beyond the sectarian divide: the social bases and

Beyond the Sectarian Divide: The Social Bases and Political Consequences of Nationalist andUnionist Party Competition in Northern IrelandAuthor(s): Geoffrey Evans and Mary DuffySource: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1997), pp. 47-81Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/194075 .

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B.J.Pol.S. 27, 47-81 Copyright ? 1997 Cambridge University Press

Printed in Great Britain

Beyond the Sectarian Divide: The Social Bases and Political Consequences of Nationalist and Unionist Party Competition in Northern Ireland GEOFFREY EVANS AND MARY DUFFY*

The Northern Irish party system is plausibly represented as two systems, in which party competition occurs within nationalist and unionist blocs. Social and ideological divisions within these blocs constrain parties' electoral strategies and thus facilitate or inhibit cross-communal

compromise. Using Northern Irish Social Attitudes data, various accounts of these intra- communal divisions are tested and their political implications assessed. Contrary to expectations concerning the effects of cross-communal contact, neighbourhood integration is found to have no relationship with partisanship although, consistent with political socialization theory, young people on both sides of the divide are more likely than those who are older to support the more recently introduced parties. Most significantly, however, there are noticeable asymmetries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalist blocs. Among Protestants, left-right ideology has a far stronger impact than constitutional position on patterns of partisanship; and social class has considerably stronger effects than does denomination. Most Protestants, whatever their partisanship, also express strongly unionist constitutional preferences. In clear contrast, on the nationalist side party support is polarized along constitutional lines, there is no cross-cutting ideological division over economic inequality, and a majority of Catholics adopt a moderate stance on nationalism. It is argued in consequence, that within the unionist bloc the pattern of intra-communal party competition militates against constitutional compromise as a solution to 'the troubles', whereas among nationalists the unidimensional structure of competition for electoral support and the distribution of attitudes towards the constitutional issue are likely to have influenced the adoption of compromise strategies by Sinn Fein.

Northern Irish politics has usually been characterized as sectarian. Beloff and Peele, for example, suggest that 'in Northern Ireland the sectarian divisions between Protestant and Roman Catholic - which interlock with the divisions over the constitutional status of Ulster - are the most important factors shaping electoral choice'.' They further argue that because of the extent of religious polarization, there is effectively no competition across the sectarian divide, as

'any attempt to broaden [party] appeal beyond a "natural" religious base risks

alienating the core of party sympathisers'. None the less, while such a

description rightly points to the most salient feature of Northern Irish politics, it is also an oversimplification, because it ignores the sometimes severe competition between parties representing the same side of the constitutional

* Nuffield College, Oxford. M. Beloff and G. Peele, The Government of the United Kingdom : Political Authority iln c

Changing Society, 2nd edn (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), p. 211.



48 EVANS AND DUFFY

debate. Thus the party system is more accurately characterized as a dual one, where intra-communal cleavages structure competition separately within nationalist and unionist blocs.2

In this article we examine the nature of this intra-communal party competition and consider how it is likely to impact upon cross-community political negotiations.3 We assume that a long-term solution to the Northern Irish conflict

requires the involvement of the different parties representing the nationalist and unionist communities, and that divisions within those communities are likely to affect the nature of intra-communal party competition and, in consequence, the progress of inter-communal negotiations.4 By examining the social structural and ideological sources of intra-communal divisions our aim is to

identify their implications for the electoral strategies of the two main parties representing each confessional bloc.5

For this purpose a rational choice approach to party competition is employed. This approach indicates whether the status quo represents an optimal vote-winning strategy and - where this is not the case - provides pointers to the issues on which parties are likely to shift ground in order to improve or maintain levels of support. It is thus assumed that political actors are, at least in part,

2 This of course ignores a section (less than 10 per cent) of the Northern Irish electorate who

support the centrist and bi-confessional Alliance Party and also the (growing) number of people who express no political affiliations. These are important groups to consider when assessing the potential for changes to the current status quo, although whether there in fact exists (apart from notionally) any viable middle ground, especially given the limited success of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, remains the subject of considerable debate: for example, J. Ruane and J. Todd, 'Diversity, Division, and the Middle Ground in Northern Ireland', Irish Political Studies, 7 (1992), 73-98. However, these groups are too important to treat merely as a side issue and will instead be explored in future work.

3 Surprisingly, while much has been said about the salience of the inter-communal divide and the lack of cross-religious voting, there has been a dearth of systematic empirical research exploring the nature of these intra-communal splits in partisanship. The work of E. P. Moxon-Browne (Nation, Class and Creed in Northern Ireland (Aldershot: Gower, 1983)) on political divisions among unionist

party supporters and more recent analyses of national survey data (for example, J. Curtice and T.

Gallagher, 'The Northern Ireland Dimension' in R. Jowell, S. Witherspoon and L. Brook, eds, British Social Attitudes: The Seventh Report (Aldershot: Gower, 1990)) rarely go beyond a first-order level of analysis. Studies such as that by Ruane and Todd ('Diversity, Division, and the Middle Ground') although interesting and suggestive, are limited by their anecdotal nature. Richard Rose's major work on Gov,erning Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective (London: Faber and Faber, 1971 ) dating from before 'the troubles' remains the most significant contribution to this area. Ian McAllister and Richard Rose ('Can Political Conflict be Resolved by Social Change?' Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27

(1983), 533-57; and McAllister, 'Class, Region, Denomination, and Protestant Politics in Ulster', Political Studies,, 31 (1983), 275-83) have also explored issues concerning attitudinal polarization which will be referred to in passing.

4 See P. Mitchell, 'Conflict Regulation and Party Competition in Northern Ireland', European Journal of Political Research, 20 (1991), 67-92, for further discussion of this point.

5 The confessional parties are, on the one hand, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) versus Sinn Fein (SF); and on the other, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) versus the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). See the next section for a fuller discussion of these.



Beyond the Sectarian Divide 49

motivated by the need to maintain or improve levels of support across their constituencies and that because of this party stances will to some degree reflect voter preferences. Social and attitudinal distributions that increase the electoral

rationality of cross-communal compromise, therefore, increase the possibility of a negotiated settlement, while those that remove the need for compromise decrease the chance of developing an acceptable inter-community solution.

Inevitably, the success of this approach rests in part on the accuracy of its

predictions.6 It should be noted in this respect that although the analysis which follows was initially undertaken in early 1994, it signals at least some of the

political strategies and ensuing negotiations which have occurred since that time.

Which factors influence whether cross-communal compromise is electorally rational? First, and most obviously, there is the distribution of attitudes towards constitutional questions. Ceteris paribus, if on any politically salient issue a

party is located on the periphery of the distribution of voter preferences, it is

likely to seek increased support by trying to move towards the centre of that distribution.7 Parties are more likely to endorse cross-communal constitutional

compromise if voters themselves are predominantly in favour of it. If the distribution of attitudes is less favourable to compromise, the likelihood of any party making risky conciliatory moves is significantly reduced, although this

might happen if there are 'external' incentives from Dublin or London, for

example. Such strategic movement is only probable, however, if there is both a pool

of potential voters adopting alternative positions on an issue and if this issue is relevant to the intra-communal competition for votes. The relevance of the constitutional issue to party competition is limited by at least two constraints.

6 The approach derives of course from Downs's influential formulation, although given the information costs associated with understanding voter choices in terms of issue preferences, we in general view dimensions of competition as arising from differences in ideology among the electorate. An ideological orientation - as indicated, for instance, by an expressed identification with labels such as unionist or nationalist - is likely to inform attitudes towards particular issues and thus serves as a heuristic for comprehending politics under conditions of low information rationality. See, for example, M. J. Hinich and M. C. Munger, Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

7 Evidently, this assumption does not hold when the party elite themselves are not receptive to vote seeking at the cost of principle. None the less, although such a possibility underpins many of the more significant criticisms made of rational choice analyses of party behaviour, its likelihood should not be accepted without question. Even for the politically committed, the question of electoral viability tends to raise its head. In Northern Ireland, for example, see J. W. McAuley, The Politics of Identit.: A Loyalist Community in Belfast (Aldershot: Avebury, 1994), p. 78, who illustrates how, despite Ian Paisley's strong influence on the direction of DUP party policies, when this influence threatens to take the party in a direction unsupported by a large enough proportion of the electorate, pragmatism and vote-winning considerations become paramount. Thus, when some DUP representatives noted the shift in public opinion in favour of Sunday opening (which Paisley strongly opposed), they suggested that: 'The strength of local opinion made the party change ... because [the Paisley stance] was losing us votes'.



50 EVANS AND DUFFY

The first constraint is the existence of more than one axis of issue-based

competition. The presence of alternative axes along which support is distributed reduces the need to compete on any particular issue. Thus the structure of intra-communal competition, and the degree of flexibility in this respect, is of considerable importance for understanding intra-communal politics. If constitutional questions are the only basis of division, a party that is located in an unfavourable location in that 'issue space' may need to move in order to maintain or increase support. To the degree that other issues are important for

dividing parties, constitutional compromise is less likely. Parties are free instead to place emphasis on issues that lie off the constitutional dimension,8 or to

attempt to generate entirely new issue cleavages on which they have more chance of gaining electoral success.9

Secondly, moves to the median-voter position on the constitutional dimension are unnecessary if partisan support is not calculative. Although we assume that parties calculate the electoral returns to their actions, there is no need to treat voters so narrowly.1' A well-established literature provides good reason to believe that voters support parties as a result of political socialization and

recruitment, not just because of their subjective expected utility." Partisanship in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, is unlikely to be accounted for simply in terms of cost-benefit calculations. To the degree that parties have distinct constituencies derived from political socialization, they are insulated from competition over issues and can avoid those sorts of electoral pressures.'2

Thus the multiple cleavage argument is simple: if there is more than one

8 That parties disadvantaged on the main dimension of competition emphasize other issues is indicated in I. Budge and D. Farlie, 'Party Competition - Selective Emphasis or Direct Competition? An Alternative View with Data', in H. Daalder and P. Mair, eds, West European Pairtv Svstemis.

(Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983, pp. 267-306). 9 This point derives from Riker's writings (W. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (San

Francisco: Freeman, 1982)). None the less, such innovation is unlikely to be successful in Northern Ireland, as it is difficult to see which new issues could plausibly be adopted by political entrepreneurs seeking to build an alternative electoral base. As Ted Carmines has argued: 'Losing parties and politicians who naturally turn to iinew issues to improve their political situation are severely constrained in a political system in which the existing alignment is pervasive and its issue basis is vivid. Political discussion is likely to revolve around the existing issue agenda in this situation no matter how much some political entrepreneurs would like to change that agenda.' See E. G. Carmines, 'The Logic of Party Alignments', Journal of Theoretical Politics, 3 (1991), 65-80, pp. 67-8.

