(iPoster) Class Gaps in Political Discussion in Western Europe, 1970-2020

• In Event: Poster Session: Posters on European Politics, Advanced Industrial Societies, & Post-Soviet Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Advanced Industrial Societies

Abstract

This paper investigates the shape and historical determinants of how socioeconomic status (SES) gaps in everyday political involvement have evolved in Western Europe. The literature currently considers that these gaps should have grown due to declines in political involvement among low SES citizens provoked by rising economic inequality, on the one hand, and the rise of the internet, on the other. I evaluate these expectations by analyzing nearly a million survey observations with data on the frequency with which people discuss politics from 843 surveys conducted at 141 time points between 1973 and 2021. Using these data, I first analyze the temporal evolution of SES markers as regressors of political discussion; subsequently, I conduct time-series analyses to gauge the statistical relationship between economic inequality and internet penetration trends and this temporal evolution. I find that while internet penetration trends are a significant and positive predictor of SES gaps in political discussion, economic inequality is significantly but negatively associated with them: more discussion inequality is observed in more economically equal historical contexts. Noting how this finding challenges the expectations of historically disembedded models of political participation, I propose that the historical evolution of SES gaps in political discussion over the last 50 years can be best understood by taking into account how shifts in political culture connected to political professionalization and technocratization during the 1980s changed the motivational structure of political participation for citizens in affluent democracies—particularly those with high socioeconomic status.

Author

• Sergio Galaz García, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)