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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
This note derives hypotheses about the intergenerational transfer of Canadian partisanships from a social learning model, which posits that the adoption of attitudes is affected by the homogeneity of cues in the environment. As hypothesized, data from the 1974 Canadian national election study show that the rate of adoption of parental partisanships is affected by the consistency of each parent's federal and provincial party identifications. The second hypothesis, which posits that transfer rates are affected by provincial-federal party system correspondence, is also supported in three of four regression equations.
Ce document dérive des hypothèses relatives au transfert inter-génératif de l'esprit de parti canadien à partird'un modele d'etude sociale qui demontre que l'adoption des attitudes est influencée par l'homogénéité des signaux dans l'environnement. Tel qu'indiqué dans la première hypothese, les données provenant de 1'étude sur l'élection nationale Canadienne effectuée en 1974, montrent que le taux d'adoption de I'esprit de parti parental est influencé par la consistance de chacun des parents au niveau de leur identification à un parti fédéral et provincial. La deuxième hypothèse, qui démontre que les taux de transfert sont influencés par le système de correspondance au sein d'un même parti provincial et fédéral, est également corroborée dans trois sur quatre équations de régression.
1 There is a strong tendency for greater parent-adolescent attitude similarity when the two parents' attitudes are similar. See Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard G., The Political Character of Adolescence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 153–78.Google Scholar Moreover, when parents agree with their child's friends, the child has higher levels of agreement with both groups on party identification, vote, political trust and political efficacy. See Suzanne Koprince Sebert, Jennings, M. Kent and Niemi, Richard G., “The Political Texture of Peer Groups” in Jennings and Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence, 229–50.Google Scholar There is also evidence that homogeneity of attitudes within a peer group increases the peer group's influence on party identification, racial distance and perception of discrimination, but not on sympathy with black protest, political efficacy, or political trust; see Campbell, Bruce A., “A Theoretical Approach to Peer Influence in Adolescent Socialization,” American Journal of Political Science 24 (1980), 324–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The influence of British and American parents on their children's partisanship has also been shown to be greater when that partisanship is dominant in the social class. In this last connection, see Butler, David and Stokes, Donald E., Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971), 45–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Goldberg, Arthur S., “Social Determinism and Rationality as Bases of Party Identification,” American Political Science Review 63 (1969), 5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Langton, Kenneth P. and Jennings, M. Kent, “Mothers versus Fathers in the Formation of Political Orientations,” in Langton, Kenneth P., Political Socialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 52–83.Google Scholar
3 Renshon, Stanley Allen, “Assumptive Frameworks in Political Socialization Theory,” in Renshon, Stanley Allen (ed.), Handbook of Political Socialization: Theory and Research (New York: The Free Press, 1977), 27.Google Scholar
4 Clarke, Harold D., Jenson, Jane, LeDuc, Lawrence and Pammett, Jon H., Political Choice in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979), 138–45.Google Scholar These authors classify those who identify with the same party at both levels, but with different intensities, as “partially consistent.” Those identifiers are considered “consistent” in the analyses in this note.
5 Jenning, and Niemi, , The Political Character of Adolescence, 37;Google ScholarDennis, Jack and McCrone, Donald Y., “Preadult Development of Political Party Identification in Western Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 3 (1970), 243–63;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPammett, Jon H., “The Development of Political Orientations in Canadian Schoolchildren,”this JOURNAL 4 (1971), 132–41.Google Scholar
1 The data used in this note were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for the 1974 Canadian national election study were originally collected by Harold Clarke, Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc and Jon Pammett. Neither they nor the consortium bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here.
7 The questions about federal and provincial politics were presented in different parts of the interview, in an attempt to minimize the effects of one on the other. Some evidence suggests this technique may not be as effective as one might hope. See George F. Bishop, Robert W. Oldenwick and Alfred J. Tuchfarber, “What Must My Interest in Politics Be If I Just Told You, 'I Don't Know,'?,” paper delivered at the 1982 meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association.
8 The ability to impute parental partisanships was strongly related to the respondent's report of the level of the parents' political interest (taub>.3), and moderately related to the respondents' federal and provincial party identification intensities (taub>.l). The ability to impute parental partisanships was unrelated to efficacy (as scaled by Clarke, et al., Political Choice in Canada, 401–03)Google Scholar, subjective social class, age, interest in politics, language spoken as a child, income, sex, and education (taub>.l). A more detailed report is available from the author on request.
9 The American research suggests that parental party identification is perceived quite accurately by adolescents, although not perfectly. In the 1965 high school senior study conducted by Jennings and Niemi, 71 per cent of the student reports of parental party identification correctly identified the parent as a Democrat, independent or Republican. The taub correlation was .59. Most of the errors (61%) placed the parent in the student's own party. See Niemi, Richard G., How Family Members Perceive Each Other (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 59–63Google Scholar. Recall of one's own party identification has also been shown to be only fairly accurate, as people tend to underreport changes in their own partisanship. See Niemi, Richard G., Katz, Richard S. and Newman, David, “Reconstructing Past Partisanship: The Failure of the Party Identification Recall Questions,” American Journal of Political Science 24 (1980), 633–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar These cautionary remarks are presented so as to make clear the limitations of the data. Findings should be interpreted as suggestive.
10 The set of excluded respondents did not differ appreciably from the set of included respondents on efficacy, subjective social class, education, frequency of general discussion of federal politics, federal and provincial party identification intensities, language spoken as a child, income, or sex (taub,<.l). Moderate differences were found on age (older people were more likely to be excluded, taub=-.121), parents' federal and provincial political interest (people who recall their parents as more interested are more likely to be included, taub=.177 and .208, respectively).
11 See Cairns, Alan C., “The Electoral System and the Party System in Canada,” this JOURNAL 1 (1968), 55–80.Google Scholar
12 No significant difference at the p=.10 level.
13 If the unculled sample is used for estimating the transfer rates of federal partisanships, parent would also have to be controlled for this statement to be true.
14 From Clarke, et al., Political Choice in Canada, 141.Google Scholar
15 Ibid., 138–39.
16 I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for this point.
17 The measure is one of two suggested by Taylor, Charles Lewis and Hudson, Michael C. in their World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (2nd ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 216.Google Scholar
18 Ordinary least squares could not be used since different provincial sample sizes and variances in the estimates of the proportion of successful transferring consistent identifiers violates the OLS assumption of homoscedasticity. The weight used was [n/p(l-p)]½ t. For a general discussion of weighted least squares, see Hanushek, Eric A. and Jackson, John E., Statistical Methods for Social Scientists (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 150–53.Google Scholar
