 Everybody I'm Peter Achterberg. I'm a professor of sociology. I'm a cultural sociologist. I started out as a political sociologist early Let's say 10-12 years ago or something and I did some work on why people actually Fought for all kinds of parties and I did some work on Why actually the working class isn't voting for for leftist parties No longer, right, and I think yesterday evening we witnessed that Tremendously well in the Netherlands and well, this is more or less the general theme of my Lecture for today But first things first Which party did you vote for yesterday? So I was a little bit scared because well, I entered this room or this building and then Kim said well There's a there's an election and I thought oh god I I've also planned for an election, but she was polling for something differently than I am so I want to you to grab your phone go to ww.menti.com and enter this code 160084 and then you get to vote But if you have a QR scanner you can also use this one or Go to this website and it doesn't really matter which route you take Just answer the question which party did you vote for yesterday? I would really really appreciate that Does it work? Yeah, okay while you are voting our University magazine, perhaps, you know it universe universe online. Do you know it? Yeah They also pulled well basically the political sentiment of the university and well, we don't know which part which respondents or which groups of students and Staff actually answered this question, but well the results aren't in any way representative But I thought it it gave a nice illustration So I just want to present you the results while There are you are you scanning now or? Doesn't work. Okay Is it are you able to to vote or yeah, okay? So these were the results So based on on the the poll by universe D66 Alexander Pechtold you would almost get a majority in the in the parliament followed by yes, the clever and Then that's it. So now I'm wondering But you actually did right and again, this is in no way Representative, but I just wanted to find out right just a little hook. So I Already opened this But not here apparently, okay. Ah, look at that It converges nicely and oh here somebody That's you that's you, right Okay, so What do we see D66 that's also the most popular party here In this room followed by the greens and then the the liberals I would actually have had expected about given the the Christian profile of our well university that The Christian Democrats would have gotten some some more votes, but apparently you don't like boomer But um, well this converges actually quite nicely so What can we see what what is so striking here? For a sociologist, what is the striking here? well, I Think who links? Can be qualified as a left party and also as pay Exactly because well basically these two parties, right and especially the Dutch PVV That's an interesting party and well a Right-wing party you might say well, I'm not pulling you on your profession, but I can guess it right It's it's the a professional Class type profession right you all earn a lot of money I think Well at least more than those in the Schilderswijk or in Rotterdam-Zuid or Somewhere in Tilburg beyond the railway track, right? No Sorry I'm trying to display a lot of knowledge of Tilburg, but actually I have none so okay, but um The PVV Well, it's a right-wing party as is the VVD But they don't get any votes here, which is totally different from our national results Right, so the PVV is second Party in the Netherlands at this moment right right this might change because Wednesday will be the real election results But still it's a quite a big party and here at the university Nowhere at universities people are thinking of considering voting for a populist party, right? Yeah There is a couple of Political scientists doing research on this and well basically what they do is they voice This but they don't vote like this right so on these issues. They are rather right-wing at the same time So but but you're actually absolutely right It is not a right classical right-wing party. It's a different type of party. It's a populist party. Oh I'm clicking but not nothing's happening. So Okay so Based on these results of the polls of the students and the staff and now of our alumni You might think that if you take a look at these polls that we are back in the good old days in which we were the guiding Country of the rest of Europe, right? So everywhere in Europe. There were people voting for populist parties like flams belong or FPO or Well Le Pen in France But here nothing happened, right? So so we considered ourselves. Well, okay. We have have no racist parties We have young math. Well That's it, but he he doesn't get any votes. So that's not a problem at all So so we actually thought that we were a tolerant nation United in our tolerance in our multiculturalism And not having these kinds of ideas, right and based on on these thoughts on on these findings You provided you might still think this but this simply isn't true, right? So Because like in France or like in Hungary or like in Austria we also have The populist now right since been for time entered the political stage We we have we have seen we have witnessed a succession of all kinds of populists at the right end of the Political spectrum filling this gap, right? People have discovered that we are not a Guiding country. We are just like the rest, right? So if you take a look at these pictures, right? What do you notice? Ah, yeah, that's because of my my personal hobby. I like Gathering these these photos, right? I think they're kind of nice probably they They want to have a couple of photographs of them humanizing themselves like they can actually care for Living beings, yeah Yeah, ah Yeah, I just I think they're they are funny, but Yeah, there's a huge similarity, but probably this is this is selective, right? So I just wanted wanted to have a couple of pictures But probably there are also pictures of rutte with a cat or or a parrot or something something like that I don't know but we could do research on this Right or right Yeah, and there's there's also princess Marike she likes to hug trees and do so and and do things with animals, so I'm Hug them of course nothing else. Okay so If you take a look at these pictures, they are interesting, but what's missing? Humans particularly one Which we have all been talking about for let's say a half a year or a year or one and a half year Thank you very much here. He also has a dog or or cat or something, right? Okay Okay, so So this Orban and Hofer and Wilders and Le Pen and Trump and I could go on and on These are all populist right, but if we would go to Latin America, we would also find populist I also have pictures of them with cats or parrots I'm not showing them right here, but I have them But these are a rather different type of populist these are left-wing type of populist and these are all right-wing Populist and I'm only focusing today on on these kinds of populist And I'm asking what well what unites them besides their preference for animals What unites them right and why is it so attractive for for people to vote to want to vote for these kinds