Revisiting middle-class politics: a multidimensional approach - evidence from Spain.

Revisiting middle-class politics:a multidimensional approach –evidence from Spain

Modesto Gayo

Abstract

The sociological tradition of thinking about the middle class has made a verysignificant contribution to the understanding of politics in advanced contemporarysocieties.This paper approaches the case of Spain within a conceptual and empiricalframework derived from that work. Its point of departure is that most analysis ofsocial class in sociology and political science to date has relied on class schemes thatattempt to explain single subjects or dimensions of particular phenomena. Politicalsociology, for example, has produced numerous single-dimension studies on issuessuch as voting, political participation, and political values or attitudes.These kinds ofstudy tend to produce neat and unambiguous conclusions. A more nuanced pictureemerges from the present study, which adopts an alternative, multidimensionalanalysis. The study compares the behaviour of social classes, and above all offractions of the middle class, in each of the four areas of voting, political ideology,political participation, and political values. Doing so, the results present a muchmore complex picture of middle-class politics than has traditionally been available.The significance of these results is twofold. First, we see that an accurate descriptionof the political behaviour of the middle class cannot be reduced to a dichotomousunitary versus heterogeneous dilemma, or to conservative versus leftist views, sincethe political stand of this social class is essentially ‘ambivalent’. Secondly, theseresults strongly suggest that theoretical work on this and similar types of phenom-ena should more frequently take into account the complexity of actually observedbehaviour, rather than relying on the often thinner or simpler patterns from whichsociological knowledge has too often been derived.

Keywords: middle class, voting, ideology, political participation, social class, politicalactivism, postmaterialist values

A review of the debate about middle-class politics

Preliminary notes

Scholarly concern with the politics of the middle class goes back at least to theorigins of the Marxist tradition. Nonetheless, this paper will focus on intellec-

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The Sociological Review, Vol. 61, 814–837 (2013) DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12084© 2013 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2013 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Publishedby John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,USA.

tual contributions to this field from the 1950s onwards. This coincides roughlywith the period during which the middle class became an object of systematicconcern in sociological thought, as a corollary of the dramatic changes thentaking place in advanced industrial societies. One of these changes was thetransformation of the social structure, leading to what was identified as aspectacular growth of the middle class. The political consequences of thisemergence, at a moment of considerable social and political upheaval, were atthe very heart of the theoretical debate.

This scholarly attention was represented by studies which largely took thegrowing relevance of this recently numerous middle class for granted. Theyconcentrated on characterizing this key new social class through focusing ondifferent aspects of its behaviour. This research was very productive over anumber of decades, serving first to create an image of a distinctive and tosome extent unitary social group and, later, to present it as a fragmentarybut still identifiable and cohesive social entity. This success in building up adetailed picture of a single social class, with all its features and details, con-tributed to turn what began as a way of explaining observable social pro-cesses into a sort of essence, the middle class. Some conceptual questions ordifficulties were raised when the frontiers of this social class were evaluated– what was known as the ‘boundary problem’ (Crompton, 1992; Devine,1997) – but the emerging picture of the middle class survived these chal-lenges fundamentally intact.

This article goes further down this line of thinking about this social class.Using the same logic and accumulating previous partial results, arrives atimportant conclusions about the explanatory power of a social concept, the‘middle class’, theoretically driven for decades, which has become a sort ofshibboleth to which scholars defer in their thinking and ordinary people intheir everyday lives. However, if we look at the political behaviour of middle-class occupational groups across different dimensions, we see that it is in factdifficult to match observed patterns of behaviour with existing dichotomousclassifications such as unitary versus heterogeneous, conservative or radical,rightist or leftist, materialist or postmaterialist.

With all those patterns in the actual behaviour of the middle class andhaving demonstrated how important it is to look at the middle class from amultidimensional perspective, I argue that it is very problematic to considerthe middle class only or mainly as a reality or a social entity whose genuineexplanatory utility is considered to be beyond question. From my results, the‘middle class’ emerges as a more ambivalent or limited concept, useful inunderstanding some social processes, but probably contributing little ornothing to account for others.

