ABSTRACT

It has recently been argued that subjective status – the way individuals feel about their worth in society – deserves greater prominence in accounts of political preferences including anti-immigration sentiment and Brexit. In this paper, we give a detailed empirical account of the relationship between Subjective Social Status (SSS) and Brexit-related preferences, using data collected online in the autumn of 2017 (N = 3600). We find limited evidence that ‘objective’ dimensions of status translate into preferences via SSS. Rather, most of the effect of education and social class on political preferences is direct (or via another unmeasured mechanism). We propose that SSS has a role in norm compliance and demonstrate that high SSS among the university-educated and among those with high-status social ties is associated with a higher probability of voting leave in the referendum, as well as higher levels of anti-immigrant sentiment. Thus, we conclude that if SSS has a role in shaping populist preferences, it is more complex than has been assumed. It exerts an effect in the opposite direction to the expected one among the privileged, and does not appear to explain the preferences of the ‘left behind’.

摘要

最近有人争辩说，主观身份（个人对自己在社会中的价值的看法）在政治偏好（包括反移民情绪和英国退欧）方面应得到更大的重视。在本文中，我们使用2017年秋季在线收集的数据详细描述了主观社会地位（SSS）与英国脱欧相关偏好之间的关系的实证研究（N = 3600）。我们发现有限的证据表明状态的“客观”维度通过SSS转化为偏好。相反，教育和社会阶层对政治偏好的大多数影响是直接的（或通过其他无法衡量的机制）。我们建议SSS在规范合规性方面发挥作用，并证明受过大学教育的人和具有较高地位的社会联系的人中SSS较高与公民投票中投票假的可能性较高以及反种族主义较高水平相关。移民情绪。因此，我们得出的结论是，如果SSS在塑造民粹主义偏好方面发挥作用，则它比假设的要复杂。它的作用与特权者所期望的相反，并且似乎无法解释“落伍者”的偏好。