10 Michael Laver elaborated this argument succinctly some time ago (M. Laver, 'On Defining Voter Rationality and Deducing a Model of Party Competition', British Jourinal of Political Science, 8 (1978), 253-6).

'' For example, A. Campbell, P. E. Converse, W. Miller and D. E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960).

12 Also, as Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie among others have pointed out (I. Budge and D. Farlie, Voting and Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1977), p. 4.), there are likely to be 'party reserved' spaces in the issue space, such that the ability of parties to move to an optimal position on an issue will be governed in part by the 'credibility' of their position change. The DUP, for example, would find it extremely difficult to persuade either supporters or opponents that they were genuinely endorsing pro-nationalist initiatives.




source of partisan support - whether that be due to competing issue dimensions or socialized group allegiances - it is less critical to be near the most popular position on any one issue. By loosening the link between levels of support and position on the constitution, alternative cleavages facilitate movement by parties either towards or away from voter preferences with regard to constitutional compromise.13

The presence of multiple cleavages also has implications for the stability of Northern Irish politics. The standard pluralist position argues that the trade-offs associated with multiple cleavages are conducive to political system stability.14 If this is the case, then to the degree that multiple cleavages are to be found within the nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland, they should serve to maintain the stability of the separate party systems in the region. Under these conditions, and contrary to the traditional liberal idea that multiple cleavages can facilitate moderation,'5 the existence of multiple intra-communal cleavages in Northern Ireland may under certain conditions serve to militate against compromise.

From this perspective, as we shall see, the recent political manceuvres of Sinn Fein can be understood in terms of their electoral rationality, as can the intransigence of both unionist parties (and in particular the Democratic Unionist Party) regarding all-party talks. Indeed, party behaviour leading up to and following the Downing Street Declaration, the publication of the Framework Documents, and the ongoing political disputes (notably over the issue of arms decommissioning) in the wake of the 1994 ceasefire, all serve to highlight the importance of understanding the nature of party competition within blocs and how this conditions strategies with regard to the constitutional, or other,

13 The implications of cross-cutting (multiple non-reinforcing) cleavages for cross-communal compromises in Northern Ireland were also investigated by Budge and O'Leary in their comparative analysis of Belfast and Glasgow in the 1960s. See I. Budge and C. O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 378. E. A. Aunger, In Search of Political Stability: A Comparative Study of New Brunswick and Northern Ireland (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1981 ) also compared the extent of cross-cutting in Northern Ireland and New Brunswick. Both Budge and O'Leary and Aunger's main interest, however, was in the possibility that moderation might be facilitated by cross-cutting divisions between Catholic and Protestant, and working-class and middle-class activists and voters. The implications of cleavage structures among the mass electorate within the nationalist and unionist communities was not examined.

14 R. Dahl, Polharchlv (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1971); and for the Northern Irish case, in particular, Aunger, In Search of Political Stability.

15 Although we should note that Budge and O'Leary found the alleged moderating effects of

cross-cutting cleavages were less straightforward than is sometimes assumed (I. Budge and C. O'Leary, 'Cross-Cutting Cleavages, Agreement and Compromise: An Assessment of Three Leading Hypotheses against Scottish and Northern Irish Survey Responses', Mid-West Journal of Political Science, 15 (1971), 1-30). The failure of cross-cutting cleavages to be clearly associated with political moderation was only partially resolved by a further analysis of how cross-cutting social divisions, although associated with moderation, might have produced reinforcing issue cleavages. See I. Budge and C. O'Leary, 'Attitudinal and Background Cross-Cutting: Further Evidence from Glasgow and Belfast', Mid-West Journal of Political Science, 16 (1972), 712-22.



52 EVANS AND DUFFY

compromises involved in agreements with the governments in London and Dublin, and internally with other Northern Irish parties.

In order to understand, however, how intra-communal party competition is likely to influence party strategies, we need first to identify the dimensions along which their supporters differ. Several explanations have been advanced to account for polarization in party support within political blocs, some more relevant to one side, others applicable to both. For example, constitutional disputes might be expected to provide sources of division within as well as between blocs, as should experience of the conflict and related predictors of intra-communal political extremism.'6 For reasons that are discussed below, a denominational split may also be found among Protestants. In addition, we might expect a class-based cleavage involving conflict over the distribution of resources - such as is the case in the rest of the United Kingdom and most other capitalist democracies'7 - to be apparent within nationalist and unionist groups. This could serve to cross-cut the effects of other cleavages. In other words, left-right ideology could provide a cross-cutting basis of party competition that has no direct link to constitutional and religious polarization.

In the rest of this article these hypotheses are elaborated and tested. First, given that the sources of support for the competing parties in the unionist and nationalist camps are in part suggested by considerations of their historical origins, these will be briefly described.'8

THE BACKGROUND TO INTRA-COMMUNAL PARTY COMPETITION

Since the 1970s, constitutional unionism has had as its main political exponents in Northern Ireland the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).'9 The first of these emerged from the Ulster Unionist

16 For example, McAllister and Rose, 'Can Political Conflict be Resolved by Social Change?' 17 For voting in Britain, see G. Marshall et al., Social Class in Modern Britain (London:

Hutchinson, 1988); and more recently, A. Heath, G. Evans and C. Payne, 'Modelling the Class/Party Relationship in Britain, 1964-92', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 158 (1995), 563-74; for class and the left-right ideology, see G. Evans, 'The Decline of Class Divisions in Britain? Class and Ideological Preferences in the 1960s and the 1980s', British Journal of Sociology, 44 (1993), 449-71; for comparative research, see G. Evans, ed., The End of Class Politics? Class Voting in Comparative Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press), forthcoming.

18 For discussions of the four main parties examined here see: W. D. Flackes and S. Elliot, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 1968-1993 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1994). Detailed treatments can be found in: UUP: T. Wilson, Ulster: Conflict and Consensus (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); DUP: S. Bruce, God Save Ulster! The Religion and Politics of Paislevism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); McAuley, The Politics of Identity; SDLP: I. McAllister, The Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party: Political Opposition in a Divided Society (London: Macmillan, 1975); Sinn Fein: P. Bishop and E. Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987), chaps. 20, 22). B. O'Leary and J. McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland (London: Athlone Press, 1993), chap. 5, give a good general overview of the Northern Irish conflict and its roots, and of the evolution of the current party system.

19 In fact, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) also supports the Union with Britain. However, this party has never put the constitutional debate at the centre of its politics and is truly




Council, formed at the beginning of this century to resist Home Rule

legislation20 and was the dominant force in Northern Irish politics from 1920 until the end of the 1960s. However, the hegemony of the UUP became

increasingly undermined by the fragmentation of unionism in response to internal political differences and the general turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. UUP dominance eventually collapsed in March 1972 when the Stormont

parliament was prorogued and direct rule from Westminster imposed. Following a period of regrouping, electoral support for the UUP has remained

relatively steady since the late 1970s (with the exception of the 1981 Westminster election, when it dipped considerably) and it continues to be the

single biggest player (with 34.5 per cent of the vote in the 1992 Westminster

election) in Northern Irish politics. The surprise election of David Trimble as

party leader in September 1995 (succeeding long-term leader James

Molyneaux) signals a potential restructuring of the UUP that is likely to involve its adoption of a more uncompromising approach to political negotiations around the constitutional issue.2

The splintering of political unionism in the late 1960s and early 1970s was

particularly due to tensions between those more or less intransigent to proposed social and political reforms. Simultaneously exacerbating and feeding off these tensions, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) emerged in 1971 as a more militant, unified and unequivocal unionist voice. In the words of its co-founder Desmond Boal, the DUP was 'to the left' on economic issues and 'right-wing' on the constitution. It made significant headway into the unionist vote, helped along by the charismatic appeal of its co-founder and current leader Ian Paisley, a Free Presbyterian minister.22 In particular, Paisley's leadership style,23 his

religious fundamentalism (which attracts a wider following than simply his Free

Presbyterian flock), and his no-nonsense articulation of working-class unionist

(F'note continuetd)

bi-confessional in terms of the support it draws. It is, therefore, marginal to our discussion of unionist/nationalist party support.

2" T. Wilson, Ulster: Conflict and Consensus (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 21 Trimble's election surprised many political commentators, who saw the more experienced,

more liberal John Taylor as favourite. The result was a clear signal that grass-roots unionists want a strong, articulate and uncompromising player to fight their comer in any post-ceasefire negotiations. To the extent that Trimble was the most hard-line of all the candidates, the outcome also represented a further set-back to a peace initiative already in stalemate over the issue of IRA decommissioning (Trimble has indeed stated that the token handing over of some arms will not be enough to bring him to the all-party negotiating table).

22 For example, when he first stood in the 1969 election as a Popular Unionist Party representative for Bannside against Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill, he was only narrowly defeated. He won his first Westminster seat the following year, and continues to attract a large personal vote in the European Elections in which, with around 30 per cent of the vote, he is the most strongly supported candidate.

23 For example, Bruce, God Save Ulster!; C. Smyth, lan Paisley: Voice of Protestant Ulster (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987).



54 EVANS AND DUFFY

concerns,24 are seen as important factors in enabling the party to become a central player in Northern Irish politics over a relatively short period of time.25 The DUP continues to attract a significant share of the vote (13.1 per cent in the 1992 Westminster general election), though this fell back after a high in the early 1980s and particularly in the wake of the DUP's failed resistance to the

Anglo-Irish Agreement of November 1985. Nevertheless, within a declining unionist bloc,26 it continues to mount a serious challenge to the UUP and despite their co-operation on some issues, competition between the parties remains considerable. This may, however, be set to change following Trimble's ascent to power and reports that the new leader wants to strengthen unionism by giving it once again a more unified voice, which may involve greater cross-party co-operation.27

On the nationalist side, there is a similar two-way split in partisanship. In this case however, as Whyte suggests, 'divisions run deeper and are of longer standing'.28 The main voice of constitutional nationalism is provided by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), which was formed in August 1970 in the shadow of the political upheavals of the civil rights years. The union of members of the Nationalist Party, the National Democratic Party and the

Republican Labour Party which in large part produced the SDLP has not always been an easy one and, in the early days especially, tensions between the nationalist and socialist aspects of party ideology were all too apparent.29 Pro-welfare, and supporting a united Ireland through peaceful, constitutional

means, the SDLP quickly became the political choice of the majority of Northern Irish Catholics and took the lion's share of their vote from its first (local government) election in 1973 until the early 1980s. Current support for the SDLP remains strong, with the party now attracting around two-thirds of nationalist party supporters and making a net gain in percentage of the overall vote in Westminster elections between 1983 and 1992 of 5.6 per cent (the highest for any party). As is the case for the DUP, support for the party leader John Hume tends to be particularly high and the party remains second only to the UUP in share of the vote (23.5 per cent in the 1992 Westminster general election).

