Educational Networks, Social Closure, and Political Divides

Debates about the nature of a deepening educational divide in electoral politics have tended to focus on education as an individual-level characteristic, whether as a marker of skill endowment, an experience instilling certain values, or the consequence of self-selection based on socialization experiences earlier in life. In this paper, we instead look at how education relates to political outcomes as a feature of social networks. We take cleavage-theoretical perspectives on the educational divide one step further, by treating individuals not as atomistic entities, but as embedded in social structures. Using original survey data from Germany, the UK, and Switzerland, we show that educational differences in political outcomes are diminished in the presence of countervailing networks. Looking not just at vote choice, but at indicators of social closure, this study suggests that segregated social networks contribute to stabilizing contemporary cleavage structures, even as the mass social and political organizations that shaped 20th century cleavage politics have declined.