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The political meaning of dining out: testing the link between lifestyle and political choice in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2015

Nicoletta Cavazza  and
Piergiorgio Corbetta
Nicoletta Cavazza*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Comunicazione ed Economia, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy
Piergiorgio Corbetta
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione, Università di Bologna, Italy
*
*E-mail: nicoletta.cavazza@unimore.it
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Abstract

The debate that has arisen around the weakening of the traditional cleavages’ heuristic power in explaining vote suggests considering the role of lifestyles in designing politically meaningful social aggregates. We investigated the relationship between lifestyle and voting behavior, establishing the degree to which this relationship traces the effect of the socio-structural categories (e.g. social class) or is, at least in part, independent of them. Through a k-means clustering, we individuated a typology of four Italian lifestyles; we showed its relation to socio-demographic features and its ability to discriminate participants’ political attitudes. The subscription to each lifestyle was significantly associated with voting behavior, net of the variance accounted for by the traditional cleavages. The theoretical implication and further direction of research are discussed.

Keywords

lifestylesocial cleavagessocial classpolitical orientationvoting behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
Italian Political Science Review / Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 23 - 45
Copyright
© Società Italiana di Scienza Politica 2015 

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