The Intergenerational Foundations of Class Voting

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

In this seminar, Giuseppe Ciccolini will present the paper “The Intergenerational Foundations of Class Voting: Social Mobility and Electoral Choice in Western Europe."

Please note that the event starts at 17.15.

Scholarly explanations of the survival of left parties and the upsurge in mainstream politics discontent often refer to voters' intergenerational mobility resulting from the post-industrial transition. As the occupational structure evolves, voters across generations are exposed to heterogenous life chances, and the social elevator progressively alters class voting patterns. Yet empirical evidence for the electoral implications of social ascent and decline as well as their reasons is mixed at best -- likely because most empirical studies seek for homogenous average mobility effects. To address this limitation, we analyse the diverse consequences of mobility across social groups in a quasi-descriptive fashion by applying a cutting-edge ANOVA-based method. Contrarily to prior studies, this approach allows us to identify class-specific mobility effects on voting (ceteris paribus), consistently with theory, and disentangle them from "pure" class effects.

Our analyses draw on individual-level detailed information on both intergenerational social mobility and political behaviour from the European Social Survey (rounds 1-9) across 19 Western European countries. Although scholarly accounts on the consequences of social mobility averagely find little to no support in our analyses, we do observe some significant and substantial class-specific effects of both social ascent and descent on voting choice.

Due to limited spaces for COVID restrictions, participation on site will be allowed on a first-come, first-served basis. The speaker will present in person, the talk will be live-streamed and participants will receive the zoom link once registered.