A Critique of the Consumption Cleavage Approach in British Voting Studies

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Abstract
In recent years the theory of consumption cleavages has progressed far towards supplanting traditional explanations of voting behaviour resting on socialization and issue-based electoral choice. What is not often realized is that the new theory cannot readily coexist with traditional explanations. If consumption cleavage theory is right then much of what we thought we understood about political behaviour is wrong; and the implications of this confrontation extend far beyond voting studies or even political science, to fields as diverse as anthropology and social psychology. In this paper it is argued that traditional explanations of voting choice have not been proved defective by the consumption cleavage theorists, nor has the proposed replacement been proved superior in this field of study. The consumption cleavage approach is questioned because its adoption would involve great sacrifices while offering little in return.