The Development of The Education Cleavage: Denmark As A Critical Case

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The Development of the

Education Cleavage: Denmark as
a Critical Case
Rune Stubager
Published online: 12 May 2010.
To cite this article: Rune Stubager (2010) The Development of the Education
Cleavage: Denmark as a Critical Case, West European Politics, 33:3, 505-533, DOI:
10.1080/01402381003654544
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West European Politics,
Vol. 33, No. 3, 505–533, May 2010
The Development of the Education

Cleavage: Denmark as a Critical Case
RUNE STUBAGER
Over recent decades scholars have documented the increasing electoral salience across
Western Europe of a new post-materialist or libertarian–authoritarian dimension. The
theoretical status of this new dimension and its relation to extant cleavage structures –
notably the class cleavage – has, however, been debated. This paper demonstrates that
the dimension reflects a new education-based cleavage that has come into existence
since the mid 1980s. Thus, analyses of Danish election surveys and party manifestoes
show the linkage between the voters’ educational level, their values, and their voting for
authoritarian or libertarian parties – i.e. the existence of an education cleavage. Due to
its status as one of the more advanced countries, Denmark can be seen as a least likely
case for the existence of a structurally based cleavage; hence, the existence of the
education cleavage in this country indicates that similar cleavages lie underneath the
authoritarian–libertarian dimension in other countries as well.
The socio-structural anchoring of electoral behaviour in advanced industrial

democracies is a highly contested subject. Thus, from the early 1980s and for
some two decades the prevailing – de-alignment – argument was that this
anchoring has been seriously weakened and, in some cases, has disappeared
altogether (cf. e.g. Dalton et al. 1984; Franklin et al. 1992). Instead, it has
been argued, so-called new politics issues (Miller and Levitin 1976) and
post-material values without structural links have come to the forefront of
the voters’ minds on election day thereby dissolving the previous type of
cleavage politics (cf. e.g. Dalton 2002; Inglehart 1997).
More recently, however, this conclusion has been disputed, on the one
hand, by scholars aiming to document the resilience of social class as an
important influence on voting (cf. e.g. the debate in Evans 1999b) and, on the
other hand, by scholars analysing the development as reflecting a
‘transformation’ as much as a decline of the relationship between social
structure and voting (Knutsen 2004; van der Waal et al. 2007). Under the last
heading we may also list authors such as Kitschelt (1994, 1995), Kriesi (1998;
Kriesi et al. 2006), and Kalmijn and Kraaykamp (2007) whose analyses point
Correspondence Address: stubager@ps.au.dk
ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online ª 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402381003654544
506 R. Stubager
to the increasing importance of education as an independent electoral

influence in societies characterised by a globalised knowledge economy.
From a different perspective, authors analysing the formation of values
have noted the strong connection between education and new politics issues
or authoritarian–libertarian values where more highly educated groups
consistently tend towards the libertarian pole while less educated groups
tend towards the authoritarian pole thus creating an objective conflict
between the groups (Brooks 2006; Stubager 2008, 2009; van de Werfhorst
and de Graaf 2004; Weakliem 2002).
Combining these observations the contours of a new cleavage emerge:
Just as the class cleavage was reflected in the opposition between a socialist
left and a capitalist right represented in the political arena by the respective
parties, the basic idea pursued here is that education is giving rise to a new
cleavage that lies beneath what has been seen as a purely ideological conflict
over authoritarian–libertarian values as reflected in such topics as
immigration and environmentalism – a conflict that is represented by
parties giving voice to the positions of the conflicting groups.
The aim of the paper is first to test this hypothesis about the existence of
an educational cleavage at the electoral level and, second, on this basis to
explore, in a longitudinal framework, the dynamics of the development of
the alleged cleavage. This latter aim has implications for the choice of setting
in which to conduct the analyses. Thus, as can be verified by inspecting the
details of the above-mentioned studies, the developments in the individual
countries are often quite different. Probably, this variability reflects both
institutional differences (e.g. electoral rules) and the differential behaviour of
the political actors – not least the parties (cf. Knutsen and Kumlin 2005:
161). The impact of such factors raises doubts about the explanatory merits
of a comparative approach to new and emerging cleavages: Particularly in
the initial phases of the establishment of a cleavage we should expect
country-specific factors to play relatively large roles (cf. Evans 1999a: 332).
By restricting the focus to one country, on the other hand, it is possible to
analyse the sequence of developments in depth by taking into account the
idiosyncrasies of the national political and social context, e.g. the
organisation of the educational system, the configuration of the party
system, and the policy stances taken by the parties. Incidentally, these are
factors that set fairly high requirements in terms of data – requirements that
are difficult to meet in a comparative context. For these reasons, the
analyses will focus on only one country. The country chosen is Denmark
which is one of the most advanced countries with a highly educated and
affluent electorate (van Deth 1995). For this reason, Denmark should
constitute a prime example of the individualising forces of embourgeoise-
ment and cognitive mobilisation underlying the de-alignment perspective
(cf. the functional model of Dalton et al. 1984; Dalton 2002). Denmark can,
in other words, be seen as a least likely case for the existence of structural
influences on voting behaviour in the form of a new cleavage. On the other
The Development of the Education Cleavage: Denmark 507
hand, as discussed below, the situation in Denmark on a number of the key

factors is clearly representative of that in other advanced industrial
countries so that the results may be generalised to such countries as well.
The paper unfolds as follows. First, it is necessary to establish the
cleavage model that underlies the analyses. Then, the ideological core of the
new cleavage – authoritarian–libertarian – values has to be defined before
turning to a short discussion of central aspects of the macro-social
development. With these elements in place a set of hypotheses that can
guide the analyses are developed before turning to the actual analyses in the
fourth section. The analyses clearly document the existence of the proposed
cleavage and the final section is therefore devoted to a discussion of the
dynamics behind the development of the cleavage and the generalisability

of the results. The discussion suggests that the development is driven not
by one single factor, but by the coincidence of a socio-structural potential
that is activated by macro-social developments and mobilised by political
parties.
Theory, Background, and Hypotheses

The Cleavage Model
Cleavages have been subject to scholarly interest for an extended period of
time. Yet, their definition is contested. The central reference is Lipset and
Rokkan’s ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An
Introduction’ from 1967 and most subsequent research follows leads
contained in this seminal piece. The article itself does not contain a clear
definition of the cleavage concept, however. Such a definition has, on the
other hand, been presented by Bartolini and Mair in 1990 and refined by
Knutsen and Scarbrough in 1995 and it is their approach that forms the
foundation for the use of the cleavage concept in the present context.
Cleavages are defined, hence, as consisting of three inter-related elements:
a socio-structural, a psychological (consisting of an interest and a
consciousness aspect1), and an organisational – what Deegan-Krause
(2007) refers to as a ‘full cleavage’. The definition revolves around the
existence of conflict as the fundamental aspect of cleavages (cf. also
Zuckerman 1975: 238): Cleavages arise because socio-structurally defined
groups disagree about certain matters. To be able to speak of a cleavage in
accordance with the model presented here, thus, it is crucial to document
that socio-structurally defined groups have developed opposing interests
that may be either material or non-material (i.e. values) and that the
members of the opposing groups support organisations that articulate the
interests of the groups in the political arena. In the present context focus is
on parties as the embodiment of the organisational cleavage element. Thus,
other types of organisations (such as trade unions) that have played a role in
relation to other cleavages are left out of consideration.
508 R. Stubager
The underlying conflicts can be seen as erupting due to macro-social

