Political Institutions and Political Socialization: A Cross-National Study

When systematic empirical research on political socialization began some thirty years ago, the idea of party identification as a primary vehicle of continuity in the American political culture was already well established. The works of Lazarsfeld et al., Campbell et al., and Hyman had paved the way for a tradition of scholarship in which partisanship was central to the understanding of mass political behavior.1 This tradition encompassed, and in part rested upon, the presumption that partisan feelings play a special part in the process of value transmission across generations. The core of the argument consisted of three major tenets. Party identification is shaped earlier than most other political attitudes and is strongly influenced by parental views. It remains unusually stable over the life cycle. It strongly affects other political attitudes, serving as an anchoring point for ideological commitments and issue stands.