“Switzerland is as deeply polarized as the USA”

Silja Häusermann, Simon Bornschier, in the publication Democratic Conflict and Polarization: Healthy or Harmful?, you explain the evolution of democratic conflicts and political polarization. In France, national elections took place in July. How was this polarization reflected in these elections?

Simon Bornschier: The elections demonstrated that France is really not that different to any other European country. Although many observers expected to see a shift to the right, the three big political groupings – the radical right, the New Left and the established right in the middle – received a more or less equal share of the vote. There’s an even balance between those at the extremes.

Silja Häusermann: Although France has a different electoral system to most other European countries, the basic issues are the same as those found elsewhere. Trends that we’ve identified in other countries – such as the fact that young people are much more likely to vote for parties at either end of the political spectrum rather than the center – were confirmed.

In your publication, you analyze the increasing level of political polarization in Western democracies. How do you measure this?

Häusermann: We measure the level of polarization primarily by looking at the gap between the political positions adopted by the parties or voters. In addition, we look at the size of the political groupings at the extremes. When you combine and evaluate these dimensions, you see that the level of polarization is increasing. The fact that younger people tend to vote for more radical parties means that the level of polarization is likely to grow even more in the future because people’s voting patterns tend to remain relatively stable over their lifetime in heavily polarized and segmented democracies in particular.

Which issues are polarizing society today?

Häusermann: In the 21st century, it’s socio-political issues like minority rights, equality and migration in particular that are having a polarizing effect. And internationalization – should a country open itself up or cut itself off. By contrast, in the 20th century the polarizing issues were mainly distributional questions in relation to taxes and social benefits, for example.

Bornschier: The media often ascribes the current conflicts simply to the issue of immigration. However, the differences are older, more complex and relate to different sets of issues and identities that differentiate voters. They can be traced back to the mobilization of supporters of the New Left in the 1970s and 1980s. This put new issues on the agenda, such as gender equality, minority rights or people’s freedom to choose how to live their lives. One example was the “gay movement”, as it was known at the time. A national-conservative countermovement rallied against this, resulting in the emergence of the radical populist right. It focused on issues like immigration, protecting traditions and the relationship with the EU.

Häusermann: Ultimately, this trend is a consequence of the expansion in education in the 20th century. The transition from the industrial to the post-industrial age has radically transformed societies. It’s created a broad, well-educated middle class that is concerned about the issues that mattered to the New Left. Education has become the primary determinant of a person’s life chances and risks. Younger people, many women and people living in urban areas are the main beneficiaries of this trend. At the same time, there’s a countermovement of those who have been and are still unable to benefit directly from these changes within society.

In this context, you distinguish between universalistic and particularistic positions that are represented by the parties on the extreme right and left of the spectrum. Can you explain this? 

Bornschier: The issues that the New Left put on the agenda highlight a strong principle of equality. This relates not just to economic questions, but also questions of identity. It’s all about equality in respect of gender, social background and lifestyles. This is the key demand of the singular, universalistic pole. The counterpole to this is traditionalist or even particularistic. It seeks to preserve established communities. These are often communities that are imagined. Advocates romanticize and defend a homogeneity that has never actually existed. However, these contrasting notions of society are now linked not just to cultural issues, but economic issues, too.

Häusermann: The direct correlation between a person’s immediate material situation in life – such as their income – and their political attitudes has weakened. Many political beliefs are instead motivated much more by cultural factors, i.e. by values and societal ideals. Cultural motives are right at the forefront of issues like immigration or European integration in particular, even though these issues do of course have a very clear material, distributive dimension. But polarization means that value-based notions of society are becoming prisms through which many different political issues are viewed. I’ve done a lot of work on welfare policy and the welfare state, so on genuinely substantive issues. In this area, we’re seeing that even traditional questions of distribution are increasingly being viewed through this cultural prism nowadays. For example, under the banner of welfare chauvinism, which means assessing social benefits – such as the question of whether they should go more to the native population or to immigrants.

Your study also focuses on those who have not benefited from social and economic development. You cite the phrase “places that don’t matter”, which was coined by a British professor of economic geography. It means places where people feel abandoned. What role does the experience of being one of the losers play in the discussion surrounding polarization?

Häusermann: There’s a lot of research on this. It shows that the perceived level of distress is not just a material one, but also a cultural, immaterial phenomenon. In other words, unemployment, job loss and a strong perception of having low social status are not strong predictors of voting for right-wing authoritarian parties. On the other hand, a fear of losing one’s job is. People’s subjective assessment that they’ve lost importance and status relative to other groups in society and are getting a raw deal is in fact a core subjective predictor of this. It’s the feeling of relative loss. The world is moving in a direction that you can’t follow and is leaving you behind.

Is the feeling of losing out culturally a stronger determinant of a person’s voting behavior than their economic situation? 

Häusermann: Yes, Switzerland provides a very good test bed for this theory. That’s because there aren’t any places that don’t matter here. But in the USA, for example, there are. It has places where many people have been left behind socially, economically and also in terms of infrastructure. That’s why the USA is often a poor case for us to study because everything there is overdetermined: the people are suffering economically, culturally, and in terms of their health and education outcomes. In Europe, it’s much easier to differentiate between these different dimensions and weigh them up against each other. In wealthy countries like Austria, Denmark or Switzerland, there are good schools right across the country, for example. Children receive a good education everywhere and even remote regions are well developed. Nevertheless, these countries have right-wing nationalist parties that attract a large share of the vote.

Bornschier: The people who vote for radical right-wing parties aren’t primarily the people who are faring worst in society. But they have the vague notion that their children won't do as well in the future and that there was once an ideal world in which everything was better. They think that the policies of nationalist right-wing parties will help them return to a bygone era.

The other parties don’t seem to be able to do anything to dispel this vague notion. Why is that?

