Education, Authoritarianism, and Party Preference in the Balkans

Abstract

This article examines the thesis that educational cleavage, operating through an authoritarian-libertarian value dimension, has become one of the most important social cleavages that influence political divisions in contemporary Europe. This model, which is a revision of the standard cleavage model of politics, has been developed and tested in the Western European context. However, the validity of this assumption in different social contexts, such as the Eastern European and the post-communist, has not been tested yet. This article uses data from the fourth wave of the European Values Survey to test the idea that the authoritarian-liberal dimension mediates the influence of education on party orientation in seven Balkan countries and territories. The results show that education and authoritarianism are significantly and negatively correlated in each Balkan country. Yet, there are differences in their political relevance that are dependent on the behavior of the parties themselves and possibly the presence of other major cleavages.