Finnish Economic Papers – Volume 22 – Number 2 – Autumn 2009 THE POLITICAL OPINIONS OF SWEDISH SOCIAL SCIENTISTS* Niclas BerggreN The Ratio Institute,P.O. Box 3203, SE‑103 64 Stockholm, Sweden; e‑mail: [email protected] HeNrik JordaHl Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), P. O. Box 55665, SE‑102 15 Stockholm, Sweden; e‑mail: [email protected] and cHarlotta sterN Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, SE‑106 91 Stockholm Sweden; e‑mail: [email protected] We study the political opinions of Swedish social scientists in seven disciplines and find indications of a left‑right divide, with sociology and gender studies being the most left‑leaning disciplines, with business administration, economics, and law being the most right‑leaning ones, and with political science and economic history being located somewhere in between. This pattern is found when looking at party preferences, left‑right self‑identification, and positions on economic pol‑ icy issues. Overall, there is a slight dominance in sympathies for the right, al‑ though there are more academics to the left among those most involved in activi‑ ties with a potential to influence decision‑makers. (JEL: A11; A13; A14) *The authorswish to thank Andreas Bergh, Anders University,the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) Björklund, Stefan Dahlberg, Gissur Erlingsson, Jeffrey at Stockholm University, the Department of Economics at Friedman, Nils Karlson, Daniel Klein, Iain McLean, Henrik the University of Helsinki, the Research Institute of Indus‑ Oscarsson, Bo Rothstein, Daniel Waldenström, two anony‑ trial Economics (IFN), and the Ratio Institute for valuable mous referees, and participants at the World Meeting of the comments and suggestions, and the Torsten and Ragnar Public Choice Societies in Amsterdam, as well as seminar SöderbergFoundations (Berggrenand Jordahl) and the participants at the Department of Government at Uppsala SwedishCouncil for Working Life and Social Research University, the Department of Political Science at Göteborg (Stern) for financial assistance. 75 Finnish Economic Papers 2/2009 – Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl and Charlotta Stern 1. Introduction advisors) and also in indirect ways (as teachers and in the media).2 an increasing number of studies investigate the early studies of academics indicated aleft political views of academics. Most of them have and democratic (as opposed to republican) in- been conducted in the Us, where the results in- clination among Us academics (spaulding and dicate that social scientists predominantly sup- turner 1968, lipset and ladd 1972, ladd and port the democratic Party,although the degree lipset 1975, lipset 1982, Hamilton and Har- of dominance varies substantially between dis- gens 1993). this was especially the case for ciplines. We contribute to this literature with an humanist and social-science faculty, whereas analysis of swedish social scientists in business natural-science and business faculty tended to administration, economic history, economics, be less left-oriented. later studies give asimilar gender studies, law, political science, and soci- picture. rothman et al. (2005) find that liberals ology.toour knowledge, this is the first study and democrats outnumber conservativesand of its kind in a Nordic country. republicans by large margins, and the differ- We find evidence of a left-right divide be- ences are not limited to elite universities or to tween disciplines, with gender studies and soci- the social sciences and humanities. klein and ology most to the left and with economics and stern (2004, 2005a,b, 2006a,b,c, 2007a) find a business administration most to the right. We dominance of democrats among social scien- look at party sympathies, left-right self-identi- tists and, based on asurvey of members of the fication, and attitudes towards policyproposals scholarly associations in anthropology, econom- on economic issues and find the same left-right ics, history, legal and political philosophy, po- divide in each case. the differences between litical science, and sociology, that their policy disciplines remain also when controlling for preferences generally are such that partisan various background characteristics. the most identification are in line with left/right ideal evident policy consensus is that a large major- types. theyalso find that the diversity of policy ity of the social scientists oppose tariffs on views is greatest in economics and that those goods fromcountriesoutside the eU with an who deviate from left views are as likely to fit overwhelming resistance among economists. a libertarian profile as a conservative one.3 to overall, there is a slight dominance of sympa- ourknowledge,there is no longitudinal study of thies for the right.1 Not all academics lean left the political views of academics, but klein and relative to the political culture to which they stern (2009, p. 15) summarize existing cross- belong, not even in a country like sweden. discipline studies from different time periods in signs of a left orientation emerge, however, the