Geoffrey M Evans
Biographic Data
| ID | 3572063 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Geoffrey M Evans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Geoffrey M |
| FAMILY NAME | Evans |
| SIGNATURE | EVANS G M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2036-7814 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1904 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1938 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 23 |
Linking artificial intelligence job exposure to expectations
The rapid expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace has significant political implications. How can we understand perceptions of both personal job risks and opportunities, given each may affect political attitudes differently? We use an original, representative survey from Great Britain to reveal; (i) the degree to which people expect personal AI-based occupational risks versus opportunities, (ii) how much this perceived exposure…
The Brexit realignment amid electoral volatility
Brexit accelerated the long-term realignment of how demographic groups vote in Britain. However, Europe is no longer salient to voters, support for the pro-Brexit Conservatives has collapsed, and the 2024 UK General Election was the most volatile on record. So, did the Brexit realignment persist? We address this question by examining the relationship between Brexit preferences and demographic groups with vote choice. We find that the demographic …
Family Matters
In an era of intergenerational inequality and political polarization, what might make older voters support greater government spending on the young? Building on literature concerning family-centric political preferences, we theorize that older voters support pro-youth policies and vote for pro-youth parties when they perceive younger relatives to be struggling financially due to emotional bonds and shared risks. Using a large, original survey of …
Social Mobility, Self-Selection, and the Persistence of Class Inequality in Electoral Participation
In recent decades, non-voting among the British working class has increased substantially, contributing to widening class-based inequality in electoral participation. This study examines the impact of occupational class mobility on the intergenerational transmission of electoral participation in two ways. First, by applying Diagonal Reference Models to data from the British Household Panel Survey and the UK Household Longitudinal Study covering e…
A New Dilemma of Social Democracy? The British Labour Party, the White Working Class and Ethnic Minority Representation
Like much of the European centre-left, Britain's Labour Party has struggled to appeal to its former core working class support base in recent years. However, this is largely a failure to connect with the ‘white working class’ (WWC) specifically, whereas support among ethnic minorities remains robust. We hypothesise that Labour could be experiencing a ‘trade-off’, whereby efforts to cater to minorities harm its perceived ability to represent WWC i…
Explaining the Relationship Between Class Position and Political Preferences
Past findings on the connection between class position and political preferences are overwhelmingly derived from cross-sectional studies, which provided a limited basis for inferring causality. This study uses long-term panel data on thousands of British respondents to measure the impact of intra-generational class mobility across a range of political identities and preferences. Upward class mobility leads to small increases in economic conservat…
Core Political Values and the Long-Term Shaping of Partisanship
Party identification has been thought to provide the central organizing element for political belief systems. This article makes the contrasting case that core values concerning equality and government intervention versus individualism and free enterprise are fundamental orientations that can themselves shape partisanship. The authors evaluate these arguments in the British case using a validated multiple-item measure of core values, using ordere…
More than self-interest
The connection between social class and political preferences is among the most well established in the social sciences. This association is typically taken as prima facie evidence of economic self-interest: Classes hold different attitudes, values, and party preferences because they have different economic interests. However, this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. In this article, we use survey data from 18 West European countries t…
Brexit or Corbyn? Campaign and Inter-Election Vote Switching in the 2017 UK General Election
The 2017 UK General Election saw the collapse of UKIP and an unusually influential campaign that saw Labour improving from a likely historic defeat to almost pulling level with the Conservatives, denying Theresa May a parliamentary majority. We argue that the election should be understood in two phases: first from 2015 to the start of the election campaign, and second the campaign itself. The former period was characterised by strong switching al…
The New Politics of Class
This book explores the new politics of class in 21st century Britain. It shows how the changing shape of the class structure since 1945 has led political parties to change, which has both reduced class voting and increased class non-voting. This argument is developed in three stages. The first is to show that there has been enormous social continuity in class divisions. The authors demonstrate this using extensive evidence on class and educationa…
