(Page 3 of 34) - Value Cleavages and Partisan Conflict: The 2004 American Presidential Election in Comparative Perspective authored by Gunther, Richard., Beck, Paul., Kuan, H.C.. and Smidt, Corwin.

We begin this analysis by examining the distribution of these value orientations among the

electorates in a number of CNEP countries. We will then examine the extent to which these values
cluster together in different countries. Given that the very designation of the value dimensions
included within this segment of the CNEP questionnaire was determined by the salience of these value
cleavages in the development of political "ideologies" in Western Europe over the past three centuries,
this exercise will, from one perspective, explore the extent to which these ideological divides are
reflected at the mass level in the two Western European countries included in this part of the analysis--
Spain and Greece. It will also explore the extent to which this West European "template" fits the
clustering of attitudes and the development of value cleavages in a sample of non-West-European
democracies--in the United States, Uruguay, Chile, Hungary and Hong Kong. After concluding that
the "ideological families" present in some of these countries differ somewhat from the configurations
hypothesized in the "West European template," we will develop values scales that more accurately
capture the values cleavages found in each country.

In those four countries where value clusters emerged as strong and coherent, we will measure

their impact on electoral behavior. We will incorporate scales of values (based on the previous rounds
of dimensional analysis) as independent variables in Logit equations, alongside other items that are
commonly found to be powerful determinants of voting decisions.

Finally, we shall set forth a speculative theoretical framework linking all of these stages of

analysis, and attempting to explain why specific values cleavages emerge in some countries and affect
the vote in a remarkably persistent matter, while in other countries no coherent dimensional structure
emerges at all and the electoral impact of these values is nil. This explanatory framework involves
three distinct political processes that may span over a century of a country's political evolution. The
first of these involves the outbreak of conflict among political, social, intellectual and/or economic
elites at some point in the past that politicizes these values and polarizes society along these value-
cleavage lines. As we shall argue, the focus of these conflicts should be expected to vary from country
to country: in some cases, it may involve clashes over the role of religion and the Church in society
and politics, pitting practitioners of different religions against each other, or religious believers against
anticlericals and those favoring separation of Church and state; in others, it may arise out of disputes
over the proper economic system for a society, pitting one socioeconomic class against another. Cross-
national differences with regard to the present-day clustering of these value orientations are to
considerable extent the product of differences among societies or cultures at some salient point in the
past, or of varying trajectories of political development.

But what links these previous historical developments (some of which occurred centuries ago)

to the late-20th and early 21st-century electoral behavior that we are attempting to explain? Two
additional processes are relevant to the perpetuation of these value conflicts and the subsequent
crystallization of these values into distinct clusters that are relevant to partisan competition today. The
first is the incorporation of these sociopolitical values into political ideologies. In their efforts to
mobilize supporters in these historical conflicts, political elites and their intellectual allies elaborate
arguments explaining why individual citizens should take sides in these disputes. In this paper, we will
examine several competing ideological orientations that emerged in Western Europe out of intense
political conflicts that occurred between the late 18th and the mid 20th centuries: Traditional
Conservatism, classical Liberalism, Socialism and Social Democracy. We shall also examine the case
of "the dog that didn't bark:" despite socioeconomic and cultural transformations that some would
argue should culminate in the emergence of a growing "postmaterialist" cluster of values, we will see
that postmaterialism has almost no impact on electoral behavior in these seven countries today. We
hypothesize that the absence of a clearly articulated postmaterialist ideology within these countries is
one reason why it has not assumed greater political significance in these countries.