Häusermann: You’d think that these people can be attracted by political policies that are a direct response to their experience of loss. But it's not that simple because this experience of loss is not necessarily material. It can’t just be compensated for with money. For many years, political parties thought that people could be encouraged to vote for them with social policies – by offering more generous unemployment benefits or minimum wages, for example. But this hasn’t really worked because the main source of disquiet is an immaterial one.

How can this cultural unease be tackled?

Häusermann: It’s difficult. The political right has a simple answer to this because it appeals to national sentiment. This appeal is linked to a promise to attach more value to national causes than “foreign” ones. For the universalistic left, which is very much defined by the idea that it wants to spread equality to more and more people, this of course isn’t an option.

Bornschier: The basic problem is a sense of a lack of appreciation. People who feel like they’re not appreciated enough within society are more likely to vote for a radical right-wing party. The question is how to give them this sense of feeling appreciated. There’s the exclusive, nationalist approach. The traditional offering from the left was to emphasize the absolutely key role played by the working class as the engine that drives social progress. This discourse gave people the appreciation that they’re missing today. However, some elements of today’s working class value different identities, for example the fact that they feel an affinity with people who are down-to-earth and have rural roots. It's very difficult to reach these groups by offering social policies. The people who typically vote for radical populist right-wing parties actually don’t want any handouts or welfare benefits because they're proud of the fact that they've worked hard to acquire their own wealth.

Is there a need for new political narratives?

Häusermann: Yes, especially among liberals and the progressive left. I’ll give you an example. Following its defeat in the European election, Germany’s SPD party debated which narrative it should adopt in response to its poor result. One of the suggestions was to emphasize that it’s the party of “working people in the center ground”. If you follow the arguments we’ve put forward, this would have no impact because this rallying cry doesn’t appeal to either of the political poles and doesn’t reflect the times we live in. In France, by contrast, the left coalesced at astonishing speed for the second round of the parliamentary elections and coined the name “Nouveau Front populaire”. This is a direct revival of the left-wing “Front populaire” that formed in response to fascism in the crisis-torn 1930s. The message was clear: “It’s now about the bigger picture, we’re in the same position we were in back then.” This hit a nerve. The Democrats in the USA are currently trying to do the same thing by portraying the election campaign as a fundamental choice on liberal freedoms.

You write in your analysis that Switzerland is one of the most polarized countries in Europe. Why is that? And how is this reflected?

Bornschier: This is reflected in the fact that the parties at the extremes are particularly strong. There’s hardly any other country in Europe where the national-conservative right in the form of the Swiss People’s Party performs so well with almost 30 percent of votes and where at the same time the opposite political extreme is similarly strong in the form of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens. This means that more than half the population vote for parties at the political extremes. In many other countries, there are lots of smaller parties at either end of the political spectrum. That’s why Switzerland is as heavily polarized as other highly polarized countries like the USA.

Häusermann: The political identity in Switzerland is usually not thought of as being a trailblazer or a radical country. But when it comes to political polarization, Switzerland is a paradigmatic case. In our analysis, we’ve highlighted three reasons for this: the structural shift that created the New Left and the countermovement on the right was very intense and very rapid in Switzerland. The same was true of the process of deindustrialization in the 1990s with the number of people employed in industry halved and a late, but rapid expansion of education. The second point is that in Switzerland, the Social Democratic Party shifted to the left at a very early stage. Other social-democratic parties followed suit. The third point is the political system in Switzerland, which enables parties to be radical and yet still govern. Switzerland has parties governing together in coalition that, compared to other European countries, sit on the right and left poles of the political spectrum. This is why paradoxically Switzerland, as a “consensus democracy”, has an extremely polarized party system.

Is the consensus under threat?

Häusermann: The institutions of the consensus democracy, proportional representation, government by consensus, the direct democracy that forces parties to compromise are not under threat because they command a huge level of support in the population. On the other hand, the capacity of politicians to get things done is under threat because this polarization makes it difficult to reach decisions. This can be seen in policies on Europe, pensions or the environment.

In your analysis, you asked the question: is political polarization healthy or harmful? What’s your verdict?

Häusermann: Political polarization has a bad reputation and understandably arouses fear in people. We wanted to emphasize the fact that the conflict over the direction in which society should evolve is simply part of democracy. This doesn’t constitute a problem for democracy a priori. Democracy is a set of rules governing the contest and debate between different ideas in a healthy society.

Despite this, there’s an impression that liberal democracy is under threat. Why is that?

Häusermann: There’s a dilemma, which is that in some countries those on the authoritarian right don't just have substantive objectives, but are questioning the rules of democracy themselves and are attempting to change the landscape of liberal democracy in which different political opinions vie for popularity. This threat exists and we didn't want to trivialize it. But we wish to point out that conflict is an established part and a healthy aspect of any debate within a liberal democracy. Politics is about conflicting ideas, not administering or optimizing things.

Bornschier: However, in today’s key political conflict, which is all about identity, reaching a compromise is more difficult than it was in the conflict between the state and the market. Economic disparities are easier to resolve by balancing financial interests. When it comes to worldviews, this is much more difficult. This takes us back to the question of how to make everyone feel that their role in society is valued and appreciated. Our societies haven’t yet managed to find a satisfactory answer to this question.

Literature

Silja Häusermann, Simon Bornschier, Democratic Conflict and Polarization: Healthy or Harmful? UBS Center for Economics in Society. Public Paper No 14. The publication is freely available on the UBS Center website (www.ubscenter.uzh.ch).

Simon Bornschier, Lukas Haffert, Silja Häusermann, Marco Steenbergen, Delia Zollinger: Cleavage Formation in the 21st Century. How Social Identities Shape Voting Behavior in Contexts of Electoral Realignment. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2024