The Changing Basis of Party Competition: Education, Authoritarian–Libertarian Values and Voting

Abstract

The Changing Basis of Party Competition: Education, Authoritarian-Libertarian Values and VotingThe role of social structure as a determinant of electoral behaviour has been debated across Western countries, with one side in the debate arguing that the rise of the electoral conflict between authoritarian-libertarian values reflects the diminishing importance of socio-structural factors. In contrast, this article shows, using a unique representative sample from Denmark, how this conflict has its roots in an opposition between high-and low-education groups that divide over authoritarian-libertarian values, have developed education-based identities and group consciousness, and are influenced by these factors to vote for parties, each mobilizing their side in the conflict -that is, that the authoritarian-libertarian conflict is based on an education cleavage. Documenting for the first time the influence of education-based identity and group consciousness on voting, these findings demonstrate that socio-structural factors -partly through the voters' social identities and consciousness -continue to play an important role for electoral behaviour in Western countries. Likewise, the findings suggest that the conflict over authoritarian-libertarian values will have lasting importance for politics in these countries. The logical next step, therefore, will be to extend the analyses to the comparative level.

Populist demand, economic development and regional identity across nine European countries: exploring regional patterns of variance

“…In our models, we control for a series of covariates that, theoretically, are related to both our independent as well as our dependent variable. First, education is often considered a status marker and one of the core strata influenced by this are the lower educated (Stubager 2013). While some scholars see less or absence of (higher) education as an essential indicator of far right potential (Arzheimer 2009;Bornschier 2010), recent scholarship specifies this claim by arguing lower education is particularly indicative of populist potential (Bovens and Wille 2010;Elchardus and Spruyt 2016).…”

Nordic Research on Political Behaviour

“…Within the Nordic context, as in most other advanced democracies, the search for new and stable explanations of electoral behaviour has taken two different directions. First, we have the search for realignment or new cleavages that will replace class as a major determinant of voters' party preferences by looking at structural factors such as employment sector, gender (Knutsen 2001; 2005) and education (Stubager 2010; 2013), but also at the increasing importance of values when it comes to structuring the electoral choices of voters, which was previously considered in terms of post‐materialistic (Knutsen ), and later of authoritarian–libertarian, values (Stubager ).…”

How Party System Fragmentation has Altered Political Opposition in Established Democracies

“…One of the most discussed aspects of voting behaviour in recent decades has been the decline of traditional party linkages, such as partisanship and traditional social cleavage structures (see, for instance, Best 2011; Dalton et al 1984; Franklin et al 1992; de Graaf et al 2001; Knutsen 2006; see also Stubager 2013). A de-aligned electorate may serve as an important precondition for a decline in strategic voting, since loosening party ties provide room for other factors to affect voting behaviour.…”