of populist? because as you can see here and these are Taken from new puntinelle, and I think these are the rather official numbers 20 seats at this moment are Projected to to be won by Wilders next Wednesday. So that's a lot Another interesting feature is here the the great demise of the Dutch labor party Which I will come back to at the end of the presentation Predicting or actually explaining why why this should be so okay, so I'm going to discuss two major features of Populism and the first is well, it's always a little bit hard to to talk about populism without Explaining what that is right because if I would ask all of you what populism is and probably No one would have the the same answer and then that's that's okay because it's a social construct And we can use that social construct in a way right and we can can construct their own Definition of populism and then use this and they're basically In the literature there's some sort of convergence on two definitions of populism at this moment Right when it applies to Western types of populism and this is the first and this is the most general one It is basically the idea that populism isn't much besides The idea that there's the people the people at large the people who have a lot of common sense Who know everything who have gone through the University of life? Who have the wisdom and which is young homogenous on one hand and then there's the elite and DC these elites are completely corrupt they Well, they everything which goes wrong is basically product product of the elite right so I Don't know or whether there are any fans of the spelt here Do you notice the spelt? Yeah, they have cool movies of the Partij tegen de burger. You know it. I like it right These are great because well, basically they they use this populist discourse and basically say well these are our Policies so they say things like well we go out of our way to To mess up all of your lives right as soon as people aren't happy. We are happy Right, and we can only do this together right things like that, and I like it, but this is basically Populism that right in the first sense populism As a as an antagonism as a continuing battle between the good and the bad and the good is the people and the bad is Elite and it doesn't say much about whether this is right wing or left wing It basically only says says that well the the people at large The good are opposed to the bad right corrupt elites and that's it and then where which type of ideological Policies they want to embrace or not. It's not a given so this might may also apply to Hugo Chavez in Latin America And to to wield this right okay, so this this populism and I well that that's interesting But then the question is what explains the rise of such populism and well There I don't know are there any we don't have political scientists in the house But I have other people here who have read something within political sociology No, because this one this is Giovanni Sartori He's kind of the founding father of political sociology and well He has written a lot of Well very influential texts within political sociology and one of those texts is about the structure of politics And what he says is that within politics? There are basically two dimensions. There's the Redemptive side the ideological side on the one end and there is a pragmatic Technocratic side in the other end so to give an illustration of what that is and I'm my apologies for for keeping my illustrations from well Dutch examples, but There is this example of are you in Lubach now are you in Lubach? Yeah, okay. You made a movie or a little Well, I don't know Sunday with Lubach. I don't know how to call that a sketch On on builders and what he constantly says is who done how how can we do this right? You you say all kinds of stuff, but how can we do it? How? Give us your your Technocratic solutions for all your stupid ideas, right? This is the the basic and This question of how how can we? Reach certain goals. How can we make sure that our policies stick? That's a technocratic side of politics, right? It's not about having the grand fusions or the ideas or Well, the the great land view or the the mission or something like that It's just basic. Well, you've got a problem. I'm going to do to Find a solution in this way or that way something like that It's a pragmatic side and then there is the ideological side and Real this is actually quite good in this ideological side or let's say people Politicians from Small orthodox Christian parties. These are great in the ideological redemptive side, right? And they can always answer the question. Why? Right, this wasn't in iron Lubach's sketch, but you could for instance say to The Dutch Labour Party. Why? They have a problem with that answering this question. Why they probably if you look at them They are well all over the place some say this some say that they don't have a clear answer if you say Or ask builders why? He has a clear answer the Islam. It's bad need to be erased and then everything will be beautiful again Something like that, right? It's not manageable, but he knows why he's saying this when you ask Rutte in the he did a lecture how you show he show lasing. I think it was Then he said Okay Let's first get rid out of get rid of this this elephant in room a vision who needs a vision All right, basically says don't ask me why All right. Okay, that's the other side. It's a more redemptive side of politics in which ideologies play a bigger role All right, so these are just The two sides one a last example Barack Obama Barack Obama when he campaigned he was completely on the redemptive side. There was hope Yes, we can everybody was following him But as soon as he took office then the technocratic side took over Right. This is what happened. Okay, so and then there's Margaret Kenevan She basically uses these two dimensions to explain the rise of populism Because well, this is what she says that if these two dimensions of populism are in balance everything is okay if Well, people within the political system Design new policies solve problems and they know why Well, everything is okay But as soon as technocratic Politics take over completely and they don't have an eye for this this redemptive side of politics for for this vision or for For the for basically answering the question why we should want this Then people get this fetid satisfied. They don't want this They also want some some vision some leadership from from the political elites And if they don't get it then they will start to revolt and then there will be some sort of automatic well reaction Adjustment of the system in the form of populist parties. They don't care about the why about the how they only care about the why and they Adjust this system again, and now this is what you see right and it can be left-wing It can be right-wing. It doesn't really matter in the United States We've seen this also on the left wing side with Bernie Sanders. He also has a better idea of why Right, he didn't make it but it can also be on the on the left-wing side of politics. Yes It it's not a oh, okay. Is it a better? He promised me I wouldn't notice him and now he's talking to me