Between class conflict and culture war. How left-right self-positioning reflects elite conflict and social-economic context

The meaning of left-right ideology has been changing in European democracies. The left-right conflict has been traditionally understood in economic terms, pitting those who favour a more equal income distribution against those who believe that economic inequalities incentivize performance. Scholars have recently suggested that the terms “left” and “right” have taken a more cultural meaning relating to issues including immigration, the civic integration of migrants and national identity. Under what circumstances the left-right is understood by citizens in economic or cultural terms is less well known. In this article, we test top-down context (the framing of issues by politicians) and bottom-up context (economic and social circumstances) as correlates of this change. We conduct a cross-country regression analysis using eight waves of the European Social Survey for 26 European countries. We show that both the framing of issues by politicians social and economic circumstances predict citizens’ left-right self-placement.