The Development of the Education Cleavage: Denmark as a Critical Case

Abstract

Over recent decades scholars have documented the increasing electoral salience across Western Europe of a new post-materialist or libertarian–authoritarian dimension. The theoretical status of this new dimension and its relation to extant cleavage structures – notably the class cleavage – has, however, been debated. This paper demonstrates that the dimension reflects a new education-based cleavage that has come into existence since the mid 1980s. Thus, analyses of Danish election surveys and party manifestoes show the linkage between the voters' educational level, their values, and their voting for authoritarian or libertarian parties – i.e. the existence of an education cleavage. Due to its status as one of the more advanced countries, Denmark can be seen as a least likely case for the existence of a structurally based cleavage; hence, the existence of the education cleavage in this country indicates that similar cleavages lie underneath the authoritarian–libertarian dimension in other countries as well.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for helpful comments and suggestions provided by Lise Togeby and Christoffer Green-Pedersen. Remaining errors and omissions are solely my responsibility.

Notes

1. Due to data limitations, we have to disregard the consciousness aspect in the following. See Stubager (2009) for an analysis of this element.

2. Although he uses slightly different labels this definition is also closely related to Feldman's (2003) social conformity-autonomy construct.

3. In relation to authoritarian–libertarian values the central aspect of environmental protection is the question of whether man is hierarchically superior to nature thus opening the way for untamed exploitation or, rather, nature has intrinsic value that is worthy of tolerance and protection in its own right (cf. e.g. Cotgrove and Duff 1980: 341).

4. As can be verified in the appendix all of the models reported in the figure (except for education in1987 in Panel A) are significant at the 0.05 level. The appendix also contains the coefficients underlying the δ index as well as their standard errors.

5. To complete the picture, it should be added that the relationships between the structural variables and the value dimensions are as could be expected with the higher salaried and the self-employed as the most capitalist and the medium and long-cycle tertiary education groups as the most libertarian. The typical difference on the authoritarian–libertarian scale between the highest and lowest educational categories is some 25 scale points.

6. Analyses of the voters' perceptions of the positions of the parties (not shown) document that the voters view the parties in an essentially similar way. The positions adopted by the parties translate to the electorate, in other words.

7. Nagelkerke's R² is based on the proportional increase in the likelihood function by using the fitted model compared to the null model (Nagelkerke 1991).

8. Inferential statistics are not available for comparing Nagelkerke's R² and κ-values. For the value variables, however, significance tests of changes between the years can be conducted. As can be seen in the appendix the vast majority of the models are significant at the 0.05 level. The appendix also contains all coefficients represented in the figures as well as their standard errors.

9. Inspections of the details of the results (not shown) reveal that, although the effect is clearly weakened, the behaviour of the classes remains the same (well-known): The Social Democrats are more popular among workers and the lower salariat than among the self-employed and the higher salariat. The latter group, however, is distinct in its support for the Socialists and the Social Liberals as well as the Conservatives who also have a good showing among the self-employed as do the Liberals.