People make history, but not under freely chosen conditions, and political parties are more than the passive reflection of collective demands and preferences originating in the prepolitical sphere of social relations. Politicians actively participate in shaping people's political views (“issue leadership”). Nevertheless, it is misleading to attribute the power to create political consciousness and action exclusively to the realm of politics. Both sociological determinism and political voluntarism shun a more complex reconstruction of the relationship between social structure and politics.

In this book I argue that politicians' strategies in intra- and interparty competition primarily determine their parties' electoral fortunes. Yet social and institutional settings structure the opportunities politicians may seize upon in the competitive process. Experiences in markets, work organization, and the sphere of consumption profoundly affect citizens' political aspirations and preferences. In order to promote their objectives, politicians must recognize such preferences. Is is only in the long run that public policies are likely to alter the social structure that affects citizens' everyday experiences and thus to induce a change in the process of popular preference formation itself.

In this chapter I first present a sociological theory of political preference formation in advanced capitalist democracies. My argument proceeds in three steps. I begin by delineating the range of preferences people may rank order in their most basic political choices. Next, I examine the social experiences that affect citizens' predispositions over the choice of fundamental preferences. Finally, I move from the micro-level of individual experiences to the macro-level of group formation and present hypotheses about the constitution of collective ideological currents that are centered around socioeconomic categories in contemporary society.