Social Cleavages, Democratic Representation and Measurement Models

This paper proposes a new theoretical and statistical perspective on the economic and the cultural dimension of voters’ attitudes. It argues that a common cause perspective is suitable when attitudes are related to social cleavages, whereas a common outcome perspective is appropriate when they are related to democratic representation. To demonstrate the relevance of this distinction, the correlation between both dimensions was investigated from both perspectives for thirteen West European countries. Furthermore, this study investigated the distribution of voters across a two-dimensional space. By revealing that the economic and the cultural dimension can simultaneously be negatively correlated (r = -.01) as common causes and positively associated (r = .26) as common outcomes of attitudes, this study contributed to solving a paradox regarding this association. Results furthermore revealed that most voters are better represented than often assumed by parties that combine either a leftist or a rightist position on both dimensions.