It's not necessarily a better vision it's a vision so Where whereas some politicians go out of their way to avoid having a vision because it might deter or alienate some voters Well populist parties have a vision, right? They have a vision a grand vision of going back to to to a nation of The 1950s where you could just simply be happy. All right, where there was no such thing as as Islam Messing messing up our old country or something like that, and it's not a good vision or a better vision It's a vision, right? Yeah Some have some do no Yeah, but not all left-wing parties have these right so Did in this this theory by Kenovan? She simply says that when political parties Ideologies basically well Fade out a little bit or aren't as strong as they used to be then there's room for Populism to rise and actually Sorry, but and actually we can see this for instance now in in a after a cabinet with let's say rutte and Samsung Left and right they can't have a clear ideological vision of where we are going. It's a technocratic cabinet It's a good quality cabinet for arranging all kinds of stuff technocratically, but they can't answer the big questions in life at this moment, right and then Populism must well win, right because it's just a correction to the system and earlier on Pin for time entered the stage After a couple of purple cabinets, which were highly technocratic They didn't have a vision except for everybody needs to work And and and we we become a lot very rich or something like that, right? And that's it There wasn't any crisis. There wasn't a crisis of the in the economy in which people got fed up with constantly being poor and the losers of modernity or something like that No, that wasn't the case at all. They were just fed up with technocratic politics and then Well, they started voting differently, right? Then the last one that's a paper notice and what she did was take these two Dimensions and try to measure it try to measure it not at the political level, but at the societal level and Well asking whether or not people on the one hand have a need for a Democracy have all kinds of democratic aspirations have all kinds of visions basically And at the same time being highly dissatisfied the way how Democracy works at this moment and distrust in politicians, etc. So on the one hand, they they have aspirations But they don't see them met By the politicians, right? So so they want to change everything They look to politics to the democratic system to to change their lives for the better. They hope that that well that these politicians have all kinds of big stories and Grant narratives to to satisfy their their needs in this respect But they simply do not trust these politicians anymore They are highly dissatisfied at the same time with how democracy works Probably but I I'm I completely agree with you with the first couple of sentences you you just said But I don't know whether they are aware that they are that the builders for instance isn't going to to listen at all They don't care, right? They just think that well he has a vision. He completely says what I think they think So he doesn't have to listen because he already know he voices our concerns. So it's not a problem at all, right? Okay Yeah, so So I'm just going to translate it a little bit people who have lower degrees of education And well basically this is an important explanation for why people actually vote for Populist parties, right? They they feel nomic They have a lot of cultural discontent they constantly see bureaucratic systems they constantly see Well society being disorganized they constantly feel that there's no real Truth anymore or something like that. Everything has become Unpredictable and for us or for you or for a higher educated they like this, right? It gives them opportunities and they they embrace this basically and Well, they they see there's an opportunity to to pick and choose whatever they like and then Take it as opportunities to develop develop themselves even further for lower educated for people with lower levels of cultural capital This doesn't apply right they are already a little bit scared of this this chaos And they only want to restore order in the most strong way possible, right? And this is also why most populist parties are let's say law and order type of parties Which promise one thing and that is to restore order to the nation, right? To make it simple again and everything will be the same. Yeah Yeah, exactly Mm-hmm. Well, it didn't it did Well for for sociologists a majority or minority is basically the same, right? I Don't care, but These phenomena exist in every country So in Great Britain in Poland in Germany in Austria in France In United States, it's always the same, right? So even though some populist may be more popular than other populists and there's no big Populist revolution at this moment. It's roughly well 25% of the people will have these kinds of sentiments and sometimes these sentiments are captured quite well by the populist Of service at this moment, right? And sometimes it's not and then they well, they don't vote or they fun, right? Yeah Yeah, but Probably but but still you can see that also in the Nordic countries for instance in Denmark There's a four-shift party Which which is which has been the delight while the example for Wilders, right? So and also in Norway And in Sweden we have Anders Breivik with probably the same sentiments And there's all kinds of lowly educated and perhaps the level might differ But it's still the same Well phenomenon, right? It's a lowly educated people who have these kinds of feelings and want to Do something about it, right? Which is also in a way a positive thing, right? Because well, you can also give up on society Yeah In North, right? Oh Okay, because I saw you reacting when I was discussing this Okay It's too too generalizing That's why they all live there Yeah Yeah, which ones in Asia, okay Yeah No, of course, yeah, yeah, it is what it is Yeah, yeah, but it is Please let me continue a little bit with my story, but I'll be sure to come back to you on this Well, what people actually expect from democracy, right? So but but it's later on in my slides and otherwise it will be some sort of post-modern Presentation which I can do of course, right sep Fourth and back but so what I did was using your the European social survey is well basically replicating this idea of Pippa noise, right and Here are the democratic aspirations the high hopes people have for democracy and it's operationalized by a couple of questions for instance also the idea that democracy is simply the best way to rule a country and That well, they are very much in favor of people having a lot of say in what our how the nation is run etc and this is the the trust in the political elites and trust in the political system and it's much lower right and well if you subtract these two then you get some sort of gap and This gap this institutional confidence gap or this democratic deficit That's that's basically interesting and I did some research on these and actually This is much more common among the lowly educated than among the highly educated The highly educated have a lot of