The SDLP's only serious competition for nationalist votes is from Sinn F6in.

24 See S. Nelson, Ulster's Uncertain Defenders (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1984); Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed.

25 However, McAuley, The Politics of Identity, pp. 58-81, argues that all of these explanations oversimplify the nature of DUP support.

26 In Westminster elections, UUP/DUP vote share declined from 52.1 per cent in 1987 to 50.3

per cent in 1992, largely as a result of the challenge from Conservative party candidates. 27 Indeed, there is some media discussion of the likelihood of a single integrated unionist party

eventually emerging. 28 J. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 74. 29 The resignation of Gerry (Lord) Fitt in 1979 was a result of these tensions between nationalism

and socialism. Fitt argued that the party was becoming too 'green' and was moving away from its socialist roots: see W. D. Flackes and S. Elliott, Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 1968-1993 (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1994), p. 307.




Following the split in the Republican movement at the beginning of the 1970s, ('Provisional') Sinn Fein, the Provisional IRA's political wing, came to dominate the ultra-nationalist position.3" However, it was only in 1981 that the party emerged as a political force with the controversial by-election success of Bobby Sands, a hunger striker in the Maze prison. Since then, Sinn Fein has remained the preference of around a third of nationalist party voters, although its support was checked somewhat by the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and reached a low in the 1992 Westminster general election when the party polled just 10 per cent of the total vote, a drop of 3.4 per cent from 1983. Though the loss, in the 1992 election, of party leader Gerry Adams's Westminster seat to SDLP candidate Dr Joe Hendron was seen as further evidence of the party's decline, following the delivery of the IRA cease-fire and the increased international legitimacy accorded to Sinn Fein and more particularly to Adams' s leadership which followed, the fortunes of the party appeared on the rise, at least in the short term. However, this largely depended on Sinn Fein treading a delicate line between maintaining credibility and influence among its republican support base and reassuring the wider political community that it was serious about the peace process and about entering democratic talks regarding the future of Northern Ireland.3' The resumption of IRA violence in Britain indicates its failure in this respect.

Despite unionist accusations of pan-nationalist pacts between Sinn Fein and the SDLP, polarization between supporters of these parties has been marked in PR elections by less transfer of lower preference votes between the parties than between the unionists, with a substantial proportion of SDLP supporters giving their second preference vote to the middle-ground Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (a pro-union party) rather than to Sinn Fein.32 This suggests that many nationalist voters see fundamental differences between the two parties. Nevertheless, there have in the past been notable instances of co-operation between the SDLP and Sinn Fein, and the Hume-Adams dialogue that was the catalyst for a new wave of major political negotiations leading up to and following the IRA ceasefire, suggests a level of mutual understanding and some common ground on which party co-operation and compromise appear possible.3

3" P. Bishop and E. Mallie, The Provisional IRA (London: Heinemann, 1987). 31 S. Breen, 'Sticks and Stones' (Fortnight, no. 342, September 1995) also pointed out that the

longer the stalemate continued, and the longer the peace process could be 'spun out', the weaker Sinn Fein's bargaining position might become.

32 Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland. 33 None the less, the recent SDLP-Sinn Fein negotiations did not meet with total agreement among

the rank and file of SDLP membership (nor for that matter in Sinn Fein). For example, by the autumn of 1993, when the Hume-Adams dialogue became public knowledge and loyalist paramilitaries began to target SDLP representatives, John Hume was beginning to look more and more



56 EVANS AND DUFFY

SOURCES OF INTRA-COMMUNAL POLARIZATION

The social and political circumstances described above point to several possible lines along which party support within nationalist and unionist blocs may be divided. As we have argued, some of these are likely to reinforce the constitutional and religious divisions in Northern Irish politics, while others may provide cross-cutting sources of partisanship. Given the different implications of these axes of competition for the ability of parties to seek, obtain and secure a resolution to the conflict, it is important to assess the relative importance of each in determining party support. First, however, the factors which have been proposed to underlie intra-communal party choice are examined in turn.

In the first place, it is possible to invoke 'religion' or some aspect of religion as an explanation of polarization within political groupings. Although the overwhelming importance of religious affiliation is at the inter-communal level, there is also heterogeneity within the 'Protestant community'.34 Thus Moxon- Browne35 has shown that support for the DUP may be influenced by denomination, such that this party garners relatively more support from Free Presbyterians than does the other main unionist party.36 A relationship between denomination and partisanship could also occur because members of the more liberal, less fundamentalist denominations find the excluding anti-ecumenism of Ian Paisley unappealing, preferring instead the traditional unionism of the UUP.

Religiosity may also influence partisanship. A fundamentalist element to DUP support has often been cited,37 though so too has its base among secular urban youth. Since the latter effect would be confounded with variables such as age, once we control for these we might expect to find a link between being more religious and DUP support. Within the almost exclusively Catholic nationalist bloc there may also be a link between religiosity and party support. Thus the more strongly 'Catholic' nationalists might identify more with Catholic Ireland and therefore might prefer the more strongly nationalist party. Alternatively, it may be that the more religious have greater misgivings about Sinn Fein's links with the IRA and may therefore prefer the more moderate

(F'note continued)

marginalized. Subsequent developments however, have vindicated Hume and seem to have consolidated his position once again.

34 F. W. Boal, J. Campbell and D. N. Livingstone, 'The Protestant Mosaic: A Majority of Minorities', in P. Roche and B. Barton, eds, The Northern Ireland Question: Myth and Reality (Aldershot: Avebury, 1991).

35 Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed. 36 However, given that Free Presbyterians make up only around 1 per cent of the population in

Northern Ireland (and number only twenty-three in our overall sample), whatever the strength of the link between this group and any party, the numerical implications of that link are limited.

37 See, for example, M. Abele Mac Iver, 'Ian Paisley and the Reformed Tradition', Political Studies, 35 (1987), 359-78.




SDLP voice. The frequent instances of condemnation by Roman Catholic ministers of IRA violence and those who support it lend some weight to the latter argument.

Secondly, constitutional rather than religious factors may account for intra-communal divisions in partisanship. Given that historically the DUP (relative to the UUP) and Sinn Fein (relative to the SDLP) have campaigned as more uncompromising on the constitutional issue, it would seem likely that those identifying with these parties do so precisely because their personal positions on the constitutional question are more hard-line. This seems plausible, in particular for the nationalist side where for a long time Sinn Fein's 'armalite and ballot box' strategy effectively excluded it from mainstream politics. It may be, therefore, that strength of nationalist feeling is a key element in determining support for Sinn F6in versus the SDLP. Although divisions between the unionist parties on constitutional matters are less marked, the DUP is nevertheless perceived as having a less compromising and more cohesive unionist position providing a certainty and a security for those who themselves espouse a hard-line unionist ideology. As Mitchell suggests, the DUP 'most eloquently articulates the siege mentality of absolute opposition to a united Ireland under all circumstances'.38

The extent of inter-group contact also provides a theoretically-grounded explanation for intra-communal polarization. High levels of religious segregation have long been a feature of Northern Irish society, especially in economically depressed, urban areas.39 This segregation is not only geographical, but extends to the level of friendship and, to a lesser extent, into the workplace. Endogamy, likewise, is a widespread feature of Northern Irish society which ensures limited cross-communal integration. The 'contact hypothesis'40 suggests that extreme views towards another group are more likely to develop and thrive in situations of minimal contact between groups, whereas increased inter-group contact breaks down barriers of prejudice and fosters moderate beliefs.41 We might, therefore, expect support for more hard-line parties to be greater among those who have fewer opportunities for contact with members of the opposite religion and with their alternative political views.

38 Mitchell, 'Conflict Regulation and Party Competition in Northern Ireland', p. 71. However, we have already noted the new implications deriving from the election of Trimble as UUP leader and how this might make a simple hard-line/moderate party distinction less viable than has traditionally been the case.

39 M. A. Poole, 'Religious Residential Segregation in Urban Northern Ireland', in F. W. Boal and J. Neville Douglas, eds, Integration and Division: Geographical Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Problem (London: Academic Press, 1982).

4" G. W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1954; T. F. Pettigrew, Racially Separate or Together? (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971).

4' For an application of this idea in the Northern Irish context, see K. Trew, 'Catholic-Protestant Contact in Northern Ireland', in R. Brown and M. Hewstone, eds, Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).



58 EVANS AND DUFFY

Conversely, where levels of integration are higher we might expect greater support for parties more accommodating to representatives of the alternative constitutional position.42

All of the sources of division considered so far concern factors that may serve to reinforce the constitutional and sectarian nature of the political divide in Northern Ireland. In contrast, the potentially cross-cutting bases of party conflicts within nationalist and unionist blocs are likely to form around social class and the politics of redistribution: the familiar left-right dimension of party competition in capitalist democracies. Given that both unionist and nationalist communities are distributed quite widely across the class structure and have corresponding degrees of economic inequality,43 class position could provide a powerful basis of support both for and against free market versus redistributive policies and ideology - a division upon which the parties within each bloc can compete for votes.

On the unionist side, a fairly clear class basis to party support has indeed been frequently suggested.44 The economic insecurities of the Protestant working class in the early 1970s were not being adequately addressed by a UUP that was comprised of, and that had traditionally aligned itself with the concerns of, the Protestant middle class.45 As a result, a gap opened in the political market that was quickly filled by the emerging DUP, which had a strong working-class element, a more left-wing economic orientation, and which also promised a militant defence of the Union with Britain (itself perhaps perceived as a defence of Protestant economic interests). It could be, therefore, that a link between the working class and support for the DUP is a result of the party's position on economic/redistributive issues, especially in an environment where insecurities among economically less secure Protestants remain high.46

On the nationalist side, however, there is less of a distinction between the economic policy stances of the two parties, both of which are pro-welfare, though Sinn Fein perhaps targets more specifically the needs of the working

42 In addition to the effect of neighbourhood composition, urban-rural differences are also often seen as differentiating between moderate and more extreme party supporters, especially on the unionist side; e.g. McAuley, The Politics of Identity, chap. 4. The limitations of the data prevent us

examining that issue in detail. However, using a variable discriminating between those living in a

big city/big town/small town/village/countryside, we could find no effect on partisanship in either bloc once we had controlled for the effects of other important variables. In any case, although in the early days, the Paisleyite heartland was seen to be located in Belfast (see Rose, Governing Without Consensus, p. 43), by 1978 Moxon-Browne (Nation, Class and Creed, p. 96) could identify a considerable spread in DUP support outside Belfast into other urban centres (36.2 per cent) and, notably, into rural areas (38.8 per cent).

