THE DEMOCRATIC CLASS-STRUGGLE IN POSTWAR SOCIETIES - CLASS VOTING IN 20 COUNTRIES, 1945-1990

Studies on the relation between class and voting behaviour traditional ly use measures of absolute class voting (Alford indices), and apply s imple class schemes (a manual/non-manual class dichotomy). Almost all these studies showed that levels of class voting differed between coun tries and that declines in levels of class voting occurred in most cou ntries in the postwar period. However, recently, scholars have argued that using measures of relative class voting (e.g, log-odds-ratios) an d more detailed class schemes (e.g. the EGP class scheme) might yield different conclusions. In this article the tenability of this claim is tested analysing comparable data from twenty Western industrial democ racies in the period 1945-90. The main finding is that the different m easurement procedures do not lead to essentially different conclusions . Using various procedures, a similar ranking of the countries with re spect to their levels of class voting was obtained: the Scandinavian c ountries and Britain having the highest levels of class voting, and th e United States and Canada the lowest. Furthermore, on using the vario us procedures, declines in levels of relative class voting were indica ted in the same countries (particularly the Scandinavian countries, Ge rmany and Britain), while no evidence of substantial declines was foun d in others (Canada, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and The Netherla nds).