democratic aspirations But they match it with a lot of trust in institutional elites with in political elites They also think that well, they are well versed to to for instance influence these political elites or let them know how they think and they feel represented, right? So this for them the system works beautifully, but for the lowly educated They score high on this gap. They are They think well democracy. That's okay. I like democracy. It's the only way to run a country But at the same time they distrust everyone who is in the political system so when Wilder say it says this is a fake parliament or when Trump says well, let's drain the swamp It's meant for those guys right for for those people who have this democratic deficit because well They want democracy, but they still they don't see it anymore. They don't see it working very well and this Confidence gap or this democratic deficit has two types of consequences and Well, the first is that they start voting on the edge so on the edge of the political spectrum, so This is the These are the voters for three parties the party for the animals and They score very very high on this confidence gap so they are pro-democracy but against political elites and PV voters are matching their Democratic deficit in way right, so they are also pro-democracy, but against political elites and then as p voters also Score relatively high and then well you can see that for instance the christian parties are much lower So they they match their democratic aspirations with their trust in Political elites much more yeah There it is. Okay, so in In earlier days there was d66 and the Greens They wanted democratization. They wanted to give the nation more say They wanted to give the people more say in what government actually does But nowadays we see stuff like this today We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to the people it has transferred to To the right-hand side of the spectrum and this is from the social and cultural planning office burger perspective It's number one of last year And here's what they did they they compared well the voters for all kinds of parties in time and See what they thought about a referendum right should it be an instrument or not and the interesting stuff is that here here's d66 and Here are the three parties which would later combine the greens They started out high and they ended up low Right, they don't want this anymore or they they feel uneasy with this and then there's a couple of new parties and These are very much in favor of referendum at this moment. So Where it first began as some sort of a new left-wing type of idea democracy it now ends up as a extreme left-wing or right-wing idea, right, and that's something differently different, I would say so But when you take a look at well three groups based on this democratic deficit The ones who don't have a democratic deficit The support for radical democratization, which means which is a skill in this these data, which means that say that government Should shoot at just policies in the middle of a coalition period When the people want so what want this? every major policy change should be controlled by a referendum and these kinds of issues and if you don't experience democratic deficit Then well your support for these types of radical democratization is much lower But then for the people who have a big democratic deficit support is immense, right? So they want this right and that's you that's well logical in a way because if you want democracy If you have democratic aspirations if you want to hear big beautiful ideological stories But you distrust the political system then the only solution is to take power to seize power yourself, right? And this is the only instrument They they see Which might do the trick and the interesting thing is is that there is some sort of changing discourse on democracy itself In earlier days democracy was some sort of inclusive idea if everybody Well enters democracy and discusses things Is heard then we can we we can come up with a solution which may not be perfect, but Isn't it is more perfect than dismissing everybody which is transferred to some sort of exclusive idea of Democracy at this moment, right? So the majority rules and the minority however big this minority is needs to shut up, right? So which is a totally different type of Idea of democracy we can see that in the brexit referendum, right? So almost nobody voted And then almost half of those people voted for brexit and half of them voted against this brexit And now we are going to leave the EU or the ukraine referendum. You saw the same in the Netherlands 30 percent of the people voted and then 15 percent of the people said yes and 15 percent said no But the yes people or I don't know what how it was raised, but those who were in favor for of well Ukraina We're slightly in the majority and now suddenly we need right it's a it's a majority rule So there's no inclusivity anymore, which is interesting to me Yeah But builders also voices the same ideas, right giving back politics to the nation We're making a lot of it on us, right? This is his Electrical slogan actually so which is well basically Fine for those people and also there's a forum for democracy and this was run by the the lead man basically of Of the ukraine referendum, right? So well Exactly, right? This is the idea and then you can also well take a look at how this support for radical democratization is Distributed across electorates and you can see again The party for the animals TV and SP those are the ones who like this stuff, right? And then at the at the lower end. It's a d66 Christian Democrats the greens, etc. Right? They don't like this anymore Okay, so I don't know how long how much time do I have? Okay, so then the second Second dimension of populism right because I announced I was going to discuss to the definitions of populism and this definition of populism Is much more applicable only to the the West European or the Western types of populism? So if you take a look at Latin America, it doesn't work right because we can only find left-wing Populist there but here In in Europe and also in America, I would say we find populism as nativism and this is a An idea ideology in which all non-native Elements should be well discarded everybody who wasn't born here who isn't a member of the native tribe or something Need to need to go which well in America is a little bit problematic because then All right, there aren't any natives but but still they they want to do something with that and well They they have discourse against Islamic people. They have discourse against Latin American people Right, and they want to do away with those kinds of people all non-native elements or ideas or culture or Well, Bibles or Koran's or whatever they need to go that that's not part of the original national culture and it simply needs to go In favor of well the national national idea of culture, right? And we can see this Tremendously well in the Netherlands right in the Netherlands at this moment. Everybody's constantly talking about our national identity all of the time Wilders does it Well, it's its main reason basically