43 Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland, pp. 52-66. 44 For example, Nelson, Ulster's Uncertain Defenders; Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed. 45 This is not to say that the UUP did not have a measure of cross-class support, especially

post-Stormont when it was quite radically reorganized. However, whatever the UUP's appeal, it is clear that the DUP was from the beginning a more working-class vehicle for unionism.

46 Nelson, Ulster's Uncertain Defenders.




class, while the SDLP is more of a genuine cross-class campaigner. Thus, we would not expect the same level of polarization on a left-right dimension for nationalists as for unionists. If there is any class basis to party support, this may be because the Catholic working class, who are more directly affected by the violence and by the economic problems which result from the political conflict, may hold more extreme political views,47 which in turn may make the militant nationalism (and all that this promises) of Sinn Fein more appealing. In this

respect, class divisions among nationalists might not serve to cross-cut the constitutional cleavage in the same way as they might do among unionists.

It is further possible that any relationship between social class and

partisanship may not be simply a result of economic interests, but may be linked instead to values associated with levels of education. Increased education tends to produce more liberal political attitudes,48 and, once education is controlled for, the effect of class position on political extremism tends to be substantially reduced.49 Thus greater working-class support for parties such as Sinn Fein and the DUP may in part be a function of lower levels of education, which in turn makes the simple, direct appeals and clear-cut positions of such parties more

easily understandable and more appealing.50 Increased education, however, may facilitate higher levels of political sophistication and greater tolerance, and may lead to greater scepticism in the face of simple, one-sided messages.5 Moxon-Browne52 considers both class and education in his analysis of party support, but he presents insufficient information to assess the relative effects of these variables and their interactions with each other. Curtice and Gallagher53 also speculate as to the liberalizing influence of higher education on political outlook but again the lack of multivariate analyses makes it difficult to tease out the relative effects. McAllister's multivariate analysis of Moxon-Browne's 1978 data shows a significant but small effect of years of education on support for power-sharing versus majority-rule for Northern Ireland.54

47 McAllister and Rose, 'Can Political Conflict be Resolved by Social Change?' 4X For extensive evidence see, H. H. Hyman and C. R. Wright, Education's Lasting Effect on

Human Values (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979). 49 S. M. Lipset, 'Democracy and Working Class Authoritarianism', American Sociological

Review, 24 (1959), 107-28; and S. M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (London: Heinemann, 1981), pp. 476-88.

50 The populist appeal of the DUP may in part be due to its direct, simple, and emotive messages. With catchphrases such as 'Smash Sinn Fein', the recurring talk of Britain 'selling Ulster down the river', and with the clever turn-of-phrase at which Paisley excels, the party indeed lives up to its 1982 election slogan: 'You know where you stand with the DUP'.

51 S. Stouffer, Communism, Conformitv and Civil Liberties (New York: Doubleday, 1955); for a recent analysis, see L. Bobo and F. C. Licari, 'Education and Political Tolerance', Public Opinion Quarterly, 53 (1989), 285-308.

52 Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed. 53 J. Curtice and T. Gallagher, 'The Northern Ireland Dimension', in R. Jowell, S. Witherspoon

and L. Brook, eds, British Social Attitudes: The Seventh Report (Aldershot: Gower, 1990). 54 McAllister 'Class, Region, Denomination, and Protestant Politics in Ulster'.



60 EVANS AND DUFFY

Finally, age may condition political preferences. In particular, regardless of its constitutional, religious or ideological roots, intra-communal party support may be explained by cohort differences in political socialization.55 As is well known, in the party identification model of voting behaviour56 great emphasis is placed on the importance of formative socialization as a source of political preferences. Voting decisions are seen as the result of long-term, affective attachments to political parties learned during childhood and adolescence and stabilized by early adulthood. We might therefore expect that for unionists attachment to the DUP would be significantly greater among those reaching adulthood around or after 1970. Before this, the DUP did not represent a political choice for unionists and accordingly we might expect that older people would show more support for the traditional unionist party.

Such a split is less clear for nationalists, since both the SDLP and Sinn F6in are fairly recent additions to Northern Irish politics. However, Sinn Fein entered at a later point, after a period during which the SDLP had dominated the nationalist position. We might therefore expect a younger basis to Sinn Fein support.

Alternatively, any greater tendency for the young to show greater support for the DUP and Sinn Fein, could be explained by life-cycle changes. For example, young people are often seen as less conservative, more radical, and more extreme in their outlooks and this may account for any links between youth and support for more hard-line parties. This may be particularly true when the young have been socialized during an extended period of violent conflict. The political consequences of socialization might, therefore, derive as much from the social context as from the party political situation such that, regardless of the choices available to them, people growing up in a politically unstable environment may hold views better tapped by forceful rhetoric than by the voice of compromise.

If patterns of party support can be explained by life-cycle effects, we would expect the basis of DUP and Sinn Fein support to be always strongest among the young, whose preferences might then shift to the more moderate parties as they grow older. If, however, cohort and political socialization effects account for party preference, we would not expect levels of DUP/Sinn Fein party support to decline as generations age, but would expect them to remain fairly constant. Thus, assuming the continuing availability of the DUP and Sinn F6in as political options, the political socialization hypothesis would suggest that levels of support for these parties might actually increase over time, as generational replacement removes from the electorate those who grew up before 'the troubles'.

The foregoing explanations of partisanship have varying implications for the development of the party structure within Northern Ireland and, to the degree that this in turn effects the viability of solutions to the conflict, for the

55 K. M. Jennings and R. Niemi, Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and their Parents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).

56 Campbell et al., The American Voter.




perpetuation of the political conflict there. If, for example, the constitutional dimension of competition is dominant, it is likely to constrain parties to compete for votes on that issue, thus intensifying the electoral costs of marginal positions whether they involve either cross-religious compromise or constitutional 'extremism'. In contrast, the existence of prominent left-right divisions within unionist and nationalist camps will tend to reduce the salience of the constitutional issue as a competitive dimension. Even if parties hold relatively marginal positions on the constitutional issue, their support might not be compromised.

Alternatively, if age differences suggest that socialization during the troubles increases long-term levels of support for more hard-line parties such as Sinn Fein, such parties will have less need to moderate in order to remain politically successful. However, if this support has a basis in life-cycle rather than cohort differences, it is unlikely to grow significantly as the views of each generation mellow later in adulthood: the imperative for compromise on constitutional issues might, therefore, be more pronounced.

ANALYSIS

The study makes use of the Northern Irish Social Attitudes (NISA) data (combined 1989, 1990 and 1991 sweeps; achieved sample size, 2,668). Information on the technical details of the surveys and the wording of the measures used in the analyses which follow are given in the Appendix.

Table 1 shows party preference by religion and confirms the strong religious basis to Northern Irish politics. The overriding salience of the communal divide is illustrated by the negligible levels of cross-religion support for nationalist and unionist parties. There is some support for the confessional parties from non-religious respondents, a somewhat greater proportion of both Sinn F6in and the DUP's support coming from this group than is the case for the alternative parties in each bloc: 10.4 per cent of DUP support versus 7.1 per cent of UUP support, and 5.2 per cent of Sinn F6in support versus 2.9 per cent of SDLP support, comes from the non-religious. Overall, there is a higher proportion of unionist party support among the non-religious.57 Another important feature is the number of non-partisans, not so much among the non-religious (we might expect this to be high), but in the other groups too, especially Catholics, who comprise over 40 per cent of the group expressing no political preference and nearly half of the 'don't knows'. This may reflect either general political apathy or an unwillingness among Catholics to reveal their preferences, or it may be an indication that for Catholics in particular, the current range of political choices is less attractive than for unionists. The Alliance Party of Northern

57 This may reflect the higher proportion of these respondents who come from Protestant as opposed to Catholic backgrounds (measured by a question on whether those claiming no religious affiliation had been brought up in any religious tradition).



TABLE I Religious Affiliation of Party Supporters

UUP DUP S. Fein SDLP APNI Other No party DK/NA (n)

Protestant 92.4 89.2 - * 50.2 43.5 34.9 39.3 (1,370) Roman Catholic * 94.8 96.2 31.2 34.4 42.6 47.1 (893) No religion 7.1 10.4 5.2 2.9 18.7 22.1 22.5 13.6 (306)

Total 100.( 100.0 100.0 100. 0 100. 0 100.0 100 .0 100.0

n (780) (249) (77) (412) (235) (131) (479) (206) (2,569)

: Less than I per cent support.

t0 t')

z (.r,

z

-n

CC

CZ Cl "r 'T




Ireland (APNI) takes some of those not attracted to sectarian politics but overall levels of support for this middle-ground party are quite low.

It is clear that religion is important as a zero-order predictor of party support and that levels of inter-communal party competition are negligible. Thus, the idea that Northern Ireland has two co-existing party systems is strongly supported by the data. We examine next the characteristics of supporters within each bloc.

The Social and Ideological Profile of Unionist and Nationalist Supporters

Frequency distributions of demographic variables broken down by unionist versus nationalist party support, are presented in Table 2. The denomination profile of unionist party supporters closely matches that found in 1978 by Moxon-Browne.5s While more than 80 per cent of nationalist supporters go to church weekly, those who support unionist parties (who include some of the non-religious) are more evenly distributed across the three attendance categories. Compared with their unionist counterparts, there are relatively more nationalist party supporters in both the salariat and the petty bourgeoisie, but also a higher proportion in the working class.59 Nationalist party supporters are especially few among foremen and technicians.

The education breakdown shows both unionist and nationalist supporters concentrated among those with no or low-level qualifications. At the other end of the education spectrum, relatively more nationalist supporters are likely to hold degrees than are unionist supporters. Proportions of those from religiously homogeneous areas are similar for both unionist and nationalist party supporters, with more than two-thirds from each group living among a majority of their co-religionists.

Moving next to the ideological variables, we can see from Figure 1 that the spread across categories is noticeably different for the two groups. More than a third of those who support nationalist parties see themselves as 'not nationalist', while the corresponding figure for the unionist group is only 13 per cent. Conversely, while 55 per cent of unionist party supporters consider themselves either 'very strong' or 'fairly strong' unionists, only 36 per cent of nationalist supporters consider themselves equally strong supporters of their party. It is interesting that 39 percent of those supporting an explicitly nationalist party do not see themselves as nationalist. This may be as much due to the party system in Northern Ireland, where support can be as much determined by what you reject (for example, unionism) as by what you actually accept. Also, of

5X Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed, p. 89. 59 This reflects the more general social class by religion distribution which has been frequently

observed (e.g., L. O'Dowd, 'Social Class', in P. Stringer and G. Robinson, eds, Social Attitudes inl Northern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1991)), although it shows a considerable narrowing of the socio-economic gap to that noted by E. A. Aunger, 'Religion and Occupational Class in Northern Ireland', Economic and Social Review, 7 (1975), 1-18.



