Party Identification and Party Stability

'Party identification’ has been variously described: as an anchor; as constituting ‘psychological membership’ of, or ‘psychological identification’ with the party; and so on. The compilers of a recent collection of political attitude measures, published under the auspices of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (where most of the election analyses since 1952 have pivoted about the concept), even describe party identification as ‘probably the most important attitude variable in the field of political behavior’.² But the term itself and its connotations are misleading. Even where they do not suggest a borrowing from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysisγ they tend to define away a set of questions that need to be answered: a preference for one party compared to what?; an intense preference, in what sense and compared to whom?4In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that ‘if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free’, and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.