United states. their main finding is that when looking at the potentially most influential “few professors in the social sciences and hu- academics in the public-policyarea. manities today are not on the left, and that there studying sweden contributes to the literature has been adecline since the 1960s in professors in providing information on the policyviews of social scientists in aNordic country,apart of 2 See e.g. Myrdal (1960), Carlson and Jonung (2006), the world with extensive welfare-state arrange- and Bergh and Erlingsson (2009). ments and a socially progressive tradition. the 3 Similar results are reported by Lee (1994), the Brook‑ swedish tradition of running politics according ings Institution (2001), and Tobin and Weinberg(2006). The results on party preferences are reinforced and to some ex‑ to rationalist and modernist precepts has given tent validated by voter‑registration studies – see e.g. Horow‑ ample room for social scientists to affect poli- itzand Lehrer (2002), Zinsmeister (2002), Cardiffand Klein cies in many direct ways (e.g. as politicians and (2005), and Klein and Western (2005). Cardiff and Klein e.g. find an average Democrat‑Republican ratio of 5:1 across universities and disciplines. However, Zipp and Fen‑ wick (2006, p. 320) dispute the claims of the previous lit‑ eratureand present results that indicate that “the American academy has not become a liberal hegemony; if anything, 1 The terms left and right areused in accordance with therehas been aslight trend to moderation –fromboth ends standard usage in Swedish discourse, which is not auto‑ of the political spectrum towardthe center.” Forareply,see matically comparable to usage in other political cultures. Klein and Stern (2007b). 76 Finnish Economic Papers 2/2009 – Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl and Charlotta Stern who are not on the left, as indicated by repub- ements of ahealthyacademic environment. a lican voting, self-identified conservative lean- dominance of a certain perspective in a disci- ings, or policy views.” pline could be detrimental for an open inquiry arelated line of research, initiated by Brittan into issues, especially into those of policy rel- (1973) and kearl et al. (1979), is less focused evance. However, homogeneity could also be on studying party sympathies or self-character- interpreted as consensus, i.e. as an indication izations butrather highlights views on specific that scholars have tried various ideas in open policy issues, and some investigate the extent to discourse and come, through careful analysis, which academics (especially economists) are in to certain insights of high certainty. agreement on various issues. For instance, Full- We do not evaluate these alternative interpre- er and geide-stevenson (2003) and Whaples tations in this study but leave for others to ana- (2006) report a considerable amount of consen- lyze and discuss the positive and negative ef- sus among economists over various policy is- fects of our findings. our study can best be seen sues. there have also been such surveys of as descriptive and explorative and as a founda- economists in countries other than the Us. gen- tion for further, more explanatory work. to date, erally, the studies report a high degree of con- there is no unified general theory of political sensus within countries, butthere are, as shown preferences. Frequent explanations include so- by e.g. Frey et al. (1984), sometimes clear dif- cial background (campbell et al. 1960), group ferences between economists in different coun- membership (Mutz and Mondak 1997), as well tries.4 as macro- and microeconomic models (Fair there are twodominant rationales for the line 1978; elinder et al. 2008), and it would be in- of inquiry pursued in this paper. First, academ- teresting for future research to develop and test ics tend to be influential in any society. in par- theories in this area. ticular, the views of teachers and professors are We now turn to the swedish case. transmitted to students.5 other channels of in- fluence open to and used by academics, as members of the elite with access to political 2. The Survey circles, are publications, the media, and arole as advisor (Hoffman-lange 2007, p. 918). only 2.1 Invitees and Respondents by knowing what academics actually believe and think is it possible to critically discuss their the basis for this study is aweb-based survey influence. second, heterogeneity, plurality and that wasconducted in december 2005–January non-conformism are often viewed as central el- 2006. e-mail invitations were sent to 4,301 swedish academics, which constitute “all” aca- 4 FormoreUSstudies, see e.g. Alston et al. (1992), demics who are doctoral students and univer- Blendon et al. (1997), Fuchs et al. (1998), Heckelman and sity employees doing research and/or teaching Whaples (2003), Colander (2005), and Whaples (2006). For at 25 colleges and universities in the disciplines non‑US studies, see e.g. Blockand Walker (1988), Ricketts and Shoesmith (1992), Anderson and Blandy (1992), Ander‑ business administration, economic history, eco- son et al.