developments that impact on the (material or non-material) interests of the
socio-structurally defined groups. This impact arises in so-called critical
junctures (cf. Lipset and Rokkan 1967: 37) where new issues become salient
due to macro-social changes that elevate them onto the societal agenda.
Cleavages may develop, thus, where such newly salient issues are related to
the interests of social groups in different ways – where, in other words, the
groups have conflicting views on how to respond to the issues.
It should be noted that, in keeping with the tradition of cleavage analyses,
the model proposed is not of a deterministic character. Thus, for cleavages
to come into existence parties have to incorporate the conflicting positions
into their platforms thereby articulating the positions and identities of the
conflicting groups. That is, all elements of the model need to be in place.
This underlines the importance of the organisational element.
Authoritarian–Libertarian Values
Before proceeding to a discussion of the socio-structural background to the
proposed cleavage it is relevant to briefly discuss its ideological content: new
politics or authoritarian–libertarian values. Such discussions are often
marred by changing conceptualisations. To counter this problem, in the
analyses that follow we shall apply a definition of authoritarian–libertarian
values developed on the basis of the works of Flanagan (1987; Flanagan and
Lee 2003) and Kitschelt (1994).2
Both authors use the term authoritarian–libertarian values to label a
dimension which has the concept of hierarchy at its core (cf. also Enyedi
2008: 293): authoritarians favour social hierarchy, that is the rank ordering
of individuals in a system with a clear distinction between superior and
inferior groups or persons (cf. e.g. Kitschelt 1994: 10; Flanagan and Lee
2003: 237–43). Such hierarchies are both natural and right to authoritarians
(cf. also Jenssen 1993: 122). Libertarians, on the other hand, dislike social
hierarchies and prefer the free and equal interaction of people without
regard to social positions of any kind; in Jenssen’s words libertarians favour
‘parity of power’ in social interactions.
In addition to the attitudes to hierarchy, attitudes to tolerance for non-
conformity form the second core aspect of the authoritarian–libertarian
dimension. Entailed in a libertarian position, thus, is a basic respect for and
tolerance of other people – including those who deviate from one’s own
norms or the norms of society. Variety among humans is, in fact, seen as
something to be protected for its own sake. This is not so for authoritarians:
those who deviate from conventional norms or who stand outside society
should first and foremost be made to comply with the norms of society.
Their deviance (no matter at what level) is not accorded any value in itself;
variety is potentially bad (cf. also Adorno et al. 1950: 232–3) and deserves
no protection. In this way hierarchy and tolerance form the ideational figure
underlying authoritarian–libertarian values. This is the core of the conflict

which, as mentioned, sharply divides individuals according to their
educational level: highly educated groups are generally libertarian in
outlook while less educated groups tend to be authoritarian.
The concrete manifestation of the conflict may vary from one country to
the other, however. That is, the underlying values may play out in relation
to different issues dependent on the socio-political and historical context.
Thus, whereas the conflict in the United States takes the form of ‘culture
wars’ over moral and religious issues (cf. Smith and Tatalovich 2003), in the
more secular countries of northern Europe (not least in Denmark) it has
been reflected in the debate about immigration, criminal justice and
environmental protection (i.e. the relationship between man and nature3).
The Macro-Social Background

As is clear from the discussion of the cleavage model above, macro-social
factors play an important role in the model by providing the impetus for
cleavage development. Thus, to support the hypothesis regarding the
existence of an education-based cleavage it is necessary briefly to examine
relevant aspects of the development in Denmark. The examination is entirely
instrumental in the sense that it will focus on factors that are related to the
proposed cleavage and may play the roles expected by the cleavage model.
The natural place to start is with education itself. On this point the
evidence is clear: There is a marked and steady increase in the educational
level among Danes. Thus, according to Jacobsen (2004) the proportion with
tertiary educations has increased from 12 per cent in 1983 to 22 per cent in
2003; and during the same period the proportion having only primary or
lower secondary education dropped from 52 per cent to 35 per cent. In other
words, while the less educated group is rapidly diminishing, the more highly
educated group has grown to a size that makes it politically relevant in the
sense that parties may be able to base their existence on catering to
the interests of the group. This constitutes an important pre-condition to the
establishment of an education-based cleavage.
According to the model presented, however, cleavages do not simply arise
whenever different structural groups with conflicting interests can be
identified. Rather, it is necessary that the conflict of interests is activated
at the structural level by events that put the conflicting perspectives in play
in critical junctures. An overview of Danish politics through the past two
and a half decades reveals that in particular two issues related to
authoritarian–libertarian values have experienced marked changes in their
salience: environmental issues and the issue of immigration. As for the
former, the environment first made its way onto the public agenda in the late
1960s and early 1970s, but the mid 1980s brought increased focus on
problems related to pollution. The result was a marked jump in the salience
of the environment to voters who placed the issue high on the agenda in the
510 R. Stubager
late 1980s (see Table A1 in the online appendix: ‘Stubager Appendix’ at

http://structureofcompetition.pbworks.com and at http://sites.google.com/
site/structureofcompetition).
Another critical juncture has manifested itself in relation to the issue of
immigration. Although a certain amount of immigration is no new
phenomenon in Denmark, the number of guest workers and refugees that
have arrived in the country over the past few decades far surpasses anything
seen before. This development has not gone unnoticed among the voters (cf.
Table A1): the immigration issue was put on the public agenda in the mid
1980s and the 1990s brought a steady increase in salience culminating in
2001 when the issue was seen as second in importance only to the somewhat
vaguer issue of welfare (Goul Andersen 2003: 138).

Since, as argued above, the environmental and immigration issues are
strongly related to the authoritarian–libertarian dimension, the result of
these developments was an activation of the dimension in the minds of the
voters. Thus, the combined impact of the increasing salience of the two
issues has been an activation of the conflict between authoritarian and
libertarian values.
Hypotheses
On the basis of the model and the selected features of the macro
development it is possible to develop a set of hypotheses about the
development of the proposed education cleavage that can guide the
subsequent analyses. The first set of hypotheses pertains to the aim of
substantiating the existence of the new cleavage. Thus, in accordance with
the cleavage model we should expect to find a relationship of significant
strength between the voters’ length of education and their position on
authoritarian–libertarian values (H1). The existence of a new education-
based cleavage presupposes that any relationship found between education
and values is not caused by other variables. The most probable rivals of the
education-based explanation would seem to be social class and age or
cohort. Preliminary analyses showed that age and cohort do not influence
the effects of the other variables; consequently, the analyses presented below
are conducted without these variables. On the other hand, to test the
independence of the proposed new cleavage from the previously dominant
class cleavage a measure of social class has been included in the analyses.
Similarly, to provide a standard by which to judge the results for the
education cleavage a parallel set of analyses is (in most cases) conducted for
the class cleavage which pits the social classes against each other in a conflict
of interests reflected in the opposition between socialist and capitalist values
(henceforth referred to as economic values). When commenting on the
results, attention is mainly focused on the education cleavage, however.
Looking at the organisational level we should expect to find parties that
adopt the stances of the educational groups and articulate them in the
political arena (H2). And when bringing the elements together we should
expect that education and authoritarian–libertarian values are most
important in relation to voting for those parties that most clearly
incorporate authoritarian–libertarian stances in their platforms (H3). With
regard to the longitudinal aspect of the analysis the main expectation is that
the elements of the education cleavage strengthen over time in comparison
with the class cleavage (H4). To test these hypothesis all analyses are
conducted in a longitudinal perspective, thus directing attention to the
dynamic of the development of the cleavage.
The Crystallisation of a Socio-structural Foundation: Social Background and