64 EVANS AND DUFFY

TA B LE 2 Frequency Distributions of Explanatory Variables for Nationalist and Unionist Party Identifiers

% Nationalist party % Unionist party identifiers identifiers

Denomination (n = 1,024) No religion* - 7.9 Presbyterian - 43.6 Church of Ireland 32.2 Methodist 7.1 Other Protestant 9.2

Church attendance (n = 488) (n = 1,044) Weekly 81.6 39.8 Twice monthly/monthly 8.0 23.3 Less often/never 10.4 36.9

Social class (n = 459) (n = 1,006) Salariat 18.3 16.7 Routine non-manual 17.2 22.2 Petty bourgeoisie 13.1 11.9 Foremen and technicians 2.8 6.8 Working class 48.6 42.4

Age (n =493) (n = 1,059) Under 26 years 17.4 9.6 27-38 years 28.6 19.2 39-50 years 19.1 20.1 51-64 years 15.2 22.0 Over 64 years 19.7 29.1

Neighbourhood integrationt (n = 328) (n = 666) All same religion 42.7 37.7 Most same religion 27.2 34.8 Half or less same religion 30.1 27.5

Highest educational qualification (n = 493) (n = 1,057) Degree 6.1 2.9 Higher ed. below degree 7.7 9.4 A level 7.7 8.7 O level 15.7 16.0 CSE or equivalent 8.5 9.6 No qualifications 54.3 53.4

* Non-religious unionist supporters are included in all analyses. The number of nationalist supporters claiming no religious affiliation is small (n = 16), so these are excluded from the analyses.

The question on the extent of neighbourhood integration was not asked in the 1990 survey.

course, respondents might support parties for reasons other than those

concerning constitutional ideology.6? None the less, the message is clear: the

6" The measure of nationalism or unionism is inevitably constrained by the questions available in the survey. Nevertheless, this self-placement question has the advantages of both being familiar




50 Party support

| Unionist .) 40 -

. Nationalist

, 30 - c,

20 - 0 ()

0 I

Very strong Fairly strong Not very strong Not un/nat

Strength of unionism/nationalism

Fig. 1. Strength of unionism and nationalism among party supporters

distribution of responses in the two communities is more favourable to hard-line unionism than it is to hard-line nationalism.

Supporters of the two nationalist parties are also significantly more left-wing, with a mean scale score of 10.75 (s.d. 3.55), than are unionist supporters (mean = 12.67 (s.d 3.97); F= 76.97; p < 0.001).61 Figure 2 shows that left-wing values are to some degree associated with both increased nationalism and increased unionism, although this pattern does not apply to people who are 'not unionist' or 'not nationalist' - indeed, 'non-unionists' are also likely to be left-wing. Nevertheless, even the non-linear association between left-right ideology and constitutional ideology is weak among both nationalist (eta = 0.16) and unionist (eta = 0.13) party supporters. The cross-cutting nature of constitutional and left-right ideology is therefore confirmed. We next examine those factors that are important for predicting support for each of the competing parties within each bloc.

(F'note continued)

to respondents and allowing consideration of nationalism or unionism as an ideological dimension within the two blocs.

61 Left-right ideology is normally distributed among both nationalist and unionist supporters.



66 EVANS AND DUFFY

15

Party support 14

Unionist 13 ~-

__I Nationalist

2 12 - 0

.I 11 -

.) 10 -

c 9- co

8-

7-

6-

Very strong Fairly strong Not very strong Not un/nat Strength of unionism/nationalism

Fig. 2. Mean left-right scale soore by strength of unionism and nationalism (separately for unionist and nationalist supporters)

Unionist Divisions

Table 3 shows the percentage levels of DUP support within the different

categories of the explanatory variables. Denomination, social class, age, education and strength of unionist ideology all show strong relationships with

party preference. Those in the mixed Protestant group, those from lower classes, the young, and the less religious all show greater DUP support than other groups. Strength of unionist ideology has an unusual effect, with both the most and least

unionist groups showing similarly high levels of DUP endorsement. Education also has a marked influence on partisanship, with lower-level (and no)

qualifications related to higher levels of DUP support. The neighbourhood integration effect is weaker but still statistically significant, indicating that DUP

supporters are more likely to come from areas where there are fewest Catholics. As many of the explanatory variables are related, it is important to consider

their net effects. For example, age and educational level are negatively associated (with older people tending to have lower level and fewer

qualifications), yet have quite similar patterns of association with partisanship so that as age and educational level increase so too does tendency to prefer the

UUP. To evaluate the impact of variables like these on partisanship we must

control for their associations. Table 4 shows the results of nested logistic regressions of unionist party

support on the various explanatory variables and allows their relative effects to




TABLE 3 Percentage of Unionist Party Supporters in Each Category of the Explanatory Variables Who Prefer the DUP to the UUP

% DUP support

% DUP support

Denomination*** (n = 1,024) No religion 32.1 Presbyterian 22.4 Church of Ireland 20.6 Methodist 23.3 Other Protestant 39.4

Church attendance*** (n = 1,044) Weekly 18.3 Twice monthly/monthly 21.4 Less often/never 32.5

Social class*** (n = 1,006) Salariat 12.5 Routine non-manual 21.1 Petty bourgeoisie 18.3 Foremen and technicians 27.9 Working class 32.6

Neighbourhood integration* (n = 666) All same religion 31.9 Most same religion 20.7 Half or less same religion 21.9

Age*** 26 or under 27-38 years 39-50 years 51-64 years 65 or over

Unionism***

Very strong Fairly strong Not very strong Not unionist

Highest educational qualification * *

Degree Higher ed. below degree A level O level CSE or equivalent No qualifications

Note: Relationships between each explanatory variable and unionist party support are statistically significant (using the Pearson Chi-squared test of association) at: * /^<0.05; ** p<0.01; ***

p < 0.001.

be considered.62 The model in column 1 is the baseline, which includes the six main explanatory variables: denomination, church attendance, social class, age, unionist ideology and neighbourhood integration. Left-right ideology is left out of this model so that its effects on the other parameters in the model can be observed when it is added in Model 2.

In the baseline model, age has the strongest effect on unionist partisanship. There is an incremental increase in DUP support with decreasing age, with the over 65 year olds most likely to prefer the UUP. Those born into the troubles, and those reaching their teens at the onset of the conflict are most likely to

support the DUP. Although the increase in UUP support across the age groups (from youngest to oldest) could be consistent with both the socialization thesis

6~ As the dependent variable is dichotomous, logistic regression is to be preferred to OLS regression. See J. Aldrich and F. Nelson, Linear, Probability, Logit and Probit Models (Beverlcy Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1984).

(n = 1059) 46.1 34.5 25.4 18.9 14.6

(n = 1,056) 31.7 21.9 19.6 35.6

(n = 1,057) 9.7

19.2 14.1 20.8 23.8 29.4



68 EVANS AND DUFFY

TABLE 4 Regression of UUP (0) Versus DUP (1) Support on Explana- tory Variablest

Explanatory variables+ Model I Model 2 Model 3

Age 49.40*** 48.67*** 65.76*** 65 or over (300) - 1.67(.29)*** - 1.73(.29)*** - 2.43(.34)*** 51-64 years (228) - 1.20(.29)*** - 1.26(.29)*** - 1.89(.34)*** 39-50 years (21 1) -0.77(.28)** -0.80(.28)** - 1.31(.31)*** 27-38 years (201) - 0.23(.27) - 0.29(.27) - 0.65(.30)* [26 or under (97) - -

Denominiation 21.85*** 25.42*** 25.29*** No religion (78) 0.01(.32) 0.01(.32) 0.06(.33) Methodist (72) 0.27(.34) 0.33(.34) 0.40(.35) Presbyterian (437) 0.36(.19) 0.42(.20)* 0.52(.20)* Other Protestant (93) 1.31(.29)*** 1.45(.30)*** 1.48(.30)*** [Church of Ireland (328) - -

Church attendance 16.50*** 13.36** 11.23** 0.14(.23) 0.09(.23) 0.14(.24)

Less often/ never (384) 0.75(.20)*** 0.68(.20)*** 0.65(.21)**

[Weekly (411)1 - - -

Social class 25.33*** 10.80 4.50 Salariat (165) - 1.24(.28)*** -0.87(.29)** -0.56(.34) Routine non- manual (221) -0.56(.21)** -0.37(.22) -0.14(.23) Petty

bourgeoisie (117) - 0.71(.28)* - 0.31(.29) -0.28(.30) Foremen and technicians (66) - 0.08(.32) 0.03(.32) 0.22(.34) [Working class (420)] - - -

Unionism 18.04*** 12.49** 11.98** Not at all

unionist (141) - 0.51(.29) - 0.40(.29) -0.32(.30) Not very

unionist (332) - 1.01(.24)*** - 0.86(.25)** -0.50(.25)* Fairly unionist (402) - 0.69(.23)** - 0.60(.23)* -0.59(.24)* [Very unionist (162)1 - -

Neighbourhood integration 1.75 1.76 2.08

-0.15(. 1) - 0.15(. 1) - 0.16(.1 l)

Left-right ideology 30.82*** 23.29*** -0.14(.03)*** - 0.12(.03)***

Highest edluc. qualification 24.94*** Degree (30) - 1.28(.70) Higher ed. below degree (98) - 0.44(.35) A level (91) - 1.56(.40)*** 0 level (165) - 0.93(.27)*** CSE or equivalent (98) - 0.85(.30)** [No qualifications

(555)1

Initial - 2 log likelihood 1145.52 1003.13 968.41 Model chi-squared 142.39*** 34.72 '** 27.59*** Degrees of freedom 18 I 5

' Nested logit models; n = 1.037. To deal with missing data, we included a number of 'answered/not answered' variables in the models. The regression coefficients for these have no substantive interpretation and are not reported above.

Main figures are logistic regression coefficients (standard errors in parentheses). Positive coefficients for categorical variables indicate that the category is more supportive of the DUP than is the reference group [in square brackets . Figures in italics are Wald statistics indicating the statistical significance of the overall variable effect. Effects statistically significant at: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.00)1.




that those already attached to traditional unionism would be unlikely to switch allegiance with the emergence of the DUP, and with the life-cycle thesis that political preferences moderate with age, the pattern is not a perfect illustration of either. This is because the DUP gains a quarter of its overall support from those in the oldest category who would have been at least already in their late 30s when the party emerged.

