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Left-Right identification and education in Europe: A contingent relationship

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

In the American research tradition, education has long been argued to push one toward a liberal political ideology. Traditionally, education has been associated with the upper classes of society and thereby with a more right-wing, conservative political ideology. Recent research demonstrates an inconsistent relationship between the ideological leaning of various political attitudes and education. This article reviews current theory on education and ideology and finds three perspectives dominate the literature: self-interest theses, developmental theses and socialization theses. Self-interest theories follow the traditional association of education with the upper classes and thereby with right-wing ideology. Developmental theses argue that education contributes to liberal political attitudes by stimulating cognitive development and expanding an individual's perspective. Socialization theses argue that education contributes to political attitudes by social learning processes. A specific example of a socialization perspective is the core values thesis. This thesis argues that education propagates the transmission of a society's core values. To this thesis, I add that an individual's personality is important in this process. As such I test a three-way interaction which provides support for the modified core values thesis: personality and context interact to influence the ideological leaning of our political attitudes.

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Notes

  1. Separate analyses show that this fact does not change the substantive conclusions of the overall analysis.

  2. See Appendix for details on the questions/measures used to construct each variable.

  3. The variation in the number of countries listed across the different models is because of the missing data discussed above. Analyses conducted on only the cases including all the necessary data (that is, only the 65 countries with all relevant variables) yield nearly identical results changing neither the substantive or statistical conclusions of this article. Further, running the analyses separately on round one, round two or round three of the ESS separately also yields similar conclusions.

  4. The code for creating this graph was modified from that provided by Brambor, Clark and Golder at http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mrg217/interaction.html.

  5. AIC is used to determine the model with the best fit to the data from multiple competing models (models whose AIC values differ by less than 3 are considered equally valid models).

  6. It is important to note here that I am not asserting that the older one becomes, the more likely one is to identify as right-wing; the data do not support that conclusion. What is to be concluded is that older cohorts are more likely to identify as right-wing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 48824, MI, USA

    Kris Dunn

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Appendix

Appendix

ESS Questions Used in the Construction of Dataset

Left-Right Identification: In politics people sometimes talk of ‘left’ and ‘right’. Using this card, where would you place yourself on this scale, where 0 means the left and 10 means the right?

Demographics

Age: And in what year were you born?

Education: How many years of full-time education have you completed?

Gender: CODE SEX, respondent

Income: Using this card, if you add up the income from all sources, which letter describes your household's total net income? If you don’t know the exact figure, please give an estimate. Use the part of the card that you know best: weekly, monthly or annual income.

Minority: Do you belong to a minority ethnic group in [country]?

Psychological

Personality: Now I will briefly describe some people. Please listen to each description and tell me how much each person is or is not like you.

  • Agreeableness (Cronbach's α=0.73)

    • Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to her/him. She/he likes to do things in her/his own original way.

    • She/he thinks it is important that every person in the world should be treated equally. She/he believes everyone should have equal opportunities in life.

    • It is important to her/him to listen to people who are different from her/him. Even when she/he disagrees with them, she/he still wants to understand them.

    • It is important to her/him to make her/his own decisions about what she/he does. She/he likes to be free and not depend on others.

    • It's very important to her/him to she/help the people around her/him. She/he wants to care for their wellbeing.

    • It is important to her/him to be loyal to her/his friends. She/he wants to devote herself/himself to people close to her/him.

    • She/he strongly believes that people should care for nature. Looking after the environment is important to her/him.

  • Conscientiousness (Cronbach's α=0.72)

    • It is important to her/him to be rich. She/he wants to have a lot of money and expensive things.

    • It is important to her/him to show her/his abilities. She/he wants people to admire what she/he does.

    • Being very successful is important to her/him. She/he hopes people will recognize her/his achievements.

    • It is important to her/him to get respect from others. She/he wants people to do what she/he says.

  • Extroversion (Cronbach's α=0.75)

    • She/he likes surprises and is always looking for new things to do. She/he thinks it is important to do lots of different things in life.

    • Having a good time is important to her/him. She/he likes to ‘spoil’ herself/himself.

    • She/he looks for adventures and likes to take risks. She/he wants to have an exciting life.

    • She/he seeks every chance she/he can to have fun. It is important to her/him to do things that give her/him pleasure.

  • Openness (Cronbach's α=0.74)

    • It is important to her/him to live in secure surroundings. She/he avoids anything that might endanger her/his safety.

    • She/he believes that people should do what they’re told. She/he thinks people should follow rules at all times, even when no-one is watching.

    • It is important to her/him to be humble and modest. She/he tries not to draw attention to herself/himself.

    • It is important to her/him that the government ensures her/his safety against all threats. She/he wants the state to be strong so it can defend its citizens.

    • It is important to her/him always to behave properly. She/he wants to avoid doing anything people would say is wrong.

    • Tradition is important to her/him. She/he tries to follow the customs handed down by her/his religion or her/his family.

Personal Safety: How safe do you – or would you – feel walking alone in this area after dark?

Religiosity (Cronbach's α=0.81):

  • Regardless of whether you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are?

  • Apart from special occasions such as weddings and funerals, about how often do you attend religious services nowadays?

  • Apart from when you are at religious services, how often, if at all, do you pray?

Trust in Government: Using this card, please tell me on a score of 0–10 how much you personally trust each of the institutions I read out. 0 means you do not trust an institution at all, and 10 means you have complete trust. (Cronbach's alpha=0.86)

  • (country)'s parliament?

  • the legal system?

  • the police?

  • politicians?

  • the European Parliament?

  • the United Nations?

Trust in People (Cronbach's α=0.77):

  • Using this card, generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people? Please tell me on a score of 0 to 10, where 0 means you can’t be too careful and 10 means that most people can be trusted.

  • Using this card, do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?

  • Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?

Effective Number of Parliamentary Parties: This measure was derived from the World Bank's Database of Political Institutions (Beck et al, 2001) to determine a country's effective number of parliamentary parties (see Laakso and Taagepera, 1979, for an explication of the formula used to derive this measure).

Income Disparity: The country-level measure of income disparity was derived from the ESS household income question. Income disparity is a measure of the difference between the median and mean income in each country; specifically, I subtract the aggregate mean income from the aggregate median income.

Survey Year: Coded 1, 2 or 3 based on the wave of the survey.

Years Free: The Freedom House Ratings were used to determine the duration a country has been free.

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Dunn, K. Left-Right identification and education in Europe: A contingent relationship. Comp Eur Polit 9, 292–316 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2010.17

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