Value Positions
The first set of analyses focuses on the development over time in the linkage
between the socio-structural level and values. In accordance with H1 the
basic expectation at this point is that the relationship between authoritar-
ian–libertarian values and education will be stronger – and increasingly so –
than both the relationship between authoritarian–libertarian values and
class and the relationship between economic values and education.
Data and Measures

Data for the analyses come mainly from the Danish election studies for the
period 1979 to 2005 (cf. the online appendix) for which roughly comparable
indicators of authoritarian–libertarian values are available. Unfortunately a
suitable measure of vocational education was not included prior to 1984
meaning that the core analyses cannot be pushed further back. Whenever
possible, however, the entire time span will be analysed. The independent
variables – length of education and class – were coded with, respectively, five
and four categories while the dependent value dimensions were constructed
as simple additive scales running from 0 (libertarian or socialist) to 100
(authoritarian or capitalist). Details of the variables can be found in the
online appendix. Means and standard deviations of the scales are presented
in Table 1.
The most important point to note in the table is the absence of any clear
trend for the authoritarian–libertarian value dimension. Whatever changes
we may find in the following analyses, thus, they do not seem to be driven by
any substantial changes in the aggregate position or the spread of the
electorate on this value dimension: The position only varies to a limited
extent and the changes display no clear trend. For economic values (at least
from 1981 onwards), no major trend in the mean is discernible at the
aggregate level either. We do, however, observe a (statistically significant)
reduction in the standard deviation towards the end of the period. For now
we just note these findings; below we shall see that they have particular
consequences.
512 R. Stubager
T ABL E 1
M E A N S AN D S TA N D A R D D E V I A T I O N S F OR A U T H O R I T A R I A N –L I B E RT A R I A N
A N D EC O N O M I C V A L U E S SC A L E S , 1 9 7 9 – 2 0 05
Authoritarian–libertarian values Economic values

Version 1 Version 2 Version 1 Version 2
Year Mean Std. dev. Mean Std. dev. Mean Std. dev. Mean Std. dev.
1 1
1979 50.73 19.59 37.63 26.40
1981 46.671 26.441 51.97 27.33
1984 42.161 29.771 49.19 28.21 39.502 29.122
1987 54.30 24.93 43.551 31.001 33.792 29.722
1990 55.80 23.98 51.16 27.56
1994 56.00 22.98 46.822 31.042
1998 56.21 24.20 54.87 24.23

2001 57.00 23.44 55.01 23.98
2005 53.39 23.08 53.47 22.65
Notes: 100 scale points indicate an extreme authoritarian or capitalist position; 0 scale points
indicate an extreme libertarian or socialist position.
1
In 1981 and 1984 the criminal justice item is missing from the authoritarian–libertarian scale.
The immigration item has alternative formats in 1979, 1981, and 1984 as does the
environmental item in 1979.
2
The economic values scales in 1984, 1987, and 1994 are based on a different set of indicators. In
1984, the Version 2 figures stem from the 1985 class survey which is used for most analyses (cf.
the online appendix). The Version 1 figures stem from the 1984 election survey which is used in
Figure 3.
As pointed out by Müller (1997: 751–2), in longitudinal analyses of the

kind pursued here it is necessary to differentiate between changes in the
effect of one variable on another and in the composition of the electorate.
Effect changes are reflected in changes in the coefficients of the independent
variables in the (OLS regression) analysis between two elections. As we are
dealing with categorical variables, however, the analyses produce a large
number of coefficients, all of which cannot be reported. Therefore, a new
measure – d (delta) – is proposed. d is defined as the standard deviation of
the linear regression coefficients – the bs – associated with a given
categorical variable in accordance with the following formula:
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
uK 2
uP
u b b
t1 k
d¼
K
where the variable has k ¼ 1, 2, . . . K categories. Just as the k-index (Hout

et al. 1995) on which it is modelled, the d-index allows us to condense the
different coefficients associated with a categorical variable into one number.
The value of d, thus, is the average deviation between the K categories and
the mean of the electorate measured in the same units as the dependent
variable (cf. Manza and Brooks 1999: 264). Changes in the composition of
the electorate are captured by (changes in) the adjusted R2 (which, as noted
by Müller (1997), also reflects effect changes – a point to keep in mind when
interpreting the results); I shall refer to the adjusted R2 as measuring the
impact of the independent variables.
The analyses will be based on five different measures: For both length of
education and class I shall report the values of the adjusted R2 for bi-variate
analyses with the socio-structural variable as independent and either of the
value dimensions as the dependent variable. From these analyses I will also
report the value of the d-index summarising the effects of the socio-
structural variables. In addition I shall report the adjusted R2 from analyses
including both socio-structural variables in the analysis together. By
comparing these figures to the others it will be possible to gauge the degree
to which the impact of the socio-structural variables overlap in influencing

the development in the value dimensions.
Analyses: Cleavages at the Value Level

The results of the first set of analyses are displayed in Figure 1.4 They fall in
fairly clear patterns. Looking first at the relationship between the socio-
structural variables and economic values in Panel A we observe a tendency
towards a weakening of the relationship between the socio-structural
variables and the value dimension as measured by the adjusted R2 (depicted
on the left-hand scale) for the combined impact of both socio-structural
variables. We can also note a very strong parallelism and short distance
between the curves for the adjusted R2 for the class variable and the overall
adjusted R2. When compared to the course of the curve for the adjusted R2
for education this clearly indicates that the class variable has a greater
impact on economic values than does education – as could be expected. At
the same time, however, we can also observe a clear and persistent
weakening of the effect of the class variable (cf. the development in the d-
index depicted on the right-hand scale) although it still retains a level well
above that of education. This indicates that the declining tendency in the
overall relationship is caused both by an effect change and a (relatively
modest) change in the composition of the electorate.
Turning then to the results for authoritarian–libertarian values in Panel B
we find an almost equally clear – but different – pattern: The first thing to
notice is the strengthening of the overall relationship between the socio-
structural variables and the value dimension over time. This strengthening
has increased the adjusted R2 from a 1984 level around that found in Panel
A to a 2005 level which is almost three times higher than the comparable
figure for economic values (0.17 against 0.06). As was the case with the class
variable in Panel A we find a clear relationship between the overall adjusted
R2 and that for the effect of the education variable. In Panel B, further, the
class variable seems to have a much weaker impact on the values and adds
very little extra explanatory power to the model. This is also reflected in the
levels of the d indices clearly showing that education has the stronger effect.
514 R. Stubager
FI G U R E 1
TH E I MP ACT A ND E FFE CT OF LE NG TH OF ED U CA TION AN D CL ASS ON
E CO NO M I C A N D AU T H O R I T AR I A N – L I B E RT A R I A N V A L UE S ( AD J U S T E D R 2 AND
D I N D E X , 1 9 8 4 – 2 0 0 5)
Note: See the online appendix for coding and scaling and the underlying coefficients. The adjusted R2 is
measured on the left-hand and the d index on the right-hand axes.
Looking at the d-curves we can observe the absence of clear trends in their
development. The strength of the effects of the socio-structural variables, in
other words, is unchanged. In itself this is an interesting finding when
compared to the declining effect of the class variable found in Panel A. The
weakening of the effects of the socio-structural variables, apparently, is not a
ubiquitous phenomenon. However, the stability in these effects also
indicates another thing: The increase in the value of the adjusted R2 for
the overall model (and – due to their strong connection – the education
variable) is, at least partly, driven by changes in the composition of the
electorate – the growth of the more highly educated group. For the class
variable we can – as for education in Panel A – observe a high degree of
parallelism between the R2 and d-curves, thus indicating that compositional

