I’ve been meaning
for some time to write about a recent paper
by Thomas Piketty, which looks at what characteristics influenced
voters to vote for the left or right in France, the UK and US since
WWII. (Simon Kuper has a nice little summary
with a great title.) Here is a chart that shows how after WWII
educated voters tended to vote right, but now tend to vote left (even
after controlling for income, age etc - see box)
In all three
countries, the number of educated voters increased in all three
countries, reflecting in part the need for higher skilled workers.
In contrast (and if
we exclude the most recent elections in France and the US) the income
profile for voting has not changed very much over time: poorer voters
are more likely to vote left than richer voters, particularly if we
control for education, although poorer voters are increasingly
unlikely to vote. So the shift in voting patterns among educated
voters demands an explanation and has fascinating implications.
Unfortunately the
paper does not focus on this question, but it does
suggest that part of any explanation may reflect the fact that more
educated voters tend to have more liberal attitudes in general, and
more liberal attitudes to migration in particular (see here
for example). The positive correlation between social liberalisation
and education is well documented (see [1] for example), as was
evident in the Brexit vote.
I suspect there are
other factors as well. There are possible reasons why the interest of
human capital (as economists would call it) are different from the
interests of business or financial capital, or no capital at all. For
example a more meritocratic education system suits them better than
one where income buys education, so they are likely to be stronger
supporters of a state based education system (or indeed they may be
part of it). They will also be more likely to consume state
subsidised culture. More generally there may be a wish to break down
traditional class based networks and replace them with more
meritocratic structures. On the other hand because human capital generates an income, they will be less keen on tax based redistribution than workers. All this may create what some might call an
education ‘cleavage’.
The implication for
parties on the left are that party members were increasingly from the
educated middle class rather than working class, and this has
gradually changed the structure, platforms and leaders of left
parties. Together with the decline in trade unions, the counterpart
to this will be a less visible representation of the working class.
Piketty describes this as the emergence of the “Brahmin Left”
elite, which can be compared to the “Merchant” elite on the
right.
A consequence may be
that the political elite as a whole becomes less interested in
redistributive policies that used to favour the working classes, and
helped continue the decline in wealth inequality before the 1980s that
Piketty has famously documented elsewhere. That in turn makes it easier for the
right to capture parts of the working class vote, particularly when
these voters have socially conservative views. A recent book
by Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille takes a very dim view of these
changes.
There is a less
pessimistic take on all this. As right wing parties have increasingly
relied on pushing socially conservative/authoritarian/anti-minority policies to
gain votes, left wing parties find that this combined with
wealth/income protection is an unbeatable coalition for their
opponents. (Perhaps this helps explain the decline in so many
centre-left European parties.) The only way to beat that coalition is
to rediscover economic policies that help the working class.
This long paper has
other interesting results. In France, like the UK, public attitudes
have seen a decreasing hostility to immigration over time. He also
notes that the right’s socially conservative turn has helped to
sustain an almost complete loyalty to the left from Muslims in the UK
and France, and from blacks in the US. Finally a parochial point of
interest, which is also a point that Torsten Bell has stressed
recently.
Piketty notes that
the dominance of the left among the young in the UK in 2017, as well
as being unprecedented in the UK, was higher than in any of the two
other countries at any point in time. It may be that this is part of
a trend since 1997, but it could be exceptional because of Brexit,
which amounts to the old taking opportunities away from the young.
[1] Education-based group identity and consciousness in the
authoritarian-libertarian value conflict. / Stubager,
Rune. In: European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 48, No. 2,
2009. .
