http://cps.sagepub.com/Comparative Political Studieshttp://cps.sagepub.com/content/2/2/139The online version of this article can be found at:DOI: 10.1177/001041406900200201 1969 2: 139 Comparative Political StudiesPhilip E. ConverseOf Time and Partisan StabilityPublished by:http://www.sagepublications.com can be found at: Comparative Political Studies Additional services and information for http://cps.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://cps.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://cps.sagepub.com/content/2/2/139.refs.html Citations: What is This?- Jul 1, 1969 Version of Record>> at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from at St Petersburg State University on November 4, 2013 cps.sagepub.com Downloaded from OF TIME AND PARTISANSTABILITYPHILIP E. CONVERSEPHILIP E. CONVERSE is Professor of Sociology and Political Science atthe University of Michigan. His principle field of concentration is socialpsychology. He isthe author of numerous articleson voting behaviorand political alienment.IT IS A COMMONPLACE expectation that newly established social andpolitical institutions somehow accumulate a deepening stability withthe passage of time.In the very long run, of course, once-establishedinstitutions may obsolesce, evolve into new forms, or be more brusquelyoverturned. But the timing of these terminal events, embedded as they willbe in a complex nexus of change, seems almost impossible to forecast atlongrange. What is utterly predictable, however, isthat threats to thesurvival of a new institution will be very high in its infant stages. In thedegree that itcan outlast these first precarious periods, it will typicallyhave put forth roots of sufficient strength so that challenges to its verybeing diminish in number and those that do occur are warded off withincreasing ease.Itbecomes sanctified and protected by &dquo;the weight ofhistorical tradition.&dquo;Itisacrossthis sequence, from birth through initialvicissitudes toestablished maturity, that currently fashionableinterestsin &dquo;political*This paper was prepared with the benefit of a Senior Post-Doctoral Fellowship/~o~ ~ ~Vaf/o/M/~c:eMC~ FoM~Jaf/on.7~ cdd!~OMfof/:M H/ppo~, ~e at~Ac~from theNational Science Foundation.In additiontothis support, the authorgratefully acknowledges the indispensable aid of Mrs. Jean Dotson and Mrs. Sarah(Barker) Horack in the preparation of the empirical materials.[140]development&dquo; on one hand, and &dquo;politicalstability&dquo; on the other, clearlycoincide. New political forms are best nurtured in the haven of politicalstability; once matured, they can act in turn as a significant force towardthe maintenance of political stability.Whilethese sequences arefamiliar enough,systematicempiricaltreatment of the temporal processes involved seems rare. Indeed, while thenatural history metaphor we have used is both classic and compelling, itdoes not seem congenial to quantification. On what scales, for example,are we to gauge the &dquo;weight of historical tradition&dquo;?Yet it seems evidentthat patterns of slowlyaccumulatingstability within new social formsreflect temporal processes of habituation or &dquo;socialization&dquo;on the part ofthe many factors involved. In short, they are cases of social learning, and assuch should be susceptible to quite rigorous specification.The main purpose of this paper is to attempt such a specification, in alimited though farfrom trivialcase.We are interested generally in theadventand progressive stabilizationof democratic political institutionsthat has represented perhaps the most noteworthy and sweeping politicalchange over an ever broadening circle of nations for the past century and ahalf.This &dquo;progress&dquo; has, of course, occurred incrabwise fashion, withbackward stepsnearly as frequent as forward ones at many times andplaces. Yet these crabbed steps are part and parcel of our sense of thevicissitudesof earlydevelopment; wherenationshavemaintaineddemocratic forms for a sufficient period of time, the implantation seemscomplete, and further reverses nearly inconceivable.It would be self-defeating to try to treat the development and stabilityof democratic forms in any general sense, without further focus. While&dquo;politicalstability&dquo;may be a unitary concept at some abstract level, itsreferents and concrete indicators are extremely multifarious. That there issomestatistical tendency for symptoms of stability and instability toco-occur seems likely, and without this there would be little meaningfuldiscussion of stability in the abstract at all. Yet the correlation among anyfull gamut of such symptoms ismild at best, and statements aboutstability are likely toremain weak until more specific components ofstability are singled out and their dynamics understood.Historically, for example,incipient democraticformshavebeenoverturnedbothfrom&dquo;above&dquo;and from &dquo;underneath,&dquo; and thetwopatterns do not always havemuch incommon. Revolutionary coupsagainst new democratic systems have been executed by traditional eliteswithanarrowor totally invisiblebaseof support inthebroaderpopulation. And relatively fringe leadership, with minimal initial support[141]from traditional elites, has succeeded in rallying sufficient mass support toantidemocratic parties to derail a system, with the Weimar Republic beingperhaps the prototypic case.The elite coup has undoubtedly been the more frequent phenomenonof the two, in part for the obvious reason that disaffectedelitesoftencontrol the kinds of resources necessary to make seizure of governmentplausible. Indeed, whilewe know of no systematicchartings of suchdevelopments, itis impressionistically clear why the consolidation of anewly established democracy isslowand unsure with respect toeliteattacks.In most such situations, thereis initially a residuum of elitepersonnel, which either poorly understands the constraints of democraticvalues, or which is downright hostile to them. As these older cohorts dieout and are replaced by younger generations of potential elites, socializedfrom the outset in the fundamental &dquo;rulesof the game&dquo; characteristic ofdemocratic values, the balance of ideologies shifts progressively and thenew forms find increasingly firm footing.The mass side of the picture is at least somewhat more perplexing, forthere isa good deal of evidence that the more subtle and important ofdemocraticvaluesneverhavemuch more thanan extremely limitedabsorption. Democratic slogans of one sortor another may have widepopular currency, but even in the United States where mass exposure todemocratic forms is of the longest standing in the world, there seems littlecapacity to translate these norms into appropriate attitudes and behaviorswithin complex, &dquo;reallife&dquo;situations (see, for example, Prothro and Grigg,1960). From this point of view, elites must remain &dquo;the keepers of theflame.&dquo; 1Yet itis hardly true that mass populations exposed for generations toelectoral participation failto differ significantly from those passed intothissituation for the firsttime. There isevidence of a kind of &dquo;settlingdown&dquo;or habituation to a competitive party system, which occurs at amass level as a secular trend over time, and which is quite analogous to theprogressive learning at an elite level, although it may be oriented somewhatdifferently.While there is undoubtedly a variety of indicators of this habituation,the one most noteworthy in our eyes isthe progressive &dquo;binding in&dquo;ofpopular loyalties to one or another of the traditionally competing politicalparties. Where these loyalties have not yet had time to develop, itseemslikely that electoral support will have numerous capricious overtones, andthat intimes of severe distress nontraditional and antidemocratic partiesmay find ready support. When in an intermediate stage they become at[142]least moderately developed, such probabilities may decline quite visibly,although it may remain a frequent strategy of political dissent to launch anew politicalparty in hopes of striking sufficient popularsupport tobecomeviable.When these loyalties becomestillfurther developed,however, even such a strategy comes to seem forbidding in the extremeand is rarely entertained for any purpose more serious than short-termmaneuver.Thus we conceive such aggregate levels of loyalty to existing parties in ademocratic system as an important ingredient of democratic stability, andperhaps, for the mass level, the most important ingredient, although anysuch claim must remain speculative. And it is the temporal development ofthese loyalties, fromthe point atwhichelectoral processes arefirstinstitutedina polity to maturational equilibrium, which provides theprimary focus for this paper.2 2POINTS OF DEPARTUREMore clearly than usual, our inquiry was given its first impetus fromtwo superficially distinct bodies of empirical fmdings which have been intheliteraturefor a number of years. We can speak in a more efficientshorthand later if we stop to review these findings briefly now.The Individual LifeCycle and Strength of Partisanship. The generalfinding,long since enunciated, that people tendtovotein quiteremarkable degree forthe partysupportedby their parents intheprecedinggeneration, has helped tostimulatea greatproliferation ofrecent studies on political socialization.3 The hallmark of these studies isa focus on the political learning that has already taken place in the decadeand a half before the individual first joins the active electorate.It is certainly true that the individual enters an electorate as a &dquo;biasedcoin,&dquo;particularly with respect to such simple matters as party inclination.Yet this fact should not be allowed to obscure the equally important fact,vivid for anyone working exclusively on adult cohorts from age 21 to thelate years, that significant increments of political learning are visible overalmost the whole course of the adult participation in the electorate. Wewould