Political Behavior
- What is Political Behavior?
Mass political behavior consists of those actions of ordinary citizens aimed ar influencing political outcomes
- electoral arena
turnout
vote choice
- Protest arena
- Interest group arena
Funnel of Causality
Orders the various causal factors in terms of their proximity to political behavior
originally proposed by Campbell et al
Some elements are missing from the picture and we'll add these
norms
emotions
personality
Step 1
economic structure + socials divisions + historical patterns
identities/ interests/ values
example: The church-state cleavagee shapes the political conflict over gay marriage
Step 2
identities + interests + values
attitudes/ beliefs
identities reflect the psychological sense of belonging to a specific group
interests are the materiaö stakes that a person has
values reflect desired goals or end states
someone might oppose gay marriage because of a deep religious identity
a gay person might favour gay marrriage because they'd like to get married
someone favoring equality might vote for gay marriage
Step 3
attitudes + beliefs
behavior
attitudes: a learned tendency toward the evaluation of an object
beliefs: the idea that some proposition about the world is true
- Social Groups and Party Systems: The Classical European Model
The fundamentals of politics: The funnel of causality
Structuralist approaches
Rational choice: individualistic perspective
Structuralism as "group theory" (Hall & Taylor 1996
Focus on interactions, networks
social identities and group formation
compatible with culturalism
In electoral studies: Question how social factors shape electoral outcomes
How social factors shape electoral outcomes
economic structures
Social divisions
Historical patterns
Learning outcomes
What is specific about conflicts rooted in social structure
funnel of causality: link to group identitiy
Understand how West European party systems came about
Understanding their susequent evolution
What determines the relative iimportance of multiple cleavages
Structural conflicts
Anchored in social structure: description of society and relationships between individuals
Positions: Worker, owner, catholic, non-religious, rural or urban resident
Roles: What it means to be a worker etc. - related to counter-roles
Groups: Shared understandings of what a worker, owner or religious person is
From social to political conflict
Multiple potential political conflicts: class, religious, racial, ethnic, linguistic, national, or gender - and many more
Which ones become politicized?
Structuralism: macro-processes of modernization as critical junctures
National building, industrialization (Lipset & Rokkan)
Secularization, educational revolution, value change, post-industrial society
European integration, globalization
Potential and mobilized cleavages
Which social antagonisms become mobilized?
Historical cleavages - Lipset & Rokkan
Social movements introduce innovation
New cleavages since the late 1960s
Goals: Understand political conflict in Western Europe and its evolution
Individual-level underpinnings of these processes - values, ideologies, preferences, identities
Lipset and Rokkan (1967): The formation of West European party systems
What is a party system?
A configuration of parties
A system of interactions (Sartori 1976)
Two critical junctures explain make-up and differences between party systems
National revolution
Industrial revolution
Parties reoresent social groups
Alliances between groups
Configuration of party systems
Alliances can be predicted or explained
Ultimate aim: Explaining the presence and relative strength of different cleaves
The first "critical juncture": The national revolution
Nation-building triggers territorial opposition: The center-periphery cleavage
Culture of the center vs. local cultures (Regional parties in Scotland, Canada, Spain oppose national or liberal parties)
A cultural antagonism: Church-state cleavage
Secularizing impact of the French revolution
Centralizing nation-state vs. historical privileges of the churche (education!)
Produces a great deal of variance
Christian Democratic parties (Austria, Germany, CH, later in Italy and France)
The second "critical juncture": The industrial revolution (Industrialization and extension of franchise leads to two economic cleavages
Primary vs. secondary sector
Protectionism (peasants) vs. free trade (industry and commerce
Parties: Agrarian and peasant's parties (SVP) against Liberals
The class cleavage
Industrial bourgeoisie - working class
Conflicts over political participation, distribution, economic and social rights
Social Parties, Social Democracy, Workers' Parties
Communist parties due to split within the left
Extensions
How social groups are formed: Distinctive working-class movements
Sociological factor: closure
Social mobility closure
Openness of society to upward mobility through education
Contrast between USA and Europe
Interaction closure
Who people interact with (Max Weber, Anthony Giddens ... )
The role of mass parties in reinforcing social closure
Political factors: Political parties
Workers' parties create subculture: party press, organizations, sports clubs, unions
The social construction of boundaries
Establishing cultures: the values and views characteristic of different classes as they are historically formed thorugh autonomous organisation (Rueschemeyer, Huber, Stephens)
Creating strong partisan loyalties
The relative importance of cleavages
Lipset & Rokkan (1990) stress
Sequential mobilization
Social groups retain loyalties (Mechanism: social closure and group appeals
Not all voters are "available" for mobilization!
Existing cleavages shaoe subsequent ones
The class cleavage: The social composition of left-wing electorates in the 1950s/1960s
Share of workers that vote for left parties (vertical axis)
Share of workers in electorate of left (horizontal axis)
What is missing?
The individual-level story
Voters have multiple group attachments
How do we cross-pressured voters decide which party to vote for?
Cleavages as a concept to bridge the micro and macro levels
Elements of cleavage
Social structure
Social identity
Political organization
Equivalent concepts at the individual level
Position in social structure (class, education, religion, milieu, etc.)
Group identification
Political loyalties (party identification)
Stryker (1980): Identities and their relative salience
Symbolic interactionalism
Each individual has multiple identities
Arranged in a salience hierarchy
Hierarchy determines action
Who you interact with is shaped by social structure (social groups)
Interaction shapes identitiy salience
For cross-pressured individuals, the most salient identitiy prevails
- Values and Ideology
How do we study values and ideology?
Cultural atrifacts
(Participant) Observation
Sample Surveys
Random samples
Asking questions
The idea
Every citizen has an a priori known, non-zero probability of being selected into the sample (simple random sampling)
Problem areas
Coverage error
Frame to generate the sample does not match the target population
Literary digest
Nonresponse error
Selected units refuse to do the survey
A masive probem with response rates being often mich less than 50%
Idea
Values are mental constructs
Elicit them by asking specific question that shed light on the values
Problem areas
Do people hold values? Is there anything to guide their response?
Unreliability
Bias
Social desirability
Method effects
Mode effects
Three Micro-Perspectives on Values
What are values?
The enduring belief that a certain end state is personally or socially preferable to another end-state
Value Hierarchy
According to Rokeach, values form a hierachy
The most highly ranked values are the most relevant for political behavior
Beauty > Freedom > Equality
A different perspective: Value Clusters
Materialist
Maintain order
Price control
Mixed
One from Materialist
One from Postmaterialist
Postmaterialist
Participation
Free speech
Value change
Younger generation grew up in affluence - basic needs taken care of
As a result younger individuals are committed to postmaterialist values - autonomy self-expression
Generational replacement results in a silent revolution - the transformation away from materialist values
Schwartz proposes a series of 10 universal human values
Self-direction
Stimulation
Hedonism
Achievement
Power
Security
Conformity
Tradition
Benevolence
Universalism
Value Structure
The two-dimensional structure exists around the globe
It can also be understood from evolutionary and functional perspectives
Macro-Perspectives - Values as political culture
Almond % Verba Civic Culture
Siehe Tabelle VL
Emancipative Values - Welzel - Freedom Rising
Quest for emancipation
Freedom of choice
Equality of opportunity
Expansion of rights as a function of expanding resources
Emancipative values
Autonomy - Lifestyle
Equality
Choice - Politics
Voice - Independence and imagination
Emancipative Values Cont'd
Economic development + Democratization + Social liberalization
Increase in sense of freedom
Increase in subjective well-being
A first take on Ideology
What is so important about ideology?
Ideologies organize political ideals and ideas
They are a set of beliefs and values held by an actor that define that actor's normatove direction
They also are the transformation of experience into ideas about what is and what ought to be
They are an essential part of the structure of party systems
They are often used to think about representation
Ideology and Values
Rokeach saw ideologies as value bundles
Value prularism is the idea that actors hold different values
Ideologies encapsulate this pluralism and build narrative of value priorities and their translations into policies
For Rokeach, the core ideologies of the 20th century were about two values
Equality
Freedom
Communism: Equality
Fascism: Neither
Conservatism: Freedom
Socialism: Both
- New Social Movements and protest politics
Movement politics and arenas of participation
Three arenas of participation
1.
Conventional
Voting
Campaigning
Electoral arena
Voting
Campaigning
2.
Unconventional
Demonstrating
Protesting
Public Arena
Voice demands
Protesting
3.
