Piketty says the vote on the left has moved from lower-income elites to more educated and divided elites

Conclusions from A new study by French economist Thomas Piketty, author The capital of the twenty-first century (2013) H capital and ideology (2019), co-authored with researchers Amory Gethin, of the Laboratory of Global Inequality at the Ecole d’Economics, Paris, and Clara Martinez Toledano, of Imperial College, London.

In the study, published as a discussion paper in May this year, analysts reviewed opinion polls from more than 300 elections held between 1948 and 2020. The survey covered 21 advanced Western economies, including 17 countries in Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia. and New Zealand.

“Economic inequality has grown significantly in the Western world since the 1980s, albeit at different speeds,” Gethen, Martinez Toledano and Piketty note in their discussion text.

“Given this latest development, it would be possible to anticipate an increase in political demand for redistribution [de renda] and the return of a policy based on class, income or wealth,” the researchers say.

They add, “However, Western democracies appear to have migrated to new forms of conflict based on identity issues in recent decades, exemplified by the increasing importance of environmental agendas and authoritarian anti-regime movements.”

The researchers highlight the economic protectionist agenda and advocacy of immigration restrictions and social conservatism common to these movements, which have managed to channel part of the social anxiety generated by globalization and economic insecurity.

According to them, the election of Republican Donald Trump in the United States, Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the growing strengthening of far-right leader Marine Le Pen in France, are examples of this anti-regime authoritarianism that has recently gained prominence. .

To understand the emergence of what they call “xenophobic populism” in major Western democracies, the researchers then analyzed an unprecedented database of electoral polls, which allowed them to assess the evolution of political preferences in these countries, with data containing information from voters by education level, income age, gender, religion, urban or rural location, ethnicity, among others.

“The most striking finding that emerges from our analyzes is what we propose to label the transition from a ‘class-based party system’ to a ‘multi-elite party system’,” the researchers report on their findings.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the voting of Democrats, Labor, Socialists, Social Democrats, and other left-wing parties in Western democracies was ‘class-based’ in the sense that it was strongly associated with low-income, low-educated voters,” Gethen, Martinez Toledano and Piketty explain.

The authors point out that with the gradual association of the vote on the left with the more educated, a marked difference between the effects of income (or economic capital) and education (or human capital) on political preferences arises from 2010 onwards.

They noted that “economic elites continue to vote for the ‘right’, while the educated elites support the ‘left'”, who call the two groups the ‘merchant’s yam’ and ‘yar Brahmin’ (“the Brahmin left”).

This name gives the title of the study published in May this year – Left Brahmin vs. Right Tajer: Changing Political Divisions in 21 Western Democracies, 1948-2020 (Brahmin Left vs. Commercial Right: Changing Political Divisions in 21 Western Democracies, in free translation) – Its origins go back to the Indian caste system.

In that country, the upper classes are divided between brahmins (priests and intellectuals), xatrias and vaishas (warriors and merchants). Scholars see parallels between this split in Indian elites and that of the new elite in Western democracies.

In this new scenario, where education becomes a more important determinant of voting than income, where does the political preference for the least studied go? Researchers respond and don’t pass on good news to the left.

Parties promoting ‘progressive’ politics (green left parties and, to a lesser extent, traditional left parties) have seen their electors become increasingly restricted to more educated voters, while parties with more ‘conservative’ views (anti-immigration and to a lesser extent) To a large extent, the traditional right-wing parties), on the contrary, have concentrated an increasing proportion of the electorate with low education ”, they emphasize.

Is there a parallel between the picture that Gethen, Martinez Toledano and Piketty described of the 21 advanced economies analyzed and the political reality of Brazil?

BBC News Brasil asked sociologist Esther Solano, professor at Unifesp (Federal University of São Paulo) and Brazilian conservative scholar, and sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros, columnist for Folha de S.Paulo and leftist scholar.

Solano asserts that the traditional right in Brazil, historically representing elites, formed by the Social Democratic Party and centrist parties, has been hit hard in recent years by anti-corruption and partisan rhetoric.

Meanwhile, the new far right, represented by Pocketnarism, managed to attract elites at the same time, with the liberalism of Paolo Guedes. for the middle class, with “lavajatism”; and the popular classes, through resentment of the system and appeal to the new Christian voters of the Pentecostals.

“There is a group of poor populations, primarily C and D groups, who are those with an improvement in their quality of life in terms of income and purchasing power, and who have moved away from PT rules, largely due to anti-corruption discourse,” says the sociologist. He cited the party’s bureaucracy and its isolation after it came to power in 2003 as factors that kept it away from its popular bases.

Solano also cites the emergence of Psol as another relevant force within the left that, in his view, is more closely linked to so-called “identity” agendas and, therefore, more specific to high-income and middle-class intellectual progressivism.

Solano notes that “the poorest in Brazil continue to vote mainly for the Workers’ Party.” “Since Labor has not moved, it continues to represent the axis of income, materialism, and hope for higher incomes in the future. So Labor has not lost this connection with the poorest and with the question of class,” notes the sociologist, who sees failures to communicate issues such as discrimination Sexism, racism and homophobia, which disproportionately affect the poorest.

Celso Rocha de Barros assesses: “In 2018, the right entered the poorest Labor electorate not because it offered them more social policies, income redistribution, etc., but because it introduced moral conservatism and the fight against corruption.”

“In these two years of the Bolsonaro government’s rule, it wasn’t quite the case. It is true that moral conservatism should be responsible for the flexibility of Bolsonaro’s approval rates, but the peak of his popularity was at the height of emergency aid, the largest possible Lolista thing,” the sociologist notes.

“It appears that moral conservatism can provide a popular base for the right, but that may not be enough to win elections on its own, without the aid of more pro-poor economic measures,” he adds.

Rocha de Barros appreciates that inserting Piketty’s and co-authors’ argument into the reality of Brazil has problems.

“A lot of controversy points to the crisis of European social democratic parties, but something different happened here: while this was happening in Europe, the Labor Party created a very successful social democratic government with very strong social policies,” he said.

According to him, the Labor Party was not removed from power because it “abandoned the poor or became a ‘hue'”, but because, after a certain point, it was no longer able to achieve economic growth and also because it had fallen into corruption scandals.

“It may be more difficult for the economic agenda to lose its centrality in poor countries,” assesses the sociologist. “But, for now, all of these are hypotheses that need to be explored, and I think this discussion should become increasingly central in Brazil.”

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