Some notes about Spain and research on the middle class

From the 1950s onwards, Spain underwent a notable and rapid economictransformation, becoming a society with a growing service sector in which

Revisiting middle-class politics

815© 2013 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2013 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review

migration from rural areas to cities turned the nineteenth-century social struc-ture on its head.These transformations have motivated a number of sociologi-cal studies over the decades, most of which agree about the basic lineamentsand main characteristics of this ‘revolutionary’ societal change (Tezanos, 1975;Tezanos, 1989; González and Garrido, 2005).

We should also acknowledge that some attention has been paid to therelationship between this emerging middle class and politics, on the assump-tion that this new society would give rise to a new political reality quite distinctfrom that of the Second Republic (1931–1936), the Spanish Civil War of 1936to 1939 and the long Franquista dictatorship that followed from 1939 to 1975(see Tezanos, 1975; Ortí, 1987; Requena, 2001). During the period of demo-cratic transition and consolidation that took place between the late 1970s andthe early 1980s, various scholars turned their attention to the political behav-iour of the middle classes under the new democratic party system (González,1993, 1996, 2001, 2004; Gayo, 2003, 2008).

However, even though this sociological production was empiricallygrounded in Spanish data, the majority of the ideas which shaped its descrip-tions and explanations were imported from previous debates abroad: aboveall in the United Kingdom and the United States. Notwithstanding that, thisborrowing was not blind or uncritical, as can be seen in relation to the debatesabout neoliberalism that dominated so much sociological analysis aboutBritain and the USA at least from the 1980s. In Spain that same decade insteadsaw the building up and expansion of the welfare state under socialist govern-ments. References to neoliberal policies in Spanish-based studies were accord-ingly both less frequent and less consensual at that time.

All these features – a society rapidly changing, a democratic transition, awelfare state building, and the strong influence of American and British soci-ology – shaped the nature of the political and academic context in which thedata analysed in this paper was originally collected; and represented, untilrecently, prevailing Spanish reality. It is certainly likely that the current eco-nomic crisis has had or will have a profoundly transformative impact on thissociety in general, and on the politics of its middle class in particular, but thatspecific analysis will have to be carried out in years to come.

Defining the middle class

The term ‘middle class’ has been commonly used in different ways, and it isimportant therefore to note that different authors can be referring, when theyuse it, to quite distinct ideas about its social composition or even about its verynature. Some studies have undertaken very precise and detailed groundworkto arrive at their working definition of social structure, making it possible tosee exactly how they define the middle class and then classify individuals orgroups as falling within or outside the category (see Erikson and Goldthorpe,1993; Wright, 1994). In other cases, however, such detailed process tracing is

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816 © 2013 The Author. The Sociological Review © 2013 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review

not possible because scholars approached social structure in a more impres-sionistic way and/or were not specifically interested in developing schema forsocial class (Bourdieu, 1979).

As it is accordingly not always clear who is a member of the middle class fordifferent authors, it is useful here to name the three groups most commonlythought of as making up the middle class: managers, professionals and peoplein white-collar (routine non-manual) jobs. This last category is not alwaysincluded, nor would its inclusion be universally accepted, and this study there-fore opted for a working definition encompassing the first two of these threegroups: managers and professionals. This was done in order to limit the studyonly to categories that would be uncontroversially recognized by most aca-demics in the field as component parts of the middle class. For present pur-poses, it is also important to note that this definition has the added virtue ofcoinciding with the mainstream idea of the middle class in the UK.

Taking that definition into account, I go on to develop in this paper thenotion of a ‘service class’ in order to operationalize the concept of themiddle class. I do this for several reasons. First, because it representsthe ‘minimum’ agreement previously mentioned; so most of the scholarswould accept that service class people are in this social class. Secondly, dueto the fact that this definition has been widely accepted and/or used for somedecades now in order to study the sociology of political behaviour in variouscountries, including Spain.1 Thirdly, because it also fits the tradition withinwhich the argument of the present paper has been developed. Last but notleast, the EGP scheme, which includes the service class, offers a classificationof all the occupations, and that allows to compare the middle class withother social classes.2 Table 1 sets out the main characteristics of this class asunderstood in this research. The only difference from Erickson andGoldthorpe’s conceptualization of 1993 is in the first row of the table. Thecategory ‘entrepreneurs’, which these scholars include, was dropped sincethey would not necessarily be accepted within the minimum definition of themiddle class already mentioned.

