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The preceding chapter provided striking evidence that party identifications are weakening in most advanced industrial democracies. Because party identification has been central to theories of mass political behaviour for four decades, its decline should have fundamental implications for the nature of citizen politics. As noted in Chapter 2, partisanship provides a highly effective method of organizing political information, evaluating political stimuli, guiding electoral choices, and providing political stability. Partisanship is seen as the glue that binds together diverse political beliefs, guides behaviour, and serves as a stabilizing force within political systems. Therefore, we should expect that weakening party bonds will have broad consequences for individual political behaviour.

There are, however, many scholars who question whether there has been real change in partisan behaviour. Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair argue that evidence of partisan change is illusionary:‘Not withstanding the seductive imagery of transformation which permeates many of the prevailing interpretations of contemporary Western European politics, it is clear that, in the long term, the bounds which tie the electorates into a set of political identities and alignments have demonstrated their resilience’(Bartolini and Mair 1990: 287). Mair has continued this theme in his more recent writings, arguing that the evidence of electoral change is a ‘myth’(1993; 1997). In a recent review of the anti‐party literature, Thomas Poguntke similarly concludes ‘the data I have analyzed do not support generalizations about a general decline of parties and the rise of anti‐party sentiment in Western …