Social Inequality and Political Disengagement: Social Class and The Sense of Entitlement to Have an Opinion

Abstract

The growing distrust and disengagement in politics witnessed in Western democracies in recent decades has been deemed a potential threat to democratic legitimacy. Crucial questions in meeting this challenge is who the disengaged citizen is, and what the sources are that seem to disconnect people from politics. An aspect of political alienation largely neglected in the scholarly literature is found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu; to what extent a person feels socially recognized as entitled to even have political opinions. This study centers on class inequality in political disengagement, and represents the first of its kind to investigate whether class differences in a sense of entitlement is a source of non-participation in the Norwegian context. Analyzing patterns of don’t know responses to survey questions about politics from two nationally representative surveys over a period of 30 years into the 2000s, I find that lower class Norwegians participate persistently and substantially less in political discourse by not expressing political opinions in the survey setting. Moreover, the findings indicate that this form of political disengagement cannot be attributed to people’s lack of interest in, or knowledge about, politics. But can be best understood as stemming from class-based differences in a sense of entitlement to have political opinions and engage with politics. Lastly, I find that the vertical class-gap in political Don’t Knows remains stable, and is as pronounced in the 2000s as it was in the 1980s. Closely linked to a person’s social background, this alternative aspect of political alienation emphasizes the role social structure plays in the transmission of social inequality by shaping different classes’ basic relationship to politics. And offers an alternative perspective on how social inequality produces political inequality by making it harder for socially disadvantaged groups to develop a sense that they are legitimate participants in political processes. Given the recent rising levels of economic inequality and professionalization of politics in Norway, the main implication of these findings is that efforts aimed at making participation more fully representative might focus on ways to increase lower status people’s sense that politics is something they are expected to take part in. And which, furthermore, underscores the importance of continued policies centered on making meaningful connections between democratic processes and lower class people.