changes play a minor role in relation to the effect of this variable.
The conclusion that follows is one of support for hypothesis H1. We did
find the expected increase in the impact of education on authoritarian–
libertarian values.5 The increase seemed to result mainly from changes in the
composition of the electorate. For economic values we found a decreasing
impact of the class variable resulting in a downward tendency in the
relationship between the socio-structural variables and the value dimension.
This indicates a weakening of the class cleavage at least at this level – a
development that may have repercussions at the electoral level as well.
Further, the differences between the two value dimensions both in the course
of the development of the relationship with the socio-structural variables
and in relation to the question of which of these variables has the stronger
impact supports the view that the education-based authoritarian–libertarian
cleavage is an increasingly important phenomenon that is qualitatively
different from the class cleavage.
The Development of Cleavage Party Profiles

The next step in the analysis is the examination of the stances of the parties
on authoritarian–libertarian values. Thus, to be able to support H2 it should
be possible to identify parties with a clear profile in relation to the values in
focus here – that is, profiles that are expected to become increasingly clear
over time. It should be noted that the analyses of this section merely aim at
identifying the organisational cleavage element in the form of parties
adopting clear positions on the authoritarian–libertarian dimension. The
factors underlying the dynamic in the positioning are not analysed, in other
words.
The positions of the parties are measured on a scale developed on the
basis of the Comparative Manifesto Project data set (cf. Budge et al. 2001).
The scale is centred on 0 and positive/negative values reflect authoritarian/
libertarian positions. The analysis covers the period 1979–2005 and includes
the seven largest parties in the period (see the online appendix for all coding
details).
516 R. Stubager
The development of the parties’ positions is depicted in Figure 2, which

clearly shows an increasing polarisation of the parties over the period. We
can observe, thus, how the parties, to varying degrees, drift away from the
centre around 0 over the period. The development is particularly noticeable
from 1990 to 1994 and the polarisation in 2005 is markedly stronger than in
1979 (which, it should be added, marks the high point of differentiation for
the 1970s).
The overall pattern in the positions of the parties is relatively stable
(particularly from 1994 onwards) with a division into a libertarian group
consisting of the Socialists and the Social Liberals on the one hand, and an
authoritarian group made up of the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Progress
Party/Danish People’s Party, on the other (the position of the Social

Democrats is less stable). As mentioned, however, we observe a clear
polarisation of the parties over the years: The span between them widens and
within each of the two groups certain parties are consistently more extreme
than others: the Social Liberals and the Socialists on the libertarian side and
the Danish People’s Party (the Progress Party) on the authoritarian side.6
F IG U R E 2
P ART Y P LA CE M EN T S ON TH E A UT HO RI TAR I AN– L I BER TAR IA N D I M E NS IO N
( M A N I F E S T O D A T A , 1 9 79 – 2 0 0 5 )
Note: See the online appendix for coding and the exact values. High values on authoritarian–libertarian
scale indicate authoritarian position, low values libertarian position.
Sources: Calculations based on: 1979–1998: CD-ROM included in Budge et al. (2001); 2001: data kindly
provided by Andrea Volkens; 2005: data kindly provided by Christoffer Green-Pedersen.
Thus, these parties can be seen as the main cleavage parties representing each
their side.
The increasing polarisation of the parties on the authoritarian–libertarian
dimension, further, may be taken as an indication of an increasing
importance of this dimension to party competition. By their differentiation
on this dimension the parties enable themselves to attract voters from
different value positions thereby opening the way for authoritarian–
libertarian values to become an important factor influencing party choice.
On this background it seems fair to say that Figure 2 shows the
establishment of the organisational cleavage element, thus supporting H2.
Putting It All Together: Cleavages in Electoral Behaviour

The analyses of electoral behaviour are designed to test the most important
of the hypotheses, H3, pertaining to the connection between the voters’
socio-structural background and values, on the one hand, and their voting
choices on the other. We should, first, expect to find an increasing
importance of the length of the voters’ education to their voting decisions.
Particularly we should expect to find this increase for the core cleavage
parties (cf. above) – the Social Liberals, the Socialists, and the Progress
Party/Danish People’s Party. Likewise we should expect an increasing
impact of authoritarian–libertarian values particularly in the case of these
parties. Second, the impact of education and authoritarian–libertarian
values is expected to increase relative to that of class and economic values
(H4) although to varying degrees for the different parties. We might expect,
thus, that the class and economic values variables retain some higher degree
of impact for the parties that have traditionally been the major opponents
on the class cleavage: the Social Democrats, the Liberals, and the
Conservatives – parties that were found in the previous section to occupy
less extreme positions on the authoritarian–libertarian dimension.
Analysing Party Choice across Time: Analytical and Operational Choices

The analyses will, basically, be conducted along the lines laid out above; thus,
both a PRE-type and a coefficient-based measure will be presented. How-
ever, with a categorical dependent variable – party choice – the analysis will
be conducted by means of logistic regression; hence relying on Nagelkerke’s
R2 as the PRE-type7 measure of the impact of the independent variables (for
similar uses of the measure, see Berglund 2003; Knutsen 2004). For the
categorical independent variables, the coefficient-based effect measure is
the k-index which was developed for this purpose (cf. Hout et al. 1995). For
the two interval level variables, authoritarian–libertarian and economic
values, we can use the estimated logistic regression coefficients directly.
To minimise the influence of the problems related to perfect prediction
(see the online appendix) and to be able to present a set of coefficients for
518 R. Stubager
each party, the analyses will focus on the individual parties. As before, the
seven largest parties will be included in the analysis. For this purpose it is
possible to use binomial logistic regression where the dependent variable is a
dichotomisation of the respondents into those voting for a given party and
those voting for all other parties. From these analyses I shall present
Nagelkerke’s R2, the k-index, as well as the logit coefficients for the value
variables which directly provide information about the unique features of
each party in relation to the overall party system.
As above, analyses of a number of different models are conducted. First,
by means of Nagelkerke’s R2, measures of the bi-variate impact of the two
socio-structural variables on party choice will be presented. Second, the
analyses are extended to the value level by estimating models including both
of the socio-structural variables and each of the value dimensions, thereby
taking the causal sequencing of the variables into account (cf. the cleavage
model). These models will allow for an evaluation of the structure-
independent contribution of the value dimensions. Finally, the total impact
of both socio-structural and value variables is analysed. A comparison of
these results with those obtained in the second step will permit evaluations
of the overlap between the impacts of the two value dimensions, thereby
allowing us to determine which is the more important.
The coefficient-based measures will come from, roughly, the same types of
models. I shall, thus, present the bi-variate effects at the socio-structural
level while the coefficients for the value variables will come from the full
models, i.e. where all four independent variables are included. This will give
the unique effect of each value variable (i.e. that part of their effects which
they do not have in common).8
Depolarisation and Polarisation: Values and Vote