The New Politics of Class after the 2017 General Election
The first thing to do is, of course, thank the four authors for all of their thoughts on the New Politics of Class (from now on NPC). In this response, we want to both address some of the issues that they raise, but also reflect a little on our findings and conclusion in the light of the 2017 general election. Before doing either of these, it is perhaps worth setting out the main argument of the book which focuses on three main claims about Briti…
Transition to a post-carbon society
Class, Electoral Geography and the Future of Ukip
In their reply to our article Ford and Goodwin argue that UKIP's support is derived primarily from the working class, that it may become an electoral threat for Labour, particularly in Northern seats, and that since 2010 it has taken votes that would otherwise have gone to Labour. We present evidence refuting all of these claims. First, while working class voters are a little more likely to support UKIP than other classes, numerically the bulk of…
Working Class Votes and Conservative Losses
Opinions are divided on whether the Conservatives or Labour need to worry most about UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2015 General Election. How do we reconcile evidence of substantial levels of UKIP support among traditional working class voters, and in Labour constituencies, with evidence that UKIP voters report voting Conservative in 2010? In this article, we resolve this implicit contradiction using long-term panel data to examine the sequ…
Understanding Education's Influence on Support for Democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa
Is education consequential for popular endorsement of democracy in developing societies and, if so, what are the mechanisms that account for this influence? We investigate the micro-foundations of the education–democracy nexus using a survey of 18 sub-Saharan African countries. We demonstrate that educational level is the strongest influence on support for democracy and rejection of non-democratic alternatives via its impact on comprehension of, …
The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution
The collapse of the class basis of party choice in Britain since the 1980s has been assumed to result from the diminishing distinctiveness of social classes in the postindustrial world. We argue instead that class dealignment results from the impact of an ideologically restricted choice set on the electoral relevance of values concerning inequality and redistribution. As these values provide a mechanism through which class divisions translate int…
How Parties Shape Class Politics
Why has the association between class and party declined over time? Contrary to conventional wisdom that emphasizes the fracturing of social structures and blurring of class boundaries in post-industrial society, it is argued here that class divisions in party preferences are conditioned by the changing shape of the class structure and the effect of parties’ strategic ideological responses to this transformation on the choices facing voters. This…
The Limits of Secularization? The Resurgence of Orthodoxy in Post-Soviet Russia
The collapse of the Soviet Union ended a long period of state repression of religion, facilitating a possible religious revival in Russia. Despite evidence of increasing levels of Russian Orthodox identification in the 1990s, however, the debate over whether post-Soviet Russia is an exception to secularization trends elsewhere continues. We address this debate by examining trends in Orthodox identification and church attendance and their impact o…
Reversing the Causal Arrow
Many economic voting models assume that individual voters’ reactions to incumbents are strongly conditioned by their perceptions of the performance of the macroeconomy. However, the direction of causality between economic perceptions and political preferences is unclear: economic perceptions can be a consequence of incumbent support rather than an influence on it. We develop the latter thesis by examining the dynamic relationship between retrospe…
Consociationalism and the Evolution of Political Cleavages in Northern Ireland, 1989–2004
Political cleavages are often understood as deriving from either deep-rooted social divisions or institutional incentives. Contemporary Northern Ireland provides a test of the mutability of apparently entrenched cleavages to institutional change. Research undertaken before the ceasefire in the 1990s found noticeable asymmetries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalist blocs. Within the unionist bloc, economic ‘left–right’ i…
The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions
Economic theories of voting argue that party popularity and vote are heavily influenced by the performance of the economy. Inferences about the direction of causality between perceptions of the economy and party support remain questionable, however. This article evaluates the microfoundations of economic theories of voting and party popularity using multiwave panel data. We model the dynamic relationships between party support and retrospective e…
Endogenizing Social Trust