Lobbying
Public Interest Groups
Interest group arena
Supporting interest groups
Lobbying
The New Social Movements of the 1970s and 1980s
Distinctive from old labor movement
Most important NSM: Women's movement, anti-discrimination, gay rights, environmentalist movement (including an anti-nuclear branch), peace movement, solidarity with the third world, squatter movement
What constitutes a social movement? (Kriesi 2017, Klandemans 2001)
- A group of people with conflictual orientation towards an opponent
"Conentious politics": usually, a government is involved (McAdam, Tarrow, Tilly 2001:5)
Sustained interaction (Klandermans 2001:269)
- Common beliefs and goals, rooted in feelings of collective identity and solidarity
Beliefs: Values & Ideology (week 3)
Goals: Preferences (week 5)
- A repertoire of collective actions
Arenas of political participation (Kitschelt & Rehm 2017)
Electoral arena: choosing policy-makers
Interest group arena: communicating preferences to policy-makers in the legislative and executive branch
Public arena: public expression of demands (preferences)
Non-institutionalized
Differences between movements and interest groups
Weak formal organization and loose membership criteria
Movements ccannot negotiate - they have nothing to offer in return for concessions (Offe 1985: 830)
Organizations can be part of a movement network, but the movement is broader
Offe (1985): Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics
"Old politics" - economic and religious issues
"New politics - based on post-materialistic (Inglehart 1971) or emancipative values (Welzel 2014)
Schwartz: Openness to change (self-direction), self-transcendence (universalism)
Universalistic values and aims
(identitiy politics)
What is political? Warren (1999) - two necessary and sufficient attributes
Conflict over means, ends, or the domain of collective action
Power: At least one group/party seeks to reslove a problem through resort to power - and wants to arrive at collectively binding decisions
Siehe Tabelle VL
Value change as a driver of the New Social Movements - Welzel (2013)
Cohort differences as an indicator of value change over time (chap. 2, p. 91)
Emancipative values as drivers of collective action (chap. 7)
Theories of social movements
Formation
The classical model: grievances and relative deprivation
structural strain / breakdown of social order -> disruptive psychological state -> social movement (Kriesi 2017: 278)
Cleavage model
KLanderman's (2001: 271) criticism: Do people make the right comparisons?
Symbolic interactionalism: "If men define situations as reals, they are real in their consequences (Thomas & Thomas 1929)
Critique: Grievances are ubiquitous
Social strain is a necessary, but insuffient cause
Klandermans (2001): Collective action frames
Persuasive communication raises awareness
Make shared (=social) identities salient
Application
Fridays for Future
Why is the movements collective action frame persuasive?
Action target is urgent - and politicians fail to take action
General component
Resource mobilization theory
Agency-oriented: Focuses on internal life of the movement
Internal resources
Political entrepreneurs
Organization (informal. NGOs, etc.)
External resources (solidarity with cause)
collective identitiy (catness)
density of internal networks (netness)
internal organization (solidarity
Social movement (action repertory
Similarities with the resource model of articipation
Internal life and Brady, Verba, Schlozman's (1994) findings
Internal resources
Interest (gleich ned alienated), time, skills, money
Networks
Political entrepreneurs and organization
Mobilization
Link to structuralism
Brady et al. (1995): Protest as most demanding form of participation
strong education effect (interest and skills)
Resources are not evenly distributed in society
But lack of resources can be oversome by social closure and organization
Class and religious cleavages
A bias explaining which grievances are mobilized into which areans?
Political opportunity structure model: a synthesis
Grievance model: broad socio.economic processes
Political process / opportunity structure model: expanding political opportunities
Resource model: indigenous organizational strength
click to edit
Social movement
Collective action frame: awareness + collective identity
MCAdam (1982): Explaining the Civil Rights movement
Explain development, peak, and decline of movement as a process
Why did the movement peak between 1961 and 1965?
Grievance models and resource mobilization cannot explain timing of insurgency
Internal organization building
Black church
Black colleges
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Interaction with other actors
Explaining the decline of the movement after 1968
Organizational decline, disunity
Protest shifts from South to North - growing polarization
Conservative backlash (Nixon, Reagan) based on new issues: security, inflation
Democrats retreat from mobilizing African Americans
Radicalization and repression
Why did protest erupt in the late 1970s?
Grievances (structural change)
Emancipative value change
Resources
University students from core: network, skills etc
Action repertoire
Diffused from Civil Rights movement in US (sit-ins, occupation of universities, nonviolent disobedience)
Triggering events
Vietnam war, nuclear confrontation in Europe
Diffusion
Fridays for Future: Some (tentative) explanations
Grievance: urgency of change
Collective action frame: generational component
Resources: education, networks, supporting organizations, alliance partners (UN General Secretaryy Antonio Guterres)
Charismatic leadership: Greta Thunberg
Media attention, diffusion
- What Citizens want - Attitudes, Preferences and Grievances
Attitudes
What are Attitudes?
Attitudes are a learned tendency toward the evaluation of an object
They are much more specific than values
Value: I want society to be more equal
Attitude: I support progressive taxation
The object of the attitude can be almost anything
A policy issue (progressive taxation)
A person (Uli Maurer)
A group (immigrants)
An event (strikes in the public sector)
A period (the 1950s were much better than the 21st century)
We use attitudes to predict behavior
Attitudes as Latent Constructs
We cannot directly observe an attitude
We derive it from some form of behavior
Most commonly this is response behavior in surveys
Public opinion
Aggregation over peoples attitudes
Typically measured by aggregating responses from surveys
In democracy, there is the presumption that elites heed public oponion - representation
But is there a "there" there?
A Skeptical View
Thus the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental perfomrance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphrere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again - Joseph Schumpeter p. 262
Competiitive Elitism
More Scepticism - siehe VL
Converse's Non-Attitudes
On any given issue, vast numbers of citizens do not have an attitude
Instead of admitting to this by responding dont know they make up a survey response
Since there is nothing to the response, the next time they'll make up a completely different answer
The result is response instability
Some Attitude Theory
Fazio's Attitude Model
Attitude = Object + Evaluation
Link between the evaluation can be strong, weak, non-existent
When the link is strong, then linking about object without also experiencing the evaluation is nearly impossible
With non-attitude, ther is no link: no evaluation comes to mind when thinking about the object
Response instability occurs as well when the rresponses contain a great deal of measurement error
We call this an attenuation bias
Perhaps survey researchers just ask very bad question that cause much confusion and result in large amounts of error
Ambivalence
Perhaps citizens are confolcted about issues
They know a lot but some of it cuases the, to favor and some of it o oppose a policy
That is, there are opposing considerations, causing citizens to be ambivalent
How Ambivalence Generates Instability
When confronted with a survey question, respondents samole considerations
They do this quickly - top-of-the-head responding
What comes to mind first depends on many factors
Question order
Question framing
Response attributes
In ambivalent individuals, pro considerations may come to mind at one time, while anti considerations dominate in another time
What could be driving ambivalence?
- Conflict within values, identities or interests: Limited government vs. equality
- Conflict between values, identities and interests: I like equality but i think the policy helps an outgroup i dislike
Issue Publics
Real attitudes can be found in issue publics
An issue public is a group that cares deeply about a particular issue
Pro life movement USA
Anti-Maskers
These individuals tend to respond consistently
The issue also tends to shape their political behavior
Protesting
Single issue voting
Lobbying
Preferences
Preferences vs Attitudes
Preferences
Relational
Utility for object A compared to object B
Latent - cannot be directly observed
Measurement through preference questions
Attitudes
Non-relational
Liking / disliking toward a single object
Latent - cannot be directly observed
Measurement through attitude questions
Preferences and Utility
Utility (U) = enjoyment or use from consuming a good
Metric that allows for the comparison of alternatives
Rational choice theory argues that A is preferred to B if (U)A > (U)B
Utility and Risk
ALternative A = 20.- for sure
Alternative B = 40.- with ptobability .5 and 0.- with probability .5
Expected values are the same
With marginally declining utility, a decision prefers A to B
Risk aversion = the preference for a certain alternative over a gamble with the same expected value
Grievances
Definition
A complaint - unhappiness with ones lot
Often driven by ones economic situation
Can be based on:
Absolute indicators
A comparison with others, an inspiration level, or th past
A major impetus for protest
Asian Disease siehe VL
Prospect Theory
If things are better than the reference, one operates in the domain of gains
If they are worse, then one experience a loss
According to prospect theory (Tversky & Kahneman 1979)
People are risk averse in the domain of gains
Risk seeking in the domain of losses
Implications
Citizens in the domain of losses may be more inclined to engage in potentially costly actitivites sush as protest
They my be more inclined to vote against the political establishment and vote for populist alternatives
Types of emotions
Simplex Model:
Enthusiasm - positive emotions such as pride and joy
Anxiety - negative emotions sush as fear, unease and worry
Anger - negative emotions sush as disgust, loathing and hate
Anger mobilizes (as does enthusiasm)
The affective intelligence Model
Disposition
Expectations met
Enthusiasm
Habbit
Surveillance
Expectations violated
Anxiety
Information
- Translating movements into party systems - "new politics" from 1980s onwards
Persistence and change of cleavages
From parties to movements: Value change as a new critical juncture
Changing dimensions of political space in Western Europe
The structural basis of the new cultural divide: eduction and divisions within the middle class
Evidence: Positions of social groups in the two-dimensional political space
Lipset and Rokkan (1990, last sentence);
"The voter does not just react to immediate issues but is caught in a historically given constellations of diffuse options for the system as a whole (p.138)"
Parties shape the way we think about politics
Voters interpret new issues through the lens of politics as they know it
Historical institutionalism: critical juncture followed by "positive feedback"
Socialization
In normal politics, new generations of voters are socialized into an established structure of competition
Reinforcing cleavages
Left: Pro-state intervention, secular
Right: Pro-market, conservative, religious
Cross-cutting cleavages
Left: Pro state intervention
Secular
Conservative / religious
Right: Pro-market
Values
Rokeach Model: Equality and Freedom (siehe VL)
Conflict between parties reinforces social identities
Conflict and group appeals reproduce allignments between social groups and political parties
Bartolini & Mair (1990): Stability of the class cleabage into the 1980s
Within-cleavage volatility: Voters who switch parties belonging to the same ideological block
Cleavage volatility: voters who switch between the left and right blocks
Old and new conflicts
Dealignment
Alignment between socual groups and parties become weaker (Dalton, Flanagan, Beck 1984)
Social structure changes (eg secularization, shrinking of the working class)
Social groups reorient themselves
Both create opportunities for political actors
The "dealignment hypothesis": Parties no longer represent specific social groups
Evidence from Franklin (1992: 387):
Decreasing explanatory power of class and religion on vote choice between left and right parties
Realignment
New alignments are formed based on new conflicts
The changing nature of conflict in West European party systems
Green partues form New Left and adopt the goals of the New Social Movements$
Social Democratic parties are under pressure - transformation from "old left" to New Left parteis
Kitschelt (1994): two dimensions of conflict
Economic: state vs. amerket (the old class cleavage)
Cultural value dimension: libertarian vs. authoritarian
Siehe Tabellen VL
Value change as a new critical juncture?