intuit that this would necessarily be the case where the politicallandscape changes in important ways under the adults eyes. But it is alsotrue, and rather markedly, forsuch a simplequantum as strength ofpartisanpreference, evenwhere the parties haveconstituted a &dquo;fixedfirmament&dquo;sincebirth. Indeed, inonecorrelational analysis overa[143]number of our national election surveys utilizing a battery of the mostobvious and standard sociological variables (age, sex, income, education,group membership, etc.), the strongestsingledemographic correlate ofparty identification strength was consistently the age variable, even thoughthe samples were restricted to adult citizens and thereby failed to take intoaccount the slope of increasing identifications known to occur betweenkindergarten and the age of 21.What thismeans isthat vastly differentlevels of aggregate partisanattachmenttothe traditional parties would characterizean electoraterestricted to voters in their twenties from an electorate of retired people.It is useful in this regard to think of qualitative responses (&dquo;strong,&dquo; &dquo;notvery strong&dquo;etc.) to party identification questions as locating individualson a quantitative continuum of probabilities of remaining loyal to a partyon any given vote. In a two-party system, it is natural to conceive of such acontinuum as running from .00 (will vote for party A with certainty andcould not be seduced to vote for party B even a single stray time) throughthe .5 midpoint (no party &dquo;leaning&dquo;whatever) to 1.0 (will vote for party Bwith certainty). Distributed across such a continuum, the cohort of newvoters in any election displays a decidedly bell-shaped curve, with modalpoint inthe midrange (.4-.6). Cohorts of elderly votersshow inclearcontrasta U-shapedcurve, with only a minimum of frequencies stillresiding in the midrange 4In short, the partisan stability of voting behavior tends to accumulatequite notably over the adult years of participation in the electoral process.Itislittlewonder thatwithmonotonous regularity in country aftercountry, major shifts in electoral outcomes are found to have arisen verydisproportionately in the youngest cohorts of the electorate. New votersare flexible/unstable, and much more responsive to new events than areolder voting cohorts.In view of the apparent theoretical importance of the age-partisanshiprelation, we have probed its properties in greater detail and reported themelsewhere.s Thus, for instance, wehaveassuredourselvesthattherelationship is truly a life-cycle phenomenon rather than one of differ-ential politicalgenerations inthe United States (and recent data havecontinued tounderscore this fact). More important for our subsequentdiscussion is another knot of findings. Since sheer time (or passage of yearsin chronological age) is obviously not in itself a causal agent, but rather aconvenient means of marking off how much of some more substantiveprocess can have been achieved, we were anxious to get a little closer tothe process itself. We asked, for example, whether a person who takes on a[144]new party loyalty relatively late in life builds a loyalty at faster or slowerrates than a new entrant into the electorate. Although case numbers werelimited, the results were intriguing: length of psychological membership ina particular party was the critical determining variable, and not age itself.Furthermore, thecorrelationbetween age and strength of partyidentification, with length of membership controlled, was actuallynegative!The latterclusterof resultsis essentially what we would be almostcertainto find, for example, were we to study relative fluency in theEnglish language of foreign-born migrants to the United States. We wouldexpect to find a primary correlation between age and fluency which, uponmore detailed examination, would be improved if &dquo;length of residence inthe United States&dquo;were substituted as the time variable in place of mereage; we would alsofind that, holding length of residence constant, theage-fluency relation would be negative, with younger migrants more fluentthan older ones. Rates of learning would decline with the resistances andpsychological interferences of more advanced age. These findings againunderscore admirably the simple processes of learning through exposure(&dquo;socialization&dquo;) which yield the empirical patterns.McPhee etal.have proposed a model of mass voting that contains alearning process of Polya type as a submodel to generate the increasingaggregateprobabilities of party fidelity as voting experience wears on.Although this model was conceived independently of our own work and,forthat matter, withouttheilluminationof ourdirectmeasures ofunderlyingpartypredispositions(apart fromcurrentvote intention),almost all aspects of the temporal performance of the party identificationmeasure which have intrigued us inhere as direct logical consequences oftheMcPhee model (see McPhee and Glaser,eds., 1962: Chapters 5[McPhee and Smith] , 6 [McPhee and Ferguson] ; and McPhee, 1963). Thedegree of empirical fitisa jointcommentary on the brilliance of theMcPhee insights and the relative simplicity of learning processes that seemto be involved.The utility of theorizing about underlying processes that produce theage-partisanshiprelationship (rather than accepting the relation withoutfurther thought as some natural constant) becomes clear as we ruminateabout plausiblelimiting or boundary conditions.Let us imagine, forexample, anew democratic systemholding itsfirst popular partisanelections. Obviously, ifourearlier analyses of the &dquo;meaning&dquo; of therelationship were correct, therewould beno ground to expectanyage-partisanship relation at all, since every participating cohort would have[145]had equal length of exposure (brief) to the party system. Or again, imaginethat popular elections have held over a period of 10 to 15 years. Then anaccurate appraisal of the underlying processes would lead us to expect thatwhile the age-partisanship relation would be quite nonlinear, an averageslope acrossthe age continuum would be negative, with older citizenstaking on party loyalites at slower rates than younger ones. Thus the mostfamiliar positiverelationship could only be expected to emerge clearlyaftersomemoreextended history of partisan elections.Theoldergenerations would constitute atleasta mild lag factor in this particularrate of &dquo;politicaldevelopment.&dquo; We shall happily have a chance to assessthese expectations empirically at a later point below.Intergenerational Transmission of Partisanship. While it is clear that thepartisan impulse strengthens across the individual life cycle, if we are tosimulate the levels of partisan loyalty in a moving population we must takeaccountof thefactthatthis impulse must jump acrossthe synapsebetween parent and child as the composition of the electorate undergoesits regular turnover.6 6Here again, our current inquiry has been stimulated by a configurationof data we published some years ago in a slightly different context, whichwe reproduce in part as Table1. At the time, we were interested in thedegree to which partisan transmission mechanisms between the generationsTABLE 1CAN RESPONDENT RECALL ANY PARTYIDENTIFICATION FOR FATHER?seemed comparable between France and the United States. We were quiteastonishedatthesimilarities displayedby theresults (Converse andDupeux, 1962).[146]Let us now approach thistableina slightly different way. Let usassume that an averaging of the values across the two countries-already sosimilar-willdo no more than improve our estimates as to the generictransmission processes involved. Let us interpret the paternal recall item asasufficient indicator of whether or not Generation Ihad an intensity ofattachment beyond a specified threshold (i.e., thatderivedfrom thecutpoints oftheitemonwhich thetableis based), andtaketherespondent as a representative of the state of affairs in Generation II. Thenthe cell entries (roughly, .8 and .5) are the conditional probabilities that asecond-generation member will identify with a party, given the partisansituationofhisfather.Andthesecell entries,along withtheircomplements, can be taken as transition probabilities for a Markov chaindescribing the partisan transmission process.If we could assume that the process is describable as a first-order chain,and thatthetransition probabilities remain constantover the relevantlengthyperiods of time, thenotherdeductionscan be drawn. Mostnotably, perhaps, any such process describable in these terms will have a&dquo;fixed point,&dquo; or equilibrium level of partisan attachments (in this case),toward which the system will necessarily move. What is charming in thisspecial case is that the fixed point of the Franco-American process matrixis between 71 % and 72% finally &dquo;identifying with a party&dquo; as a matter ofsimple arithmetic.As an empiricalmatter, thefewcountrieswhosedemocratic voting histories are of sufficient depth to imply arrivalata&dquo;mature equilibrium&dquo; inthese regards, tendtoshow proportionsidentified at the relevant threshold (Table 1) in the vicinity of 75% to 80%.Not a perfect fit, but without question suggestively close.Having come this far without disaster, a further heuristic step or two isobvious.We might simulate an electorate launched de novo ina partysystem and therebydisplaying themost impoverished levelsofidentification, and apply the transition matrix to the population to askhow many cycles (here, &dquo;generations&dquo;) it takes for the system to mount tothe equilibriumpoint. Therearetwo problems with the question inprecisely this form, but fortunately both are more apparent than real andneed not rob us of an answer. The first problem is that the process in thiscase does not &dquo;arriveat&dquo;the equilibrium point in an exact sense, but onlyapproaches it asymptotically. Thereforeamore manageable questionconcerns the number of cycles necessary to bring the process within veryclose range of equilibrium-so close, for example, that an electoral sampleof standard sizecould not be expected to discriminate the difference atany reasonable level of confidence.