The effect of denomination on party support is mainly due to the difference between the 'Other Protestant' group and the remaining categories, members of the former being more likely to support the DUP than any others. This reflects the inclusion of Free Presbyterians in the mixed Protestant group, since these are especially likely to support the party led by their religious founder.63 Also, partitioning out the non-religious and any differences due to denomination, there remains a strong effect of church attendance on partisanship which indicates that those most likely to support the DUP are those who attend church least often. This suggests that DUP partisanship may be based in denomination rather than in religiosity per se. It also lends some credibility to the thesis that an important element of DUP support is from more secular unionists.64 However, the weak zero-order relationship observed between neighbourhood integration and partisanship, with DUP support higher among those living in wholly Protestant neighbourhoods, disappears in the multivariate model.

Social class has a stronger effect on party choice than either of the two religion variables. The DUP gains significantly more of its support from the working class than from any other group except foremen and technicians. Compared with the working class, the salariat in particular shows a marked preference for the UUP. Indeed, the effect of class on partisanship is at least as substantial as the effect of unionist ideology. Moving from 'very strong' unionist to 'not very strong' unionist, there is a decreasing tendency to favour the DUP over the UUP. This is in line with what would be expected if the hypothesis linking partisanship with strength of ideology is true. However, among those considering themselves 'not unionist' there is an increased level of DUP support - a pattern that can also be observed in Table 3. This group is more pro-DUP than the 'not very strong' unionists. Such a pattern may reflect differences in interpretation of 'unionism' among respondents, but it also appears likely that some DUP supporters are attracted to the party for other reasons, such as its left-wing policies, rather than simply for its stance on unionism.

From Model 1 we have seen that several social characteristics - in particular, age and class - have pronounced effects on the tendency to prefer the DUP to the UUP even when differences in constitutional ideology are controlled for.

"3 Note that even when we exclude Free Presbyterians from this group they are still more pro-DUP than other Protestant groups.

64 Exploring the religiosity/religious fundamentalism issue further, we examined a large range of attitudinal measures (relating to perceptions of God and God's role in one's life, self-rated religiosity, etc.) and could find no further effect once denomination and church attendance were controlled for.



70 EVANS AND DUFFY

Model 2 takes this further by including left-right ideology in the list of explanatory variables. As the chi-squared statistics at the bottom of column 2 in Table 4 show, this significantly improves the fit obtained from the original model. It also substantially reduces the class effect: the coefficients for all class positions - but especially for the salariat - relative to the working class are reduced. This suggests that it is indeed some measurable stance on economic and redistributive issues which accounts for a sizeable portion of the initial effect attributed to class position. The inclusion of left-right ideology also affects the coefficients for denomination: the tendency for 'Other Protestants' to favour the DUP is increased, while the contrast between Presbyterians and members of the Church of Ireland also reaches the 5 per cent significance level, with the former more supportive of the DUP. Also in Model 2 the unionism effects are reduced, suggesting that some of the initial effect attributed to strength of unionist ideology was actually due to the more left-wing preferences of some groups along the unionist spectrum. The overall pattern is, however, the same.

Model 3 tests the hypothesis that the influence of social class on party preference is partly explained by differences in educational achievement. Adding qualification level brings a further statistically significant improvement in fit. DUP support is more likely to come from those with no formal qualifications. Compared to this group, most others show preferences for the UUP, though the effect is not a simple linear one of increasing UUP support with higher qualifications - A-level holders are especially likely to support the UUP. The lack of a significant difference in the preferences of the unqualified and degree holders may be due to the small number in the latter group (and therefore the high standard error). The class effect remaining after the addition of left-right ideology is completely removed with the addition of education. The effects of denomination, unionism and integration are relatively independent of education, but the coefficients for age, and in particular the youngest age, group increase. This indicates that once we control for the fact that the young tend to have more and higher qualifications than the old, young people are even more likely than their older counterparts to favour the DUP. There is now even a significant difference between the two youngest groups.

Together, Models 2 and 3 suggest that the greater working-class tendency to support the DUP is not simply a function of economic factors but is also linked to lower levels of education: to the least educated the more direct, straightforward political rhetoric of Ian Paisley and other party representatives may be more appealing than the approach taken by the UUP. They also show that left-right ideology has a substantial effect on DUP support net of other ideological, religious and sociological factors. It therefore not only cross-cuts the effects of constitutional ideology, it is a more powerful predictor of intra-communal political division than is the constitutional issue.65

65 Adding the strength of unionism variable to a baseline model with age, denomination, church attendance, social class and neighbourhood integration, improves the fit of the model by far less

(chi-squared 17.90; 3 df, p< 0.001) than does adding the left-right ideology scale to the same baseline (chi-squared 40.24; 1 d.f.; p < 0.()01 ).




Nationalist Divisions

Table 5 shows the percentage of those in each category of the explanatory variables who prefer Sinn Fein to the SDLP. As was the case for unionist party support, there are relationships between party preference and all the variables, but especially social class, age and strength of nationalist ideology. More

frequent church attendance is linked with lower levels of Sinn Fein support, suggesting that commitment to Catholicism may discourage endorsement of a more militant political approach. The working class and the routine non-manual workers are more likely to support Sinn Fein than are those in other class

positions. In particular the salariat are almost all SDLP supporters. Also noticeable is the relationship between age and party preference. More than a third of those in the youngest age group are Sinn Fein supporters, whereas levels of support in each of the other groups (and especially among those over 38 years old) are low.

TA B L E 5 Percentage of Nationalist Party Supporters in Each Category of the Explanatory Variables Who Prefer Sinn Fein to the SDLP

% Sinn Fein support

% Sinn Fein support

Church attendance* Weekly Twice weekly/monthly Less often/never

Social c(lacss*** Salariat Routine non-manual Petty bourgeoisie Foremen and technicians Working class

Age*** 26 or under 27-38 years 39-50 years 51-64 years 65 or over

(n = 488) 13.6 25.6 23.5

(n = 459) 3.6

22.8 6.7

20.2

(n = 493) 38.4 19.1 5.3 5.3 9.3

Nationalism * * *

Very strong Fairly strong Not very strong Not nationalist

Neighbourhood integration * All same religion Most same religion Half or less same religion

Highest educ. qualification i

Degree Higher ed. below degree A level O level CSE or equivalent No qualifications

(n= 490) 48.2 24.2

4.3 7.9

(n = 328) 22.1 15.7 9.1

(n =493)

6.7 5.3

13.2 31.2 14.3 14.6

Note: Relationships between each explanatory variable and nationalist party support are statistically significant (using the Pearson chi-squared test for significance of association) at: * p < 0.05; **

p<0.01: *** p< 0.001.

Levels of support for Sinn F6in are low both among those with no commitment to nationalism and among those who see themselves as 'not very



72 EVANS AND DUFFY

strong' nationalists.66 Among the other two groups, a quarter of 'fairly nationalist' respondents support Sinn Fein, rising to almost a half among the most strongly nationalist. On neighbourhood integration, we find a similar pattern as for the unionist party supporters, such that the more militant party has greater support among those living in neighbourhoods with fewer members of the other religion.

The results of the multivariate analyses are shown in Table 6. In the baseline model we find that the significant zero-order relationship between religiosity and party support is removed when we control for other variables (especially age; the young being less religious). Similarly, extent of neighbourhood integration fails to discriminate between Sinn Fein and SDLP supporters. The class effect remains largely a contrast between the pro-SDLP salariat and the other classes (notably the working class). As is the case for unionist supporters, age has a very strong influence on party preference. However, the nature of the effect for nationalists is rather different, being more of a 'one-step' effect. As discussed before, it is those who grew up with the conflict who, compared with the other groups, show a marked preference for Sinn Fein. Those who had already reached adulthood by this time (those 39 or over at the time of the survey) are much less likely to support Sinn Fein, regardless of further increases in age.

Turning to the measure of constitutional ideology, it can be seen that while there is no significant difference between the preferences of the non-nationalists versus the 'not very strong' nationalists, both groups are much less likely to support Sinn F6in than are members of either of the two more nationalist groups.

In Model 2 it can be seen that, quite unlike the equivalent model for unionist supporters, left-right ideology has no significant impact on partisanship and makes no improvement to the fit of the model. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the other variables remain largely unaffected by the inclusion of this measure of economic stance. In particular, the effect of class on support for Sinn Fein is not explained by differing class positions on left-right issues, as is the case to some extent among unionist partisans.

In Model 3 the significant relationship observed between party preference and education at the zero-order level disappears once we control for the other variables. The class effect is reduced, although there remains a significant difference between the salariat and other groups. Nationalist ideology and age are largely unaffected, though the contrast between the two youngest groups is somewhat increased. The effect of strength of nationalist ideology remains constant across the different models and, together with age, is clearly the most polarized dimension in nationalist party competition.

"6 Remember, however, that a much higher percentage of nationalist party supporters see themselves as neutral on the constitutional issue.




TABLE 6 Regression of SDLP (0) Explanatory Variablest

Versus Sinn Fein (I) Support on

Explanatory variables"

Age (n) 65 or over (95) 51-64 years (74) 39-50 years (91) 27-38 years (139) 126 or under (85)1

Church attendan(ce Twice monthly/monthly (39) Less often/never (51) IWeekly (394)1

Social class. Salariat (82) Routine non- manual (78) Petty bourgeoisie (59) IWorking class (231)#

Nationalism

Very nationalist (55) Fairly nationalist (126) Not very nationalist (I 15) INot at all nationalist (188)]

Neighbourhood integrationl

Model 1

41.15'** - 2.53(.51 )*** - 2.74(.64)*** - 3.12(.70)*** - 0.92(.40)*

1.75 0.63(.49) 0.23(.48)

Model 2

40.66*** - 2.54(.52)*** - 2.77(.64)*** - 3.11(.70)*** - 0.93(.41 )*

1.57 0.60(.49) 0.23(.48)

11.98* 11 19* - 3.36(1.06)** - 3.27(1.08)**

- 0.11.39) - 0.08(.39) - 0.92(.61) - 0.91(.61)

46.41** 2.70(.47) **

1.75(.40)***

- 0.44(.56)

0.83 - ().19(.21)

Left '-right ideology

44.87**:

2.66( .47)*** I .75(.40)***

- 0.45(.57)

0.71 -0.18(.21)

0.17 - 0.03(.06)

Highest educational quallificatieo Degree (29) Higher ed. below degree (37) A level (37) 0 level (77) CSE or equivalent (42) [No qualifications (262)]

Inititl - 2 log likelihood Model chi-squared Degrees of' freedomn

420.79 144.41*** 13

276.38 0.26 l

Nested logit models, n = 484. To deal with missing data, we included a number of 'answered/ not answered' variables in the models. The regression coefficients for these have no substantive interpretation and are not reported above.