Differing interpretations of the origins of values change
Unprecedented prosperity and material security in the postwar era (Inglehart 1984, Dalton et al 1984)
The educational revolution (Allardt 1968, Kriesi 1999 and many others)
Economic and cultural modernization (Kitschelt 1994) - affluence, education, sector
Post-materialistic / emancipative / libertarian / universalistov values
Discussion siehe VL: What kind of differences between individuals and groups would be expected
Siehe Tabellen VL
Kriesi 1999
Education
New class divisions
The educational revolution: Two types of conflict
Vertical: Winners vs. losers of modernization
Horizontal: Differences within group of winners
How can we explain who participazed in the New Social Movements?
Higher education has two effects
Emancipatory value change
Frustration due to status inconsistency
- Personality and Political Ideology
- Cultural conflicts and the rise of the radical populist right
The dealignment and realignment of the manual
working class
How did this happen?
Discourse and ideology of the radical populist right
The transformation of the political space in France,
1978-2002
Structural basis and its explanation
Divisions within the “new” middle
class
Kriesi (1999)
The antagonism between managers and
socio-cultural specialists
Managers
Socio-cultural specialists
Organizational work logic
Defend the status quo
Part of administrative hierarchies (public or private)
Rely on their skills and expertise only
Value/fight for work autonomy
Client-interactive work logic —> Experience of
human diversity
Hold anti-authoritarian and emancipatory values
Movements of the left and three groups
within the “new middle class”
siehe VL Tabelle
Old and new conflicts
Dealignment: Alignments between social groups and
parties become weaker (last week)
Social structure changes (e.g., secularization, shrinking of the working class), or…
the behavior of social groups changes
Realignment: New alignments are formed based on
new conflicts
Evans, Tilley, de Graaf (2013, 2017):
Ideological convergence and dealignment
Class continues to matter
Party appeals are relevant
Preferences along the economic state-market dimension
Life chances, identity
Left-right ideological polarization
Group appeals
Convergence: evidence, but strength depends on the data used
Reinforcing social identities
The New Left shift in welfare state policies
From status preserving welfare states to universalism
Relative deprivation: The traditional welfare state was tailor-made for the industrial working class
The New Left shift on the cultural dimension
Cultural dimension
Free choice of lifestyles, women and minority
rights (Kitschelt 1994)
Universalistic values
Evidence that Social Democratic parties’ stances regarding cultural universalism matter for class voting
From the realignment of the middle class, to the dealignment of the working class, to the realignment of the working class
Two transformations of cultural conflicts
From religion to…
The first transformation: emergence of the libertarian-universalistic pole
Bottom-up (New Social Movements)
The second transformation
More top-down: Radical populist right parties politicize a different conception of community
Cultural differentialism or ethnopluralism (Betz 2004,
Betz & Johnson 2004; Antonio 2000)
The emergence of a radical right-wing populist party family
Cultural differentialist frame diffused from Front National (now Rassemblement National) (Rydgren 2005)
Programmatic convergence of right-wing populism
Two elements of traditionalist-communitarian
ideology
Rejection of libertarian/universalistic values of the New Left (Ignazi 1992, Inglehart & Norris 2019)
Advocacy of a communitarian conception of community
New Left and populist right shifts temporally proximate
Socialist Mitterand government enacts reforms
Death penalty, regularization of illegal immigrants, limits on police prerogatives, gender equality
Strong reaction to the breakthrough of the Front National in 1984: Founding of SOS Racisme, “adversarial strategy” towards FN (Meguid 2008)
siehe VL
The social basis of cultural preferences: From the declining political relevance of religion ... to polarization based on education ... and class
Explanations: The Funnel of Causality
What explains the vote: attitudes… and campaigns
Attitudes towards
Cultural liberalism
Immigraation
European Integration
Overall positions of cultural dimension
siehe Tabelle VL
(All too) easy explanations for radical right voting
Rising immigration?
If perceptions matter, what drives these perceptions?
Radical right vote share no simple reaction to levels of immigration (Dennison & Geddes 2019)
Attitudes towards immigration tend to become more favorable since 1950s
Economic explanations?
Crisis: Pertinent only in Southern Europe
Globalization: Weak evidence
The same Critical Junctures as for the New Left transformation?
Unprecedented prosperity and material security in
the postwar era
The “educational revolution” & cultural change
Generational differences
Inglehart & Norris (2019) stand alone
Differences according to education
Massive evidence
Compatible with various interpretations (economic, cultural, transnationalism)
Competition for social classes in the two-dimensional space (Oesch & Rennwald 2018: 787)
- Social Identity
What is Social Identity
We all possess self -concepts—beliefs about who we are.
Social identities reference those parts of our self-concept that derive from group memberships
Groups can bemany things:
Ethnic and racial
Classes
Political
National
Professional
Religious
A Fundamental Need
Volkan
Tajfel and Turner
People have a fundamental need to think in terms of enemies and friends
Our self-esteem derives from the group to which we belong
Positive self-esteem is an essential need (Adler)
Identity Components
II. Sense of belonging
III. Positive affect
I. Categorization
I see myself as a member of the group
My group reflects who i am
I feel involved in what is happening to my group
When someone attacks the group, it feels like a personal insult
I am proud of my group
I am happy to be a member of the group
How Easy Can Identities Be Formed?
Many identities have deep historical roots.
However, psychologists have shown that identities can also be formed on the spot—minimal groups paradigm
Red Cap vs. Blue Cap Loves Old Art vs. Loves Modern Art
Group Comparison
Comparison
Satisfaction
Identity
Identity satisfied if Ingroup > Outgroup
Identity dissatisfied if Ingroup < Outgroup
Ingroup
Outgroup
Mechanisms
Ingroup Favoritism + Outgroup Derogation = Self-Esteem
Consequences
Identities Matter
Collective Action
Identities can help to overcome free-riding problems in collective action:
Identities also shape other collective action phenomena, e.g., tragedy of the commons.
Acting on behalf of the group
Moving beyond pure self-interest
Kramer and Brewer (1984)
Tragedy of the commons:
Making “young” versus “old ”contrast salient
Resource pool —each point taken from pool worth 5 cents
Multiple rounds
Among male participants, high depletion levels
—average take of between 7-8 points each round.
Question: Any parallels to phenomena that we observe now?
Selfish behavior depletes or spoils the resource
Everyone is collectively worse-off
Scarce shared resource
Identities and Violence
Balkans
Holocaust
Beyond the Single Identity
Multiple identities
Conflicting Identities
Catholic vs. Democrat
Superordinate Identities
Black and White both American
Different Views of Ideology
II. Ideologies reflect value priorities—cultural perspective
III. Ideologies reflect psychological needs—personality and neuroscience perspective
I. Ideologies bundle a wide variety of issues—rational choice
The Big-5 Personality Theory
What Is Personality?
Semi-permanent internal predispositions that cause people to behave in a particular manner across a variety of domains and that set them apart from each other.
Big-5
General theory of personality by Costa & McCrae
Precursor in Norman (1963)
Based on factor analysis of items
Neuroticism
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Openness
Extraversion
Compassion, Humility, Trustfulness
Industriousness, Orderliness, Self-Discipline
Assertiveness, Gregariousness, Social Confidence
Anxiety, Depression, Irritability, Rumination
Adventurousness, Idealism, Intellectualism
Many Traits Have a Genetic Element
Jang, Livesley, and Vernon (1996) find that openness, in particular, has a strong genetic component.
