The Rise of the “No Party” in England
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Authors
Aidt, T.
Rauh, C.
Publication Date
2019-08-16Series
Cambridge Working Papers in Economics
Publisher
Faculty of Economics
Type
Working Paper
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Aidt, T., & Rauh, C. (2019). The Rise of the “No Party” in England. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.43924
Abstract
We document a remarkable increase over the past two and a half decades in the fraction of people in England feeling close to no party – the rise of the “no party” – which, today, is close to constituting an absolute majority. We develop a new method to distinguish between age, period, and cohort effects based on individual longitudinal survey data and we show that the rise of the “no party” is driven much more by a secular trend (period effects) than by generation replacement (cohort effects). We show that the increase in “no party” supporters and in their turnout behavior can explain 80% of the observed decline in election turnout in England over the period. A detailed investigation of the dynamics of party identification shows that party political disengagement has become more persistent over time.
Keywords
Age-Period-Cohort Effects, Party Identification, Democracy, England, Secular Disengagement Hypothesis
Identifiers
CWPE1977
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.43924
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/296882
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