[147]The second problem is truly illusory, but worth a moments discussion.Since we must specify a very hard numerical &dquo;startingpoint&dquo; for ourcycles, what do we choose as the most plausible proportion of initial partyidentifiers (at this threshold) as the system gets underway? 1%? 4%? 10%?Once again, the mathematical properties of these curious tables can rescueusevenfrom much hard thought. For we canbeassuredthat anyreasonable startingpoint, from as large a proportion as 15% of thepopulation initially identifying to as few as a tiny handful of persons (orfor that matter, nobody!), would, with our transition matrix, arrive in thegeneral vicinity of the fixed point at what is to all intents and purposes&dquo;thesametime.&dquo;The paths towardthe equilibrium levelwouldbedifferentintheirinitial details, but would converge so rapidly in theirapproach as to be essentially indistinguishable.The convergence on the fixed point, given our transition matrix, wouldlikewisebe extremelyrapid. Two cycles alone would bring thethirdgeneration to a levelof 65% to 66% of the population identifying, thepercent difference representing what would remain atthattime of adiscrepancy between a starting point of zero or one of 15%. One morecycle and the differences between the path from either starting point andthe ultimate equilibrium level would be quite negligible.Therefore a provisional answer to our question of developmental ratesmight well be that the grandchildren of the initiating generation would, asanadult population, show nearly &dquo;mature&dquo;or equilibrium ratesofidentification, and certainly theirchildrena generation later would bedisplaying full partisan maturity in this special sense of the term.We label this answer provisional, for we do not intend to stop here. Itmay be a perfectly good answer, but enough unknowns remain that wehave been motivated to push farther. Among these unknowns, a principaldoubtmustsurroundthe assumption of constancy inthetransitionprobability matrix, and even the general validity for any wide range ofcountries of the entries derived from France and the United States in thatmatrix can scarcely be taken for granted.Most important,perhaps, isourdesiretohaveamodel of thisdevelopmental process which, though as unencumbered and parsimoniousas possible, would still permit us to deal with fmer slicesof time than&dquo;generations.&dquo; The little Markov transmission process above, while usefulas a means of illustrating the kind of ultimate product we seek, turns outto be awkward in many ways as a tool for more detailed analysis. The&dquo;children&dquo; represented by the second generation output of the transitionmatrix are truly &dquo;childrenof all ages.&dquo; There isno immediate way of[148]folding in our relatively rich information on the accumulation of loyaltiesforthe individual over the life cycle. And finally, for many interestingspecial cases-for example, the polity that establishes a democratic system,loses itfor a period of time and then resumes it-such a gross model wouldyield no estimates atall. Clearly a more differentiated cohort model isdesirable.CONSTRUCTING A MODEL OF AGGREGATE PARTISAN DEVELOPMENTTherefore we turn from our two empirical points of departure to themain task of this paper: the construction of a model to represent the mostcritical processes known to affect this developmental sequence, and to doso on a base of annual age cohorts, or measurement in years rather than ingenerations. While there is some premium on keeping the model as simpleas possible, the following would seem indispensable for inclusion as criticalprocesses:(1) a learning process: the basic increments in partisan loyalties shownby theindividualover hislife cycle as a direct function of hiscontinuing experience with the party system;(2) a resistance phenomenon, representing the declining ease of learn-ing as a function of the absolute age at which the individual com-mences his experience within the system;(3) a transmission process,capturing whatever vicissitudes may sur-round the transfer of partisan feeling from one generation to thenext; and(4) a forgetting process,handling therateof decay in retention ofpartisanloyaltiessubsequent to anysuspension ofdemocraticprocess eliminating the mass relevance of the traditional parties.Of these subprocesses, itshould be self-evident that (1) and (3) are byfar the primary elements, and (2) and (4) quite secondary. Process (4) isnot needed in the model at allsave for the rare cases of suspension ofdemocratic process, although it might have one other minor role to benoted later.Process (2) comes into play more often, as itis relevant notonly in cases where democratic process is suspended, but also for cohortsreceiving thevotefranchiseforthefirsttimeatadvanced ages.Nevertheless, itisno more than a minor &dquo;modifier&dquo;of process (1), andwill be treated as such explicitly.Itis apparent that for any finished piece of work itwould be highlydesirable as well to have some body of data that might serve for empiricalverification.In effect, we needed estimates of the strength of partisan[149]loyalitesby age cohorts as finely differentiated as possible, in as manycountrieswithmaximal variability in history of democratic process.Despite the increasingaccessibility of cross-national poll data in recentyears, these specifications were harder to meet than might appear. Theprincipaldifficulty wasthatthe majority ofthese polls neitherconceptualize nor attempt to measure an underlying strength of partisanloyalty. Instead, the &dquo;party location&dquo; variable is most typically elicited bya question like, &dquo;If you were voting right now, what party would youchoose?&dquo;While this item undoubtedly fits client needs admirably, the datayielded simply lack the conceptual significance of questions tapping theintensity of more enduring party loyalties, and their empirical propertiesare clearly not the same. Moreover, even where a more general (i.e., lessmoment-specific) partisanship question is found, strength of attachment israrely probed as well. And for reasons we have not entirely sorted out, wehaveseen questions which, on their surface, seem equivalent toourstandard items,yet havesomewhatdifferent wordings and show thecritical aging effects only more faintly.At about the time we had conceived what we wished to do and werebecoming discouraged forlackof empirical reference material, GabrielAlinond and Sidney Verba kindly made the data from their ambitious&dquo;five-nation study&dquo; availabletothe community (almond and Verba,1963). The fivecountries sampled presented anexcellent portfolio ofvariationsrelevantforour needs. There were two nations (the UnitedStatesandGreat Britain) with lengthy and uninterrupted historiesofpopular voting. Two other nations (Germany and Italy)provided casesof sharpinterruption and then resumption of democratic process, withsome further differences in time depth of widespread suffrage before theinterruption occurred. The fifthnation (Mexico) presented a case of arelatively new democracy,particularly wherefemale participation innational electoral politics was concerned.The items concerning partisanship, as comparably translated as possibleacross these countries, were worded in a fashion that departed somewhatfrom the question sequence standard on our prior work, yet which seemedto approach the same spirit:Now wewouldliketofindout something about yourpartypreference and how you vote. Are you currently a member of anypolitical party or organization?(IFNO)... Do you consider yourself a supporter of anyparticular political party?(IF NO) Towards which political party do you lean? [Almondand Verba, 1963:531].~[ 150]These items are capable of yielding four gradations of party attachment:membership, support, leaning only, or &dquo;independent&dquo;(&dquo;none&dquo; in answerto the final probe). However, allof our subsequent treatment will be interms of a three-point scale combining &dquo;members&dquo;and &dquo;supporters&dquo; forthe highest levelofattachment.Thereasonforthis discarding ofinformationis simple: theconditionsfor party membership vary fromcountry to country asa matter of sociostructural arrangements quitedistinct from our &dquo;learning processes&dquo; (whether or not, for example, unionmembership is equivalent to membership inalabor party, asitisinBritain); moreover, the membership question was not even posed in theUnited States, so that data comparability would have been infringed uponhad we tried to maintain the distinction. In sum, our primary dependentvariableisbasedon an integerscoring(0,1,2) of thethreelevelsofattachment mentioned..Our firstconcern was whether the index of partisanship based in thisfashion on the Almond-Verba data would show at least the gross contours,countryby country and age cohort by age cohort, thatour modelelements would predict.l In view of the notable differences in electoraldevelopment acrossthefive countries, these expectations were quitediverse. Yet as Figure 1 suggests, the first glimpse of the Almond-Verbadata suggested a splendid correspondence. The overall means were highestforthe two countries with the longest uninterrupted electoral traditions,andwithinbothofthesecountriesthefamiliarcurvesof life-cycleincrementsin partisanship were reasonably well represented., I TheGerman and Italian curves, preceeding at the expected lower level, showedtantalizingly-matched &dquo;ann6escreuses&dquo;in exactly the age cohortsonewould have expected to have been most retarded by the fascist intrusions.And the curve for the newest democracy, Mexico, showed the negativeslope that we had again expected to find at such a stage of development(see discussion above).Vastlyencouraged, itseemed well worth the labor to setasidetheAlmond-Verba dataand work out in high detail atthe level of