Table 1 Characteristics of the service class/ middle class

Ownership No.

Authority Yes, though in varying degrees, when taken to refer to effectivecommand over a certain number of workers.

Knowledge Yes, at least for professionals. Technical knowledge is one of the basesof the service professional relationship.

Type of work Non-manualAutonomy Yes. Service professionals’ working relationships are based on trust,

because they require specialised knowledge and/or the delegationof authority.



The debate about middle-class politics

Since the middle of the last century, work on the relationship between themiddle class and politics has taken a wide variety of approaches and forms. Itis therefore important to make clear from the outset that this paper does notdeal with two otherwise significant lines of research. One of these is theMarxist tradition, which has traditionally found it difficult to incorporate themiddle class into its understanding of contemporary industrialized societies. Itwas not until the works of N. Poulantzas (1972, 1974a, 1974b) and E.O. Wright(1983, 1994), during the 1970s and 1980s, that these intermediate occupationswere finally included in Marxist reflection on current social structures. Politicsfrom that perspective was about the possibility of a radical transformation ofcapitalist societies. Neither is it my intention in this paper to consider a secondmajor school of thought, one which focuses on the relationship between themiddle classes and political regime types from the starting point of a certainsuspicion about the potentially fascist or authoritarian orientations of peoplein the middle of the social structure. From this perspective, prevalent after theSecond World War, the study of politics considers the middle class as a socialcondition of democracy (Lipset, 1987).3

My understanding of ‘politics’ in this article takes for granted that liberal-democratic regimes are in place, and the studies referred to below were basedon this assumption. In fact, studies about voting, which probably make up themajor part of this body of work, assume the existence of a political partysystem in which voters choose their representatives in open competition. Itwas also generally believed for many years that political behaviour wasstrongly linked to social class, as probably the main cleavage in industrializedsocieties. The emergence of the middle class was looked at from this latterpoint of view, which meant considering what political implications might havebrought its appearance. A variety of answers to these questions were arrivedat, and I summarize them in the rest of this section and in Table 2.

First, in line with a broadly shared idea about the old, traditional or‘non-democratic’ middle-class politics (Vidich, 19954), some authors havecontended that the middle class is conservative. In Britain this social classhas been very frequently referred to as the ‘service class’, seen by K. Renner(in Bottomore and Goode, 1978) as strongly opposed to the working class.The major representative of this stand has been J. Goldthorpe (see Butlerand Savage, 1995). He adds, however, that conservatism does not meanthat this social class is loyal to capitalism, but that its members would bebasically in favour of defending their own interests whatever the politicalcircumstances.

At this point, I want to make clear that all the other answers to the politicsof the middle class are quite different from the traditional view. In that sense,the view that can be considered opposite to the previous one also assumesthat the middle class is a homogeneous social class, and refers to it as a ‘newclass’ with a completely different political orientation from the conservatism

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portrayed by the more traditional understanding. In this version we have asocial class which manifests itself in favour of left-wing parties and new socialmovements (Togeby, 1990; Svensson and Togeby, 1991; Bagguley, 1992;Skogen, 1996). However, it is fair to say that Goldthorpe also has allies whenhe insists on linking the new class with conservative stances. One of these is USscholar S. Brint (1984, 1985), who contends that although it is possible toidentify some professionals prone to supporting leftist or radical views, themajority of members of the middle class are quite conservative. In any case, hesees the content of these radical views as very far away from a traditional left,diverging in particular over issues such as income redistribution and theexpansion of public services.

