Social Mobility

Social systems differ greatly in their openness, in the degree of opportunity their members have to move from one status level to another and from one job to another. Politic has great influence on the level of mobility in any given society. It has been assumed that left parties stress equality of opportunity where the parties of the right or conservatives stress achievement.

This paper attempts to discuss the relationship assumed to exist between the people's political preferences and their subjective social class. Much of the voting behaviour literature can be categorized by one of the following three hypotheses: (Broh 1973:5) People vote according to their issue attitude; issue is dependent upon level of conceptualization of politics; issue voting is dependent upon the perception of part different on issues.

Although all the above categories effect people's political preference; This paper focuses only the second category of conceptualization of politics. The political preferences has been one that attract great deal of attention, subjectivly as well as objectively. The paper puts emphasize on the subjective social class rather than objective class, however, discussion of the objective will not be left out from the discussion. The paper will also compare and contrast the role of subjective social in determining people's political preferences of Germany and Finland.

There has been an assumption that social classes would condition the consequences of political predisposition on voting behaviour.(Morris 1964:117) An analysis was therefore required of the dynamic composition of party pluralism with German and Finland, with a simultaneous consideration of social class and political predisposition. Although a detailed description of each country's political system cannot be provided in this short essay, the paper will address the structure of political parties in both countries and its influence on electrode vote.

THEORY

The Analyze of the voting behaviour has been studied in many different ways. Before undertaking critical discussion of the voting behaviour of the democratic states, it is important to answer the most basic questions, who "vote"? The actually turnout various considerably in countries for different groups in the electorate and for people with different degree of social class.(Brown, Broh and Prysyd 1975:20) for example in the US educated people are much more likely to vote then less educated. Bacuse of lack of expectation from the government to change the situation of less advantaged populations kept some of those people from voting.

One of the most important predictors of voting behaviour is a persons party identification and strength of the person's partisanship. People who call themselves working class are more likely to vote for a political parties that cilams that they represent the working class, mainly socialist parties than the people who call themselves middle class, further more, the strong the person identification with the party the more likely he/she likely to vote to support the candidate of the party

A person's status, wether based on his social class or his ethnic religious groups has long been held to condition his political behaviour fundamentally (Tenowth and Mavick 1964:25)

" We may assume that the demands people tended to make, and the ways they except "politics" to effect their lives, are strongly influenced themselves by their social groups they belong to or identified themselves with" their social views of politics is equally effected how much confidence they have in their own ability to take part in political Action ( Morviik 1964:26-25)

In the United States (but not in Canada) members of different classes tend to vote for candidates of different parties. The working class has traditionally voted Democratic and upper middle class tended to split between the two parties. Which class are more conservative , which more liberal? Seymour Martin Lipset has shown that it is important to distinguish between economic and noneconomic issues when discussing liberalism. Working class people take a liberal position on economic issue, as you may expect. That is, they want many social services to be supported with taxes, and they don't mind if the government regulates business and trade as long as such regulates business and trade as such regulation is in the interest of ordinary people. (lipset, Martin 1967: )

Study conducted by John H. Goldtherd and associates found that in British pubic vote according to their subjective social class. For example 70% of the people survey who subjectively working class and identified with left wing political parties, mainly labour manual workers voted for labour party in both in 1955 and 1959 elections. By contrast, white calor worker and middle class who subjectively identified themselves the conservative party and liberal party voted for those parties. In 1968 study done by Goldberth concluded that subjective social class effect voting pattern of the population. (Gold, Likewod 1968:130) However, this doesn't mean that working class vote for left always. The subjective class cannot represented the actually class on the people surveyed, to arrive a conclusion that working class vote for left or that middle class vote for conservative. On should study the actual social class and how that is translated into the theory that social class effects on vote.

People's whose income and education indicated that they belong to working class believed that the labour party is the party of working class and as working class man they expected

that a labour government would improve their economic and social position and that of the country as a whole, and it would also provide better social services ( Refer ) However, the author feels that the reasons to why they voted to labour parties doesn't represented the assumption of the social class effects influences the way people vote. partly because people's attitude of party politics effects how they vote. In other words, one cannot expected to vote a particular parties if he/she has a negative views about party politics ( page 63 )

According to Golderth one can predict political attitude from individuals subjective class identification or from his occupational status as objectively defined " Different people perceive class structure in different ways and , whatever the objective reality of class is , people may have different images or models of this reality. These images, as well as the actual structure class are often assumed to determine people's political and social attitude behaviour". Persons social characteristics and his attitude towards politics may effect his decision to vote for particular political party. People's social status, social group membership and political attitudes are often linked with their political parties, More precisely , their attitude political parties. Thus political parties appeal to voters on the bases of their social class and social groups. (Asher, Richardson 1977:20)

Students of the voting behaviour have routinely found that a correlation between the social class position of the voters and the party they typically voted for. The theory of voting behaviour argues that persons in a professional and business occupations, persons, with high level of education are more likely to vote for a party that stands for the projection of business interest than persons in low income, low prestige occupation. Low income people have traditionally voted for Social democrats that promise the improvement of working class and expansion of social welfare in which low income population provide the services which they cannot offer.( Refere )

Lipset and Rokken argue that in modern democratic states, political parties have developed largely as instrument of various class interests. Lepset and Rokken based their theory on the three reasons. First, they feel that the absence of the monaholic unity among groups sharing common economic interest have encouraged in forming common shared political parties. Most of the socialist and social democrats born out of this commonly