annualcohorts actual values for the independent variables based on the votinghistory ofeachofthesefivecountriesthatwere specifiedby thedevelopmental model, and which could be expected to predict levels ofpartisanship as one or another function of time.Stage I: Personal partisanship experience. This rubric isintended tocoverthefirsttwoofour specifications, orthesheer temporalaccumulation of electoral experience on the part of the individual himself,[151]as modified where relevant by the age-resistance term. It will be apparentto the reader that any such estimates must immediately take account ofthe fact that for a majority of the age cohorts of Figure 1, there is strongand systematic variationin expectation by sex within each cohort, forfemale suffrage has been instituted within the lifetimeof atleastsomemembers of allfive national samples, and indeed very recently in Mexico.Therefore allcalculations of independent variables for annual cohortsproceeded on a sex-specific basis. When the annual-cohort computationsFigure 1.STRENGTH OF PARTISANSHIP, BY AGE AND COUNTRY(ALMOND-VERBA)[152]are reaggregated into the grosser Almond-Verba age categories for tests ofpredictive value ,1 2 this means that 70 discrete values of each independentvariable (5 countries, 2 sexes, 7 age cohorts) were computed, in contrast tothe 35 observations (5 by 7) presented in Figure 1.13Since the initial process component supposed that partisanship wouldincreaseasadirectfunction of length of personal experience inthesystem, a first predictor established for the annual cohorts was purely andsimply the number of years that each cohort had been eligible to vote incompetitive democratic elections up to the time of the data collection in1959. This variable was denoted Ye or &dquo;years eligible.&dquo; In addition to theobvious counting operation, the variable took into account such things asthe year(s) in which female suffrage was effected, for the female cohorts.Italsoexcluded in itsaccumulation for German and Italian cohorts theyears during which competitive partisan process was suspended by fascistregimes. IntheGerman case, this suspension was consideredtohaveoccurred after the 1933 elections; in the Italian case it was dated from thefascistelectorallawof May,1928, thatabolishedthe relatively newuniversal suffrage and limited voting by those male taxpayers still eligibleto an acceptance or rejection of candidates proposed by the Fascist GrandCouncil. Otherwise its accumulation as a simple &dquo;sumof years&dquo; was verystraightforward,although itdidneedtotakeintoaccountaswelloccasional minor variants by country in the age of initial eligibility to vote.There was no attempt in forming the Ye variable to express the factthatnotall portions of an age cohort might indeed have been legallyeligible to vote. Since cohorts were sex-specific, we were able to reflect themost important singlesuffrage variation. Nonetheless, particularly in theearly historiesofsomeof thefive countries, therewere noteworthyfurther limitations on male eligibility springing from property criteria andthe like. Furthermore, under occasional circumstances, the gap betweenformal eligibility and rates of voting turnout was so large within cohortsthat one could not conceive of ignoring it. Thus, for example, in an earlyItalian period the hostility ofthechurch to popular electionswassufficiently great, and the influence itexerted over its faithful sufficientlyintense, that many Italians formallyeligible tovoterefrainedfromparticipating in the electoral system.Therefore the Ye variable was considered as nothing more than a firstapproximation, and a second variable was developed as a modification ofit, denoted Y~ (&dquo;yearsvoted&dquo;). Forthese purposes, theannualunitaccumulationof votingexperienceby a generallyeligible cohortwas[153]reduced by acoefficient (between zeroand one) based on levelsofvoting turnoutestimatedforthatcohort atthenext preceding majornational election. Thus, to take a very extreme hypothetical example forpurposes of illustration, letus suppose that parameter information sug-gested that only half of the males in a cohort were represented on therollsof eligible voters, and thatforother reasons only half again ofthose eligible were actually participating in the voting system. Then theannualaccumulationof votingexperience forthecohortwould bereduced from one unitto .25,reflecting the putativeparticipation ofonly a quarter of the cohort. Needless to say, the modifications in theYe variable introduced in this fashion were almost nowhere as extremeasthis. Nonetheless, there seemed little question butthatthe Y vvariablemore accurately reflectedthe accumulation of personal votingexperience in an age cohort than the Ye variable.l4The second modification of the personal-experience term arises fromtheneed to express the age-resistance phenomenon. Itisrelevant onlyfor those cohorts which, due to extensions of the franchise during theiradulthood, became eligible to participate in partisan electoral process ata greater orlessertimeafterthestandard age ofinitial eligibility(generally, 21 years of age). While our operations up to this point haveinvolved simplecountings of relatively &dquo;hard&dquo; quanta, like years orfractions thereof, to arrive at &dquo;external&dquo;indicators of voting experience,we arenow faced with proposing some function of time (or length ofexperience) which isa more dynamic property of a learning process. Inprinciple, we had evidencenot only of the existence of the phenome-non, but also an empirical basis independent of the Almond-Verba datathemselves for estimating the way inwhich speed of partisan learningwas retarded by latenessof initial exposure tosuch experience. Wemight have been helped in the details of this estimation had it been easytoarriveatsome equivalences between specific values of the Almond-Verba partisanship measure and &dquo;comparable&dquo; values of the partisanshipmeasure on which many of our independent analyses had been effected.Severaltactics employed toestablishsuch correspondences gave, how-ever,sufficiently anomalous results that we were obliged to proceed insomewhat rougher fashion,although it may bestressedthatthe pro-posed function remains based on data independent of the Almond-Verbamaterials.LetA represent theindividuals chronologicalage,conventionallymeasured in years, atwhich he isfirst permitted the voting franchise.[154]Then a is defineda =A -211 (1)and the degree of resistancetonew learning (R) isdefined simply asR = a;0 < a < 50 (2)100-aThus learning resistanceisconceivedto be nilwithin a cohort thatbegins voting participation at age 21, and growing but still quite trivial ifthe cohort isexcluded from voting untiladecade orsolater.But itmounts with increasing speed, and is complete if the cohort is not giventhe franchise until age 70 or later.The independent variable that will be taken to summarize the overallimpact (Ip) of personal voting experience is, therefore:Ip - (1-R) Y (3)It may be illuminating tonote that across our set of 70 observations,the modification introduced by the coefficient (1-R) on the values of Y yissmall indeed, Ip and Yy being correlated at.99. This is so because 42cohorts of the 70 began voting &dquo;ontime&dquo;and hence the values of thetwo variablesforthesecohortsareidentical. Moreover, the valueof(1-R) slips below .9 in only 10 of the 70 cohorts, these largely centeringamong older Mexican and Italian women.Therefore theresistancemodification may seem scarcely worth theeffort, although itis clear that in estimations restricted to relatively newdemocratic systems such a modification would play a stronger role. Andeveninthecaseat hand, weshallsee shortly thattheresistancemodification is of more than passing importance. 1 5At this terminal point in the discussion of the Ip cluster of variables,it may be of interest to skip out of our chronological narration momen-tarily to report thatthezero-order linearcorrelationbetween Y y andthe mean strengths of partisanship for the 70 Almond-Verba cohorts is awelcome .519.The same correlation for the more refined Ip predictormounts to .558.Stage 77:Inherited Partisan Experience. With afirst predictor com-missioned to express the accumulation of personal voting experience, weshallnow turntothe problem of intergenerational transmission.Aglance at Figure 1issufficientto suggest thata very substantial pro-[155]portion of the overall variance (total sum of squares) in partisanship inthese data, atleastatthecohort level, istied up in between-countryvariance.Now the between-country variancein voting history forthecurrentadult generation is palpably lessthan thatwhich would havecharacterizedthe preceding adult generation inthecaseof thesefivecountries. Thus, while some relevant between-country variance does getcaptured in the Ip variable, itisclear that further gains in explanationcould be achieved by a reflection of the larger between-country differ-ences in political experience of the parental generation.Itisobvious thatour model, to be atall manageable, must make anumber of simplifyingassumptions about thesheer mechanics of thetransmission process. Itwould greatly facilitate our task, for example, ifwe were ableto pretend that transmission occurs relatively instantane-ously, and ataconstantmoment in the joint life cycle of parent andchild.Thisof course isunrealisticin every direction. If common sensehad not alreadyapprised us of the fact, recent literature would makeclear that the relevant political socialization iswell distributed over thetime the child is growing to adulthood within his family. Similarly, thevariationin ages atwhich parents beartheirchildrenis substantial,particularly forfathers.There isinadditionsome variation, althoughless, in the age at which a youth departs definitively from his family oforigin,therebydiluting the possibility of political influencefromparents. Thus since our model must hinge on a fairly precise synchroni-zationof socializationevents with historicaleventsinannual cohorts,therealisticsourcesof temporal variationintheseaffairsarenumerou s.16Therefore we shall proceed with a highly simplified version of suchevents, intendedtobeno more thana rough approximation of theexpected values, or joint means, of these temporally dispersed matters.Ourfirst simplification isto hinge thewhole political socializationprocess on the father, for daughters as well as sons.This decision flies inthefaceof so many recent and entirely credible findings that it mayseem downright perverse. In point of fact, it is predicated on a sequenceof analyses with allof our American data, which is far too intricate andtedious torecount here.The point isnot that anything is wrong withthe current socialization findings, but rather that the additional varianceto be explained by taking account of permutations in parental identifi-cationsandsexofchildren (while of significance in themselves) isdwarfed by theextreme complications thatwould be entailedinthismodel. The cost-benefit answer was simply negative.