Publisher's Synopsis
Focusing on new approaches to the history of electoral behaviour, the authors argue that with a few exceptions, the subject is dominated by concepts and methods associated with the work on the electoral sociology of 19th- and 20th-century Britain carried out in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then not only has the political topography of contemporary Britain changed a great deal, but a growing body of research, both in history and political science, has begun to revise earlier assumptions and conclusions about electoral behaviour past and present. Through a critical survey of the impact of psephological techniques on modern British history, together with a series of reassessments of key historiographical controversies made familiar by the work of historians influenced by electoral sociology, this text questions how well the approach of electoral sociologists has stood the test of time?