Social trust forms a major component of current conceptions of social capital and as such has been attributed a significant role in providing the social context for the emergence and maintenance of stable, liberal democratic polities and effective economies. Its role in these processes has in turn been generalized to post-communist societies in East-Central Europe undergoing ‘dual transitions’ from authoritarian states with command economies to d…
On the Validation of Measures of Strategic Motivations
In their recent article in this Journal, Alvarez and Nagler model strategic voting in the 1987 British general election using multinomial probit.R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler, 'A New Approach to Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections, British Journal of Political Science, 30 (2000), 57–75. They claim to find lower levels of such voting than many other approaches. They also demonstrate purportedly that estimates of strategic v…
Analysing patterns of religious participation in post‐communist Eastern Europe 1
It is generally thought that processes of modernization generic to industrialized societies have resulted in a process of secularization with respect to conventional religious participation and observance in most Western countries. It is not at all clear, however, whether the post‐communist societies of Eastern Europe have followed this pattern. In this we paper we examine whether levels of religiosity in ten post‐communist societies – five gener…
Northern Irish Voters and the British–Irish Agreement
The Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions
Economic theories of voting argue that party popularity and vote are heavily influenced by the performance of the economy. Inferences about the direction of causality between perceptions of the economy and party support remain questionable, however. This article evaluates the microfoundations of economic theories of voting and party popularity using multiwave panel data. We model the dynamic relationships between party support and retrospective e…
Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate
A B S'I'RA C' I' Butler and Stokes' authoritative analysis of the British electorate concluded that in general voters' political attitudes were poorly formed and, in consequence, unstable and inconsistent. This paper re-examines this question by developing and evaluating multiple-item scales of two core dimensions of mass political beliefs: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values. The scales are shown to have respectable levels of interna…
The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment
Explanations of cross-national variation in levels of popular support for democracy can be distinguished by the relative emphasis they place on the importance of economic and political factors. ‘First generation’ theorists emphasized economic variables, including levels of economic development and rising expectations. In contrast, ‘second generation’ writers have focused on the role of political factors, including the mode of the transition to de…
Identifying the Bases of Party Competition in Eastern Europe
This article examines the emerging structure of party competition in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. It argues that the relationship between the social bases, issue dimensions and stability of party competition in countries in the region will vary depending on their differing experience of marketization, ethnic homogeneity and established statehood. In some countries, the predicted framework of party competition will derive from socio-econ…
Reversing the Causal Arrow
Many economic voting models assume that individual voters’ reactions to incumbents are strongly conditioned by their perceptions of the performance of the macroeconomy. However, the direction of causality between economic perceptions and political preferences is unclear: economic perceptions can be a consequence of incumbent support rather than an influence on it. We develop the latter thesis by examining the dynamic relationship between retrospe…
The Measurement of Core Beliefs and Values
It has become clear from national surveys, both in Britain and elsewhere, that the attitudes of the mass public towards social and political issues tend to group together in broadly predictable ways. Analyses of British Election Study data have consistently found that attitudes towards economic issues such as nationalization, income redistribution and government intervention go together and are largely unrelated to attitudes towards moral issues.…
How Parties Shape Class Politics
Why has the association between class and party declined over time? Contrary to conventional wisdom that emphasizes the fracturing of social structures and blurring of class boundaries in post-industrial society, it is argued here that class divisions in party preferences are conditioned by the changing shape of the class structure and the effect of parties’ strategic ideological responses to this transformation on the choices facing voters. This…
The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution
The collapse of the class basis of party choice in Britain since the 1980s has been assumed to result from the diminishing distinctiveness of social classes in the postindustrial world. We argue instead that class dealignment results from the impact of an ideologically restricted choice set on the electoral relevance of values concerning inequality and redistribution. As these values provide a mechanism through which class divisions translate int…
