The Role of Education in Shaping Contemporary Political Divides

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Across advanced democracies, education is increasingly predictive of political attitudes and voting behavior, creating stark political divides between college-educated and non-college-educated citizens on issues such as immigration, climate change, and minority rights (Hooghe & Marks, 2018; Kitschelt 1994; Kriesi et al. 2008; Bornschier 2010). In the US education is only recently starting to be an important dividing line, while in Europe political differences between people with different levels of education have become so pronounced that scholars now discuss the existence of an education-based social cleavage. But how large are political divides along educational lines from a comparative perspective, which aspects of education - its substance or its level - should we focus on, and what are the social and economic antecedents of these education-based political divides? What are their implications for the increasing social and political polarization of societies, and to what extent can heterogeneous social networks help to bridge these divides? This full paper panel brings together a group of scholars concerned to understand the role of education in shaping contemporary political divides in advanced democracies.

Sub Unit

• Division 14: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Democracies

Individual Presentations

• The Emergence of the Latent Educational Cleavage: A Longue Durée Analysis - Julian Leonce Garritzmann, Goethe University Frankfurt

• Handling the Stigma of Handling Dark Money - Jeffrey L Kidder, Northern Illinois University; Amy Binder, Johns Hopkins University

• Socioeconomic Segregation and Political Polarization - Jona de Jong, European University Institute

• Field of Education and Voting in the United States - Liesbet Hooghe, UNC - Chapel Hill; Julia SchulteCloos, LMU Munich; Jonne Kamphorst, European University Institute; Gary Marks, UNC - Chapel Hill

Chair

• David A. Hopkins Boston College

Discussant

• David Attewell University of Zurich