May be because of its connection to intelligence.
So Why Does This Matter?
The conservative as anxious, disciplined, risk-averse:
The liberal as open-minded
Personality correlates with ideology
Jaensch (1938) J-Type
-Fromm (1947) hoarding type
Uncertainty-threat
Evidence from Carney et al. (2008)—Study 1
siehe VL
Personality and Populism
Bakker, Rooduijn, and Schumacher (2016) argue that agreeableness correlates negatively with populist voting:
Fatke (2019) shows that
Both left and right!
Low agreeableness means higher susceptibility to anti-establishment messaging
Neuroticism plays a role as well
Context matters
Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Origins
Developed to understand the appeal of a particular type of
ideology—fascism
Adorno et al. (1950)
The Authoritarian Personality
F-Scale
siehe Tabelle VL
Some F-Scale Items (Ray 1972)
The Revival
Altemeyer’s RWA = right-wing authoritarianism.
A syndrome of three elements of the original F-scale.
Correlates negatively with openness
Conventionalism + Authoritarian Aggression + Authoritarian Sumbission
Effects
Support for punitive policies
Support for populists
Voting behavior
Support for conspiracy theories (but only those implicating the
political establishment)
Is There Left-Wing Authoritarianism?
Eysenck and others have argued that dogmatism exists on both sides, but is more prevalent on the right.
Conway et al. (2017) argue there is LWA:
Traditional finding says no.
Parallel items to RWA—questionable
Focus on religious target groups—relevant in US but elsewhere?
Social Dominance Orientation (SDO)
RWA correlates poitively with SDO
SDO helps to explain opposition to policies that improve the lot of or extend rights to certain groups in society
The Neural Substrates of Ideology
Liberal and Conservative Brains
Beyond Correlation
Chawke and Kanai (2016):
Use transcranial random noise stimulation to activate dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Observe an increase in conservative values
Goal of the study was to assess the effect of messages; the increase occurs regardless of message
- Political Misperception
Motivation
Misperceptions are Widespread
Individual-Level Theories
A Third Bias?
Meso- and Macro - Level Theories
Three Functions of Elections
Policy signaling — in what direction should the country be moving?
Legitimation
ofpower
Holding elites accountable — circulation of elites
The Role of the Mass Public
Crucial for accountability
Crucialfor policy-signaling
Political perception: How do citizens view political reality?
Crucialfor legitimacy
To know whether to “throw the rascals out” one has toknow how they performed
Issue/ideological voting requires an accurate sense of where the parties stand
One needs to accept election outcomes
Alt-Facts
We live in a world of alt-facts
Fundamental disagreements about (political) reality
Political disagreement should be about
Values
Priorities
Solutions
Now it is about the nature of reality itself
Reuters -IPSOS
2016 52% of Democrats believed Trump legitimately won the election
2020 26% of Republicans believe Biden legitimately won the election
Democracy in trouble!
Cognitive: Balance Theory
Affective: Hot cognition
X = object (e.g., issue)
Links are affectively laden perceptions
O = other (e.g., politician)
Balance exists when the product of the
affective charges is positive
P = person (e.g., voter)
Assumption: People are motivated to retain
balance and restore it if necessary
Heider (1946)
Three Pathways to Balance
Issue voting
Persuasion
Projection
I favor gun control (P - X = +)
The party opposes gun control (O-X = -)
Conclusion: I dislike the party(P-O=-)
P - X + O - X = P - O
P - O + O - X = P - X
I like the party (P - O = +)
The party opposes gun control(O - X = -)
Conclusion: I oppose gun control (P - X = -)
I like the party (P - O = +)
I favor gun control (P - X = +)
P - O + P - X = O - X
Conclusion: The party must favor gun control (O - X = +)
Two Variants of Projection
Contrast
Assimilation
P - O is negative
You tend to place O further away on X then it really is
P - O is positive
You tend to place O closer on X than it really is
The stake triggers a motivation to retain the belief
This, in turn, affects subsuquent information processing
Beliefs are sometimes held with great conviction
It partially defines who they are
People have an emotional stake in it
Two kinds of Motivation siehe VL
Two Biases
Confirmation
Avoid disconforming information
Disconfirmation
Discounting
Counter-arguing
Validity effect or illusory truth effect
If a false statement is repeated otfen enough, people start to believe its validity
It Is About Emotion
Effects are much weaker for people who are
ambivalent—much more belief change but also much cooler cognition
Not all emotions are equal
Anxiety - unbiased processing
Anger - biased processing
Disposition System
Surveillance System
Situation matches script
Habits drive behavior
Enthusiasm and anger
Situation differs from script
Information drives behavior
Axiety
The Supply-Side of Bias
Benefits of lying often outweigh
costs.
Doubling down on lies is common
Politicians often fuel misperceptions
through prevarication and lies
The Mass Media
Both-side-ism
Horserace journalism
Partisan press
The Social Media
Often propagate untruths quickly and without check
However, can also be put good to use
Often serve as echo-chambers
Mobilization
Discussion and deliberation
- Populism and Representation
Programmatic representation
Evidence from the Swiss case
Beneficial and problematic aspects of polarization
Theory and measurement
The role of populism
What is populism?
Discussion of the interview with Steven van Hauwaert:
How populist attitudes and substantive policy preferences work together
Pitkin (1967): Models of representation
- Descriptive representation
- Symbolic representation
Both unreliable proxies for policy preferences!
Idea: Similar demography, similar interests
Next week: Charismatic linkage
- “Representing people who have interests”: policy
representation
Requires programmatic linkages (next week)
The challenge to the classical model
The classical model of policy
representation is “promissory” (Mansbridge 2003)
Representation is reciprocal and
interactive (Disch 2011)
But representatives influence voters
“A mobilization conception of
political representation”
Reconcile democratic theory with
empirical findings on preference formation!
Responsible party government: conditions
(APSA 1950, Thomassen 1994)
Parties offer distinct policy options
These perceptions of parties’ positions guide voting
decisions
People have informed political preferences
Voters can chose which party best represents their
preferences
Lecture on social movements: Perhaps none of the parties
does!
And not populism, charisma or other nonprogrammatic
linkages
Balance theory (last week): Achieving balance
Implementing the Responsible party
government model empirically
Parties offer distinct policy options
These perceptions of parties’ positions guide voting
decisions
People have informed political preferences
But what issues or dimensions?
Mass-level survey data
Elite-data
Match between party positions and voter
preferences
Cleavage approach (weeks 2, 6, 7): dimensions
Aufgabe VL
The transformation of the cultural
dimension, 1975-1995
Voter side: Little change on the right
between 1975 and 1995
Transformation of the Swiss People’s
Party (SVP), 1975-1995
Shifting position of the mainstream right,
1975-1995
Polarization: problematic aspects
Parties may be more extreme than voters in the
Swiss case (Leimgruber, Hangartner, and Leemann 2010) and in the US (Fiorina and Abrams 2008)
Policy making and finding compromise
Difficulty of forging legislative coalitions in Switzerland
(Traber 2015)
Polarization around cultural issues driven by parties
that put into question liberal aspects of democracy
Polarization: beneficial aspects
Polarization clarifies policy alternatives
Increases turnout
Drives out non-programmatic linkages (next
week)
Precondition for the responsible party model
Switzerland and US as examples
Populism as a “(thin) ideology” (e.g., Mudde 2004,
Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013, Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017)
3 elements
Anti-elitism – idea of the betrayed people
Manichean outlook – idea of good and evil, elite
and people
People-centrist – idea of volonté générale
Populism
Characteristic of political discourse
An attitude at the mass level
Some radical left parties (La France Insoumise, but
less so Die Linke)
Radical populist right parties (including Swiss
People’s Party)
Proposal for a measurement instrument
(Castanho Silva et al. 2018)
People-centrism:
Anti-elitism:
Manichaean outlook:
Ppl1. Politicians should always listen closely to the problems of the people.
Ppl2. Politicians don’t have to spend time among ordinary people to do a good job.*
Ppl3. The will of the people should be the highest principle in this country’s politics
Ant2. Government officials use their power to try to improve people’s lives.*
Ant1. The government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves
Ant3. Quite a few of the people running the government are crooked
Man1. You can tell if a person is good or bad if you know their politics.
Man2. The people I disagree with politically are not evil.*
Man3. The people I disagree with politically are just misinformed
Determinants of support for the radical populist
right and left
Substantive ideology
Populist attitudes – common denominator
Question: Reinforcing or complementary effects?
Populism matters mostly for those that do not hold
extreme positions on the economic or cultural dimensions
Implications for democracy
- Non-programmatic linkages and representation
Three types of linkage (Kitschelt 2000)
The cases of Argentina and Venezuela
Non-programmatic linkages and representation
Populism
When does clientelism give way to programmatic
linkages?