Euroscepticism and Conservative Electoral Support
This article uses the British Election Panel Study to assess the impact of voters' and party positions vis-à-vis European integration on Conservative electoral support between 1992 and 1996. Over this period levels of public support for European integration declined markedly, so that by 1996 the Conservative party was even closer to aggregate public opinion, when compared with its main competitors, than it had been at the time of the 1992 electio…
Beyond the Sectarian Divide
The Northern Irish party system is plausibly represented as two systems, in which party competition occurs within nationalist and unionist blocs. Social and ideological divisions within these blocs constrain parties' electoral strategies and thus facilitate or inhibit cross-communal compromise. Using Northern Irish Social Attitudes data, various accounts of these intra-communal divisions are tested and their political implications assessed. Contr…
Working Class Votes and Conservative Losses
Opinions are divided on whether the Conservatives or Labour need to worry most about UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2015 General Election. How do we reconcile evidence of substantial levels of UKIP support among traditional working class voters, and in Labour constituencies, with evidence that UKIP voters report voting Conservative in 2010? In this article, we resolve this implicit contradiction using long-term panel data to examine the sequ…
Endogenizing Social Trust
Social trust forms a major component of current conceptions of social capital and as such has been attributed a significant role in providing the social context for the emergence and maintenance of stable, liberal democratic polities and effective economies. Its role in these processes has in turn been generalized to post-communist societies in East-Central Europe undergoing ‘dual transitions’ from authoritarian states with command economies to d…
In search of the wage-labour/service contract
In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the exte…
Why are the Young more Postmaterialist
Research on aggregate generational changes in postmaterialist values indicates that cohort and life cycle effects are present, but does not identify precisely the causes of observed age differences. Using data from the 8-nation Political Action Study and macro-level indicators, this article examines the impact of both individual level and contextual factors on the relationship between year of birth and postmaterialism. Value change is found to be…
Explaining the Relationship Between Class Position and Political Preferences
Past findings on the connection between class position and political preferences are overwhelmingly derived from cross-sectional studies, which provided a limited basis for inferring causality. This study uses long-term panel data on thousands of British respondents to measure the impact of intra-generational class mobility across a range of political identities and preferences. Upward class mobility leads to small increases in economic conservat…
Core Political Values and the Long-Term Shaping of Partisanship
Party identification has been thought to provide the central organizing element for political belief systems. This article makes the contrasting case that core values concerning equality and government intervention versus individualism and free enterprise are fundamental orientations that can themselves shape partisanship. The authors evaluate these arguments in the British case using a validated multiple-item measure of core values, using ordere…
Brexit or Corbyn? Campaign and Inter-Election Vote Switching in the 2017 UK General Election
The 2017 UK General Election saw the collapse of UKIP and an unusually influential campaign that saw Labour improving from a likely historic defeat to almost pulling level with the Conservatives, denying Theresa May a parliamentary majority. We argue that the election should be understood in two phases: first from 2015 to the start of the election campaign, and second the campaign itself. The former period was characterised by strong switching al…
More than self-interest
The connection between social class and political preferences is among the most well established in the social sciences. This association is typically taken as prima facie evidence of economic self-interest: Classes hold different attitudes, values, and party preferences because they have different economic interests. However, this assumption has rarely been tested empirically. In this article, we use survey data from 18 West European countries t…
Northern Irish Voters and the British–Irish Agreement
Tactical Voting
At the end of this series of comments, rejoinders and second thoughts on tactical voting it may not be entirely clear what is actually in dispute. The aim of this Note, therefore, is simply to take stock and to try to elucidate the points on which there is agreement and disagreement
Consociationalism and the Evolution of Political Cleavages in Northern Ireland, 1989–2004
Political cleavages are often understood as deriving from either deep-rooted social divisions or institutional incentives. Contemporary Northern Ireland provides a test of the mutability of apparently entrenched cleavages to institutional change. Research undertaken before the ceasefire in the 1990s found noticeable asymmetries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalist blocs. Within the unionist bloc, economic ‘left–right’ i…
