P.L.H. Scheepers

The effect of education on nationalism and ethnic exclusionism: An international comparison

In most studies on ethnic attitudes, a rather strong negative relationship has been found between educational attainment and positive ingroup attitudes (or negative outgroup attitudes). However, it is not well known to what extent this educational effect varies across different national contexts. This study investigated the effect of education on different dimensions of nationalism and ethnic exclusionism with the use of 1995 survey data gathered in 22 countries. Notions from socialization theory were used to test whether the educational effect varies according to the length of liberal-democratic tradition and the degree of religious heterogeneity within a country. Results indicate that educational attainment is strongly related to ethnic exclusionism as well as chauvinism, but not to patriotism. Moreover, the effect of education on ethnic exclusionism is smaller in recently established democracies. The hypothesis regarding stronger educational effects in societies with more religious heterogeneity was not supported.

Individual and contextual characteristics of the German extreme Right–Wing vote in the 1990s. A test of complementary theories

In this article we set out to improve our knowledge onvoting for extreme right-wing parties, i.e. the Republikaner, by taking into account social,political and contextual characteristics. We test fourtheories that provide explanations as to why certainsocial categories are more likely to vote for the Republikaner. The hypotheses are tested withmultilevel analyses, with data from a national sample(N = 4688). Multinomial analyses provide additionalinformation on how theoretically derived politicalattitudes effect voting behaviour.

Education, Religiosity and Moral Attitudes: Explaining Cross-National Effect Differences

The aim of the present study is to answer three research questions on moral attitudes (i.e., attitudes concerning abortion, premarital and extramarital relations, and homosexual relations). Which parental and individual characteristics affect moral attitudes? Do the effects of parental and individual characteristics vary across countries? And, if so, can these effect differences on moral issues be explained by national characteristics? To answer these questions, we use the 1991 ISSP database containing relevant data of 16,604 inhabitants of 15 countries. Hypotheses are tested using multi-level analyses. We find that parental and individual religiosity, as well as individual educational attainment, have strong effects on moral attitudes. However, we observe considerable effect differences across countries, which is a rather new finding. Effects of individual religiosity on moral attitudes appear to be stronger in more religious countries and weaker in more secularized countries. Effects of individual education are stronger in more religiously heterogeneous countries and weaker in more religiously homogeneous countries. Finally, effects of individual education on moral attitudes are weaker in short-standing democracies than in long- standing ones.

Euro-scepticism and radical right-wing voting in Europe, 2002–2008: Social cleavages, socio-political attitudes and contextual characteristics determining voting for the radical right

In this contribution, we focus on the role of euro-scepticism on radical right-wing voting in national elections in 18 European countries between 2002 and 2008. We do so with multilevel modelling taking advantage of high-quality cross-national European data. First, we focus on social cleavages related to voting, e.g. social class and religiosity. Second, we examine the effects of several contextual characteristics, of which some are classical and others new. Third, we take diverse socio-political attitudes into account. We test whether euro-scepticism affects voting for the radical right, over and beyond other determinants that have previously been proposed to determine radical right-wing voting. We find evidence that euro-scepticism indeed contributes to the explanation of voting for the radical right beyond perceived ethnic threat and political distrust. At the same time euro-scepticism is much less relevant than perceived ethnic threat in explaining why particular social categories, i.e. lower educated people, manual workers, unemployed people and non-churchgoers are more likely to vote for the radical right.

Exposure to Newspapers and Attitudes toward Ethnic Minorities: A Longitudinal Analysis

This study aims to test whether exposure to certain newspapers leads people to perceive ethnic minorities as more threatening. Building on cultivation theory as developed by Gerbner, this study extends his theory by looking at the possible effects of exposure to newspapers. Results indicate that exposure to a newspaper characterized by negative reporting about ethnic crime leads people to perceive ethnic minorities as more of a threat than exposure to other newspapers does.