for for being in politics, right? It's nationalism and the fight against all non-native read Islamic elements at this moment Right, and this is this is a powerful idea So the question is what explains such populism, right? We've seen a populism of antagonism, but this this is a different type of populism It's ideological and well Again the same format basically This is a book by Ronald Ingeard the silent revolution has anybody read this It's an anybody ever heard of Ronald Ingeard You have yeah, okay Okay, so Ronald Ingeard was was basically the the inventor or the one who made the term post-materialism popular and you know post-materialism that's basically the idea that People increasingly start to emphasize all things which aren't Related to materialist issues, so they don't care as much anymore about the economy. They don't concern about Economic redistribution as much as they used to but they tend to think about other stuff. They think about individual freedom. They think about Cultural identity they think about Well tolerance for Deviant persons they think about all kinds of other stuff which has nothing to do with the economy basically, right? so for instance in Politics you always hear the the phrase it's the economy stupid, right? Well, Ronald Ingeard would disagree with this to a certain extent because he says politics Increasingly becomes post-materialist, right? Non-material non-economic issues are increasingly important and he started out his work back in the 60s 1960s Studying well the rise of the new left, right and Back in those days this this university was called the Karl Marx University Remember, are there any persons here? Okay, yeah, did you like it? Okay Interesting but Back in those days in the 1960s People first seem to discover gay rights or women's rights or the right to to do whatever you liked Instead of what society constantly expected from you, right? And this conformism This orthodox conformism of the 1950s was broken in a way, right? And individual liberty and the idea that you could Be yourself Right, which you see now everywhere if you go to the to the HEMA There's an advertisement which says all take yourself Right, so you can buy your stuff in the HEMA to become yourself. It's a nice Nice idea, right? So now it's it's completely normal for us to be confronted with these kinds of ideas for the 1960s It was it was revolutionary, right? It wasn't seldomly seen because we needed to adapt before that and now individual liberty and tolerance were new types of issues that rose and Ronald Ingor tried it to to explain this right and they use some sort of muslovian logic muslov You know, yeah, okay, so when basic needs were met and we were more prosperous we didn't Worry too much about putting food on the table the next day or finding a Shelter for our kids or something like that. That was taken care of in the in the post war period And which meant that we could start worry about Well things that weren't okay yet, right? Which was individual liberty self-attainment social cohesion, etc And that's what what became much more important, right? And this is the first step and This already caused some sort of big breakup in the political system. So here is Ina Brouwer and Here's Marcus Bacher Marcus Bacher was like like a member of the old Socialists in the old sense, right? So fighting for for the for the working class and the for people we didn't have anything and This was Ina Brouwer later on she became I don't know the English word for Wethouder She she became Eldermen she became an alderman in Amsterdam now the green left capital of the Netherlands by the way for the green left and they broke up They were in one party and they broke up right and they started their own parties a green left was born basically in that in that moment, right? So it tore apart The left wing parties Into an old left and a new left and this new left became Then the second step in this argument is that Piero Ignasi says well if you take a look at Ingo Hart He only predicts that everybody becomes more left-wing and more left-wing and more left-wing. So and Confronted with all kinds of other stuff like the rise of public parties He says well these are only temporal aberrations of Of a more general trend and the more general trend is that everybody Increasingly becomes more tolerant and that's what he constantly says and then Ignasi says well that's bullshit There's also a silent counter revolution a revolution of people who were silent like you were silent on the Karl Marx University all the time because then everybody would Would fight with you or something, right? Oh? But most of the people Obviously not everybody in 1960s and 70s felt like Like the new left-wing Activists all the time right and there's a beautiful book for instance by by I don't know his first name, but his lions. He's a History professor in America and he has a couple of students every year a new bunch and he said well, okay You are the kids of the 1960s and 70s generations, right? So your parents were at Woodstock go go ask them what they did, right? Were they at Woodstock? Were they protesting? Were they taking seizing their democratic power and every student came back and said well My parents didn't do anything, right? So there was a huge silent majority and they remained silent for a long time And at a certain point they got fed up with this and They started this a counter-revolution They started to to react against this and started to to call for more order in the nation to to call for a ban on immigration to call for More and stiffer sentencing, etc. Etc. Everything for which the new left Did not stand for it basically and the the interesting stuff is is that this silent counter-revolution wasn't materialistic at all But there's also post-materialist. It didn't have anything to do with how much money you have. It has to do Or with economic redistribution. It has to do with but basically the ideological counterpart of the new left right new right So and this is from a paper of Jeroen van der Waal and myself what you can see is that if you measure in political party Manifestals you measure Preference for new right-wing policies, you can see nothing in the post-war period up until Well, basically the 1980s. So new right-wing policies weren't Particularly popular and there was no general trend within this type of policies. If you take a look at the period Following the 1980s, you can see a sharp increase in the popularity of new right-wing Ideas we did the similar analysis for new left-wing ideas and It's the other way around first. There was a sharp increase in new left-wing ideas. Then afterwards Nothing really happened, right? So from the 1980s onwards. There's no increase in new left-wing ideas in political party manifestos Now this is in Europe. So these are all Political parties in Europe in the data set there. There's a that there's a data set. It's an international collaborative project of basically political scientists coding all political party manifestos in all of Europe and Expressing them in percentages. So if they talk about crime in a right-wing way A lot like five or six percent or so is about this Then this