Religious and secular value divides in Western Europe: A cross-national comparison (1981–2008)
| Author | Anna Pless,Paul Tromp,Dick Houtman |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0192512121995126 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512121995126
International Political Science Review
2023, Vol. 44(2) 178 –194
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512121995126
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Religious and secular value
divides in Western Europe:
A cross-national comparison
(1981–2008)
Anna Pless , Paul Tromp and Dick Houtman
Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven, Belgium
Abstract
Studies on cultural divisions in Western European politics typically combine two different value divides. The
first divide is moral traditionalism versus progressiveness, which pits the religious and the secular against
each other on matters of procreation, family and gender roles. The second one is authoritarianism versus
libertarianism, which captures the opposition between the high- and low-educated about basically secular
attitudes towards matters of immigration and law and order. Since the first divide is religiously inspired and
the second one is basically secular, this article systematically distinguishes between them and studies whether
secularization in Western Europe affects them differently. We perform multilevel regression analysis using
European Values Study data (four waves, 1981–2008) for 17 Western European countries. Our findings
show that the divide between the religious and the secular about moral issues declines with secularization,
while the divide between the high- and low-educated about secular issues becomes wider.
Keywords
Cultural value divides, secularization, moral traditionalism–progressiveness, authoritarianism–libertarianism,
cultural cleavage, cultural politics, Western Europe
Introduction
While cultural issues have come to dominate political agendas of Western European democracies
in recent decades, comparatively religious and secular societies tend to feature very different cul-
tural conflicts. On the one hand, religious societies, best exemplified by Ireland and Northern
Ireland, have been witnessing decades-long battles over same-sex marriage and abortion. On the
other hand, the most secularized Western European countries, such as the Netherlands, appear to
be divided over immigration and ways to deal with it. In this article, we contribute to the scholarly
debate on the transformations of cultural politics (Bornschier, 2010; Kriesi, 2010; Norris and
Inglehart, 2019) and study whether processes of secularization in Western Europe lead to changes
in the dominant cultural conflicts.
Corresponding author:
Anna Pless, Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, box 3601, Leuven, 3000, Belgium.
Email: anna.pless@kuleuven.be
995126IPS0010.1177/0192512121995126International Political Science ReviewPless et al.
research-article2021
Original Research Article
Pless et al. 179
Despite these notable differences in the types of cultural issues on political agendas, cultural
political opposition on the level of the general public is typically conceived of as pitting culturally
progressive individuals against their culturally conservative counterparts (see, for instance, De
Witte and Billiet, 1999; Flanagan and Lee, 2003; Houtman, 2003; Lipset, 1959). In doing so, how-
ever, two different value dimensions rooted in different social groups are combined. The first value
dimension is moral traditionalism–progressiveness, which pits the religious and the secular against
each other on matters of procreation, family and gender roles. The second one is authoritarianism–
libertarianism, which captures the opposition between the high- and low-educated about basically
secular attitudes towards matters of immigration and law and order (see, for instance, Norris and
Inglehart, 2019).
Given that the moral traditionalism–progressiveness divide is religiously inspired, while the
authoritarianism–libertarianism one is basically secular, in this article we take the two divides apart
and study whether processes of secularization in Western Europe affect these two divides differ-
ently. In the next sections, we first differentiate between the moral traditionalism–progressiveness
and authoritarianism–libertarianism value divides, and then theorize about how and why seculari-
zation is likely to affect them differently. In the empirical part, we apply multilevel regression
analysis to the survey data from the four waves of the European Values Study (EVS) (1981–1990–
1999–2008) for 17 Western European countries and study whether secularization makes (a) the
moral traditionalism–progressiveness divide between the religious and secular narrower; and (b)
the authoritarianism–libertarianism divide between the high- and low-educated wider.
Cultural issues and cultural divides
Social class used to enjoy the dominant position in explaining differences in both values and voting
choice among Europeans largely throughout the 20th century (Houtman, 2003; Lipset and Rokkan,
1967). This ‘old’ dimension of European electoral politics largely revolved around redistributive
issues: old leftist parties, relying on the working class, pushed for more redistribution and social
protection while old rightist parties represented the upper classes in trying to hold back state
involvement in the economy (Kriesi, 2010; Nieuwbeerta, 1996).
At the end of the 20th century, however, the role of class in political behavior was found to
decrease rather dramatically (Nieuwbeerta, 1996), as it could not provide a satisfactory explanation
for why Europeans voted for new types of political parties—those of the new left and the new right
(Achterberg and Houtman, 2006). Unsurprisingly, further studies demonstrated that redistributive
issues became less divisive at the end of the 20th century as both the elites and electorates of
Western European democracies largely converged on the previously dividing topics of redistribu-
tion and the need for the welfare state (Adams et al., 2012a, 2012b).
The decreasing role of social class in political behavior is often attributed to the rise of cultural
political issues (e.g. gender equality, minority rights, ecology) on political agendas of Western
European democracies since the 1970s and the emergence of new types of political parties that
rather straightforwardly built their programs on cultural issues (Bornschier, 2010; Inglehart, 1977;
Kriesi, 2010; Van der Waal et al., 2007). Since the 1970s, parties of the new left have been increas-
ingly successful in putting culturally progressive ideas on Western European political agendas and
in attracting progressive voters (Bornschier, 2010). The authoritarian backlash of the 1980s and the
1990s, in contrast, brought parties of the new right to claim their spot in the political landscape of
Western European democracies by successfully criticizing immigration and globalization—the
great evils attributed to leftist policies (Ignazi, 1992; Norris and Inglehart, 2019).
Despite the wide scholarly interest in cultural issues on political agendas and the new types of
parties promoting these issues, cultural divisions in Western Europe have yet enjoyed far less
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