Culturalism
Structuralism
Rational Choice
Programmatic linkages: Based on policies offered by parties
Clientelistic linkages: Selective incentives offered by politicians or parties
Charismatic linkages: Personalistic appeals
Responsible party model
Brusco et al. (2004): Vote-buying as a specific form
Symbolic representation (Pitkin 1967, last week)
Different forms of benefits
Conditionality distinguishes clientelistic from
programmatic politics
Patronage
Material benefits (vote buying)
Parties provide public jobs to brokers
Brokers provide clients with access to public
goods, social policy, etc
Conditionality as the central feature of
clientelism (Stokes et al. 2013: 7)
Scherlis (2008): The clientelistic pyramid
The central role of monitoring in
clientelistic exchanges
Three explanations in Brusco, Nazareno & Stokes
(2004)
- Norms: Receiving a benefit creates an obligation
- Discounting the future: People do not believe in
policy programs
1. “Probabilistic selective incentives”: Compliance in
order to secure resources in the future
Monitoring by indirect observation: partisan and social
networks
Implications of clientelism
Central role for brokers: All politics is local
National parties do not represent voters’ policy
preferences
Cleavage-formation difficult
Lipset & Rokkan (1967), week 3: Ideological conflict
is cross-local or “functional
Violates key democratic principles
Grievances create potentials for populism and
charismatic leaders
All three linkage strategies are present (clientelism,
programs, charisma)
Clientelism used to compensate losers of market
liberalization
Informal used to compensate losers of market liberalization
Programmatic divide dating back to 1940s
Poor voters
Informal sector workers
Sectoral cleavage: Agricultural exporters-industry
Lipset and Rokkan (1967): primary-secondary sector
Multiple linkage strategies in Argentina
Juan Domino Perón becomes labor minister in
military government in 1943
Strong measures in favor of working class:
unionization, wage increases, full employment
Development of the “charismatic bond” (Madsen
and Snow 1991)
Madsen und Snow (1991):
“The Charismatic Bond”
Charisma defined as influence or persuasion
Persuasion
Projection
assimilation
contrast: polarization
The role of crisis: Self-efficacy (capacity to deal with
challenges) gives way to proxy control (giving somebody else control)
Relief accompanied by positive emotion
Two types of Peronist voters
Voters in small towns, migrants: charismatic linkage
Programmatic linkages among working class: From
charisma to organization
Charismatic mobilization can result in enduring
cleavages
Charisma: A strategy of mobilization
Persuasion
Situations in which order breaks down
Populism: An ideology – the pure people against the
corrupt elite
Strategy used by political outsiders
Mirrors mass-level populist attitudes
Both are compatible with different ideologies
Linkages and programmatic representation:
The election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela
Predominance of clientelism in
Venezuela’s party system, 1958-1998
Weak representation in Venezuela prior to
Chávez’ candidacy
Chávez elected president in 1998
Movement for the Fifth Republic
(MVR, later PSUV)
Nicolás Maduro elected
successor in 2013
Promises “Socialism of the 21st Century
Clientelism may not be seen as wrong
Development reduces importance of clientelism
Low-income voters may not see programmatic goods
as an alternative
Auyero (2001): Ethnographic study on Peronist
networks in Argentina
Depends on political sophistication
Middle-class voters dislike clientelism (Weitz-Shapiro
2014)
Dependence on clientelistic resources
“Functional equivalent to the welfare state” (Kitschelt
2000)
Lower-income voters targeted (Brusco et al. 2004)
How to overcome clientelism?
Development makes clientelism more costly
But: “Politician’s dilemma” – parties forced to pursue
short-term strategies (Geddes 1994)
Parties shift to programmatic goods
Even the middle class may expect clientelistic goods
(culturalism)
Key question: Do parties have access to state
resources?
First path to programmatic politics:
Establishment of a universalistic bureaucracy before mass politics
Second path: Ideological parties (Shefter 1977)
Bottom-up organized parties can rely only on
ideology
Historical mobilization of the left in Europe
Creates persistent differences between parties
Role of ideological polarization
Tutorat 2-4
Week 2 - Social groups and party systems: The classical European model
Week 3 - Values and ideology
Week 4 - Social Movements
Structuralism
Structuralism as a “group theory” (Hall & Taylor 1996) <-> Rational choice as a individualistic perspective
Social structures = Description of society and relationships between individuals in terms of specific
categories; Positions within society (e.g., class: worker vs. owner, religion: religious vs. non-religious)
Political parties represent certain social groups → premise of Lipset and Rokkan’s (1967) approach
Structuralist approaches assume that political decisions are anchored in social structures, not in individual preferences
Social groups have shared understanding about themselves and others (e.g., what is a worker,
what an owner? What does it mean to be religious or not?)
Theory of how fundamental structural conflicts translated into group identities; How did structural
conflicts become salient and durable political conflicts?
Lipset and Rokkan (1967): Formation of West European party systems
Social conflicts which became mobilized can be
traced back to two specific junctures: National and industrial revolution
Both explain similarities and differences
between party systems because they have triggered the emergence of 4 types of conflict,
so-called cleavages:
Center vs. periphery (NR)
Church vs. state (NR)
Primary vs. secondary sector (IR)
Working class vs. bourgeoisie/capital (IR)
Implications & extension
Sociological perspective: How social groups are formed
Political factors: How mass parties reinforce social closure in order to secure voters
“Frozen” party system?
Stability of cleavages is fostered by sequential mobilization
Historic cleavages were pacified to a significant extent
Assumption that process of party system formation is path dependent
Are these assumption still
accurate today?
Social mobility closure: possibility of moving to a „higher“ social group
Interaction closure: Interaction with/within social groups one feels closest to
when low, it results in closed
social groups → manifestation of conflicts
manifestation of identities
Minimizing interaction by creating subcultures, stressing social identities, nourishing partisan loyalties,
establishing cultures (e.g., party press, sport clubs, unions, schools)
The individual-level story or, which group identities become politically relevant?
Cleavages as a concept to bridge
the macro and micro levels
Sheldon Stryker (1980): Symbolic interactionism
(or ‘Society shapes self shapes social behaviour’)
Each individual has multiple identities, which can
be ordered in a salience hierarchy.
The relative salience of group identities matters for
social and political behaviour
Who you interact with is shaped by social structure.
→ Interaction shapes identity salience
Hence, cross-pressured individuals are expected to
vote according to their most salient identity
Def. ‘salience hierarchy’ = ‘the likelihood that an identity
will be invoked in a variety of situations’ (Stryker 2008)
Framework
Def. Value by Milton Rokeach (1968/69):
“[A value is] the enduring belief that a particular mode of conduct or that a particular end-state of
existence is preferable for oneself or for society.”
Values are supposed to be fairly stable
Values are concepts that are difficult to
measure (“nailing a pudding to the wall”).
personal vs. societal values
Three micro-perspectives on values
Inglehart’s Value clusters
Schwartz’s 10 universal human values and value structure
Rokeach’s value hierarchy
Behavior is guided by the most highly ranked value
Each individual ranks its values hierarchically
materialist vs. mixed vs. postmaterialist
Depending on generational context (value change), leads to silent revolution
They can all be found in every society all over the world, to different extents
They be placed in a 2-dimensional space: change – conservatism & self-transendence – self-enhancement
Perspectives on values: Political culture and the quest for emancipation
G. Almond & S. Verba (1963): The Civic Culture
C. Welzel (2013): Freedom Rising
a categorization of three types
The key question is the relative mixture of these types in a
given national population, and, where political stability is concerned, the nature of the fit between the mixture and
the type of government
Key idea: Patterns of belief, i.e. psychological orientations
of the mass population toward the polity, define the “political culture” of a nation.
Participant
subject
parochial
e.g. Democratic governments would best go with a “participant”
political culture
The expansion of rights is seen as a function of
expanding resources
Four domains of emancipative value orientations:
Key idea: Quest for emancipation around the globe
manifests itself in a demand for more freedom of choice and equality of opportunity
Autonomy
Choice
Voice
Equality
Introduction to ideology and value pluralism
Ideologies organize political ideals and ideas
Value pluralism is the idea that actors hold different values
Ideologies are an essential part of the structure of party
systems as political parties align along ideologies
Set of beliefs and values (value bundle after Rokeach)
held by an actor reflecting the transformation of experience into ideas about what is and what ought to be
Ideologies encapsulate this value pluralism and build a
narrative of value priorities and their translation into policies
Core ideologies of 20th century were about two values:
Equality and freedom
What constitutes a social movement?