As a preliminary to the multi-variate analyses, Figure 3 shows the
development in the mean positions on the two value dimensions of the
parties’ voters over the period from 1979 to 2005 for which we have (fairly)
comparable data (cf. the online appendix – note that the Progress Party and
the Danish People’s Party are presented together in the following).
The figure reveals interesting developments. For economic values depicted
in Panel A, first, we see a clear movement of the positions of the voters for
the Socialists towards the centre. Second, the Liberals and the Conservatives
seem to attract voters with a slightly less capitalist profile over time. These
changes result in a clear decline in polarisation (measured as the difference
between the two most extreme parties) from around 45 scale points in 1979
to about 25 in 2005 – a near halving, in other words. In spite of the changes,
however, the distribution of the parties across the dimension follows a stable
pattern with the voters for the Liberals and the Conservatives on the
capitalist side, the Social Liberals and the Progress Party/Danish People’s
Party voters closer to/around the centre, and the voters for the Socialists
F IG U R E 3
P L ACEME N TS O F TH E PA RTIES ’ V O TER S ON ECON OM IC A ND LIB ERT ARIAN –
A U T H O R I T A R I A N V A L U E S ( D E V I A T IO NS FR O M M E A N , 1 9 7 9 – 2 00 5 )
Note: See the online appendix for coding of variables, the exact values and their standard errors.
and the Social Democrats occupying the most Socialist position in the
spectrum.
For authoritarian–libertarian values in Panel B we see the opposite
pattern: There is an increasing polarisation of the parties’ voters over the
period. The development is driven by the Socialists during the first half of
the 1980s but becomes particularly pronounced in 1987 where the Social
Liberals and, notably, the Progress Party develop marked voter profiles as
520 R. Stubager
well. From 1987 onwards, thus, we see a clear trichotomisation of the voters
into an authoritarian group (Progress voters), a middle group (voters for the
Conservatives, the Liberals, and the Social Democrats) and a libertarian
group (voters for the Social Liberals and the Socialists).
In response to the changes, the polarisation (measured as above) changes
from about 20 in 1979 to about 40 in 2005 (having reached a peak about 44
in 2001). The major increase in this measure took place from 1979 to 1987
and is due mainly to the changing position of voters for the Progress Party.
In this context, it should be remembered that the changes from 1984 to 1987
which are particularly pronounced in the figure are not due to changes in the
aggregate position of the electorate: As we saw in Table 1 this position is
almost unchanged between the two years. What seems to have happened,
therefore, is that the voters have begun to let their value positions influence
their voting. This is what Levendusky (2008) refers to as sorting; that is that
the voters bring their electoral choices in line with their values (cf. also
below).
In conclusion, then, the analysis shows a considerable – and changing –
relationship between both value dimensions and voting. The results, further,
indicate that the expectations of an increasing importance of a cleavage over
authoritarian–libertarian values and a decreasing importance of a cleavage
over economic values meets with a great deal of support in the data. It
should be remembered, however, that the analyses here are bi-variate in
nature – there might be considerable overlap between the influences of the
two value dimensions. In the remainder of this section, therefore, it is
examined whether the results hold up in multi-variate analyses including the
socio-structural variables and both value dimensions.
Cleavage Decline and Rise: The Class and Education Cleavages 1984–2005
Although mixed, the picture that emerges from the analyses contains a
number of interesting patterns. In Figure 4, which shows the impact (cf.
above) of the variables, a couple of general trends can be noticed. First, we
can see that the ability of the models to explain the choice of the Social
Democrats as well as the Conservatives is in decline – particularly for the
latter party. The development for the other parties shows less of a trend
although the tendency seems to be towards a weakening of the models’
explanatory power for the Liberals (except in 2005) and the Socialists (from
1998 onwards) and a strengthening for the Social Liberals. The absolute
levels of the curves are roughly comparable across the party spectrum.
Only the Socialists deviate somewhat by maintaining a higher level of
Nagelkerke’s R2-values for the value variables throughout the period.
The second point to note is that the explanatory power of the socio-
structural variables is generally at a fairly low level. At the beginning of the
period the class variable did play a larger role in relation to the three
traditionally large parties – the Social Democrats, the Liberals, and the
F IG U R E 4
T HE I M P A C T OF LE NG T H OF ED U C A TI O N , C L A S S , E C O N O M I C V A L U E S , A N D
A U T HO RI T A R IA N – L IB ER TA R IA N V A L U E S ON P A R T Y C H O IC E ( EA C H PA RT Y V S .
AL L O TH ER P AR TIES ) (N AG EL K ERK E’ S R 2 , 1 98 4 – 2 0 0 5 )
Note: See the online appendix for coding of variables, the exact values and their significance.
Conservatives – but (particularly since 1990) it has lost a great deal of its
impact. As we can see in panels A, C, and E of Figure 5 this loss of impact is
paralleled by a weakening of the strength of the effect associated with the
522 R. Stubager
F IG U R E 5
T H E EF FE C T OF LE NG TH OF ED U CA TI ON , C L ASS , E C ON OM I C VA LU ES , A ND
A U T HO RI T A R IA N – L IB ER TA R IA N V A L U E S ON P A R T Y C H O IC E ( EA C H PA RT Y V S .
AL L OT HE R P A R T I E S ) (k- I N D E X A N D L O G I T CO EF F I C IE N T S , 1 9 8 4 –2 0 0 5 )
Note: See the online appendix for coding of variables, the underlying coefficients and their standard errors.
The k-index is measured on the left-hand axes, the logit coefficients on the right-hand axes.
class variable (as measured by the k-index depicted on the left-hand scale).
We may, hence, conclude that the loss of impact has its cause in a change of
the (strength of the) effect of the class variable. In fact there seems to be a
general trend towards a weakening of the effect of the class variable – a
trend that was also found in Figure 1 above.9
The education variable, on the other hand, has the greater impact (of the
two socio-structural variables) for the Social Liberals and the Socialists (for
the Progress Party and the Danish People’s Party education and class show
roughly similar levels of impact) while it plays markedly smaller roles in
relation to the three traditionally large parties. For the Social Liberals we
can, further, note an increase in the impact of education towards the end of
the period – an increase that is founded on stability in the strength of the