[156]Once we arefocused on the fathers, then, we assume the followingpattern generically:(1) the child is born when the father is 30 years old;(2) therelevant political socializationoccurs when thechildis age15, and the father age 45.Given this idealized (or skeletal) description of the timing of sociali-zation events, the question becomes one of what itisthat the fathertransmitsatthemoment designated. Here theanswercan be morerealistic. Clearly he transmits something of his own accumulated partisanvotingexperience. And furthermore, we have already designed a fairlythoughtful measure of the partisan voting experience accumulated by anindividualat any point inhislife cycle, as a function of the relevanthistorical sequences he (and his cohort) has experienced. Therefore whatismore natural than to suppose that the father transmits some quantumthat is a simple function of whatever his own Ip may be at age 45?Hence we have two chores: to say somewhat more precisely what the&dquo;simple function&dquo;of Ip should be, and to cycle backward a generationinorder to compute Ip values appropriate forthe specific cohorts offathers of citizens in the Almond-Verba samples. The latter problem is aroutine matter requiring no further comment. The former can occasionmore labor.The Ip of an individual can be conceived as (an indicatorof) asortof partisan&dquo;push&dquo;deriving from electoral participation. Inthis light, the question can be formulated in terms of how much of such&dquo;push&dquo;(hopefully in terms of years or elections worth of experience) apartisan father (orhome) gives his children, relativetochildrenofnonpartisan background. This formulation led to a detailed examinationof the relativerates of ascent of partisanship curves in the limited set ofour American data enjoying the relevant information, according to thepartisan or nonpartisan nature of the family background. Here as earlier,we were anxious to develop our specifications as fully as possible fromother data, preserving the application to the Almond-Verba materials asan independent test of the model. Some conclusions did emerge from this comparative examination oflearning ratesin partisan and nonpartisan homes. For example, itwasquite clearthatthe partisanship of childrenfrom nonpartisan homes(even excluding chronicnonvoters among the children) neverdoes&dquo;catch up&dquo; in intensity tothe mounting partisanship of adults origi-nating in partisan environments. This was a welcome fact, as we realized[157]that we had unwittingly been building such a property into our model.But the key question-how much voting experience the individual withno partisan push from his family would have to accumulate to matchtheinitial partisanship ofthenormal amalgam ofindividualsfrompartisan,semipartisan, and nonpartisan homescharacteristicofa&dquo;mature&dquo; democracy-received a lessdefiniteanswer due to small casenumbers and irregular functionsinthetest group atcritical points.Nonetheless, the data did suggest thatthe &dquo;push&dquo;expressed in years ofvoting experience should lie between 14 and 25 years.We were prepared to take the answer from this analysis as a conserva-tive one, for the simple reason that while an individuals home may havebeen without partisan flavor, in the United States there would be manyassumptions of some partisan identificationintheculturalairoutsidethe home. Therefore itwas assumed that any individual growing up insuch an atmosphere should starthis electoral experience with at least aslightly greater partisan push than an individual in a country where thecultural atmosphere(as wellasthe parentalsituation) made fewerpresumptions of partisanship. And these assumptions would in turn leadus tofavorforour model an estimatelike25 years, ratherthan theinner limitof 14. Yet this seemed somewhat extraordinary: at age 45,thefathersown Ye in any country could only be 25 (21 to 45); andhis Y~ or Ip somewhat less.Hence the data seemed to imply that all ofhis partisan push was transferred into initial partisan momentum for hischild.This unexpected result might be resolved of course by taking a thirdgeneration intoaccount. Thus the father would represent not only hisown electoral experience up to age 45, but in addition whatever initialmomentum hehadreceivedinturnfrom hisown parents. Then histransmission to his child would more easily be depicted as the expectedfractional value only of his own experience.Atthis point, however, we decidedtocommission the experienceterm for the father as an explicit variable, and letconventional estima-tion procedures seektheir optimal weight in the test against empiricaldata. Therefore we proceeded with the definitionIr = The value of Ip as computed at age 45 for the annualcohort 30 years ahead of (older than) ego,where If may be thought of as &dquo;impact, father.&dquo;[158]The establishment of If values across our 70 cohorts needs littlenewexplanation. Itcanbeseenthat only 35 independent valueswereneeded, as If was considered to be the same for both male and female(new-generation) cohorts of the same age. The main configuration thatrequiredany new decisionrulesaroseinconnection with thefascistsuspensions of democratic process in Germany and Italy. What shouldwe imagine tobethefateof thetransmission processduring theseperiods?For the firsttime we found ourselves without a shred of informationapart fromtheAlmond-Verbadatathemselveson which tobaseajudgment. At the outset we considered turning the parental contributionbrusquely tozeroforthefullfascist period ineach country. Onreflection, however, this seemed needlessly unrealistic. Informal evidencewould suggest thatdemocratic expectations arenot instantaneouslydropped under such conditions:even after some passage of time at leastasmall minority of the population clings covertly to party loyalties ofthe prefascistperiod. Moreover, setting thesocializationtransmissionimmediately tozero would make fora discontinuity inthe temporalfunctions that belies other outside knowledge. Thus, for example, somesocializationwould already have occurredinthecohorts lessthan 15years of age, even before democratic process was suspended.Therefore, itseemedmostreasonableto posit some more gradualdecomposition of the socialization effects in the period after suspension.In particular, we decided to assume that there would be a 20% annualdecrement inthe strength of the partisanimpetus availablefortrans-mission as of the suspension. In other words, if the father under 45 (andhence toarriveatthe socializingyear during the fascist period) has aquantum to transmit of If at time t (the year of suspension), then whathe actually transmits in the nth year of the fascist period is assumed tobeIf,, t+n - (.8)n If tt (4)We emphasize that this function isan ad hoc estimate of these effects.At the same time, itaffects only about a dozen of the 70 cohorts, andinfluences predictions evenformostof theseina very minor wayrelativetothealternative hypothesis ofasocializationthat simplyterminates during such a change of regime.The Empirical Test.Whilethemodelatthis point hasnot yetincorporated alloftheinitial specifications, itisnot premature to[159]examine itsfit. The one element still missing is a representation of someforgetting(decay of Ip) that logically would be expected forcohortsexperiencing normal socialization and entry into a democratic electorate,butwhose participation was then suspended fora lengthy period oftime.The cohorts in question herearethe older German citizens andItalianmales. The Ip values for these cohorts have been mildly limitedby the fact, already reflectedin the model, that these people failedtoaccumulate partisan experience atnormal rates during youth to middleage. Butnodecrementhasbeen postulated: themodel as itstandsportrays them to be resuming the suffrage after the fascist period at thesame levelsof experiencethey had built up by the time the intrusionfirstoccurred. Clearly some provision for partialforgetting ofthisexperience during the hiatus is necessary.However, we have no independent basis for estimating effects of thiskind, although itwould be quite clearfrom other psychological litera-turewhat generalfamily of functionistobe prescribed.Up tothispoint we have been quite successful (with one minor exception: specifi-cationof the decay of transmission effects when democratic process isinterrupted, treated just above) in basing our estimates of functions andparameters on dataother than the Almond-Verba materials, preservingthe status of the latter as a fresh and independent test. Lacking furtherinformation,however, itseems appropriate toconsider atestof thenearly complete model at this point. Thus we will leave the introductionof a forgetting orretention function to a frankly a posteriori stage ofthe analysis.We have already noted above that the Ip variable taken alone showedat this point a simple correlation of .56 with the mean values of partyidentification strength acrossthe70sex-and country-specificagecohorts.The