variable gets this score and you can calculate Well, the popularity of certain policies I think That's true in the Netherlands that that that was true and you might think it's not in my presentation But I did a lot of research on this you might think that for instance cultural issues Conceived a little bit broadly. We're already very important in the Netherlands back in the old days because well When when you talk about religion when you talk about abortion when you talk about euthanasia or something These are the issues, but nowadays when we talk about cultural Polarization between political parties. It's always in a secular sense So it's not about those issues because everybody in the Netherlands for instance now Agrees with each other that euthanasia is okay Or abortion that shouldn't be a problem or what to do with gays No problem left-wing parties or right-wing parties all think alike basically they are tolerant But now there's a new type of secular cultural polarization on immigration cultural tolerance And now what to do with criminals, right? And this this isn't like in the old days There's some point and it's also one of the reasons why The Netherlands is atypical in a way for the rest of Europe because Polarization was more strongly here than in all other nations. I know, right? But still in the Netherlands it was particularly strong Okay, and well a major consequences later on all right-wing parties also started to to tear up, right? So First there was builders who remembers why builders left the Liberals why? Turkey exactly right it was already about Well, basically not not an economic issue. It was about identity and whether or not Turkey should be allowed to to start negotiating for entering the European Union and Well later on there was a massive fight, right for for the party leadership between Rita Verdunck and Rutte This was not photoshopped by the way. He actually did press conference like this once. I Like it. All right. He doesn't have an animal, but for the rest. It's perfect But like Marcus Bakker and Ina Brower They also tore up right these these right wing parties into a old right-wing party and a new right-wing party Okay, so and then the last one is how to explain it and I would say Well, if you take a look at inguard There's some sort of idea that that it's economic prosperity and if I would ask my mother-in-law Well, we sometimes watch television about politics and then suddenly she cries out these people simply don't have Any real concerns, right? That's that's why they start talking about black Pete and She doesn't think it's real politics. She she thinks it's a demonstration of people are too prosperous Basically, so there's nothing left to talk about so people start bullshitting, right? This is what she thinks well I think and and inguard basically also thinks this way, right? It's it's about first taking care of the basic needs and when those needs are met them people can start worrying about less important stuff, right? I don't think this way and I see it as some sort of Expression of of another process which is going on for a long time, which is de-traditionalization in earlier days perhaps, let's say In the 1950s everything was well institutionally very stable, right? People went to church or not people were in a pillar What do you think? What to be fine as good or bad? It was all clear, right and nowadays I like the lower educated you described already There's a lot of Uncertainty in a way institutional uncertainty, but also moral uncertainty in which we don't Completely know what is good and what is bad Our parents socialize us completely different than in earlier days. We don't go to church anymore We can't don't get socialized about that about these kinds of issues which causes some sort of Well Unplausibility, right? So and then there's two reactions. You can enjoy this and say, well, okay I'm going to seize this moment. I'm going to Enjoy this newly given freedom to determine my own way or you can say well this has gone too far I want some moral guidance and these are the two typical reactions that you get and I did a paper Together with Willem de Koster and a couple of others Which is called one nation without God. It's published in English and in Dutch But when preparing this lecture, I couldn't find the English version. So I took the Dutch table but here you can see that this this affects Highly and lowly educated completely different So people are embedded in a post-christian moral who go to church who believe highly and strongly in Old Christian dogmas react completely differently The lowly educated who are embedded Who are disembed it? I'm sorry React completely differently from the lowly educated who still go to church for This interaction term basically says right and we did a couple of skills on Ethnocentrism and multiculturalism and on authoritarianism You can see that the lowly educated when they don't go to church when they don't embrace this Christian moral this orthodox idea then they become ethnocentric then they become Racist in a way then they have an authoritarian reaction against everything in society Which leads them to vote for well populist types of parties nativist type types of parties, but if the same lowly educated people are embedded in a Christian orthodox Surrounding then there's no effect at all right and well there's a couple of graphs But I just chose for this this table and Well, it's a very robust finding that for the lowly educated there's A racist tendency only when they are not institutionally embedded and for a highly educated it's completely the other way around I would say but for highly educated people they Increasingly become libertarian they increasingly become more tolerant when they don't go to church. So not going to church has as a lot of great Effects at the same time for the highly educated. So you cannot say going to church is good or bad or Right because it has different types of effects for the different groups in society lowly educated people react completely differently namely racist and conservative and Authoritarian while highly educated people react like in the other way, right? So and this points at this Institutional environment, what did you want to ask I? Think you're right because later on in this this paper We we examine why this interaction actually exists and then we control for well not a party but but for Anomia which probably is strongly linked and then we actually completely explain away this these differences between these two Educational categories and so it is the lowly educated. We have a sense of not being heard not having control on the system of not feeling at home in their nation Which which causes this right and the highly educated don't feel this at all. They don't have this cultural malaise. They don't Feel discontented whatsoever and it doesn't lead them to racism or Population, yeah, I don't know because here in the Netherlands. We only have Christians so I Probably there's a lot of more religions, but they refuse to answer our questionnaires So that's a bit of a problem, right? So I simply do not know whether it also applies to to Islam for instance or well Judaism or Buddhism