Arenas of political participation
Three arenas of political participation (Kitschelt & Rehm 2017)
Movements vs interest groups → Boundaries of institutional politics
Three characteristics of social movements
A repertoire of collective actions
Common beliefs and goals, rooted in feelings of collective identity and solidarity
A group of people with a conflictual orientation towards an opponent
Interest group arena: Communicating preferences to legislative and executive branch (lobbying)
Electoral arena: Choosing policy-makers (pm) (voting & campaigning)
Public arena: Non-institutionalized public expression of demands (voicing demands & protesting)
Movements cannot negotiate (Offe 1985)
Organizations can be part of a movement network, but the movement is broader
Weak formal organization and loose membership criteria
What is political? The area of politics in the 60s vs today
Emancipative values drive collective action (Welzel 2013)
Theories and concepts of social movement formation
The classical model
Concept: ‘Collective Action Frames’
Social movements form when grievances /
structural strains are unbearably high
Relative deprivation is more important than
absolute deprivation
Goal is to break down existing social order
Feeling about what people think they
deserve or what status they held at some point does not have to be true/realistic
Collective action frames
Such collective action frames provide the basis for
collective identity - which is what sustained mobilization ultimately is about
Klandermans (2001) asks: Are people able to judge
where they stand socially relative to others?
Def. “sets of beliefs that serve to create a state of
mind in which participation in collective action appears meaningful” (Klandermans 1997)
Persuasive communication during mobilization
campaigns raises awareness and makes shared identities salient
Resource Mobilization Theory
Political Opportunity Structure Model
Mobilization over a longer period of time can
only be sustained through resources:
Claim: Structures (e.g. grievances/strains) are
not sufficient for SM formation
Internal resources: Political
entrepreneurs and strong organization
External resources: Allies with resources
(e.g. solidarity with cause, parties, unions, politicians, international organizations)
Claim: The availability of resources is not sufficient for
SM formation
The Political Opportunity Structure Model stresses the
relevance of the political context
A synthesis of previous models: “Social movements come
into being because people who are aggrieved and have the resources to mobilize seize the political opportunities
they perceive” (Klandermans 2001).
Tutorat 5-7
Week 5 - What citizens want: Attitudes, preferences, and grievances
Week 6 - Translating movements into party systems – “New politics” from 1980s onwards
Week 7 - Cultural conflicts and the rise of the radical populist right
Converse’s Non-Attitudes vs. Fazio’s Attitude Model
Converse:
Fazio:
Fear of admitting ignorance leads to response instability
On any given issue, vast numbers of citizens do not have an
attitude
Attitude = Object + Evaluation
Attitude formation depends on intensity of links between object
and evaluation → Strong vs. weak vs. no links
Ambivalence vs. Univalence (Feldman and Zaller 1992)
Attitudes = distribution of competing considerations (e.g. large
vs. less generous welfare state, tax on plane tickets)
Ambivalence = Two or more competing perceptions/values
within one individual
Voters have to reconcile competing values
Elite-framing, e.g. Reagan's welfare queen
Issue Publics
An issue public is a segment of the population that cares deeply about an issue (e.g. anti-maskers, anti-abortionists)
characterized by strong attitudes (stable and predictive)
even unaware voters can hold attitudes toward a limited number of issues about which they care
When estimating voting behaviour, one could thus consider weighing measurements of attitudes by a measure of ‘personal importance’ (“How important is this issue to you personally?")
Preferences vs. Attitudes, Grievances and Emotions
Preferences
Attitudes
Utility of A is compared to utility of B (if UA > UB , A is
chosen over B)
Measurement:
preference questions
Relational
Non-relational
Measurement: attitude questions
Liking/Disliking toward a single object
Persistence and change of historic cleavages
Historical institutionalism
Socialization and values
Lipset & Rokkan: Party systems did not change significantly
until 80s → Parties shape the way we think about politics
Economic left-right and a cross-cutting cultural cleavage
Axes congruent with values of equality and freedom
These conflicts reinforce social identities between voters
New generations of voters are socialized into established
structure of party competition
Cleavage stability vs. volatility
High within-cleavage volatility during
post-war era → traditional cleavages have not weakened over time
Emergence of new value dimension
cutting across class cleavage → cleavage volatility starting in 80s
Cleavage is stable if voters do not
switch from one block to the other
Process of dealignment / realignment
Value change as a new critical juncture
Changing dimensions of political space in Western Europe
New social movements changed nature of conflicts present
in the West European party system:
Kitschelt (1994): Despite shift from old to new Left,
conflict remained two-dimensional
Social Democratic parties under pressure →
Transformation from “old left” to New Left parties
Emergence of green parties → Formation a New Left
adapting goals of NSMs
Structural basis of the new cultural divide
Value change as a new critical juncture:
Differing interpretations of the origins of value change
“Educational revolution” (i.e. massive expansion of higher education) generates a “liberalizing effect" (Kriesi 1999)
Economic and cultural modernization generates “winners” and “losers”
Unprecedented prosperity and material security after WWII → from materialistic to post-materialistic (Inglehart) or emancipative values (Welzel)
generational differences (Inglehart & Norris 2019 stand alone)
Divisions within the new middle class (see Kriesi 1999, Oesch & Rennwald 2018)
Qualification level -> Classical class divide: losers
vs. winners of modernization → economic axis
Work Logic -> New middle class divisions:
work logic → cultural axis
Ideological convergence and dealignment
The New Left shift on
Two transformations of cultural conflicts
From the dealignment to the realignment of the working class (Oesch & Rennwald 2018)
Two elements of traditionalist-communitarian ideology
...the cultural dimension → universalistic values, new political issues (cultural liberalism)
...the economic dimension → reforms of the welfare state (from status preservation to universalism)
bottom-up: the emergence of the libertarian-universalistic pole
top-down: radical populist right party family politicizes
a conception of community based on ethnopluralism/cultural differentialism
Rejection of libertarian/universalistic values of the New Left
Advocacy of a communitarian conception of community
What explains voting for the radical right?*
Focus of the cleavage
perspective (and political sociology more generally)
Critical junctures/grievances
explaining the rise of the radical right?
Party mobilization: Group Identity + Value orientations + Group identity
Economic structure + Social divisions + Historical patterns
Campaign activity: Attitudes towards issues + Vote
Attitudes towards:
Immigration
European integration
Cultural liberalism (or overall
position on cultural dimension)
Implications & extension from Lipset and Rokkan
Sociological perspective: How social groups are formed
Social mobility closure: possibility of moving to a „higher“ social group
Interaction closure: Interaction with/within social groups one feels closest to
when social mobility closure is
high, it results in closed social groups → manifestation of conflicts
when social mobility is low, it
results in closed social groups → manifestation of conflicts
when interaction closure is low, it
won’t result in closed social groups → no manifestation of conflicts
when interaction closure is high, it
results in closed social groups → no manifestation of conflicts
Tutorat 8-12
Week 8-10: Political psychology: Social identities / Personality and ideology / (Mis-)Perceptions
Week 11-12: Populism and representation / (Non-programmatic linkages)
The Responsible Party Government Model
Classical models of representation (Pitkin 1967): policy representation (“representing people who have
interests”) vs. descriptive and symbolic representation → How and why was the classical model criticized?
Key elements of the ‘Responsible Party Government Model’ → programmatic linkage
Representation: Idea → Responsiveness of governments to citizens’ preferences
(2) parties offer distinct policy options
(3) perceptions of parties’ positions guide voting
decisions
(1) people have informed political preferences
Responsiveness* and polarization
responsiveness is the idea that governments react to preferences of voters
Conceptualizing ‘Populism’ and link to non-programmatic forms of politics
3 key elements of populism
Conceptualizing ‘Populism → a “thin ideology” (see e.g. Mudde 2004)
people-centrism - idea of volonté
générale
anti-elitism - idea of the betrayed people
Manichean outlook - idea of the good
people vs. evil elite
Conditionality as the central
feature of clientelism that distinguishes it from
programmatic politics (Stokes et al. 2013: 7)
- Lipset & Rokkan 1990: CLEAVAGE STRUCTURES, PARTY
SYSTEMS, AND VOTER ALIGNMENTS
The two revolutions: The National and the Industrial
The transformation of cleavage structures into party systems
Conditions for the channelling of opposition
A MODEL FOR THE GENERATION OF THE
EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEM
Four Decisive Dimensions of Opposition
Implication for comparative political Sociology
- Welzel: Mapping Differences
Measuring Values
Item Combination
Item Scaling
Item Selection
Secular Values
Emancipative Values
Index Construction
Index Dimensionality
Qualifying the emancipative values index
Evolving Standards of Emancipation
Normative Desirability
How Western are emancipative Values?
Measurement Validity
How real are national mean Scores?
Variation in emancipative Values between
and within Societies
Variation between Societies
Variation within Societies
Key Points
- Klandermans 2001: The Blackwell Companion of Sociology
Why Social Movements Come into
Being and Why People Join Them
What are social Movements
Why do social Movements come into Being
Because People are Aggrieved
Because People have the Resources to mobilize
Because People seize the political Opportunity
Comparisons of Space
In Conclusion
Why do people join social Movements?