effect (cf. Panel B in Figure 5). In relation to the other parties, the strength
of the effect of education is somewhat more variable, though. The education
groups’ party choices (not shown) are pretty consistently in accordance with
the results of the analyses at the party level: The Social Liberals, the
Socialists and the Conservatives are preferred by more highly educated
respondents while less educated respondents are attracted by the Social
Democrats and the Progress Party/Danish People’s Party; Liberal voters
have no clear educational profile.
Summing up the results regarding the relationship between the socio-
structural variables and party choice, then, we can note that the decline of
the class variable hits hardest among the three traditionally class-based
parties while the education variable retains – and in one case increases – its
impact in relation to the three parties most closely associated with the
authoritarian–libertarian cleavage. These results, thus, are patterned on the
parties’ positions in relation to the two cleavages.
Moving on to the value variables, we find even clearer differences: Voters
for the Social Democrats, the Liberals and the Conservatives are clearly
more influenced by economic than authoritarian–libertarian values over the
entire time period – although the independent impact of the latter dimension
increases somewhat for the Social Democrats and the Liberals. For the three
other parties – and particularly for the Social Liberals and the Progress
Party/Danish People’s Party – the impact of authoritarian–libertarian
values is greater from 1994 (1998 for the Socialists) onwards.
For the latter two parties we can also observe the very tight connection
between the curves for the total model and the model excluding economic
values. This implies that economic values have only a modest independent
impact once authoritarian–libertarian values have been taken into account –
just as we should expect for two of the main opponents on the latter
dimension. By inspecting the comparable curves for the Social Democrats,
the Conservatives, and the Liberals, in contrast, we can see how, for these
parties, changes in the impact of economic values continue to have the
strongest influence on the development in the overall impact of the models –
in spite of the increasing importance of authoritarian–libertarian values.
524 R. Stubager
This finding indicates that the three parties are still tied to the economic
conflict dimension.
Based on the results of the bi-variate analyses in Figure 3 we should
expect to find clear differences in the directions of the effects of the value
variables. As can be seen from the logit coefficients for the dimensions
(depicted on the right-hand axes in Figure 5) this expectation holds up. On
authoritarian–libertarian values, thus, the Social Liberals, the Socialists, and
(somewhat weaker) the Social Democrats are more popular among
libertarian than authoritarian leaning voters (the coefficients are negative
which means that a low value on the dimension, i.e. a libertarian position,
increases the probability of choosing the party in question). The
Conservatives, the Liberals, and most strongly the Progress Party/Danish

People’s Party, on the other hand, are favoured by authoritarian leaning
respondents (i.e., the coefficients are positive).
On economic values we find the traditional left–right picture with the
Liberals and the Conservatives being relatively more popular among voters
at the capitalist pole (cf. the positive logit coefficients) compared to the
Social Democrats and the Socialists who are relatively more popular among
voters at the opposite pole. For the Social Liberals and the Progress Party/
Danish People’s Party the effect of economic values is much weaker,
signifying, as should be expected from Figure 3, that these parties are
relatively more popular among voters in a centre position compared to those
at the extremes.
The developments in the strength of the effects of the value variables add
to our understanding of the impact of the variables associated with the two
cleavages. First, we may observe that, with a few exceptions, the curves for
the effect of economic values display trendless trajectories. The tendency
towards a weakening of the impact of the variable, hence, seems to stem
from changes in the composition of the electorate on this dimension. One
obvious candidate for such changes is a depolarisation of the electorate.
This would result in a movement of respondents from extreme, and
therefore value-homogeneous, positions to more moderate, and therefore
value-ambivalent, positions. Such changes will result in a lowering of the
value of PRE-type measures like Nagelkerke’s R2. In this case, a
depolarisation on the economic value dimension is indeed what was found
in Table 1.
A more volatile pattern of development is found when looking at the
effect of authoritarian–libertarian values, however. Thus, just as at the bi-
variate level we see an increasing polarisation among the parties: On the
libertarian side, the Social Liberals, the Social Democrats, and the Socialists
all become increasingly popular among libertarian relative to authoritarian
voters (whereas the strengthening of the effect of authoritarian–libertarian
values in the early/middle part of the period is significant, the tendency
towards moderation in 2005 is insignificant for all three parties). This is
matched on the authoritarian side by the gradual development of a
preference for the Liberals among authoritarian (as compared to libertarian)

voters and the more marked increase in these voters’ preference for the
Progress Party in 1987 (again compared to libertarians; both movements are
clearly significant). These results seem to imply that the upward tendency in
the Nagelkerke’s R2-curves for the impact of authoritarian–libertarian
values has its basis in effect changes rather than composition changes. This
interpretation is supported by the development (or lack thereof) at the
aggregate level where we found no major changes in the voters’ overall
position on authoritarian–libertarian values (see Table 1). What we observe
on this value dimension, in other words, is sorting (cf. Levendusky 2008) of
the electorate: increasingly, libertarian voters choose libertarian parties and
authoritarian voters choose authoritarian parties, thus producing a new

alignment which we can – due to the results already presented – refer to as a
new cleavage.
Summary of Results
Given the level of detail of the results it seems reasonable to take a step
back and relate the evidence to the hypotheses. First, we may note that the
results provide clear support for H3: for the three parties that were found
to adopt the clearest positions on the authoritarian–libertarian dimension
(the Social Liberals, the Socialists, and the Progress Party/Danish People’s
Party) we found education and authoritarian–libertarian values to be the
most important variables (relative to class and economic values,
respectively) – having, furthermore, increasingly strong effects in the
expected direction. For the three other parties analysed, class and
economic values continued to have the stronger influence reflecting the
traditional association of these parties to the class cleavage – a cleavage
that appears to be in decline (cf. the reductions in both the impact and
effect of the class variable as well as the impact of economic values).
Support was also found for H4 about the relative strength of the
education and class cleavages. Thus, the impact of both class and
economic values is in clear decline; and coupled with the results for H3
this implies a strengthening of the relative impact of the new cleavage,
which is exactly what was expected.
In conclusion, then, we are able to find support for the general
expectation regarding the establishment of an education-based authoritar-
ian–libertarian cleavage while the traditionally dominant class-based
economic cleavage appears to be in decline. The development is clearly
connected to the parties’ positions on the value dimension as analysed above
where support for H2 about the differentiation of the parties on the value
dimension was detected; and since it was also possible to find support for H1
about the connection from the socio-structural level to the value dimension,
the logical next step seems to be a discussion of the timing of the
developments at the different levels of the analysis.
526 R. Stubager
Push and Pull: The Interplay of the Cleavage Elements Across Time
In the preceding sections I have analysed the development of the class- and
education-based cleavages. The question remains, however, where the
central impetus behind the development of the education-based cleavage
originates; or, in other words, why and how the cleavage has come into
existence. With the limited number of data points available I am barred
from conducting proper time-series analyses just as we have to be modest in
terms of the strength of the relationships between the curves we can expect
to find as the analysis is sensitive to random fluctuations. The following
discussion, therefore, is more of a tentative interpretation than an attempt at
conducting explicit hypothesis tests.

