The effects of class mobility on class voting in post-war western industrialized countries

Classic studies in political sociology argued that differences in countries ' patterns of mobility are responsible for variations in levels of class Vo ting in these countries. In this paper the tenability of this classic claim is examined using survey data from 14 long-standing Western democracies ov er the period 1964-1990 (N=54 478). When testing this claim, we improved ov er earlier studies by employing detailed measures of class, by using multiv ariate statistical models that measure relative levels of class voting and by employing diagonal reference models that deal adequately with the effect s of individual intergenerational class mobility. Our results show signific ant effects of individual intergenerational mobility. The longer mobile per sons are members of a certain class the more they are apt to show the typic al voting behaviour of their destination class. However, our results do not support the claim for the effects of intergenerational mobility at the mac ro level. Variation in levels of mobility can only to a very modest extent - if at all - be held responsible for cross-national and overtime variation in levels of class voting.