or something. I don't know. It's a it's an open-ended question, right? I think it does because well basically what religion does is answer moral questions So you don't have to have them And well, but I don't know right we can figure that out but probably what I didn't do here is also Distinguished between Protestants and Catholics in which you can can also expect some differences, right? Because Protestants are more on their own And well are less embedded in a moral story because they're always individually responsible for their own Moral guidance for Catholics. It's more easy because you just listen to the Pope and that's it, right? So Well, that's the idea in Catholicism at least so but but well, I don't know we can try to figure that out Okay, and then in the wake of Oh, sorry in there are two types of consequence. I need to speed up a little bit. I think You have two types of consequences people start voting differently and in the wake of this this causes some sort of huge Realignment of Western politics so to show the relations a little bit between ethnocentrism and Voting behavior you can see the PVD and the PVD on the one hand for having ethnocentrists electorates and greens and D66 and the Dutch Labour Party score lowest on this and also when you talk about let's say protectionism Protecting your own national economy from let's say other types of economies what we see now all the time in the United States with Trump abandoning all kinds of international trade deals and t-tip et cetera Well, if you take a look at this you can see rather the same Right, it's nativism which does the trick you might say and this causes some sort of realignment and To to make this a little bit clear. There's some sort of idea that well party structures are basically just a reflection of Well societal structures so in the pillar I system you might have Catholics Protestants Socialists and liberals and then suddenly Some political parties would would come up be frozen in a political party system Representing the interests of these societal groups which are fighting each other and this is what always happens So for instance, if you take a look at Labour That's an ideal party in this this idea into of course because Labour appeals to the working class if it is already already in the name of their party or Christian Democrats also appeals to Christians and this works tremendously well and This is sometimes forget forgotten but in political sociology people constantly Think that well if you find people from a working class voting for a left-wing party This is a demonstration of this cleavage politics. Well, actually there needs to be something in between Because well sometimes members of the working class vote for Conservative for a left-wing party for completely the wrong reasons, right? So for instance, there's a case of Italian Workers of a factory who vote for Who vote for the Communist Party so you might think it's because of Well class interests, so that's why they are voting for this, but actually they just like the leader or he's cute or Or he is in favor of garbage disposal because in Italy while garbage is often not Collected right something like that and then strictly speaking. I think you cannot talk about class voting in this way Right, so the cleavage class voting doesn't work. Okay What we have seen throughout the post War period is some sort of massive Decline of class voting so this this traditional idea of the working class voting for a left-wing party and Middle-class and the higher classes voting for right-wing parties that has diminished quite strongly and there are some sociologists We're actually thinking this indicates the death of class right which is Well terrible for sociologists because if there if there's one staple of sociology its Stratification and that has classes and that people differ from each other with respect to this dimension And now it suddenly ceased To to affect voting behavior, right? We don't like that By the way, I think this is why a lot of sociologists are now transferring to health Because we can still demonstrate that the low low classes are dying Sooner and living unhealthier etc. So we can still say well class matters But um, okay, this is on the side note this is from the PhD thesis from new beta and I'm not going to go into the To discuss the details, but what he did was tremendously important because well There was a lot of discussion on how to measure class voting from very simple cross-stabilizations to regression models to a multi-level modeling to logistic multi-level modeling Including a lot of parties or only two including a lot of classes or only two And there are models including 160 classes and all parties which well obscures the idea a little bit of Well class voting I think but but still there was a lot of debate and what he did was Measure everything in any possible way to figure out whether or not class voting was declining and for for all kinds of Western countries basically you found well Negative trends and it didn't matter how he measured this There was a negative trend which was important and then all the death of class sociologists Basically took these evidence and several you see now classes that right and here's another demonstration you can see that actually This is by a man's and Brooks You can see how in the United States and this is replicated also for the Netherlands So it doesn't really matter where you look That for instance the professional class So I presume the class in which you are in or in the class of the managers That's another class right if you're an economist basically you end up here I think if you're a sociologist or a lawyer you end up here so The professional class Started out as a right-wing class and ended up as a left-wing class And for instance here are the lowly skilled Here are the lowly skilled workers and here are skilled workers. They started out as a left-wing class But there is a diminishing trend and which has continued Also after 1992 right so there's some sort of Realignment in a way so taken from this you could say well class doesn't Explain too much which has led a lot of people to worry about What's going on for instance Thomas Frank you wrote a book on this? What's the matter with Kansas and you found a lot of people Kansas was a relatively poor State a lot of people in the working class suddenly started voting for The Republicans the wrong party right and he said what's the matter with them right what so everybody's worrying about this and Well, I think that This is a rather important that a class position might represent two things at the same time People might have a lot of economic capital might have a lot of income which well Necessitates that you vote for a right-wing party because well they will defend your economic capital and Also, cook there's cultural capital and if you have a lot of cultural capital if you read a lot of books go to the museum all the time consider yourself an art lover then well You have different types of interest you have different types of values you become much more libertarian and For the lower end of the scale people have a lot Less economic capital. They also have