Main figures are logistic regression coefficients (standard errors in parentheses). Positive coefficients for categorical variables indicate that the category is more supportive of Sinn Fein than is the reference group [in brackets]. Figures in italics are Wald statistics indicating the statistical significance of the overall variable effect. Effects statistically significant at: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; **p < 0.001.

Foremen and technicians have been combined with the working class for this analysis.

Model 3

33.78*** - 2.69(.58)*** - 2.93(.68)*** - 3.15(.75)*** - 1.12(.43)**

1.80 .64(.50)

0.29(.47)

8.06 -3.19(1.25)**

- 0.22(.44) - 0.87(.63)

44.52*** 2.74(.49)*** 1.93(.42)***

- 0.38(.58)

0.61 - . 17(.22)

0.26 - 0.03(.06)

7.82 ().26(1.35)

- 0.70(.98) - 1.06(.76)

0.64(.45) - 0.60(.61)

276.12 8.37 5



74 EVANS AND DUFFY

The lack of association between education, left-right ideology and party support, and the relatively restricted effects of class, contrast with the pattern observed among unionist supporters. Nationalist supporters clearly have fewer dimensions (of those examined here) along which they are polarized. There are no cross-cutting left-right issues and most social characteristics are either only weakly related to party support or are not relevant at all. Only age continues to have a strong effect.

DISCUSSION

In this article we have looked beyond the inter-communal divide in Northern Ireland and have demonstrated that, as Brendan O'Leary suggests, political partisanship is considerably more than 'some Pavlovian reflection of the balance of sectarian forces'.67 In doing so we have examined the bases of intra-sectarian party competition, since these provide at least some of the constraints under which political actors seek to maintain or improve their support. With this in mind, a number of possible sources of intra-communal party competition have been assessed.

Some of our findings serve to undercut certain theories of intra-communal political divisions: neighbourhood integration appears to be of no consequence for partisanship within either the unionist or the nationalist blocs. This might be considered somewhat surprising given the volume of literature and the many practical initiatives built on the assumption that cross-religion contact brings moderation in views about the other group.68 It is possible, of course, that our measure simply does not tap 'contact' sufficiently well to justify rejecting the hypothesis completely, although two other measures (regarding friends and relatives), and a combined integration measure of all three indices, also failed to find any significant association in the multivariate analyses of intra-communal party support. Yet again, most of the experimental or

quasi-experimental research in psychology seems to indicate that for positive outcomes, inter-group contact requires contact on equal footing, preferably with shared rather than competing goals, and with the backing of wider social norms.69 At present, these conditions hardly seem to apply in Northern Ireland.

For nationalist supporters, explanations of party support in terms of religion or religiosity have received little support. Religiosity (measured by church attendance) does not discriminate between supporters of Sinn Fein and the SDLP. On the unionist side, however, church attendance does have a substantial

'7 B. O'Leary, 'Party Support in Northern Ireland, 1969-1989', in J. McGarry and B. O'Leary, eds, The Future o 'Northern lrel/and, Appendix 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

6X E. Cairns, Ccughllt in the Cros.fire: Children and the Northern- Ireland Conflict (Belfast: Appletree Press, 1987).

69 M. Sherif, Group Conflict (and Co-operation: Their Social Psv'chology (London: Routledge &

Kegan-Paul, 1966).




effect, with those attending least often being most likely to support the DUP. And for denomination, the cautions of Moxon-Browne, Boal, Campbell and Livingstone, and others have been borne out.70 The 'Protestant community' cannot be viewed as a monolith in terms of party preference at least, since compared with those from the Church of Ireland, the mixed group of Protestant denominations (Free Presbyterians, in particular) and to a lesser extent Presbyterians, are more supportive of the DUP. We speculate that, especially given the pattern of DUP support among the 'non-unionists', this link may be due to the Protestant exclusivism and anti-ecumenism espoused by Ian Paisley and more attractive to some denominations than to others.

The most significant of our findings, however, concern age, class and constitutional ideology. Age is an important basis of splits in partisanship among both communal groups. On each side the effect is of a similar magnitude but takes a slightly different form: a dramatic, one-step effect for nationalists; a more incremental effect for unionists. The result is that young people on both sides of the communal divide prefer the younger, generally less moderate parties. On the unionist side at least, the gradual nature of the incline in DUP support with youth lends support to the socialization hypothesis. Alternatively, as we suggest in our initial discussion of competing sources of partisanship, it may be that the young are more attracted by the militant, more idealistic nationalism of Sinn F6in, or the hard-line unionist rhetoric of the DUP, and are less drawn to the often (though not always) more muted politics of the SDLP and the UUP. If this is the case, the levels of support observed here may be the result of life-cycle effects and, while they may not diminish over time, they will at least not increase substantially.

Clearly only a time-series analysis can fully answer these questions. However, we are able to address this issue, at least informally, by comparing our findings with those relating to 1978 published by Moxon-Browne.7' Dividing his sample into six age groups (slightly different from those used in the main analyses here), Moxon-Browne shows that 26 per cent of UUP support in 1978 was drawn from the under 35s, compared with 35 per cent for the DUP. In our data from 1989-91, we find that only 17 per cent of UUP support is now drawn from the under 35s, compared with 39 per cent of the DUP's following. The proportion of DUP support being drawn from among young people has clearly increased compared with the proportion of UUP support obtained from them: a gap of only 9 percentage points in 1978 had widened to 22 percentage points by the end of the 1980s. Given that the life-cycle account implies that the relative proportions of support for the two parties should remain reasonably constant over the twelve year period, this is evidence that the relationship

70 Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed; Boal, Campbell and Livingstone, 'The Protestant Mosaic: A Majority of Minorities'.

71 Moxon-Browne, Nation, Class and Creed.



76 EVANS AND DUFFY

between age and party preference on the unionist side may be explained, at least in part, in terms of a socialization effect.

This conclusion is also suggested by examination of the self-placements of younger supporters on the measure of constitutional ideology. Young people are not in general more hard-line than are the oldest cohort. Thus, although some younger nationalist supporters (18.6 per cent) consider themselves very strong nationalists, 41.9 per cent label themselves not at all nationalist. This is compared with 14.6 per cent and 21.9 per cent respectively among the oldest group. This is even more strongly the case among unionists where there is no evidence of a more hard-line constitutional position despite their greater levels of support for the DUP: among the youngest group, 8.8 per cent are very strong unionists, versus 23.2 per cent in the oldest group, while 34.3 per cent of the young see themselves as not at all unionist and only 6.2 per cent of the oldest cohort. Thus older people are clearly not less hard-line on the most salient political issue dividing the population as a whole, but continue to prefer the more established, traditionally more moderate parties. The socialization hypothesis would predict exactly this.

The implications of the effects of age on support for more or less hard-line parties on both sides of the communal divide are intriguing. On the one hand, the discovery of cohort differences rather than life-cycle effects suggests that

generational replacement by people socialized during the troubles will, over time, increase support for hard-line parties. In the long term, these parties might not, therefore, be constrained to shift to any sort of middle ground in order to maintain popular backing. On the other hand, the generally more moderate nationalist as well as unionist identities found among the young clearly do not herald the growth of an increasingly more hard-line position on the Constitution. Indeed, the fact that younger voters are more moderate in their views on nationalism and unionism suggests that to the degree that constitutional

ideology is relevant to party competition, the hard-line parties might need to soften their constitutional positions to maintain electoral support. In this view, the negative implications of the link between youth and support for the DUP and Sinn Fein for the likelihood of finding a solution in Northern Ireland may be much reduced.

Although the findings with regard to age are similar for both nationalists and unionists, the effects of class, education and ideology - both left-right and constitutional - are clearly rather different in the two blocs. Thus although social class (but not education) does have a limited impact on partisanship among nationalists, the constitutional cleavage is far more important for distinguishing between the supporters of the two nationalist parties. This schism is in turn reflected in the parties' respective stances on constitutional issues. It is not

surprising that a party which traditionally has refused to reject violence as a means to a united Ireland should attract mainly the most strongly nationalist of

supporters. On the unionist side - in contrast - the constitutional issue is not so

important in determining party support. Indeed, more of the differences in

support are accounted for by a left-right cleavage involving both left-right




ideology and class position, with the latter reflecting in part class differences over left-right economic issues. This is certainly intuitively plausible given that, in the first place, the distinction between the unionist parties on constitutional issues is neither so clear nor so deep as it has been between Sinn Fein and the SDLP; and, secondly, given the circumstances of the DUP's emergence as a party born out of and sustained by working-class Protestant perceptions of threat, not just to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, but to the very social, religious and economic fabric of their Protestant Ulster. However, it should also be remembered that differing education levels account for a substantial part of the class effect on unionist partisanship. This would suggest that the greater tendency for the working class to support the DUP and for the salariat to prefer the UUP is not just related to economic factors but, as already suggested, may be linked to party styles and the nature of party rhetoric. As we have suggested above, the extent to which this may change following Trimble's election remains to be seen. It is unclear whether Trimble will be able to spin the hard-line rhetoric to bring on board former DUP support without alienating his moderate middle-class supporters, perhaps prompting some defections to the Alliance party.

These patterns hold mixed implications for the likelihood of constitutional compromises. Among the nationalist parties, the cleavage structure is such that for Sinn Fein to maintain or improve upon its popular support it has needed to move to a less extreme and, therefore, more competitive position on the constitutional issue. Prior to the initial dialogue with John Hume in 1993, Sinn Fein's position was clearly in the tails of the distribution of nationalist sympathies and this is reflected in its pattern of support here among more or less nationalist respondents over the period 1989-91.72 Thus, in the light of the downturn in party fortunes and faced with no other salient dimensions along which to compete with the SDLP for votes, Sinn Fein was pressured to shift to a less extreme position on the nationalist axis in order to improve its electoral prospects.73 This at least in part explains the political manoeuvring by the party (spearheaded by Adams) which helped precipitate the Framework Documents, the cease-fire, and the negotiations which followed. These can be seen as strategic moves on the part of a Sinn Fein leadership responding to a situation that had become a political dead-end, and were rewarded in the elections of 30 May 1996 with almost 16 per cent of the vote. Of course, this is not to discount the possibility that - as many commentators have suggested - the IRA's increasing recognition that a military campaign was not going to change their aims was also an important factor in shaping the change of republican strategy.