If variable reflecting transmissionof parentalexperienceshows only a very mild correlation (.17) with the Ip variable over thecohorts, so that collinearity problems are minimal. As expected also, theadditionof the If variableas a predictorgreatly increases the fit (forthis sample of nations): the multiple correlation from If and Ip to meanpartystrengthby cohortisatthis point a satisfying .886.The co-efficientofdetermination (R2 ) is .785, or nearly four-fifthsof thecohort variance in partisan strength accounted for.The &dquo;Forgetting&dquo; Function. The residuals from the regression analysisabovecouldbeexaminedtodeterminewhether they reflectedthe[160]incomplete state of the model at this point. In particular, the absence ofthe forgetting functionshould have given a systematic overestimate ofparty identification strength within the six oldest German cohorts (threeoldest, subdivided by sex) and the three oldest grades of Italian males.This anticipated effect was indeed present, and quite clearly so. Eight ofthe nine criticalcohorts showed negative residuals (actual identificationsweaker than predicted), while the ninth was barely positive. The effectwas clearest in the German cohorts: all six fell among the nine residualsmost extreme in the predicted direction.A forgetting functionwas thenaddedtothe model, determinedpartiallyby theoreticalconsiderations and partially by the behavior oftheresiduals.That is, itwas assumed that a retention curve (&dquo;percentsavings&dquo;) would show a negative but deceleratingslope(negative firstderivative,positive second derivative) asa functionof the passage oftime unexposed to partisan democratic process. It was also assumed, onsomewhat lesscertain grounds, thatthe rateof loss would be slightlyfaster for the cohorts that were youngest atthe time of the suspensionofdemocratic process, relativetothosewho were already intheirthirtiesorfortiesatthetime of suspension. Within thesetheoreticalconstraints on the likely character of the forgetting function, the actualchoice of parameters was deliberately made so as to minimize the size ofthe residual values. 1 7Afterthe forgetting modifications were incorporated and the modelas originally envisionedwas completed, the multiple correlationhadrisen from .89 to .91.The Socialization of Disfranchised Females. A second examination ofresidualsatthis point revealed a strong pattern suggesting that we hadmade one rather egregious error in the initial organization of the model.Itwill be recalled that both sonsand daughters cohorts were creditedequally with reception of whatever partisan experience their fathers hadto offer during theirsocialization. While this represented an intentionalsimplification and one which for most purposes would be adequate, itconstitutes an affront to common sense with respect to those cohorts ofdaughters for whom, at the time of socialization, politics remains solidlya male world and female suffrage isstill decades away.The point was brought home tous forcefullyby the fact that thestrongest negative residuals (the model overestimating partisanship) nowclustered among the older cohorts of Italian and Mexican women. Thesewomen had the least personal voting experience of any of our cohorts,[161]havingonly recently receivedthefranchise.Their personalexperience(I ) was being dimmed further, interms of the model, by high age-resistance.Thuswherethe Ip variablealonewas concerned,onlyvestigial levels of partisanship were being predicted for them. The over-estimatewas arisingentirely from thecontribution of the If variable(partisanexperience &dquo;inherited&dquo;from father), imputed to be as strongforthese long-to-be-disfranchised females asfortheir voting brothers.This whimsical implication of thea priori model cried out for adjust-ment.Inthe original model, itwillbe recalled,every cohort was taggedwith an age-resistance value (R). For allcohorts entering the electorateautomatically upon reaching adulthood, this value was zero. It ascendedto increasinglysignificant levelsthe laterinlifeacohort was enfran-chised.Thereforeitseemedareasonablemodificationto apply thecoefficient (I-R)referring to egos own cohortnot only to egosimmediate partisan experience, butalsoto apply itto the &dquo;inherited&dquo;experience communicablefrom egos father.Such a correction wouldhere affect only those female cohorts becoming enfranchised after adult-hood had been attained. In effect, this correction would impute a fairamount of &dquo;anticipatory socialization&dquo;:those women being socialized ata time when their own enfranchisement was imminent would receive thesame, or nearly the same,partisanpush fromthefatherastheirbrothers. The more remote in time thatfemale suffrage becomes, how-ever, the less political impact such a socializing father would transmit toa daughter.After this further post hoc modification was introduced in the valuescomputed for the fivenations of the Almond-Verba study, the multiplecorrelation coefficient ascended to .925, with nearly six-sevenths of thevariance in cohort means accounted for. Table 2 summarizes the outputof the regression analyses at the two main stages of testing.The fit might have been further improved in several simple ways hadtheeffortseemedwarranted.Asone example, thereis -somemildsuggestion thatthelinear regression modelontheseuntransformedvariables isnot optimal. Indeed, semi-log and double-log versions of theregressions wereexamined.A log transformationofthe dependentvariable (commonly indicated in problems of time and growth) did givealmostassuccessfula fitastheuntransformed version, and itseemslikely thatsomeintermediatetransformationwouldhave actuallyimproved the magnitude of the correlations. Or again, there remain some[162]few small patterns in the residuals that suggest reasonable further adjust-ments of themodel. However, inview of thefactthatthese wouldinvolve the importation of concepts alien to the learning base on whichthe model rests, and in view of the real danger of overfitting the modeltothis particular batch of data, we have pursued none of these othercorrections. The level of fitneeds no apologies as itstands.TABLE 2FIRST AND SECOND REGRESSION ANALYSESNOTE:The dependent variable, Ps, referstotheindex of strength of partisanidentificationcalculated asdescribed inthe text from the Almond-VerbaFive-Nation Study. The regression coefficients are not normalized.Some Caveats.Inviewof what may seem a remarkably closefitbetween the model predictions and the Almond-Verba data, a number ofqualifying observations are in order.First, whilethe multiple correlationsareindeed pressing theouterlimitof what might be expected, given inevitable sampling and measure-ment error, itshouldbe remembered that the sheer magnitude of thecorrelationsis substantially enhanced by thefactthatwe have beenmaking somewhat aggregated, ratherthan individual-level,predictions.That is, we have been attempting to predict the mean values of partisanstrength registered by each of the 70 cohort groupings. Within every oneof these cohorts, of course, thereisfurtherindividual-level variationaround the mean, and thisvariationhas been systematically excludedfromconsiderationinour predictions. To the degree thatthemodelpivots on experience thatcohort members share in common,l8 itfailstoaccount forwithin-cohortvariation.If the data were disaggregated,bringing thisfurthersourceofvariationinto view, thecorrelationswould be considerably closerto ranges familiarfrom other individual-[163]levelworkwith samplesurvey materials.For comparison wehaveconsidered the results in this disaggregated form; then the final multiplecorrelation recedes from .93 to .46.At the same time we may emphasize that there is no reason to avoidprediction to aggregated cohort values, provided the difference in mean-ing of statistics reflectinggoodness of fitis kept in mind. In point offact, for the study of secular trends in social and political change wheretimeand population turnoverseem important mechanisms, thetreat-ment of cohorts as units of analysis may be very much indichted.Insofar as our cohort-level model purports to deal in what seem to berelatively basic and inexorable processes, it would make sense at anotherstage of analysis toaddress the explanation of individual-level (within-cohort) variations in partisan strength with the effects of these processesfirstextracted.In other words, the measurement of individual partisanstrength would be recast as residuals from the cohort-level predictions.Successin accounting fortheseresidualindividual-levelvalues wouldthen be suggestive with respect to situations that inhibit or stimulate therate of growth of such loyalties.This observation leads toasecond caveat.We do takefor grantedthat &dquo;otherfactors&dquo;can inhibit or stimulate the development of partisanloyalties atan individual level, and it logically follows that such factors,if differentially present across a range of polities, would lead to charac-teristicdifferencesinthe speed withwhich aggregateloyalties coulddevelop andeveninthe&dquo;saturationlevel&dquo;towardwhich particularpolities tend. Indeed, ifotherwork is valid, France may provide aninstance in which communication peculiarities (among other things) haveexertedsome inhibitions on the development of partisanship (Converseand Dupeux, 1962). Conversely, if politicized mass organizations tend tostimulatethe development of partisanloyalties asis frequentlysup-posed, thena societypervadedby such organizations toan unusualdegreemight be expected to display unusual speed in the mobilizationof aggregate loyalties.The point of our second caveat, then, should be clear. If we are usingthe current model to extract some sense of a general &dquo;timetable&dquo;for themobilization of aggregate partisanship, we arenot in the least imaginingthatourestimates constitute&dquo;lawsof development,&dquo;particularly withrespect to any specificparameters. At the very best, the general time-tabletobe presented below must be seen as a &dquo;mainline&dquo;estimate ofthese effects, around which considerablesocietalvariation may occur;eventhis&dquo;mainline&dquo;is only more orless adequate according tothe[164]degree towhich our haphazard sample of fivenations is representativeof the larger universe of cases. 