Political Culture Versus Rational Choice
There has been considerable disagreement among political scientists over the relative merits of political culture versus rational choice explanations of democratic and liberal norms and commitments. However, empirical tests of their relative explanatory power using quantitative evidence have been in short supply. This article employs national probability sample surveys conducted in 1994 to assess differences between Czechs and Slovaks in the expr…
Analysing patterns of religious participation in post‐communist Eastern Europe 1
It is generally thought that processes of modernization generic to industrialized societies have resulted in a process of secularization with respect to conventional religious participation and observance in most Western countries. It is not at all clear, however, whether the post‐communist societies of Eastern Europe have followed this pattern. In this we paper we examine whether levels of religiosity in ten post‐communist societies – five gener…
The Decline of Class Divisions in Britain? Class and Ideological Preferences in the 1960s and the 1980s
In this paper the thesis of a decline in the ideological significance of class is tested by examining the class basis of ideological divisions in 1964 and 1987 using national random samples. The findings indicate that class was still as much a basis of ideological conflict in the 1980s as it was in 1964. In comparison, it was found that other potential sources of ideological preferences were both weaker and less stable, with some evidence of a de…
Class, Electoral Geography and the Future of Ukip
In their reply to our article Ford and Goodwin argue that UKIP's support is derived primarily from the working class, that it may become an electoral threat for Labour, particularly in Northern seats, and that since 2010 it has taken votes that would otherwise have gone to Labour. We present evidence refuting all of these claims. First, while working class voters are a little more likely to support UKIP than other classes, numerically the bulk of…
Towards a New Drama in Germany
Towards a New Drama in Germany
Coming" and "Going" at the City Gate
An Old Babylonian Soldier
Gates’ and ‘Streets’
Books Preferred by Aboriginal Children
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Identifying the Bases of Party Competition in Eastern Europe
This article examines the emerging structure of party competition in the new democracies of Eastern Europe. It argues that the relationship between the social bases, issue dimensions and stability of party competition in countries in the region will vary depending on their differing experience of marketization, ethnic homogeneity and established statehood. In some countries, the predicted framework of party competition will derive from socio-econ…
The Decline of Class Divisions in Britain? Class and Ideological Preferences in the 1960s and the 1980s
In this paper the thesis of a decline in the ideological significance of class is tested by examining the class basis of ideological divisions in 1964 and 1987 using national random samples. The findings indicate that class was still as much a basis of ideological conflict in the 1980s as it was in 1964. In comparison, it was found that other potential sources of ideological preferences were both weaker and less stable, with some evidence of a de…
The Constant Flux
The Measurement of Core Beliefs and Values
It has become clear from national surveys, both in Britain and elsewhere, that the attitudes of the mass public towards social and political issues tend to group together in broadly predictable ways. Analyses of British Election Study data have consistently found that attitudes towards economic issues such as nationalization, income redistribution and government intervention go together and are largely unrelated to attitudes towards moral issues.…
Tactical Voting
At the end of this series of comments, rejoinders and second thoughts on tactical voting it may not be entirely clear what is actually in dispute. The aim of this Note, therefore, is simply to take stock and to try to elucidate the points on which there is agreement and disagreement
The Politics and Economics of Democratic Commitment
Explanations of cross-national variation in levels of popular support for democracy can be distinguished by the relative emphasis they place on the importance of economic and political factors. ‘First generation’ theorists emphasized economic variables, including levels of economic development and rising expectations. In contrast, ‘second generation’ writers have focused on the role of political factors, including the mode of the transition to de…
Why are the Young more Postmaterialist
Research on aggregate generational changes in postmaterialist values indicates that cohort and life cycle effects are present, but does not identify precisely the causes of observed age differences. Using data from the 8-nation Political Action Study and macro-level indicators, this article examines the impact of both individual level and contextual factors on the relationship between year of birth and postmaterialism. Value change is found to be…
Building Bridges? The Political Implications of Electoral Integration for Northern Ireland