A third view underlines the heterogeneous nature of the new middle class.This strand is very important as it has probably been the most successful orwidely accepted idea about the middle class to date. It has a very long history,with relevant contributions in American sociology (Bonham, 1954; Mills,1959). These studies, however, incorporate the white-collar jobs into their

Table 2 Examples of studies on middle-class politics, showing whichdimensions of political behaviour were researched

Authors Dimension(s)studied

Conclusions

Goldthorpe (in Butler andSavage, 1995)

Voting Conservatism

Dalton et al. (1984) Voting LeftistHeath and Savage (in Butler

and Savage, 1995)Voting Managers are more conservative,

while professionals aredivided. Those who we mightcall ‘humanist’ and welfareprofessionals are more likelyto be left-oriented.

Svensson and Togeby (1991),Togeby (1990), Bagguley(1992), Skogen (1996),Searle-Chatterjee (1999),Macy (1991)

Social movementactivism

Radicalism and politicalactivism

Eder (1995), Frankland andSchoonmaker (1992)

Social movementactivism

Radicalism

Gouldner (1980) Attitudes RadicalismInglehart (in Dalton et al.,

1984)Materialism/

postmaterialismcleavage

Postmaterialism

John and Barbara Ehrenreich(in Walker, 1979)

Theoreticalcontribution

Managers and professionals are,in general, two differentgroups.



definition of the middle class, in accordance with the way this social class hasusually been understood in the United States (as the social projection of a sortof middle man). More contemporary approaches consider only managers andprofessionals, but their findings continue to centre on the idea of heterogeneity(Savage et al., 1988; Savage, 1991; Devine, 1997; Müller, in Evans, 1999). Not-withstanding, the idea of heterogeneity is by no means a simple one. It canitself have different meanings, and as a finding it does not necessarily contra-dict the view of the middle class as politically conservative. In the last analysisit merely means that there are important differences of behaviour within thissocial class, such that some of its social components will be, at least in relativeterms, strongly inclined towards the left (Kriesi, 1989; Herring, 1989, Bonnett,1993; Heath and Savage, in Butler and Savage, 1995; Rootes, in Maheu, 1995).Besides that, this fragmentation refers to the undisputed and unexpectedfinding that the leadership of new social movements is usually in prosperousor middle-class hands. This is interpreted as ‘leftist’ (the European term) or‘radical’ (the US term) political behaviour on the part of the middle class.

If we adopt the notion of the middle class as a heterogeneous or fragmentedsocial class, we can produce a political map of this social class that bringstogether the findings of various contributions on the topic. Doing that, threeimportant groups or subclasses have been identified.

a. Managers

Managers have been depicted as strongly inclined to support rightist views.There is, in other words, a widely accepted consensus that managers have beenhistorically aligned with conservative stances and conservative political parties(Heath and Savage, 1994; Brooks and Manza, 1997).

b. Professionals

It is unclear whether this category always refers to the same occupations, butit usually includes, at a minimum, cultural and social specialists. Welfare pro-fessionals are accordingly normally considered as belonging to this ‘sub-class’.They are also seen as public sector workers biased in favour of leftist or radicalpositions, and/or strongly drawn toward participation in social movements(Cotgrove and Duff, 1980; Togeby, 1990; Bagguley, 1992; Bonnett, 1993).The theory of the ‘new class’ is connected to these patterns of behaviour5

(McAdams, 1987; Kriesi, 1989; Eckersley, 1989; Macy, 1991; Wallace andJenkins, 1995; Graaf and Steijn, 1996). Bell (1974) also talks about the emer-gence of a new class, which is caused by technological development in society,and having contributed that appearance at the same time to that very samemodernization. However, empirically only one fraction of this part of themiddle class shows political attitudes more liberal than the average of thesociety they live in. This fraction is mainly filled with people working innon-profit oriented economic sectors such as health, education and research.

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This fact once again suggests that the new class is a politically fragmentedclass. For example, although professionals are closer to the left than managersare, professionals as a group also frequently show quite conservative tenden-cies (Heath and Savage in Butler and Savage, 1995). These sorts of findingsled Heath and Savage to differentiate between two types of professionals:those who work in welfare or creative activities (‘artistic’, in a broad sense),and those who might be identified with traditional professions. These latterwould be expected to make up the subgroup closer to managerial politicalorientations. Furthermore, Kriesi (1989) also suggests distinguishing betweenprofessionals in charge of organizational supervision or control, and thosewho provide direct client services. Finally, another contribution was made byHerring (1989), for whom professionals are only distinguishable from manag-ers in their political views if the former work for the government.

