Cultural Backlash? Trends in Opinion Polarisation between Educational Groups in Five European Countries

We test Norris and Inglehart's (2019) cultural backlash theory by analysing opinion dynamics on cultural issues between high and low educated citizens in France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary and Poland. We operationalise cultural backlash as a widening attitudinal gap between low- and high-educated citizens on cultural issues. We draw on six items measuring attitudes towards immigrants, LGTBQI+ and gender role that have been repeatedly asked in the European Values Study (1980-2020) and European Social Survey (2001-2017). We conduct ordered logistic regression analyses on these six items by controlling for compositional change within educational groups over time. Our results show an increasing educational gap only on three LGTBQI+ and gender role items in Hungary and Poland, one gender role item in France and one immigrant item in Italy. We conclude that cultural backlash theory might be most applicable to gender and LGTBIQ+ issues in Hungary and Poland, but cannot convincingly explain opinion trends between educational groups on cultural issues in Italy, France and Sweden. Our study highlights the importance of small-N comparative studies in the empirical assessment of cultural backlash theory.