Value orientation and external political efficacy: assessing the relationship between traditional values, progressive politics and political responsiveness

Abstract

Values are often used to explain phenomena associated with problematic political behaviours. For example, the election of far-right parties is often attributed to traditional values. The ‘Cultural Backlash’ thesis (Inglehart and Norris in Cultural backlash: trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2017a) is prominent in this field of research and explains such behaviour by a predominance of progressive issues as the result of Value Change. It is assumed that this causes traditional individuals to perceive the political system as less responsive, which can also be understood as low external political efficacy; however, there is little in the way of empirical research that tests the connection between one’s value orientation and one’s sense of external efficacy (Inglehart and Norris in Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash, 2016; Inglehart and Norris in Cultural backlash: trump, Brexit, and authoritarian populism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017a; Inglehart and Norris in Perspect Polit 15(2):443-453, 2017b). This study aims to fill this gap by examining the effects of traditional values on perceptions of external efficacy, particular attention to the role of predominantly progressive politics. For this purpose, the relationship between values and external efficacy is brought into cross-national context in order to analyse the moderating effect of the degree of progressivity of the respective national political system. To test these assumption with multilevel mixed-effects model, this study uses European Social Survey data from 23 European countries and from the Manifesto Project. The results show that traditional values are negative associated with external political efficacy. They also show that this effect is partially intensified the more progressive the party manifestos are.