1 9A third caveat has to do with our interpretation of determinants ofthese processes. In view of the specific &dquo;habit/attitude&dquo; being investi-gated here (partisanship), we have ineffect operationalized the vagueentity often described as &dquo;the weight of historical tradition&dquo; largely interms of the transmission of parental experience. Nonetheless, the readershould be aware that any of a wide range of variables correlated withthe sheer length of time these democratic systems have been under waywould produce substantialcorrelations with the levelsof partisanshipobserved in the Almond-Verba data. Itis even possible that methodolog-icalartifacts have contributed to the result, since certain known defectsof the Almond-Verba data become more intensein the countries thatareless developed andhence are&dquo;newer&dquo;democracies.Some of themost blatantof thesedefects we have been safein ignoring, since themodeofdata analysis cancelsouttheireffects.2 0 Others, however,would be of concern.For example, it might be argued that Italy andMexicoshow low levelsof partisanship because partypreference isajealously guarded secret in more peasant cultures, particularly when thequery comes froma strange interviewer.There is undoubtedly someelementof such a phenomenon in these data. Nevertheless, work withevasions and refusals to indicate partisanship in other similar settings hasconvinced us thatthesetend tocenterin segments of the population(women, the poorly educated, the geographically remote) that are leastinvolved and informed about national politics, and are likely to concealignorance far more often than fervent feelings. Any such syndrome, ofcourse, fitsthecurrent model of socializationor learning very admi-rably.In any event, we do not feel apologetic about the interpretation ourmodel casts on the data, in part because of the obvious logic of thematter, andin part because of thesuccessof severalrather irregularpredictions (in particular, those surrounding the cases of fascist suspen-sion). Furthermore, expectations hinged on the model have been sus-tained in a wider array of contexts than can be explored here.21 Yet itremains useful to stress that the success of the predictions in itself is noguarantee that our choice of mechanisms is the most appropriate.A finalcaveat has to do with the structure of the model itself. Thereare quite anumber of free parameters that require estimation here, andestimatescould varyconsiderablyaccording to the order in which theestimation proceeds. We have attempted to cope with these potential[165]indeterminacies by starting with thoseeffectsmost abundantly docu-mented from independent sources and, considering these fixed, haveproceeded to make other estimates on the basis of residual, unexplainedvariation.Thisseemsareasonable strategy underthe circumstances,although itis obviously notstrict proofagainst theintrinsic logicalambiguities.2 2It may be appropriate to point out, however, that most of the ad hoccomplications thatarisesurroundthe two unusual instancesof fascistsuspension of democratic process. Without the further terms necessaryto express theoutcomeof componentprocessesduringperiods ofinterruption, themodelwouldrestona veryparsimonious setofestimates and indeed is straightforward to the point of almost embarrass-ing simplicity.CONCLUSIONLipset and Rokkan have recently observed that much contemporane-ous electoral analysis has proceeded without attention to the factthatquite radical differences exist in the democratic age of the systems beingdiscussed. They go on to observe that most of the substantive alterna-tivesoverwhich (European)parties still compete inthe1960s were&dquo;frozen&dquo; by cleavages salientatthose historical points when widespreadsuffrage andhencemass parties were instituted (Lipset and Rokkan,1967: &dquo;Cleavagestructures,partysystems andvoter alignments: anintroduction&dquo;).We have attempted here to assesssome of the obvious regularities intheratesatwhichthesedemocratic systems &dquo;freeze&dquo;ina slightlydifferent but entirely complementary sense. That is, the fixing of partyalternatives has tended to occur rather suddenly, as Lipset and Rokkanimply, and thisas an outcome of elite competition at acritical point.Mass loyalties only follow apace, and itisthis pace that we have beeninterested in estimating.By way of summary, we present in Figure 2 an idealized chart of theprogressive freezing of a system as a function of time, derived immedi-ately from the model used above. Itis important to stress, in additionto earlier caveats, that this isan &dquo;idealized&dquo; picture rather than in anysense a typical one.Inthe typical polity, the fullmass public is onlyenfranchised piece by piece (e.g.,propertied males, then all males, thenall adults), with decades often intervening between stages. Thus Figure 2should be taken to refer either to an electorate that is granted universalzO_Haaupee4ca-ia1=0t-)ui-imu.0(AI=aHi>m2:&dquo;CO) z4C*PGC2aHa0Uicc ocoati.0II-0ccC9N0zLL[167]adult suffrage atthe outset, ortoa subpopulation thatissobe-stowed.2 3 Theadditionof positions for specificpolities at particulartimes totheidealizedcurveisthus partially inappropriate; these addi-tions are meant only to be suggestive, and take into account the actualstagesby which these politiesexpanded their suffrage.They arethusrelatedto the main curve only by virtue of putative (model-predicted)levels of partisanship at the historical dates indicated.Quite in accord with our earlier crude estimate, Figure 2 suggests thatmaturity is essentiallyapproached afterabout two and one-half gener-ations (considering a generation, as we have, to be 30 years). Of coursethe logic of the model issuch that maturity becomes &dquo;complete&dquo; in anabsolutesense after the electorate iscleared by population turnover ofany members suffering a deficit because of fathers not maximally experi-enced, etc.Such an absolute maturity would arrive only more slowly ifgrandfathers were considered to make any significant contribution to theprocess in egos generation. However, such a variation of the model, ifreasonably done, would make littledifference in our assessment of thetimetable to quasi-maturity.We assume that the stateof a democratic system in this regard-thedegree towhich itisfrozenorremainsfluidwith respect tomassloyalties-is a significant datum. We see these loyalties as having some-thing of thesame conservative or preservative influence on democraticsystem stability as doessocializationintotherulesof the democraticgame atan elite level. This is not to imply that the possibility of radicalchange in party structure, oreven inthenature of the regime, disap-pears as a system approaches this type of &dquo;maturity.&dquo; But itis to arguethatthe probabilities declineina significantdegree or, if one wishes,that the severity of shock necessary to induce such system change mustbe progressivelygreater themore completely the system has jelled inthese terms.NOTES1.Such a conclusion has been discussed in recent years by (among others) V.O. Key (1961) and H. McCloskey (1964).2.It might be noted that we are using terms such as "stability" and "insta-bility" asflat descriptors,despite their frequent evaluativeconnotations intheliterature.The text will have no more and no less intended meaning if the reader[168]wishes tosubstitute polar terms keyed to opposite evaluative connotations, such as"flexibility"(forinstability), and "rigidity" or even "ossification" (forstability).3.The germinal work here was Herbert Hyman (1959). An excellent recentbibliography reflecting growth of interest is contained in J.Dennis (1967).4.For such a graphic contrast, see Newcomb et al. (1965:116). Subsequent(still unpublished) evidence suggests moreover that the party identification measureon which these arrays are based does not represent the situation quite as clearly asone might wish. That is, careful comparisons of defection rates (a behavioral votingmeasure) withinclassesof party identifiers (an attitudinal "loyalty"measure)across age cohorts shows that citizens in their first voting years tend to pull out oflinewith the norms characterizing the rest of the array, defecting somewhat morefrequently than their statements of party identification strength would predict. Inother words, they tend to overstate their level of party loyalty, particularly if theycome from stronglypartisanfamily backgrounds. Thus a measurement difficultyblurs a relationship which remains nonetheless quite strong.5.The most relevant discussions are presented in A. Campbell et al., 1960 (seeespecially 161-165 and 497-498).6.TheMcPhee model again hasan ingenious setof provisions toreflectpopulation turnoverand learning of partisanship by children (McPhee and Glaser[eds.] 1962: 151-152).7.The reader unfamiliar with this theorem may enjoy experimenting with ithimself. Thus, for example, application of this particular transitionmatrixtoaparental generation with only 20% of party loyals produces a much more heavilyidentifiedsecond generation56% with party identifications above this threshold,rather than 20%. This figure thrusts rapidly upward toward the fixed point of thetable. On the other hand, ifwe imagine a hypothetical population where identifi-cations, forwhatever reason, have surpassed the equilibriumlevel-say, 90% ofparents areidentified-thenthesecond generation willhave slipped "back" to a77% level, or again much nearer to the fixed point of the process. This is the senseinwhich a very precise level represents an "equilibrium" for the process. For anextremely accessibletreatmentofsuch processconfigurations, the readerisre-ferred to J. Kemeny et al., 1957 (Chapter 5).8.The assumption of constancy seems a littlesafer than it might otherwise beinviewof thebrief number of cycles required and the modest tolerancethatmight be allowed in variationsof theentries (temporal or cross-national) whileapproximating thesame result.It might be noted in this regard that a seeminglycomparable parent-child matrix for Great Britain pointed out to me by MichaelKahan has quite differentinternalentries-and fixed point-but roughly a two-generational solution nonetheless, at the level of convergence required above. Ontheother hand, a parellelparent-child matrix prepared by Akira Kubota on thebasisof national surveys of the Japanese electorateare strikingly similarto theFrench and American cases.9.Notethe reproduction hereof the slightly varied procedure used intheUnited States sample.10.The agecoding inThe CivicCulture study issomewhat coarse but by nomeans inadequate for our purposes, there being seven classes distinguished:18-25,26-30, 31-35, 36-40, 41-50, 51-60, 61 and over.11.The slight decline in the oldest age category for both the United States andGreat Britain isthe only mildly unusual feature, and even this turns up (throughsampling error?) in occasional U.S. samples with our standard party identificationquestion.Summing across many such studies, however, the terminal age categorymatching the Almond-Verba divisionsdoes show a very faint continuing positiveslope.