less cultural capital. This is more or less aligned but then the work of Pierre Bourdieu basically shows that It starts to deviate at a certain point then there are cultural specialists like librarians, they read a lot, but they earn squat and Economic specialists like people selling houses, right? They don't read They never read but a lot of money and a BMW stuff like that. For instance, did you take a? Did you ever see the the house of Donald Trump? Yeah, okay, that's an indication of low levels of cultural capital, right? Yeah, so you know he ends up here somewhere, right? He has a lot of economic capital, but not too much cultural capital Okay To show that I'm not bullshitting you. This is taking from a Dutch survey and you can see that there are some sort of Funneling effect, right? Where here here's a cultural Capital and here's the economic capital and you can see music instrument the makers Kuntzenaar's Musici out there's they don't earn a lot, but they have massive amounts of cultural capital and here are the Well, the Comissionaries the mark Lars the director, right? They don't have as much cultural capital, but they have a lot of economic capital, okay Yeah But it Yeah, yeah, yeah, they combine this yeah, yeah So so yeah, that's why well, obviously, there's always some in between, right? But this these are the two flavors basically of the middle class and then well this correspondent Corresponds nicely with how political space nowadays is structured instead of one left right Continuum there are two so if I would ask you what to do with the economy should we take money from the from the Rich and give it to the poor or not Your answers whether or not you're left-wing or right-wing would not predict in any way the answers on Issues like what to do with immigrants what to do with criminals Or what to do with individual freedom or something like that. So they're completely unrelated and you can see this Well in surveys from the 1950s onwards, it's very stable that there's some sort of bidimensional structure and Well, basically we took this and said well if you are a member of a working class Then you don't have a lot of cultural capital at the same time. I already showed you this and people with low levels of cultural capital are more authoritarian and if you are Authoritarian you don't like to vote for let's say a left-wing party, right? Traditional left-wing party because they combine they are much more libertarian, right? So take a look at Dutch Labour Party, for instance, they always talking about international solidarity if there's an international crisis They say well, okay, well the refugees are welcome here, etc People who have low levels of cultural capital don't like this, right? So they Run the other way to the right-wing parties But if you are a member of the working class, then you also like to have economic redistribution You want to take from rich give to the poor some sort of Robin Hood type of policies We and which is a perfect reason for you to vote for a left-wing party. Well, we analyzed voting behavior pattern patterns over the the complete post-war period period for 20 Western European countries and we found out that this Way of voting hasn't decreased So it is still as important as it ever was which is hard to imagine, but still this is what we found So where when you are in a working class You still want to vote for a left-wing party. However, it has become increasingly difficult for you to do so because this Mechanism has increased tremendously in power, right? So political parties started polarizing over this Personal cultural salience increased tremendously and this mechanism Increased and increased and increased so if you only take a look at class and left-wing voting behavior like new beer time Manza and Brooks and the pictures I just showed you you think class doesn't matter anymore But if you control for this cultural mechanism, you can still see that it actually does right so for in for Well Traditional economic old right-wing or left-wing parties. There's still hope I would say but still It has become increasingly hard to to to get those votes because builders is constantly Talking about culture constantly talking about immigrants and this makes it hard. Okay, so I'm over Over time, so I'm going to skip this. This is what I just told you if you take a look at income There's actually an increasing influence on voting behavior And if you take a look at education as a indicator for cultural capital, there's also Much stronger influence, but the other way around which causes People with a low level of education to want to vote for a right-wing party Well My conclusion if you take a look at populism as an antagonism Well, you could say it's a it's a result of technocratic politics. It's because well sometimes There are technocratic Governments which Necessitate some sort of ideological redemptive correction and then some people especially in the lower end of the political in in the lower end of the socioeconomic Spectrum want to vote for this and they want to democratize The political system and if you take a look at populism as nativism you could see there is some sort of reaction against the powerful flower power types of policies that have entered politics and they want to Correct that and which brings some sort of cultural realignment of politics Okay, now my last remark. I promise this already was on the Dutch Labour Party based on this I wrote an article together with dick hafman a colleague of mine, which was called our Arbiters and school maces workers and school teachers It's an unhappy marriage Because the the school maces the teachers have a lot of cultural capital They don't have a lot of economic capital, but they have a lot of cultural capital and within the Dutch Labour Party There were were a lot of people a lot of school teachers who wanted to to vote for Labour Party because of these culturally progressive ideals that they had but then the workers They had a less cultural capital. They were more authoritarian more racist and they don't want to to They don't want a Labour Party which embraces Libertarian ideas. So this was some sort of well a split electorate in a way and No matter what they did if they would move to the new left Culturally progressive left they would lose the voters Of the working class if they moved would move to the right as they recently also tried they would lose all the school teachers So actually what we did and well people always say sociologists cannot predict Anything we predicted the end of the Labour Party and I don't want you to all well basically say you're right But just take a look at what happened yesterday, right? We we we can see all the school teachers moving to D66 and the Greens and we can see all the workers Moving to to the pay-for-pay and the S S pay the socialist party, which has a much more conservative Agenda when it comes to cultural issues. So basically What we predicted Well, I think it will turn out to be right and people would have known this by the way because we started A campaign a campaign in the media, but when we just started Michael Jackson died, right? Okay, so that's it. Thank you very much