The scenario might become even more complex if we take into accountsome additional works which have studied in detail the political behaviour andattitudes of middle-class professionals. On the basis of this additional researchone might claim that the politics of this group is a combination of conservatismand liberalism or radicalism (Brint, 1985; Brint et al., 1997; Brooks and Manza,1997), in which professionals tend to hold liberal views on social issues such astolerance and the protection of individual rights, whilst being quite conserva-tive over equality or economic issues.

c. White-collar workers

These are what has been known as routine non-manual workers, usuallyworking in office-based jobs and enjoying lower salaries than the (other)middle-class groups already discussed. Accordingly, their hierarchy andworking conditions have frequently been considered quite close to those ofthe working class. Thus, for example, it is understandable that clerical workershave been understood as a social class with a high probability of supportingleftist parties (Rallings, 1975; Jary, in Garrard et al., 1978). This same closenessto the working class has cast doubts about whether white-collar workers reallybelong to the middle class.

Notes on methodology and data: a multidimensional approach

A reflection on approaches: towards multidimensionality

Most existing research on the subject comprises ‘snapshot’ studies of particu-lar cases and moments in time. Longitudinal and comparative perspectiveshave been relatively neglected, not so much for intentional or dogmaticreasons but owing to the specific nature of the studies involved and/or toresearchers’ particular backgrounds and interests. Additionally, the treatmentgiven to these particular cases has been quite partial, as almost all that we



currently know about the middle classes comes from existing studies focusedon one particular dimension of society (such as voting, or political activism,or values).

As important as the data, in other words, is the way in which we approachthe study of society. This does not presuppose a preference for particularqualitative or quantitative techniques: it refers rather to a methodologicalconcern about the relationship between the information or data that we cur-rently have and the conclusions that we usually draw from it. In particular, asfar as the debate on the politics of the middle classes is concerned, it is veryeasy to show how conclusions about conservatism or radicalism/leftism havebeen systematically drawn from studies that focused on only one dimension ofmiddle-class behaviour (see Table 2).6 This is a significant limitation because amore complex profile of the middle class, that incorporates research on severaldimensions of social behaviour, does not always offer such a clear depictionas those produced by single-dimension studies. This is true even withoutnecessarily incorporating comparative or longitudinal perspectives. Simply byapplying a multidimensional approach to the traditional concern with oneparticular case at a specific moment in time, we can generate enough informa-tion to allow a more complete and complex critical dialogue with theories orexplanations proposed to explain or understand what turn out to be partial, oreven completely inaccurate, depictions of broader realities. At the very least,we will be driven to exercise more care in limiting ourselves to specific expla-nations for actually observed phenomena, rather than generalizing patternsthat might be peculiar to a single dimension of middle-class social life. Thispaper, for example, presents the results of research on middle-class politics inSpain. The results reveal complex patterns that in some cases depart substan-tially from commonly accepted depictions.

Dimensions of analysis

This paper’s contribution is based upon what I call a ‘multidimensionalapproach’, characterized by two important methodological decisions. First, theapproach offers the kind of complete analysis of political attitudes and behav-iour that is very difficult to find in existing literature. Second, this way ofproceeding itself reflects a belief that the relationship between social class andpolitics cannot be reduced to an analysis of the much-studied associationbetween social class and voting.

The analytical field surveyed explored four different dimensions, two ofwhich refer in essence to ways of thinking, and two to actual behaviours. Thefirst two consisted of political or ideological self-positioning, and politicalattitudes and values. The second pair, related to behaviour, were representedby voting and political participation. The selections reflect the fact that theseare the areas covered by most currently existing analyses of middle-classpolitics.