[169]12.In view of the extremely minor error involved, the reaggregation for thefirstfour relatively narrow age cohortsassumeda rectangular distribution ofpopulation across the cohort. For the fifth and sixth cohorts an appropriate grossweighting wasintroducedtoreflectthe decliningslope of population, and theweighting was done on a careful year-by-year basis in the critical seventh category(over 61 years of age), within which the range of annual population proportions isgreatest and the independent variables were often showing quite disparate values aswell.The basis,however, wasnota country-specificagetable, butratherarepresentative table thought to be a reasonable average for the types of countriesinvolved. The riskof any serious error here is very slight, as the reader may cometorealizeon reflection.That is,although the age tables for these fivecountriesmay well have been quite disparate in1959-the year most of the Ahnond-Verbadatawere collected-countrydiscrepancies in age distributionsare largely con-trolled by virtue of our predictions being made within fairly narrow age cohorts.13.The 70 estimates of partisanship intensity available from the Almond-Verbamaterials rest on a range of case numbers from 37 to 156, with the median valuebeing 71 cases.14.Another operationalization that might recommend itself in the preparationof an indicator of accumulated voting experience for a cohort, would be to sumacross"elections experienced," ratherthan simple years. In point of fact, twoparallel variables developed on thisbasis (E eand Ev: elections eligible and elec-tions voted) were the subject of some experimentation. Although in one sense suchvariableswouldseem to bring us another step closertothe concept "electionexperience," the shift of base opens a Pandoras box of practical woes. When is anelection an election? Do we count minor partisan elections or only national ones?Do off-yearCongressional electionsintheUnitedStates"count" thesame aspresidential elections? Indeed, itwas something of a relieftodiscoverthatthepredictivepower of the E variables experimented with was slightly less than thatoftheY variables, fortheY variables represented such simple and readilyaccessibly information on polities.15.Itsrelative efficacy shouldnot be neglected even atthis point, incom-paring Yvand Ip. That is, in view of the very high correlation between the twomeasures (actually.994), themaximal amount of further variance that Ip couldaccount for beyond whatever Yv already accounts for in a dependent variable islimitedand readily calculablein any given instance.InlaterrelationstotheAlmond-Verba partisanship variable as dependent variable it could be seen that themodificationaccounts for nearly half (.41) ofthismaximum possiblefurthervariance. In view of the fact that the need for a modification of this type was feltbefore the Almond-Verba materials were first examined, and the function proposedfrom other information without recourse to any close dissection of the Almond-Verba data, the utility of the modification can scarcely be questioned.16.The McPhee simulation iscontrived to represent some temporal dispersionof impact on the child (see McPhee and Glaser [eds.] 1962: 152).17.Theactual forgetting function employed was asfollows.Considertheamount of partisan experience, both direct and inherited (Ip and If,respectively),that a citizen has accumulated up to the time when partisan process is suspended.Let b represent the proportion of that experience which would be actively retainedwhen partisan process is restoredt years later. Thenb = r /log t + r[170]wherer =c + 0.05A sand (As being the chronological age of thec = a constant, 2.9 subject at the time of suspension)18.One exception involves differentialrates of voting turnout within cohort.At this point a fully elaborated model would indeed make differential predictionsatan individuallevelwithinthe cohort. For simplicitys sake, however, we havehere treated turnout asa cohort-level rate, and hence bypassed the opportunity totreat within-cohort variability.19.In this regard, it may occur to the reader that the model does imply somedifferential national predictions that we have not chosen to exploit here. Thus, forexample, ourinitial analysessuggestedstrongly thatwhat is important forin-creasing levelsof partisan identificationisnot somuch generalparticipation indemocratic processperse, butrather persistentvoting for particularpoliticalparties. As a corollary, a polity withinwhich politicalparties have frequentlydisappeared with new ones emerging (for whatever reason) should be predicted toshow lowerlevelsof partisanship,everything else equal, than the polity withinwhich the same constellation of parties has endured for a long time (for whateverreason). Therefore more incisive predictions could be made by taking into accountthe continuity of voter-partyrelationships, ratherthan the simple voter-processrelationship we have used here. In fact, some analyses were conducted within theAlmond-Verba data on this score, and showed positive results. That is,among truemass parties (asopposed to ideological splinter groups) there issome mild corre-lation between party age and intensity of popular support within the same system.However, theseresultsare sufficientlyweak, when othermain effectsarecon-trolled, and the problems of ascertaining party "age" in view of the continuum ofpossible transformations of a political party as a perceived object (mere change inname as one extreme, for example) are sufficiently difficult that itseemed wise toproceed on the simpler base.20. Thus, for example, the most glaring known defect of the data is the severeunderrepresentation ofmales inthe Mexican sample.However, sinceallof ourestimates have been carried out within sex categories, this defect is irrelevant.21.One particularly interesting reflection of these processes isof a behavioraland historical nature. Itcan be shown that temporal variation in party voting andticket splitting-bothsupposed to be symptoms of weakly developed partisanshipin aggregates-areremarkablyhigh inthe"new votingsystems" represented byAmerican states freshly admitted tothe union inthe latenineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries.22.Problemsofsubstantive interpretation intertwinewiththese ambiguities.For example, the decrement in partisanship among the older German and Italiancohorts afterthe initial test, which we then handled with a "forgetting function,"might be given amore vigorousinterpretation, asan activealienationfrom thepoliticalprocess onthe part of cohorts that had participated inthesuccessivedemisesof democraticandfascist regimes. Such an interpretationmight havesuggested adifferent type of functionto predict thedecrement. The residualdeviations atthis point were not sufficiently robust or patterned to permit such adelicate judgment inthis regard. We simply recognize here competing interpre-tations.23. Although themodel implies that progress of identification among femaleswill be more rapid than isassumed by Figure 2, due to their being embedded in apartisan atmosphere before suffrage.[171]REFERENCESALMOND, G.and S.VERBA (1963) The CivicCulture.Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press.CAMPBELL, A., P.E. CONVERSE, W. MILLER, and D.STOKES (1960) TheAmerican Voter. New York: John Wiley.CONVERSE, P.andG.DUPEUX (1962) "PoliticizationoftheelectorateinFrance and the United States." Public Opinion Q. 26 (Spring).DENNIS, J. (1967) Recent Research on Political Socialization:A Bibliography ofPublished, Forthcoming, and Unpublished Works, Theses and Dissertations, anda Survey of Projects in Progress.Medford, Mass.:Lincoln-Filene Center forCitizenship and Public Affairs (July, mimeo.).HYMAN, HERBERT (1959) Political Socialization. New York: Free Press.KEMENY, J., J. SNELL, andG.THOMPSON (1957) IntroductiontoFiniteMathematics. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.KEY, V.O. (1961) "Public opinion andthe decay of democracy." VirginiaQuarterly Review 37 (Autumn): 481-494.LIPSET, S.and S.ROKKAN [eds.] (1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments.New York: Free Press.McCLOSKEY, H. (1964) "Consensus and ideology inAmerican politics." Amer.Pol. Sci. Rev. 58 (June): 361-382.McPHEE, W. N. (1963) Formal Theories of Mass Behavior. New York: Free Press. and W. GLASER [eds.] (1962) Public Opinion and Congressional Elections.Glencoe, Ill.:Free Press.NEWCOMB, T. M., R.H. TURNER, and P.E.CONVERSE (1965) Social Psy-chology. New York: Holt, Rinehart &Winston.PROTHRO, JAMES W.and C.W.GRIGG (1960) "Fundamental principles ofdemocracy: basesof agreement and disagreement." J.of Politics22 (May):276-294.