Many Ways to Be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Partisan Asymmetries Across the Ideological Divide The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Gidron, Noam. 2016. Many Ways to Be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Partisan Asymmetries Across the Ideological Divide. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493265 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Many Ways to be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Partisan Asymmetries across the Ideological Divide A dissertation presented by Noam Gidron to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2016 ©2016 — Noam Gidron All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Peter A. Hall Noam Gidron Many Ways to be Right: The Unbundling of European Mass Attitudes and Partisan Asymmetries across the Ideological Divide Abstract How do individuals with conflicting attitudes on different issues – those with conservative attitudes on some issues but progressive attitudes on other issues – form their partisan allegiances? In examining this question, my dissertation advances an argument about the asymmetry in European mass attitudes across the left-right divide. I argue that when individuals connect their political attitudes to left-right ideological labels they have many ways to be right – yet mostly one way to be left. The first section of the dissertation argues that the shift to the knowledge economy has driven a wedge between economic and cultural conservatism in mass attitudes. This is due to the increased linkage between income and education within the knowledge economy. These two factors push individual-level attitudes in opposite directions: while higher income is associated with economic conservatism, higher education is associated with progressive cultural values. The analysis of survey data from West European countries documents a decline in the correlations between economic and cultural attitudes during 1990-2008, with variations by the size of the knowledge-intensive sector. In the second section I develop the concept of right-wing multivocality, or the ability of the right to speak in multiple voices. I show that cross-pressured voters (those who are conservative on some issues but progressive on other issues) are more likely to support the right: while support for the left requires progressive attitudes on all issues, it is enough to iii be conservative on one issue to support the right. The third section zooms in on the mainstream center-right. I show that while cross- pressured voters are the most likely to support the right – they are the least likely to support the center-right. I then examine the implications of different center-right’s strategies to these parties’ share of the vote and support across demographic groups. I show that the center-right has more to gain by courting market cosmopolitans (economically conservative, culturally progressive voters) than by courting welfare chauvinists (economically progressive, culturally conservative voters). Interviews with party elites shed light on the considerations – such as time horizons – that may push center-right parties to prefer one strategy to the other. iv | Contents Abstract iii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Mass Attitudes and the Multivocal Right 21 Chapter 3: The Unbundling of Traditional Belief Systems 50 Chapter 4: Who are the Cross-Pressured Voters? 73 Chapter 5: Mass Attitudes and the Multivocal Right 89 Chapter 6: Mass Attitudes and the Center-Right 109 Chapter 7: The Strategic Dilemmas of the Center-Right 120 Chapter 8: Conclusions 155 Appendices 168 Bibliography 192 v Acknowledgments My deepest debt is to Peter A. Hall. My understanding of what politics is – and how it should be studied – has been shaped by Peter’s writings and over our long conversations in his office at the Center for European Studies. Since my first day at Harvard, Peter has provided me with much needed academic advice and moral support, always with great patience to my half-baked ideas and terrible accent. I am deeply grateful for all I learned from him. I will consider myself lucky if Peter’s fingerprints could be detected in this work. Torben Iversen deserves special praises for not giving up on pushing me toward a clearer, better-formulated argument. Steve Levitsky encouraged me to think about the big questions at stake. His support for this project from the earliest stages was as valuable as his insightful feedback. Kathy Thelen similarly encouraged me to keep in mind the greater picture and the implications of my work beyond the narrow questions I had in mind. Together with Peter, Kathy created a supportive community of students with similar research interests – research interests that were inspired and nurtured by Kathy and Peter – and I was lucky to be a part of this group. Daniel Ziblatt provided useful feedback on different aspects of this work: several of the core ideas developed along these pages emerged out of our conversations over the years. Throughout grad school, I had the privilege of being surrounded by such great friends and colleagues. Volha Charnysh, Leslie Finger, Jeff Javed, and Charlotte Cavaille com- mented on different parts of this work. Alex Hertel-Fernandez probably read more drafts of this dissertation than anyone else. James Conran had been the ideal office-mate in both Cambridge and Berlin. I was lucky to have, both together as a group and each individually, my circle of fellow-foreigners: Chiara Superti, Adriana Alfaro and John Marshall. Yotam Kaplan has been a loyal friend and a great collaborator. My friends from the Hebrew Uni- versity – Adi Cohen, Lior Glick, Merav Kaddar, and Tomer Perry – have all contributed in different ways to the fact that exactly ten years after I began my undergraduate studies, I’m now submitting my doctoral dissertation. Mattan Sharkansky, Alon Yakter, Alon Kraitz- vi man, Roi Zur and Matthias Dilling joined along the way to my academic support group and provided feedback on different sections of the dissertation. In Berlin, I enjoyed the warm hospitality of David Brady at the WZB. At the European University Institute in Florence, I benefitted from the precious advice of Hanspeter Kriesi. At Berkeley, Jonah Levy and Nick Ziegler were always generous with their time. All this traveling was made possible thanks to the support I received from the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Inequality and Social Policy Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. ∗∗∗ It was so unbelievably great to have Shaked on my side over this last decade. Not (just) because he’s great with R, but because he’s the most generous and kind person I know. He has held my hand every step of the way, even when we were continents apart. ∗∗∗ Whatever little I have achieved and will achieve, I owe to my parents, Ronit and Amir Gidron, with never-ending gratitude. Their unconditional love has been my source of strength through life’s trials. ∗∗∗ My work is dedicated to the memory of my sister, Yael Gidron. Her death last year left us saddened beyond words. vii Introduction The battle for the soul of the right Right-wing politics are in turmoil. From the United States to the Netherlands through the United Kingdom and Germany: conflicting movements of surge and decline within the right have created a new political reality. What this new political reality on the right exactly is, however, remains disputed. Some point at the great triumph of the European right during the 2000s. “Not since the First World War has there been this kind of domination of the right – the whole era of democratic suffrage", noted one participant-observer from the beaten left (Miliband 2011). A ‘Center-Right Moment’, declared The Economist and the New York Times.1 “What’s left of the left" has become a common question in academic research (Cronin, Ross and Shoch 2011; Karreth, Polk and Allen 2013; Keating and McCrone 2013; Mudge 2011), while the political press suggested that the center-left could only hope to retain small enclaves of support before it disappears.2 Yet next to discussions of its triumph, observers have also recently begun to pay attention to the right’s state of complete ideological disarray. In Germany, one leading newspaper pointed to the “crisis of right-wing conservatism", arguing that by 2010 – in contrast to most of the post-war era – “no one could plausibly explain what are the conservatives’ guiding principles". Another German newspaper simply announced that year, following the modernization efforts of the center-right, that German conservatism has reached its end.3 Around the same time in the United Kingdom, grassroots activists voiced concerns over “the crisis of conservatism" following the Conservative Party’s shift to support same-sex marriage: 1David Brooks, ‘The Center-Right Moment’, New York Times, May 2015; The Economist, ‘The Snail Loses Pace’, August 2015. 2The Economist, ‘Rose thou art sick’, April 2015 3Franz Walter, ‘Konservatismus Debatte: Union ohne