The Generation of collective Action Frames
The Motivation to Participate in Collective Action
The Transformation of Potentiality into Action
Conclusion
- Feldmann und Zaller 1992: The Political Culture of Ambivalence: Ideological Responses to the Welfare State
The Prevalence of Ideology in the United States
The Intersection of Political Culture, Ideology, and the Welfare State
Studying ideological Conflict and Ambivalence
Data and Methods
The Nature of Beliefs about Social Welfare Policy
Prosocial and antisocial Welfare Arguments
The Extent of Value Conflict
The Underlying Values: A Closer Look
Egalitarianism, Sophistication and Support for Social Welfare
Conclusion and Implications
Ideological Responses to the Welfare State
The Measurement of Complex Attitudes
Justifying the Welfare State
- Kriesi 1999: Movements of the Left, Movements of the Right: Putting the Mobilization of Two New Types of Social Movements into Political Context
The Potential for Two New Types of Social Movements
Two New Structural Conflicts
Their Articulation by Two New Types of Social Movements
The New Social Movements in Context
National Cleavage Structures
Their Relationship with the Left
The Movements of the Radical Right in Context
National Cleavage Structures
The Relationship with the Established Right
Conclusion
- Bornschier 2008: France: the Model Case of Party System Transformation
Context Conditions
Traditional Cleavages and dealignment in the Party System
Economic Context Conditions
Cultural Context Conditions
Immigration
European Integration
Political Context Conditions
Institutional Structures
Organizational Capacity and Leadership Quality
Strategies of the mainstream parties
Analysis of the demand side: voters' political potentials
Conclusions
- Duckett and Sibley 2016: Personality, Ideological Attitudes, and Group Identity as
Predictors of Political Behavior in Majority and Minority Ethnic Groups
Research Findings on Personality and Politics
Personality and Politics: Unresolved Issues
The Current Research: Testing a Multigroup Model
Method
Sample
Measures of Personality, Ideological Attitutes and Group Identification
Political Behavior
Results
Correlational Findings
Multigroup Path Analysis
Alternative Models
Discussion
Effects of Personality on Ideological Attitudes and PB
Role of Group Identities
Effects of Ideological Attitudes on PB
Conclusions
- Carney et al 2008: The Secret Lives of Liberals and Conservatives:
Personality Profiles, Interaction Styles, and the Things They Leave Behind
Theories of Personality and Political Orientation
Early Theories, 1930-55
Middle Era Theories, 1955-80
Recent Theories, 1980-2007
An Integrative Taxonomy and Overview of the Current Research
Study 1: Personality Differences between Liberals and Conservatives
Results
Discussion
Study 2: Nonverbal Behavior and Interpersonal Styles of Liberals and Conservatives
Method
Method and Procedure
Results
Discussion
Study 3: Room Cues and the Things They Leave Behind
Method
Results
General Discussion
- Flynn et al 2017: The Natire and Origins f Misperceptions: Understanding False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics
Defining Misperceptions
The Prevalence and Persistence of Misperceptions
The Effect of Misperceptions and Corrective Information
Directionally Motivated Reasoning About Facts
Directional Versus Accuracy Motivations
Moderators of Directionally Motivated Reasoning
Contextual Moderators
Individual-Level Moderators
Measuring Factual (Mis)Perceptions
The Role of Elites and the Media in Misperceptions
Why Misperceptions Matter for Democracy
Conclusion
- Bornschier 2015: The New Cultural Conflict, Polarization, and
Representation in the Swiss Party System, 1975–2011
The Transformation of Cultural Conflicts and the Dimensionality of the Swiss Political Space
Congruence between citizens and policymakers as an element of the quality of democracy
Analytical approach, operationalization, and data
The emergence of a polarized new cultural divide
The European integration divide
Polarization and the quality of representation
Conclusion
- Brusco, Nazareno, Stokes 2004: Vote Buying in Argentina
How Extensive and Effectove is Vote Buying in Contemporary Argentina?
What Kinds of Voters are the Targets of Clientelist Mobilization?
How does Vote Buying Survive the Secret Ballot?
Conclusions
Conflicts and their translation into the party system
Parties as alliances in conflicts over policies and value commitments within larger body politic
Parties have expressive function (they develop a rhetoric for the translation of contrasts in the social and the cultural structure into demands and pressures for action or inaction) instrumental, representative functions
Hierarchy of cleavage bases in each system
4 critical lines of cleavage
National Revolution
Central nation-building culture (Dominant) vs. subject populations in the provinces and peripheries
Nation-state (centralizing, standardizing and mobilizing) vs. Church (historically established corporate privileges)
Industrial Revolution
landed interests (Primary Economy) vs industrial entrepreneurs (Secondary Economy)
owners and employers vs. tenants, labourers and workers
French Revolution: Fundamental issue was one of morals, of the control of community norms (solemnization of marriage, divorces, organization of charities, functions of medical vs. religious officers) fundamental issue was control of education
AGIL Paradigm
Economy (a)
Locality, Household (L)
Integration (i)
Polity (g)
The aspirations of the mobilizing nation-state and the corporate claims of the churches
Fundamental issue between church and state was control of education
Church claimed to have the right to represent mans spiritual estate and to control the education of children in the right faith
But French Revolution wanted to create direct links of influence and control between nation-state and the individual citizen
The National Revolution forced ever-widening circles of the territorial population to chose sides in conflicts over values and cultural identities
Industrial Revolution triggered focus on economic interests
Industrial Revolution
Agriculture as an industry organized not like any other, but rather organized to ensure the survival intact of a caste
The conflict between Conservatives and Liberals reflected an opposition between two value orientations: the recognition of status through ascription and kin connections versus the claims of status through achievement and enterprise
The Conflict between landed and urban nterests was centred in the commodity market
Conflicts in the labour market proved much more uniformly divisive. Working-class parties emerged iin every country of Europe in the wake of the early waves of industrialization
Softening of ideological conflict since WW2 because of rapid growth of a new middle class bridging the gaps between traditional working class and bourgeoisie. But the most important factor was possibly the entrenchment of the working-class parties in local and national governmental structures
So far we have focused on the emergence of one cleavage at a time and only incidentally conerned ourselves with the growth of cleavage systems and their translations into constellations of political parties
To approach an understand of the variations in such processes of translation we have to sift out a great deal of information about the conditions for the expression of protest and the representation of interests in each society
- traditions of decision-making
- channels for the expression and mobilization of protest
- the opportunities, pay-offs and costs of alliances
- possibilities, implications and limitations of majority rule
This review of the conditions for the translations of sociocultural cleavages into political oppositions suggests three conclusions
- The high thresholds of representation during the phase of mass politization set severe tests for the rising political organizations
- The decisive moves to lower the threshold of representation reflected divisions among established ... parties rather than pressure from the new mass movements
- The constitutive contrasts in the national system of party constellations generally tended to manifest themselves before any lowering of the threshold of representation
In their basic characteristics the party systems that emerged in the Western European politics during the early phase of competition and mobilization can be interpreted as products of sequential interactions between these two fundamental processes of change
Differences in the timing and character of the National Revolution set the stage for striking divergencies in the European
party system
Differences in the timing and character of the Industrial
Revolution also made for contrasts among the national party system in Europe
Conflicts in the commodity market tended to produce,highly
divergent party alliances in Europe.
conflicts in the labour market,
bv contrast. proved much more uniformly divisive: all countries of Western Europe developed lower-class mass parties at some
point or other before World War I.
The decisive contrasts among the Western party systems
clearly reflect differences in the national histories of confict and compromise across the first three of the four cleavage lines distinguished in our analytical schema: the 'centre-periphery', the State-Church, and the land-industry cleavages generated national developments in divergent directions, while the owner-worker cleavage tended to bring the party systems closer to each other in their basic structure
The party-systems of the 1960s reflect, with few but significant exceptions, the cleavage structures of the 1920s
The party alternatives, and in remarkably many cases the party organizations, are older than the majorities of the national electorates
Erklärung zu einzelnen Ländern
The authors argue that a first transformation – the transition from agrarian to industrial societies – accompanies increasing bureaucratization. Growing bureaucratization favors a mechanical worldview that gives rise to “secularrational values.” These values demystify quasi-divine sources of authority over people, including the authority of religion, the nation, the state, and conformity
norms. The second transformation – the transition from industrial to knowledge societies – comes with increasing individualization. Growing individualization feeds an emancipative worldview that gives rise to “self-expression values.”
The human empowerment framework builds on these ideas but focuses more sharply on the desire for emancipation as a rising force in human history. From the emancipatory point of view, we need, on the one hand, a measure of values that indicates people’s dissociation from external authority. For reasons of brevity, I call these values secular values. On the other hand, we need a measure of values that shows how strongly people claim authority over their lives for themselves. This would be a direct measure of emancipative values.
So far, items are included into the measure of secular-rational values and selfexpression values primarily on empirical grounds. The logic of inclusion is a dimensional one: an item is included when – statistically speaking – it reflects the same dimension with other items. The logic that combines items because they represent a single dimension is known as the “reflective” logic, but I suggest that the term dimensional logic fits better what this approach means (see Box 2.1).
