Many Ways to Be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Partisan Asymmetries Across the Ideological Divide

Abstract

How do individuals with conflicting attitudes on different issues – those with conservative attitudes on some issues but progressive attitudes on other issues – form their partisan allegiances? In examining this question, my dissertation advances an argument about the asymmetry in European mass attitudes across the left-right divide. I argue that when individuals connect their political attitudes to left-right ideological labels they have many ways to be right – yet mostly one way to be left. The first section of the dissertation argues that the shift to the knowledge economy has driven a wedge between economic and cultural conservatism in mass attitudes. This is due to the increased linkage between income and education within the knowledge economy. These two factors push individual-level attitudes in opposite directions: while higher income is associated with economic conservatism, higher education is associated with progressive cultural values. The analysis of survey data from West European countries documents a decline in the correlations between economic and cultural attitudes during 1990-2008, with variations by the size of the knowledge-intensive sector. In the second section I develop the concept of right-wing multivocality, or the ability of the right to speak in multiple voices. I show that cross-pressured voters (those who are conservative on some issues but progressive on other issues) are more likely to support the right: while support for the left requires progressive attitudes on all issues, it is enough to be conservative on one issue to support the right. The third section zooms in on the mainstream center-right. I show that while cross-pressured voters are the most likely to support the right – they are the least likely to support the center-right. I then examine the implications of different center-right’s strategies to these parties’ share of the vote and support across demographic groups. I show that the center-right has more to gain by courting market cosmopolitans (economically conservative, culturally progressive voters) than by courting welfare chauvinists (economically progressive, culturally conservative voters). Interviews with party elites shed light on the considerations – such as time horizons – that may push center-right parties to prefer one strategy to the other.