Education and ethnic prejudice in Europe: Explanations for cross-national variances in the educational effect on ethnic prejudice

Education is often found to be a strong determinant of ethnic prejudice. However, there is preliminary evidence that this educational effect varies across countries. Moreover, there are also theoretical arguments to expect cross-national variances in the educational effect on ethnic prejudice. From both a cultural and structural perspective, we set out to explain these cross-national variances in the educational effect. Results of multilevel analyses on data from 11 European countries show that the cultural perspective is more fruitful to explain cross-national variances in the strength of the educational effect on ethnic prejudice than the structural perspective: a countrys democratic tradition and degree of religious heterogeneity are important for the strength of the educational effect on ethnic prejudice, whereas a countrys ethnic composition and unemployment rate are less relevant.

Political versus Instrumental Euro-scepticism: Mapping Scepticism in European Countries and Regions

In this contribution we demonstrate that European citizens distinguish between political and instrumental Euro-scepticism and indicate the extent to which these Euro-sceptic positions are endorsed. Data from 143,367 European citizens in 15 countries and 182 regions show that political Euroscepticism constitutes a cumulative evaluation in each European country. European citizens who are Euro-sceptic on international policies are also Euro-sceptic on joint decisions on immigration policies and sociocultural policies. Moreover, we notice that political Euro-scepticism is modestly correlated with instrumental Euro-scepticism. We explore the extent to which both forms of Euro-scepticism vary between countries and regions and to what extent the percentages of missing values on these measurements affect the degree of Euro-scepticism at the national and regional level. This contribution shows that research on Euro-scepticism to date is skewed by a focus on instrumental Euro-scepticism.

Why the more educated are less inclined to keep ethnic distance: An empirical test of four explanations

Abstract More educated individuals are more tolerant towards ethnic minorities than less educated individuals. This is one of the most consistent findings in studies on different expressions of intolerance towards ethnic minorities. In this contribution we set out to explain this recurrent finding by studying the educational effect on ethnic distance in a Dutch sample of young adults who have recently been exposed to the educational system. We have tested four explanations for the educational effect that are derived from different theoretical traditions: (i) perceived threat from ethnic minorities, (ii) cognitive sophistication, (iii) authoritarianism, and (iv) open-mindedness. We managed to explain the educational effect to a large degree (almost 67 per cent). Perceived threat turns out to be the most important explanatory factor (it accounts for 56 per cent of the educational effect), followed by authoritarianism, whereas cognitive sophistication and open-mindedness turn out to be of negligible importance for the explanation of the educational effect.

Welfare States And Dimensions Of Social Capital: Cross-national Comparisons Of Social Contacts In European Countries

We set out to describe and explain differences in the amount of some dimensions of social capital within and between European societies. Social capital refers to a wide range of social phenomena; however, we focus on social contacts with family and friends. We derive hypotheses about cross-national differences in social capital from theories on the nature of welfare state regimes. We test these hypotheses with multi-level analyses on Eurobarometer data, collected in thirteen countries. We find significant variance across different countries. This variance is partly explained by individual characteristics: religious people and people living in medium-sized or rural towns have more social contacts. Moreover, we find quite differential effects of other individual characteristics on social contacts and no effects of political stances. Differences in the cross-national compositions in educational attainment and household size also account for the variance in social contacts. Finally, people living in social-democratic regimes turn out to have the smallest amount of social contacts, whereas people living in the Latin Rim have the largest amount. In between, we find people living in liberal, respectively, conservative-corporatist regimes. This explanation is opposed to the hypothesis that it is the difference in social security rates that causes differences in social capital.

Churches in Dutch: Causes of religious disaffiliation in the Netherlands 1937-1995

The Netherlands has become one of the most secular countries in the world. A vast majority of the Dutch people does not attend church regularly and more than half its population is not affiliated with any church at all. In this study we set out to test which individual and contextual characteristics affect religious disaffiliation. We deduced several hypotheses from theories on social integration and rationalization. To test these hypotheses we used retrospective data containing information on events that took place in the lives of our respondents since adolescence. These data were analysed using a discrete-time event history model. We found that the higher the level of rationalization in a certain year, the more likely people were to disaffiliate. This effect was particularly strong for young people. Moreover, by introducing rationalization in the model we found a number of spurious relationships that at first glance seemed to be causal. Not surprisingly, respondents were more likely to disaffiliate in cases where their partners were nonreligious. However, as respondents and their partners presumably are effected equally by rationalization, we cannot but conclude that the process of rationalization is mainly responsible for the process of religious disaffiliation that takes place in The Netherlands.