Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Social class and social liberalism

1986; Wiley; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/bf01115741

1573-7861

John F. Zipp,

Electoral Systems and Political Participation

The relationship between social class and politics has been a central concern of political sociologists over the years. Recently various scholars have contended that the last twenty years have witnessed the emergence of noneconomic or social issues (e.g., equal rights, personal freedom) and of a "middle class" liberalism, especially on these social issues. In fact, it was claimed that this "privileged radicalism" has led to an inversion of the traditional relationship between class and political ideology, as now it is the middle class which is more supportive than the working class of liberal positions on the important social issues of the day. In this paper we subject these claims to a rigorous empirical test using 1973–1982 NORC data. Our findings indicate that there is little support forclass differences in social liberalism, and that most of the apparent differences are due to education. Furthermore, affluence does not have a consistent effect on social liberalism. Finally, we discuss the implications of our analyses for the nature of class differences in American society.