Jürgen Gerhards

Freie Unversität Berlin

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, many believed that this was the final victory of the liberal model of society. But things turned out differently. Today, liberal societies and their institutions are under severe attack from both outside and inside. As part of the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script” located at the Freie Universität Berlin, we conducted a survey in 26 countries from different regions of the world to determine supporters and opponents of what we define as the Liberal Script, a theoretically derived bundle of liberal values. The paper is based on a first draft of a book manuscript coauthored with Lukas Antoine, Heiko Giebler, Rasmus Ollroge, and Michael Zürn, and summarizes some of the key findings. The presentation will be structured along the following research questions. (1) What are the core characteristics of the liberal script, and how did we measure them? (2) In which countries around the globe is the liberal script most supported, and where is it most opposed? (3) Which societies are divided and show a high level of polarization, and which are more coherent? (4) Which theories can be used to “explain” the differences in support for the liberal script? (5) And which theories turn out to be better suited to make sense of the differences in support for the liberal script both at the country and individual level. 

Martin Schröder¹; Martin Ulrich²; Moritz Rehm²

¹ Universität des Saarlandes; ² Saarland University

Extreme polarization is undesirable, as it renders democratic consensus impossible. But are societies really becoming increasingly polarized? Using the Integrated Value Survey (191,069 individuals, 28 countries, 1990-2022), this article shows that preferences for redistribution and moral attitudes are not becoming more polarized across countries; on the contrary, moral attitudes and redistribution preferences have even become more homogeneous in many countries. However, the US and other selected countries have experienced more self-sorting into extreme left-right political affiliations. In the US, this stronger sorting into left and right also aligns increasingly with moral attitudes and redistribution preferences. Illustrating what sort of polarization occurs where and when, our study shows for the first time that attitude polarization is not a general secular trend across countries. This advances on existing research, which is typically limited to studying polarization in a single country, for a single attitude, or at a single point in time.

Fabian Kratz

LMU München

The question of whether attitudes become more polarized over time has stimulated significant scientific and political debate. This study is the first to show that polarization processes can occur both across cohorts and with rising age, and that cohort-based polarization may obscure age-related polarization. I introduce the age polarization and cohort polarization hypotheses, which propose that attitudes become increasingly polarized both as individuals age and across successive cohorts. I use multi-cohort panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and leverage its longest-running attitude measure—concerns about immigration. I show that education-specific differences in immigration concerns intensify both across co-horts and with rising age, and that age-related polarization only becomes apparent when co-hort-based polarization is accounted for. These substantial and original findings contribute to debates on polarization processes in attitudes over time and advance the literature on hetero-geneity in the liberalizing effect of education.

Florian K. Kley¹; Holger Lengfeld²; Stephan Poppe²

¹ Leipzig University, Research Institute Social Cohesion; ² Leipzig University, Institute of Sociology

Although the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has evolved into a major political force, there is limited knowledge on a clear-cut comparison of the changing factors over time within the AfD’s core clientele.

We use random forest models to identify key determinants of identification with the AfD and their development over time, using nine waves (2014–2022) of the German Socio-Economic Panel. Key predictors are grouped into (1) socio-economic status (education, class, income), (2) economic concerns (personal and macro-economic worries, job-loss fears) and (3) cultural concerns (immigration worries). We rely on partial dependence plots and indicators of variable importance to trace temporal shifts.

Our preliminary results show that socio-economic markers are largely stable and rather weak. Despite an increase in identification with the AfD among the lowest income group, the importance of this variable has continuously decreased, challenging the conclusion of a growing socio-structural divide. The impact of concerns relating to economic developments is relatively weak and has remained fairly consistent. Concerns about cultural threats have become a major issue ever since worries about immigration increased dramatically between 2017 and 2020.

As identification with the AfD is anchored fundamentally in persistent concerns about migration rather than socio-structural factors, this issue-driven appeal has proven stable even in times of declining immigration, forming a resilient core of support that is unlikely to diminish.