Social structure and collective preference formation: Opportunities for left party strategy in the 1970s and 1980s
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Abstract
People make history, but not under freely chosen conditions, and political parties are more than the passive reflection of collective demands and preferences originating in the prepolitical sphere of social relations. Politicians actively participate in shaping people's political views (“issue leadership”). Nevertheless, it is misleading to attribute the power to create political consciousness and action exclusively to the realm of politics. Both sociological determinism and political voluntarism shun a more complex reconstruction of the relationship between social structure and politics.