whose interests do not adamantly conflict (Kirchheimer, 1966, p.186). This would be achieved by appealing people on national societal goals transcending group interests. Western Europe in the days of Kirchheimer was undergoing secular and mass consumer-goods orientated trends which pressured the former class-mass parties to change into organized structures characterized by ideological emptiness, publicly-judged leaders, downgrading of party-membership prestige, deemphasizing the role of the social-class clientele and, last but not least, securing access to a variety of interest groups in the political game. On the one hand, partisan loyalty is not important as it was, since it is something difficult to expect and insufficient to swing electoral results. On the other, a party is a collector of interest-group claims. Thus, the catch-all party needs of the interest groups because they provide mass reservoirs of readily accessible voters. Therefore, an alliance based on mutually helpful services rises between these parties and groups (Kirchheimer, 1966, p.193). This can lead to the problem of the arbitration of interest conflicts when the catch-all party exercises government.

2.- The case of New Labour I apply the catch-all notion as above described to the case of British Labours electoral strategies over the last decade. I compare the new strategies employed by Tony Blair and the people behind the rise of an electorally successful New Labour, in contrast to the traditional class-orientated old Labourism. The introduced changes in the party strategies were, I will conclude, a case of up down relationship between partisan leadership and voters. From the beginning of the 20th century, the Labour party had been the voice of the working class movement in Great Britain, in opposition to the Tories, the centre-right party rooted in the petit bourgeoisie. The presence of a party that was seen to represent working-class interests and the presence of a vigorous union movement were efficient countervailing processes to working-class abstention, phenomenon present in industrialized countries such as the United States. In postwar decades, the unions were not the only group constituting Labours electorate, but also there were those voters from the new middle class of the cultural and social specialty, Britains New Left, hungry of radical economic policies, anti

nuclear proliferation, anti European Community interests. But, as we have briefly seen, by the seventies, a secular wave of postindustrial societal changes irrupted among Western Europe. The UKs decadent economic structure was thought to be saved if neo liberal reforms were implemented, and this thought was especially popular among the petit bourgeoisie which provided major support for Margaret Thatchers election in 1979. The next decade was signed by the Labours failure to turn into votes its extreme distant attitudes of, first, radical socialism in 1983 and then, from 1987, the major policy review under the party leadership of Neil Kinnock. By 1992, reformists within the Fabian Society, one of the many socialist intellectual societies affiliated to the Labour Party, analyzed the changing size and character of the working class and its implications for the partys long-term electoral prospects, concluding that the broad mass in the middle had to be the key target for Labour recruitment (Heath 2001, p. 10). What the party needed under the leadership of Tony Blair was to win back the middle income, middle Britain, which had been successfully recruited by the Conservative party to win four consecutive parliamentary elections from 1979 (2001, p.122). The academic literature had conceptualized these voters, many of them union members, with aspirations for social mobility as the affluent worker, the man (or woman) transformed by the embourgeoisement of its class with the rise of postindustrial societal changes (see Zweig, 1961; Abrams, 1960; Goldthorpe, 1968; Hope, 1975). The New Labour movement successfully produced, by 1997, what can be identified as class realignment, rather than the frequently postulated class dealignment (Heath, 2001, p.123). On dealignment and realignment processes see Dalton, Flanagan and Beck (1984), but for the purpose of this short essay it is enough to clarify that dealignment is a process whereby the classes converge in their pattern of support for the parties, while realignment is a process whereby a particular group shifts its support from one party towards a different one. Labour reformists, including Blair, believed that the partys social base, traditionally the unionized working class, had suffered a major shrinkage, and the party could not afford a class approach any more (Heath, 2001, p.18). The changes in the social composition of the general electorate in Britain prior to 1997 can be seen in the light of BES2. Membership in unions had a sharp decline after 1979, as a consequence of industrial restructuring which followed Thatcherite policies. The working class in the 1990s constituted the 35% of the labour force, fifteen percent less than in 1979. Labours especially close relationship with the unions was clearly thought to be broken by 1997,
2

British Election Surveys (BES) of 1979, 1983, 1987, 1992 and 1997, researched by a large group of investigators from different institutions which conveyed in the accurate analyses of Oxford scholars Heath, Jowell and Curtice. See Heath 2001.

with only 31% of BES respondents thinking that the Labour party acted very closely in accordance to the unions interests. Some said that British society was suffering increased disadvantage and insecurity, following a 30/30/40 model of 30% of disadvantaged (unemployed), 30% of marginalized and insecure (part-timers, temporary workers, low paid) and 40 % of privileged (Hutton, 1995). Analyzing how these feelings of insecurity may translate into support for socialist politics, Heath compared the two distinctive trends of 1974-1992 and 1992-1997 as regards income/wealth redistribution and governments responsibility to provide full employment according to the public. He concluded that despite being the electorate disillusioned with the Thatcherite project, individuals own sense of job insecurity cannot have played a very large role (Heath 2001, p.29). More surveys proved that social change did happen in Britain, but it had not led to a major blurring of class boundaries. The working class still thinks of itself in class terms (Heath 2001, p. 19). . However, New Labours profile became much flatter and blander that it had been before. It appeared to be fairly closely with almost all groups, but not especially concerned about any in particular (2001, Tables 7.1, 7.2). What New Labours leaders did was modify its strategy in order to appeal to its traditional opponents, without alienating its traditional supporters. In other words, became a catch-all party in the very sense of Kirchheimers definition. But appealing its opponents did not mean that the party had to win back only the middle income, middle Britain, but indeed change New Labours image in all the South East district to reverse the so-called Southern discomfort of the 1980s towards Socialism. Did Blairs transformation in New Labours appeal translate into a transformation in the pattern of the partys electoral support? Under his earlier leadership, Labour received only 27% of its vote from its traditional core groups, while the new working class, the routine non-manual workers and the salaried trade unionists provided the 43 per cent of the partys vote share (Heath, 2001, Table 7.7). And as regards the centre parties, Labour tended to converge in social class terms more with Liberal Democrats than these latter did with the Conservatives (Heath, 2001, Table 7.8). The changes that occurred in 1997 seem to have a political rather than a sociological explanation. We cannot see a similar pattern of reduced social differences on the Conservatives side, as the one suffered by New Labour. The data provided by the BES help to suggest that the outcome that gave victory to the party of the red rose, did not depend on a large swing in the working class, but in the catch-all strategy adopted from the up-down.

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