The alternative is known as the “formative” logic, which would be better characterized as the compository logic. In compository logic, one does not combine items into an overall measure because they reflect a single dimension. Instead, one combines items (1) because the very combination meets the meaning of a predefined umbrella concept and (2) because the combination is supposed to have consequences that reach beyond each constituent item.
In this context, it is important to note that a combination can be meaningful and consequential even if the constituent parts are entirely uncorrelated
interpersonal trust and voluntary engagement form a meaningful combination defined as the civic culture, and (2) that this combination is consequential for the functioning of democratic institutions
To test the theory, we must measure the civic culture as the combination of trust and engagement, no matter how closely the two correlate.
To measure secular values and emancipative values, the compository logic is more appropriate for two reasons. First, these two sets of values are indeed theoretically predefined. Second, as my theory posits, it is the very combination of their constituent parts that is supposed to have important consequences
The estimation procedure calculates for each respondent two factor scores to measure her position on the two sets of values. Doing so has three undesirable properties
- downgrading items is unjustified
unless there are theoretical reasons why an item covers a less important domain of a concept
- factor analyses yield so-called z-scores to measure people’s value positions
- extracting scores from a two-factor analysis creates two value dimensions that are perfectly uncorrelated, even if the various items are strongly correlated across two dimensions
Bringing Items into same Polarity, so highest emancipative score means most secular or emancipative position und umgekehrt: Weakest links approach and best shot approach
- low importance assigned to god in ones life
- no desire for greater respect of authority
- weak sense of national pride
- emphasis on independence and immigration instead of faith and obedience as qualities for children
- toleration of divorce as justifiable
From the viewpoint of human empowerment, secularization is the demystification of sacrosanct sources of authority over people. The WVS covers four domains of such authority
- religious authority (agnosticism)
- patrimonial authority (defiance)
- state authority (skepticism)
- Authority of conformity norms (relativism)
The established measure of self-expression values is also based on five items
- Feeling of happiness
- trust in other people
- signing petitions
- Acceptance of Homosexuality
- Priority on freedom and participation
Combination of two orientations
- A liberating orientation; namely, an emphasis on freedom of choice
- An egalitarian qualification of this liberating orientation as equal freedom of choice or equality of opportunities
Autonomy
Choice
Voice
Equality
As we will also see, however, this does not reflect a Western bias, such that the WVS questions do not speak to non-Westerners. Instead, a more systematic response pattern is indicative of a higher level of cognitive mobilization among Western respondents – which in turn is the result of education and other aspects of technological advancement, not Westernness.
It needs to be emphasized that the measures proposed here capture values at the standard of our era
Scholars might argue that measuring and rank ordering societies on a scale ofemancipative values is not a culturally neutral exercise but one that applies Western standards to societies in which these standards are alien
Emancipative values are, a priori, defined as the combination of orientations
emphasizing freedom of choice and equality of opportunities. People’s responses in the WVS are measured against this theoretical definition, no matter how
closely the item responses reflect a coherent syndrome in people’s minds.
Such a compository logic is preferable to a dimensional logic under two conditions
- the combination of given components has an a priori theoretical meaning
- there are reasons to assume that this combination has important consequences, irrespective of whether the components always closely correlate
To test this assumption, we do not need to burden the concept of emancipative values with the demanding assumption that its components “reflect” in every population a coherent syndrome.
However, the simple fact that a society belongs to the West increases the coherence of emancipative values by 0.23 points on the index. This testifies to a substantial impact of Western belongingness – which is actually not surprising given that Western societies are defined by an imprint from emancipatory movements in history.
In other words, the main reason why emancipative
values are less coherent in non-Western societies is not that they are non-Western but that their cognitive mobilization is less advanced
Together, they combine into “advancement and achievement,” which measures a society’s stage of human empowerment over the capability and guarantee domains
Collectivism vs. Individualism
collectivistic cultures place the
authority of the group over the rights of the individual; individualistic cultures do the opposite. Another measure of collectivism versus individualism, labeled
“embeddedness versus autonomy,” is provided by S. Schwartz (1992, 2004, 2007): embeddedness describes a culture in which individuals emphasize their
belongingness to closely knit in-groups; autonomy describes cultures in which they emphasize their independence from such groups. In addition, Gelfand et al.
(2011) describe cultural differences in terms of “tightness versus looseness”: tight cultures show low tolerance of deviant behavior; loose cultures do the
opposite.
Not surprisingly, emancipative values correlate with technological advancement and democratic achievement, and with all other indicators of development, in the same way as the alternative measures of culture do. The correlations always point in the same direction and are of roughly comparable magnitude, except for “tightness versus looseness,” whose associations are consistently weaker.
From that point of view, emancipative values are the preferable measure of the cultural domain of human empowerment
- emancipative values are taken from random national samples that are representative of entire societies
- only emancipative values are available in considerable time series, so, among the existing cultural measures, only this one is suited to trace value change
- emancipative values are available for ninety-five societies worldwide; the other measures exist for a considerably smaller number and variety of societies
With this change, what values mean in substantive terms changes as well. At the individual level, we deal with value preferences that characterize personalities. At the societal level, we deal with value prevalences that describe cultures
Some scholars might suspect that the prevalence of a value is a calculated artifact that doesn’t represent a truly felt aspect of social reality. It might not be a Durkheimian “social fact.”
As part of a society’s psychological climate, the prevalence of a value has its very own – ecological – effects on people, no matter how strongly these people themselves
prefer the prevalent value
For this reason, it is important to examine emancipative values not only for their individual-level effects but also for their ecological effects. Doing so is to give the social prevalence of emancipative values its own consideration. This gives “culture” its due weight because culture is a collective property, manifest
precisely in the prevalence of values.
Then, we have a real central tendency – a cultural anchor point around which the individual value positions of all members of a society gravitate
The mean only represents a cultural anchor point if distributions are single-peaked, with sharply dropping frequencies as wemove away from the mean
As is evident, all nine societies show both single-peaked and
mean-centered distributions over emancipative values. Among the ninety-five societies for which these graphics could be shown, there is not a single exception
from this pattern
- The values of individuals gravitate around national anchor points, reflecting the fact that national societies develop as entities, with a common imprint left on all members. This partially homogenizes culture within societies.
- The anchor points of national societies, in turn, gravitate around the anchor points of culture zones, reflecting the fact that societies of the same culture zones are shaped by the same historic forces. Thus, societies
of the same culture zones are on similar pathways of development
These propositions suggest that values are not static; they co-evolve with the developments that have given shape to culture zones
When one asks (a) whether emancipative values or secular values differ more over these two domains of human empowerment, and (b) whether democratic achievement or technological advancement vary the two sets of values more strongly, we get a clear answer to both questions
Remember that we distinguish between three stages of human empowerment with respect to democratic achievement: nondemocracies, hybrid regimes, democracies. Similarly, we distinguish between three stages of human empowerment in terms of technological advancement: traditional economies, industrial economies, knowledge economies.
- Technological advancement varies human values more strongly than democratic achievement does
- Emancipative values differ more strongly than secular values over both technological advancement and democratic achievement
With respect to emancipative values, it follows from Chapter 1 that members of groups with larger action resources more strongly prefer emancipative values.
What about the members of distinct ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities - should their values systematically differ from the majority?
In other words, if there is a group monopoly on certain resources to defend, valued freedoms are not generalized beyond the in-group: solidarity does not reach far in this case. This should weaken emancipative values because they aim at universal freedoms.
As regards the effects of age and gender, one might have conflicting expectations. Because of sexual discrimination, women have, on average, fewer action resources in almost any society, which should weaken their emphasis on emancipative
values.
Emancipation theory suggests that whether distinct minorities place stronger or weaker emphasis on emancipative values than members of majority groups depends on the minority’s
socioeconomic status relative to the majority
With age one might have conflicting expectations as well – depending on whether one sees age as a marker of lifecycle or cohort effects. If age is primarily a marker of lifecycle effects, younger people should emphasize emancipative
values less than older people in most societies The reason is that younger people usually control fewer action resources
That women place somewhat more emphasis on emancipative values than do men seems to be an anthropological universal
Looking at differences in emancipative values by cohort, we find an even more pronounced uniformity: without the exception of a single society, people who were born after 1970 place stronger emphasis on emancipative values than do people born before 1950. Th
The pattern repeats itself for other group-related differences in emancipative values, including residential and occupational status, as well as income and education
These are quasi-universal patterns
In any case, the largest within-societal difference found for any group characteristic, even focusing on the most distant groups in that characteristic, is always dwarfed by the largest between-societal difference among people from the same group. People’s emancipative values vary far more between societies than over within-societal divisions.
Meaningful differences between societies from different culture zones
emancipative values are strong only, but not always, if secular values are strong.
In 1965, Mancur Olson published his The Logic of Collective Action. The core of the book was the argument that rational actors will not contribute to the production of a collective good unless selective incentives persuade them to do so
The problem with Olson's logic of collective action is that it provides an explanation for why people do not participate, but fares much worse in explaining
why people do participate