The concept of cross-cutting cleavages has provided an influential explanation of why some regions with severe ethnic divisions have been able to establish and maintain political stability, while others have experienced violent conflict. It is suggested that where a deep communal cleavage is cross-cut by other politically salient divisions, a network of overlapping group memberships is created. This generates a series of divided loyalties that re…
Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate
A B S'I'RA C' I' Butler and Stokes' authoritative analysis of the British electorate concluded that in general voters' political attitudes were poorly formed and, in consequence, unstable and inconsistent. This paper re-examines this question by developing and evaluating multiple-item scales of two core dimensions of mass political beliefs: left-right and libertarian-authoritarian values. The scales are shown to have respectable levels of interna…
Beyond the Sectarian Divide
The Northern Irish party system is plausibly represented as two systems, in which party competition occurs within nationalist and unionist blocs. Social and ideological divisions within these blocs constrain parties' electoral strategies and thus facilitate or inhibit cross-communal compromise. Using Northern Irish Social Attitudes data, various accounts of these intra-communal divisions are tested and their political implications assessed. Contr…
Political Ideology and Popular Beliefs about Class and Opportunity
This paper examines popular understanding of class inequalities in opportunity using an experimental approach to assess implicit as well as explicit comprehension. Three competing representations of popular beliefs are compared: a 'class inequality' model, implying widespread belief in class-related inequalities of opportunity; a 'meritocratic' view of achievement, in which emphasis is placed on individual responsibility; and an 'ideological pola…
Britain and Europe
AS EUROPEAN INTEGRATION BECOMES AN INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT public policy issue facing both the country and its political leaders, the degree to which Britain can or should harmonize its welfare, employment and taxation policies with those of other EU members will receive progressively more attention. In this context and with the evident importance of opinion poll popularity for the main political parties’ pursuit of electoral success, public opini…
Euroscepticism and Conservative Electoral Support
This article uses the British Election Panel Study to assess the impact of voters' and party positions vis-à-vis European integration on Conservative electoral support between 1992 and 1996. Over this period levels of public support for European integration declined markedly, so that by 1996 the Conservative party was even closer to aggregate public opinion, when compared with its main competitors, than it had been at the time of the 1992 electio…
Political Culture Versus Rational Choice
There has been considerable disagreement among political scientists over the relative merits of political culture versus rational choice explanations of democratic and liberal norms and commitments. However, empirical tests of their relative explanatory power using quantitative evidence have been in short supply. This article employs national probability sample surveys conducted in 1994 to assess differences between Czechs and Slovaks in the expr…
Northern Irish Voters and the British–Irish Agreement
In search of the wage-labour/service contract
In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the exte…
Analysing patterns of religious participation in post‐communist Eastern Europe 1
It is generally thought that processes of modernization generic to industrialized societies have resulted in a process of secularization with respect to conventional religious participation and observance in most Western countries. It is not at all clear, however, whether the post‐communist societies of Eastern Europe have followed this pattern. In this we paper we examine whether levels of religiosity in ten post‐communist societies – five gener…
On the Validation of Measures of Strategic Motivations
In their recent article in this Journal, Alvarez and Nagler model strategic voting in the 1987 British general election using multinomial probit.R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler, 'A New Approach to Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections, British Journal of Political Science, 30 (2000), 57–75. They claim to find lower levels of such voting than many other approaches. They also demonstrate purportedly that estimates of strategic v…
Endogenizing Social Trust
Social trust forms a major component of current conceptions of social capital and as such has been attributed a significant role in providing the social context for the emergence and maintenance of stable, liberal democratic polities and effective economies. Its role in these processes has in turn been generalized to post-communist societies in East-Central Europe undergoing ‘dual transitions’ from authoritarian states with command economies to d…
Political science (39 works) · Politics (36 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (30 works) · Economics (26 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (18 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Psychology (16 works)