The starting point for the discussion may be found in the observation in
Figure 1 that whilst there have been changes at the compositional level in
the form of an increasing number of highly educated voters, the effect of
education on authoritarian–libertarian values has been fairly stable. This
means that the connection from the socio-structural level to the values has
been in existence throughout the period analysed. The question to be
answered below, therefore, is when this ‘position divide’ developed into a
‘full cleavage’ (cf. Deegan-Krause 2007); when, that is, the connection to the
organisational level was established.
On this point the compositional changes may have had a catalysing role.
One consequence is that the highly educated group, due to its size, has
become more attractive to political parties seeking to gain votes. This may
lead parties to adjust their positions so as to attract the votes of members of
the highly educated group – something that would contribute towards the
establishment of a full education-based cleavage.
As is clear, however, two conditions have to be fulfilled for this
connection to be established: The voters have to let their educational
positions and the consequent value positions influence their electoral choices
(i.e. they have to sort themselves) and the parties have to differentiate
themselves on the value dimension so that the voters are offered a choice.
Thus it seems probable that an answer to the question about the origin of
the education cleavage may lie in changes in the positions of the parties and
changes in the electoral salience of issues related to the authoritarian–
libertarian dimension.
The cleavage model introduced directs attention to the importance of
critical junctures to the establishment of cleavages. The central feature of
critical junctures in this context is the macro-structurally induced rise in the
salience of new issues that touch upon the interests of socio-structural
groups in different ways thereby activating a conflict between the groups.
Above I pointed to the importance of developments related to environ-
mental protection and immigration to the establishment of the education-
based authoritarian–libertarian cleavage. The increases in the salience of
pollution and immigration were seen, thus, as providing the critical
junctures out of which the cleavage has been established. Now we may
examine the connection between the salience of the two issues and the results
of the longitudinal analyses.
Environmental and immigration issues have provided the impetus for
each side of the cleavage. Environmental protection, thus, can be seen as a
libertarian issue: Once pollution becomes a salient problem it opens the way
for libertarians to mobilise in joint defence of the intrinsic values of nature
against the human domination and exploitation resulting in pollution.
Immigration, in contrast, can be seen as an authoritarian issue. Immigration
goes directly to the nucleus of the authoritarian–libertarian value
dimension – hierarchy and tolerance – and in a situation with high salience
for the issue, authoritarians may be motivated to join forces to support their
common value of maintaining a clear hierarchy between themselves and
immigrants based on the absence of tolerance for the deviance represented
by the immigrants.
In sum, the macro-social development was favourable for the establish-
ment of a new cleavage. For such developments to act as cleavage
generators, however, it is necessary that political parties pick up on them
and incorporate them into their platforms by voicing different positions on
them, in this way acting as crystallisation points in the political support
market around which groups of like-minded voters may gather. As we saw
above, this was what happened.
Table A1 in the online appendix presents the development in the salience
of the two issues in focus here. Concentrating first on the environment, we
saw how the issue experienced a salience peak in the late 1980s. We should
expect, therefore, to find that this point in time provided a particularly
favourable opportunity for the establishment of the libertarian side of the
new cleavage. Provided, that is, that the parties sought to incorporate the
issue into their platforms. As shown in Figure 2, this was precisely what they
did. Thus, in particular, the Social Liberals and the Socialists moved
towards the libertarian side on the authoritarian–libertarian dimension
during the 1980s.
It is encouraging to observe, therefore, that Figures 4 and 5 showed an
increasing strength of the effect (and, for the Social Liberals also, the
impact) of authoritarian–libertarian values for the Social Liberals and the
Socialists during the same time period. It seems a reasonable interpretation
to view the change at the voter level as resulting from the increase in the
salience of the environmental issue coupled with the increasingly marked
positions of the parties that allowed the voters to sort themselves based on
this dimension.
At the opposite extreme a similar influence of the salience of the
immigration issue on the voters for the Progress Party can be detected. In
Figure 2 we saw that the Progress Party (and since 1998 the Danish People’s
Party) has occupied extreme positions on the authoritarian–libertarian
dimension throughout the period under analysis. However, both the impact
528 R. Stubager
and the effect of authoritarian–libertarian values in relation to support for

the Progress Party were dramatically increased from 1984 to 1987 (cf.
Figures 4 and 5) without any comparable change taking place in the position
of the party during the same time interval. What did happen at this time was
a politicisation of the immigration issue, however. The question of
immigration was accentuated by a dramatic increase in the number of
refugees arriving in the country and the Progress Party took the opportunity
to put the issue on the agenda both before and after the 1987 election
(Gaasholt and Togeby 1995: 29; Togeby 2004: 51, 56).
In Table A1 (see online appendix) the increase in the salience of the topic
does not appear too great. This reflects the fact that the salience peaked in
the autumn of 1986 and then waned again as the number of refugees
dropped in response to a tightening of regulations (Gaasholt and Togeby
1995: 133). At this point in time we may characterise immigration as a flash
issue, thus. But a flash issue with an impact: Both the impact and effect of
the authoritarian–libertarian value dimension on choosing the Progress
Party had markedly increased. As was the case for the environmental issues
and the libertarian parties, hence it required the combination of a newly
salient issue and a party with a clear position on it for the value dimension
to gain importance for party choice.
In the early 1990s, then, driven by the salience of the issues of the
environment and immigration, the two poles of the new cleavage had been
established with the positioning of the Social Liberals and the Socialists on
the one side and the Progress Party on the other and the development of the
connection between the voters’ positions on authoritarian–libertarian values
and their electoral preferences – at least in relation to these three parties. At
the party system level, however, economic values continued to be the more
important value dimension (Stubager 2003). This is particularly clear with
regard to the three traditional main opponents on the class cleavage, the
Liberals, the Conservatives, and the Social Democrats, who remained
polarised on the dimension. Even when the importance of the class variable
declines, thus, voters may continue to be influenced by economic values
when making their choices as long as the parties continue to differentiate
themselves on the dimension and no new issues appear on the electoral
agenda.
From the late 1990s, however, the immigration issue rose high on the
agenda. Thus, following the continuing arrival of large groups of refugees in
the 1990s, the salience of immigration rose markedly. And since the parties
had already differentiated themselves on authoritarian–libertarian values in
1994, the result was that in 1998 these values became more important than
economic values to electoral choice overall – a position which authoritar-
ian–libertarian values have retained since (Stubager 2003). The rise in the
salience of immigration, then, can be seen as a catalyst for the completion of
the education cleavage. The clearest relationships – also with regard to the
socio-structural variables – are still found in relation to the core cleavage
parties. The effect of the increasing salience of immigration has primarily

been to increase the impact (mainly relative to economic values) of
authoritarian–libertarian values for the three parties occupying moderate
positions on the dimension, i.e. the three parties most clearly associated with
the waning class cleavage.
The preceding discussion teaches us (at least) one lesson: It is not the
development in one cleavage element in isolation that lies behind the
establishment of a new cleavage. Rather, it is the combination of
developments at the three levels that leads to the rise of the cleavage: We
have seen, thus, how the establishment of the education-based cleavage was
premised on the growth of the more highly educated group; on the existence
of a clear connection between the socio-structural level (education) and the

core values; on critical junctures introducing issues that accentuate the
conflict between the social groups; and on the positioning of the political
parties in different locations in relation to the conflict between the groups.
These developments, thus, relate to all three of the cleavage elements and it
is their configuration more than the individual elements that is responsible
for the establishment of the new cleavage. We should note, also, that the
part preceding, part parallel, weakening of the class cleavage seems to have
played an important role. The near implosion of this cleavage, thus, can be
seen as a precondition to the establishment of the new cleavage in that the
waning of the traditionally dominant cleavage opened the way for the new
cleavage (Kriesi 1998: 177). In this way the development follows the ‘conflict
displacement’ rather than the ‘conflict extension’ pattern described by
Layman and Carsey (2002).
In sum, we have observed how the socio-structurally based push exerted
by changes in the composition of the electorate, the accentuation of new
issues as well as the dissolution of the class cleavage and the pull of the
changing positions of the parties have interacted in the establishment of
the cleavage. The origin of the education cleavage, thus, is found in the
coincidence and interaction of the push and pull factors.
Danish Exceptionalism or General Trends?

