Brahmin Left Versus Merchant Right: Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948–2020

Abstract

This article sheds new light on the long-run evolution of political cleavages in 21 Western democracies. We exploit a new database on the socioeconomic determinants of the vote, covering over 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020. In the 1950s and 1960s, the vote for social democratic, socialist, and affiliated parties was associated with lower-educated and low-income voters. It has gradually become associated with higher-educated voters, giving rise in the 2010s to a disconnection between the effects of income and education on the vote: higher-educated voters now vote for the “left,” while high-income voters continue to vote for the “right.” This transition has been accelerated by the rise of green and anti-immigration movements, whose distinctive feature is to concentrate the votes of the higher-educated and lower-educated electorates. Combining our database with historical data on political parties’ programs, we provide evidence that the reversal of the education cleavage is strongly linked to the emergence of a new “sociocultural” axis of political conflict.

Political inequality, political participation, and support for populist parties

“…Therefore, our contribution to the related literature implies an all-encompassing theorization of the aforementioned empirical observations. In that sense, our approach is in line with a growing number of theoretical studies investigating the relation between social identity, inequality and populism (Guiso et al 2018;Gethin et al 2021;Pastor and Veronesi 2021;Grossman and Helpman 2021;Bonomi et al 2021;Guiso et al 2020). Third, we engage with the scientific discussion of the most recent emergence of populist movements and add to the understanding of strategies they may use to win alienated groups.…”

“…However, alienated voters may be encouraged to engage again if given a political alternative, which explicitly addresses their capabilities. In that sense, it has been observed that the ever-rising radical and populist forces in established democracies are relatively more successful among socially underprivileged voters (Han 2016;Emmenegger et al 2015;Rooduijn 2017;Oesch 2008;Georgiadou et al 2018;Guiso et al 2018;Gethin et al 2021;Gest et al 2017;Burgoon et al 2018;Hobolt 2016;Guiso et al 2020;Schulte-Cloos and Leininger 2021). Not only are these parties' manifestos characterized by promising future social security, but populist platforms are also designed to be more easily accessible.…”

Consequences of income concentration for democratic processes in contemporary Western and comparable societies: Evidence for OECD countries, 2017–2019

“…As a result, one can realistically expect authoritarian and dictatorial policies in core countries of the West in the foreseeable future. Indeed, one can already identify authoritarian and dictatorial policies in such Western core countries, primarily the United States under the post-2016 ultra-conservative, radical right autocratic regime and earlier, as during and since Reaganism, and to some degree in Brexit Great Britain as well as during Thatcherism (Alvaredo et al, 2018; Bonikowski et al, 2021; Gethin et al, 2022; Jacobs and Dirlam, 2016; Lamont, 2018; Piketty, 2014; VanHeuvelen, 2020). And one can expect that such illiberal and undemocratic tendencies will persist, even expand and intensity in these and probably via contagion or contamination in other Western core and less central countries experiencing the high or growing concentration of income and wealth (Piketty, 2020).…”

“…As a corollary, Piketty (2014) infers that the concentration of capital and income tends to reach 'extremely high levels' that have the potential to undermine democratic societies' core 'meritocratic values and principles of social justice'. Furthermore, most recently, Piketty (2020) 2 issues the warning that illiberal xenophobic populism may become victorious in the electoral process and by its radical actions result in destroying global capitalism and democracy, so long as democratic societies do not profoundly transform the current capitalist system in a 'less inegalitarian, more equitable, and more sustainable' form (similar warnings are implied in Gethin et al, 2022). In this connection, Müller (2014) observes that populism is on the 'rise across the West: from the American Tea Party to the Front National in France' and beyond and characterizes populism as 'a profoundly illiberal and, in the end, directly undemocratic understanding of representative democracy'.…”

Ideology and Monetary Policy: The Role of Political Parties’ Stances in the ECB's Parliamentary Hearings

“…This literature has, so far, focused on a single dimension of ideology, namely the left-right divide (Giesenow and De Haan, 2019;Cahan et al, 2019;Hibbs, 1992;Alesina, 1988). While this divide has proved to be historically relevant (Gethin et al, 2022;Piketty, 2018), existing works in political science point to the emergence of new dimensions that might have superseded this traditional distinction in party politics (Ford and Jennings, 2020;Caughey et al, 2019;Norris, 2019;Kriesi et al, 2008;Inglehart, 2008). New political cleavages have potentially affected the relationship be-tween politicians and independent central banks too.…”