From Class Conflict to Culture War? The Changing Meaning of the Left-Right Dimension

The meaning of left-right ideology has been changing in European democracies. While traditionally the left-right conflict has been understood in economic terms, pitting free market right against interventionist left, scholars have suggested that the terms left and right have taken a more cultural meaning in recent years relating to national identity and immigration concerns with cosmopolitan left standing against nationalist right. While this change has been debated by both political scientist and pundits, we lack a theory of why this change has occurred. We propose two different explanations: a bottom-up and a top-down perspective. The first proposes that voters respond to situations on the ground and alter their views according to those. In countries that see more unemployment the economic interpretation of the left-right should still be strong, while in countries that see more immigration, the cultural interpretation of the left-right should matter more. The second proposes that voters respond to elite cues. In countries where the elite conflict is economic in nature, voters will also see the dominant political conflict in economic terms. Where the elite conflict is cultural in nature, these voters will understand the dominant political conflict in cultural terms. We employ a cross-country regression analysis of 9 waves of European Social Survey (2002-2019) for 26 European countries using CHES (and CMP) data to measure elite cueing.