The Emergence of the Latent Educational Cleavage: A Longue Durée Analysis

• In Event: The Role of Education in Shaping Contemporary Political Divides

Abstract

Cleavages structure our societies and political systems. While most research has focused on the traditional Lipset-Rokkan cleavages, newer work identified the emergence of a potential new cleavage: the educational cleavage. In today’s knowledge economies, education and skills affect almost every aspect of politics. We increasingly witness conflict over education and between groups with different kinds of education and skills. Yet, our knowledge on the educational cleavage is meager. We don’t know to what extent we can speak of a cleavage at all, whether it materializes in all countries, and – if so – when this cleavage has emerged. This paper offers a fresh empirical view by tracing the emergence of the educational cleavage over time, analyzing the relationship between education and political preferences and behavior in the longest available survey data. We want to know to what extent and since when an educational cleavage has emerged. In order to trace this development, we turn towards long-term survey data. We combine a range of repeated cross-sectional country-comparative surveys for up to 70 countries, going back to the 1980s (e.g., ESS, ISSP, Eurobarometer), sometimes as far as the 1950s (ANES) or even 1930s (Gallup), to study the emergence of the educational cleavage across space and time. We use multilevel models, pseudo-panels, and two-stage regressions to deal with the challenges of combining data from hundreds of thousands of respondents across contexts and over time. The paper addresses the important questions whether, when, and why an educational cleavage has emerged, increasingly structuring contemporary politics.

Author

• Julian Leonce Garritzmann, Goethe University Frankfurt