72 Even if it is accepted that the nature of survey non-response will have led us to underestimate the extent of extreme nationalism in the population, the true distribution will not be very far removed from that shown in Figure 1. Moreover, the lack of an alternative dimension of ideological competition is unlikely to have been affected by non-response. Indeed, non-respondents are likely to be those who see the nationalist question as the most important question.

73 Sinn Fein's loss of its only Westminster seat (and the political credibility this afforded) undoubtedly was a further stimulus to its shift in electoral strategy.



78 EVANS AND DUFFY

However, although in vote-winning terms Sinn F6in had more to gain than to lose from its shift - however marginal - to a more moderate position, events in 1996 have shown that the party undoubtedly faced serious difficulties in selling any compromise package to its hard-line followers and to the IRA. These are likely to view any concession as a sell-out of fundamental political principles and are therefore likely to force the party away from the most electorally viable strategy. This carries with it the possibility that, as in the early 1970s, the ultra-nationalist position will be split between extremists and those willing to make concessions. Unsurprisingly, therefore, by the autumn of 1996 Sinn Fein was in a difficult position, its bargaining position having been weakened by the collapse of the cease-fire and the evident problems involved in treading the delicate line between maintaining international goodwill and preserving its position as the representative of hard-core nationalism.

On the unionist side, in contrast, the DUP has little need to compromise on the constitution in order to win votes. Not only is the distribution of unionist sympathies more heavily skewed to the position adopted by the DUP than is the case with the nationalists and Sinn Fein, but the party has other bases of support that undercut the need for constitutional compromise. The left-right division is of considerable importance within the unionist bloc, so that even if competition for votes is necessary - if only to offset the slowly declining size of the DUP class and education base - it can take place over economic issues. The DUP can, therefore, remain intransigent on the constitutional issue without seriously endangering its share of the unionist vote, whereas Sinn Fein is pressured to compete on the constitutional dimension because it cannot outflank the SDLP on the left-right dimension: Sinn Fein is already in a fully competitive position with regard to left-right issues. Quite apart from the principled, ideological objections of unionist party representatives to constitutional negotiations, as long as they remain optimally placed to win votes on the unionism issue, they have no electoral incentive to shift to a more moderate position. This does not mean that the unionist parties cannot be manoeuvred into negotiations by the actions of Westminster and other interested players, only that they are unlikely to make a deliberate shift while their supporters remained fixed in a more uncompromising position. This may be even more true in the wake of Trimble's election, as he perhaps prepares to move closer to the DUP's hard-line position, further reducing competition on that issue. However, our identification of a prominent left-right axis distinguishing party supporters suggests that talk of the re-emergence of a single, consolidated pan-unionist party ignores a fundamental feature of the existing political dynamic.

The evidence suggests that there are important asymmetries in the factors which condition partisanship on either side of the communal divide, with cross-cutting cleavages far more pronounced on the unionist than on the nationalist side. In particular, the importance of the left-right dimension indicates that the concerns of the unionist working class and their expression of these through support for the DUP are likely to require attention in any political negotiations aimed at effecting a solution to the political problems in




Northern Ireland. This second dimension, coupled with the distribution of

pro-unionist sympathies among unionist supporters, also means that the impetus for compromise by electorally calculating unionist parties appears to be limited.74 Among nationalist party supporters, in contrast, the competition between Sinn Fein and the SDLP for the nationalist vote has been, and probably remains, more conducive to constitutional compromise. Notwithstanding the

multiple exigencies that influence elite political actions, social cleavages and

electorally calculating parties can be seen to provide one explanation of political change in a context that has usually been characterized as fuelled more by primordial passions than electoral rationality.

APPENDIX

The Surveys

The 1989-91 NISA surveys mirror the basic approach and structure of the British Social Attitudes surveys administered in Britain since 1983.75 The surveys in each of the three years consisted of two components: an interviewer-administered questionnaire and a supplementary (shorter) self-completion questionnaire. Questions addressed many of the core areas covered in the British instrument but in addition tapped issues relating specifically to Northern Ireland.

The survey was designed to yield representative samples of adults (18 years or over) living in private households in Northern Ireland. Because of the small geographical size and low population density, a simple random design was employed. The current rating list of private households was stratified into three geographical areas: Belfast, East Northern Ireland, West Northern Ireland. Within each of these a simple random sample of addresses was selected, with probability of selection proportionate to the number of addresses in the stratum. Interviewers used a Kish grid to select one individual from each household where initial co-operation achieved. To adjust for the effect of household size on the probability of selection a weighting procedure was applied to the data prior to analysis. The overall response rates for the three years respectively were 66 per cent, 70 per cent and 71 per cent. These were comparable to those achieved in the British Social Attitudes surveys and the British Election Studies.76 In the

74 Though in so far as it militates against the merging of the parties into a single unionist voice, the potentially greater difficulties (regarding political negotiations) that would likely emerge if there was only one electorally powerful party are also avoided.

75 The NISA data are available in the ESRC data archive, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, C04 3SQ. England. See the questionnaire provided at the end of Jowell etal., British Social Attitudes: The Seventh Report, for examples of the issues tapped by the survey.

76 This is true despite criticisms that, because of the political problems, data collection in Northern Ireland is more difficult and thus unit non-response rates likely to be higher. However, non-response may be more prevalent in those areas where the conflict is more marked and this may in part explain why underestimation of extremist views and support for extremist parties is sometimes reported (see Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland, p. 75) and appears to be a problem in this data set in relation to Sinn Fein support (3 per cent of the sample: around 10 per cent of the vote share in elections). Another likelihood is that some (probably the more ambivalent) Sinn Fein supporters are in fact claiming to be SDLP supporters, perhaps because of social desirability pressures or because of the fear and suspicion that a situation of conflict engenders. This may even lead to an underestimation of differences between the two groups of party supporters. Alternatively, the distortions caused by false self-classification may even out: Sinn Fein supporters may appear more 'hard-line' if weaker supporters are excluded; SDLP supporters may appear less moderate when they include a contingent of actual Sinn Fein identifiers. Relative differences may, therefore, be largely unaffected.



80 EVANS AND DUFFY

pooled data set for the combined three years females were over-represented (57 per cent); respondent ages range from 18 to 95 years with a mean of 47 years; and the religious composition of the sample was 53.5 per cent Protestant and 33.6 per cent Catholic, with 11.5 per cent expressing no religious affiliation and the remainder unclassified.

Measures

Party support was measured using questions about which party respondents 'supported' or felt 'closer to'. Respondents who expressed no preference up to this point were then asked: 'If there was a general election tomorrow in which only Northern Irish parties were standing, who would you vote for?'

Protestant denominations were coded as 'Presbyterian', 'Church of Ireland', 'Methodist' and 'Other Protestant'. Free Presbyterians (only twenty-three in the whole sample) were coded with the latter category. Since reasonable levels of support for the unionist parties come from those claiming no religious affiliation, these were also included as a 'No religion' category. Because of the low level of non-Catholic support for nationalist parties, these were excluded from analyses. Frequency of church attendance was used as an index of religiosity, with categories ranging from weekly attendance, to attendance less often than this but at least monthly, to infrequent or no church-going.77

Social class was measured using the schema devised by Goldthorpe and his colleagues.78 The schema was condensed to provide five classes: (1) the salariat (professionals and managers); (2) routine non-manual workers; (3) petty bourgeoisie (the self-employed); (4) foremen and technicians; (5) the working class (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers). In multivariate analyses of nationalist party support, the foremen and technicians were combined with the working class (since the two groups tend to be reasonably similar in occupational characteristics and political attitudes) to avoid problems with small cell sizes.79

Age was divided into five categories. The youngest group comprised those born at the same time or after the onset of the troubles, while the second group were those who had reached at least their teens when the conflict began. The other three groups divided those who were adults before this period. This categorization was chosen, first, to provide meaningful age groups relative to the onset of the conflict and the party-political changes which accompanied it; and, secondly, to take account of any associated non-linearity in the age effect.

Inter-communal contact was indicated by the extent of residential integration. The form of the question used to assess this was: 'About how many of your neighbours would you say are the same religion as you?' [all, most, half, less than half, none].

Nationalist and unionist ideology was measured by the question: 'Generally speaking, do you consider yourself as unionist, nationalist or neither?' Those identifying with one ideology were further classified by their response to the question: 'Would you call yourself a: very strong/fairly strong/not very strong nationalist/unionist?' Cross-over between support for

77 There are some problems with this measure, not least its relatively poor ability to discriminate between Catholic respondents, the majority of whom attend weekly mass. See I. McAllister, 'The Devil, Miracles and the Afterlife: The Political Sociology of Religion in Northern Ireland', British Journal of Sociology, 33 (1982), 330-47. It is also difficult to assess the extent to which church attendance directly reflects religious commitment or is linked more to social pressures and habit. However, we have also examined alternative measures of religiosity and none was any better at predicting party support.

7X R. Erikson and J. H. Goldthorpe, The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

79 For further information on the occupational characteristics of the classes in the Goldthorpe schema and the implications of various forms of aggregation for its validity as an indicator of

Goldthorpe's concept of class, see G. Evans, 'Testing the Validity of Goldthorpe Class Schema', European Sociological Review, 8 (1992), 211-32.




parties on one side of the constitutional debate and support for the alternative ideological position was negligible, so two separate variables were created. One was a four-category variable including those with no nationalist sentiment, in addition to those considering themselves very, fairly, or not very strong nationalists. A similar variable was created to reflect varying commitment to unionism.

To measure left-right ideology, we used a scale comprised of five items tapping issues relating to economic inequality and the redistribution of wealth,80 which has been developed specifically to provide a reliable and valid measure of left-right political beliefs.8' Responses to each item were measured using five-point agree-disagree formats, where 'strongly agree' was given the value 1 and 'strongly disagree' the value 5, with the usual graduations in between and a centre point of 3. A summated scale score ranging between 5 and a possible 25 was then created by adding the scores for individual items. Scores were arranged so that higher values represented increasingly right-wing attitudes. The scale has a good level of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.81).

Finally, educational level was classified according to highest formal qualification obtained. There were six groups: degree, higher educational qualification below a degree, A-level, O-level, CSE or equivalent, and no qualifications.

8X The five questionnaire items used to tap left-right ideology were: 'Government should redis- tribute income from the better-off to those who are worse off'; 'Big business benefits owners at the expense of workers'; 'Ordinary people do not get their fair share of the nation's wealth'; 'There is one law for the rich and one law for the poor'; 'Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance'.

sl G. Evans, A. Heath and M. Lalljee, 'Measuring Left-Right and Libertarian-Authoritarian Values in the British Electorate', British Journal of Sociology (1996), 93-112.