Above, Denmark was presented as a critical case for the development of the
education cleavage. Given the advanced level of development in the country,
conditions for the development of an education cleavage should be
particularly adverse according to the de-alignment argument. The results
show that the cleavage has developed in Denmark. Indeed, as documented
by Knutsen and Kumlin (2005), authoritarian–libertarian values exert their
strongest political influence in Denmark. Thus, the question arises as to the
generalisability of the results: are the findings relevant to other Western
countries? A number of observations indicate that they are.
First, the increase in the level of education that was described for
Denmark has also taken place in other countries across the Western world
530 R. Stubager
(van Deth 1995). Thus, the electoral potential contained in a fairly large
group of highly educated voters is present in other countries as well. Second,
it is one of the most stable results of past as well as contemporary research
that education is the strongest variable influencing authoritarian–libertarian
values (Houtman 2001; van de Werfhorst and de Graaf 2004; cf. Stubager
2008). This is particularly so in advanced industrial societies (Kalmijn and
Kraaykamp 2007) but holds up in countries outside Western Europe and
North America as well (Weakliem 2002). In other words, the basic
connection in the education cleavage seems to be very widespread.
Third, the two-dimensional conflict structure where both economic and
authoritarian–libertarian values influence electoral behaviour and party
competition can also be found in other Western countries (Inglehart 1997;

Kitschelt 1994, 1995; Kriesi et al. 2006; van der Waal et al. 2007). The exact
content of the conflicts along the two dimensions may vary, but the
underlying structure is the same (cf. Enyedi 2008: 293).
Finally, in several of these countries analyses have found that, for the voters,
education has come to matter the most in relation to those parties that occupy
the same positions in the spectrum as the Socialists, the Social Liberals, and the
Danish People’s Party do in Denmark. In particular, this applies to Vlaams
Blok in Belgium, Front National in France, the Greens in Germany, and D66
and the Greens in the Netherlands (Knutsen 2004: 177–87).
In sum, the results for the Danish case are highly relevant to
developments in similar countries. Indeed, given the observations just noted
it might very well be that the education cleavage has been established
elsewhere already. This will be a question for future research.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for helpful comments and suggestions provided by Lise
Togeby and Christoffer Green-Pedersen. Remaining errors and omissions
are solely my responsibility.
Notes
1. Due to data limitations, we have to disregard the consciousness aspect in the following. See
Stubager (2009) for an analysis of this element.
2. Although he uses slightly different labels this definition is also closely related to Feldman’s
(2003) social conformity-autonomy construct.
3. In relation to authoritarian–libertarian values the central aspect of environmental protection
is the question of whether man is hierarchically superior to nature thus opening the way for
untamed exploitation or, rather, nature has intrinsic value that is worthy of tolerance and
protection in its own right (cf. e.g. Cotgrove and Duff 1980: 341).
4. As can be verified in the appendix all of the models reported in the figure (except for
education in1987 in Panel A) are significant at the 0.05 level. The appendix also contains the
coefficients underlying the d index as well as their standard errors.
5. To complete the picture, it should be added that the relationships between the structural
variables and the value dimensions are as could be expected with the higher salaried and the
self-employed as the most capitalist and the medium and long-cycle tertiary education
groups as the most libertarian. The typical difference on the authoritarian–libertarian scale
between the highest and lowest educational categories is some 25 scale points.
6. Analyses of the voters’ perceptions of the positions of the parties (not shown) document that
the voters view the parties in an essentially similar way. The positions adopted by the parties
translate to the electorate, in other words.
7. Nagelkerke’s R2 is based on the proportional increase in the likelihood function by using the
fitted model compared to the null model (Nagelkerke 1991).
8. Inferential statistics are not available for comparing Nagelkerke’s R2 and k-values. For the
value variables, however, significance tests of changes between the years can be conducted. As
can be seen in the appendix the vast majority of the models are significant at the 0.05 level. The
appendix also contains all coefficients represented in the figures as well as their standard errors.
9. Inspections of the details of the results (not shown) reveal that, although the effect is clearly
weakened, the behaviour of the classes remains the same (well-known): The Social
Democrats are more popular among workers and the lower salariat than among the self-
employed and the higher salariat. The latter group, however, is distinct in its support for the
Socialists and the Social Liberals as well as the Conservatives who also have a good showing
among the self-employed as do the Liberals.
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Appendix
See ‘Stubager Appendix’ at http://structureofcompetition.pbworks.com and
at http://sites.google.com/site/structureofcompetition.

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This article was downloaded by: [Stony Brook University]

On: 13 October 2014, At: 18:22

West European Politics

The Development of the

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402381003654544

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

The Development of the Education

The socio-structural anchoring of electoral behaviour in advanced industrial

Correspondence Address: stubager@ps.au.dk

ISSN 0140-2382 Print/1743-9655 Online ª 2010 Taylor & Francis

to the increasing importance of education as an independent electoral

hand, as discussed below, the situation in Denmark on a number of the key

dynamics behind the development of the cleavage and the generalisability

Theory, Background, and Hypotheses

The underlying conﬂicts can be seen as erupting due to macro-social

underlying authoritarian–libertarian values. This is the core of the conﬂict

environmental protection (i.e. the relationship between man and nature3).

The Macro-Social Background

late 1980s (see Table A1 in the online appendix: ‘Stubager Appendix’ at

vaguer issue of welfare (Goul Andersen 2003: 138).

The Crystallisation of a Socio-structural Foundation: Social Background and

Data and Measures

Authoritarian–libertarian values Economic values

1998 56.21 24.20 54.87 24.23

As pointed out by Müller (1997: 751–2), in longitudinal analyses of the

where the variable has k ¼ 1, 2, . . . K categories. Just as the k-index (Hout

to which the impact of the socio-structural variables overlap in inﬂuencing

Analyses: Cleavages at the Value Level

parallelism between the R2 and d-curves, thus indicating that compositional

The Development of Cleavage Party Proﬁles

The development of the parties’ positions is depicted in Figure 2, which

Party/Danish People’s Party, on the other (the position of the Social

Putting It All Together: Cleavages in Electoral Behaviour

Analysing Party Choice across Time: Analytical and Operational Choices

Depolarisation and Polarisation: Values and Vote

the period – an increase that is founded on stability in the strength of the

Conservatives, the Liberals, and most strongly the Progress Party/Danish

preference for the Liberals among authoritarian (as compared to libertarian)

authoritarian voters choose authoritarian parties, thus producing a new

conducting explicit hypothesis tests.

and the eﬀect of authoritarian–libertarian values in relation to support for

parties. The eﬀect of the increasing salience of immigration has primarily

of a clear connection between the socio-structural level (education) and the

Danish Exceptionalism or General Trends?

competition can also be found in other Western countries (Inglehart 1997;

Togeby, Lise (2004). Man har et standpunkt. . . Om stabilitet og forandringer i befolkningens

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