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Data and statistical techniques

The data used comes mainly from surveys conducted by the Spanish Socio-logical Research Centre (CIS).7 Surveys that refer to voting and ideology werepooled into a single data file (for details, see Table 8 in the Appendix). Theextraordinarily large resulting data file allowed me to develop an occupationalvariable originally disaggregated in a way that is not common in sociologicalanalysis. The variable contains about 35 categories of occupations (see thesecond column in Table 3), later collapsed into 6 occupational categories, asthe same table shows. This approach is much better than using a simpledivision between service classes I and II. Due to limits of space, I do not reporthere the full results which led to this aggregation of categories, but it is usefulto bear in mind that the final classification of occupations is dependent uponthe research on the voting of people in those occupations.8

This article only considers ideology in the 1996–2000 period and voting inthe 2000 national elections,9 even though the available data covered a muchmore extensive time period for both dimensions.10 The selectivity is becausethe smaller range coincides with the years for which data for political partici-pation and attitudes is also available. This data comes from annual surveys ontrade union membership and political attitudes carried out by the Ministry ofWork11 between 1999 and 2003 under the title ‘Quality of Life at WorkSurvey’.12 Those latter surveys were also put or pooled together in order tolook into the middle class through the disaggregation of this social class intosome groups of occupations, as it was done for the other two previouslymentioned dimensions. However, a distinction between the dimensions has tobe made. In the case of the dimension about attitudes and values, the numberand nature of middle-class occupational categories is identical to those usedfor ideology and voting. However, the analysis on political participation wasdone with a middle class divided only into four categories. This was becausethere was not enough number of cases for ‘other professionals’, and for thissame reason the occupational groups of ‘administrative’ and ‘technical’ pro-fessionals had to be brought together into a single category.

The outcome of this work was the production of information on the behav-iour of the middle class over different political dimensions or areas usingsimilar occupational classifications and time periods for each one. This issignificant because one of the difficulties with comparing the results of previ-ous studies, as we did in Table 2, is that the middle class was defined in differentways in each one.The differences that emerge may therefore always be held tobe a function of the changes in definition or conceptualization used.The designof the present study was explicitly intended to eliminate this inconsistency byintroducing a single source definition upon which to base research across thedifferent dimensions. Table 3 shows the final outcomes.

Several statistical techniques were originally used for the analysis (includ-ing contingency tables, a variety of types of regression, and correlations). Theanalyses were performed in two principal ways, either comparing patterns



between middle-class occupational categories or comparing middle-classoccupational categories with other social classes.

A full report on findings would exceed the scope of a single article. Itherefore decided to use contingency tables, which provide an accurate andrapidly assimilated representation in percentage form of the patterns found.Additionally the percentages are given for all occupational classes for alldimensions, with the exception of the work on political participation. Theexception is because this dimension produces an unwieldy table, one moreoversecondary to the article’s main argument.

Findings

This section presents the results of the aforementioned multidimensionalanalysis. A single table with percentages is presented for each dimension.These final tables are the result of cross-tabulating social class with variablesabout voting, ideology, political participation, and attitudes and values. Thepatterns found in these tables provided the bases for the conclusions pre-sented in the final section.

Voting

If we look at Table 4, we see that most of the middle classes are conservativein regard to voting.The occupational group of ‘other professionals’ is the most

Table 3 Middle class occupational groups

Managers 1. Directors-managers of companies, 2. Managers and directors oftrade and hotel businesses, 3. High positions in the publicadministration, 4 Supervisors and inspectors of transport andtrade, 5. Chiefs and agents in purchasing and sale, 6. Chiefs ofoffices.

Traditionalprofessionals

1. Veterinary surgeons, 2. Lawyers, 3. Chemists, 4. Engineers, 5.Doctors, 6. Architects.

Administrativeprofessionals

1. Economists and accountants, 2. Sailors, 3. Human resourcesprofessionals, 4. Publicists, 5. Estate agents and insurance brokers.

Technicalprofessionals

1. Computer technicians, 2. Technical architects and engineers,3. Nurses, 4. Technical scientists, 5. Draughtsmen.

Socio-culturalprofessionals

1. University lecturers, 2. Secondary school teachers, 3. Primaryschool teachers, 4. Scientists, 5. Musicians, show business andspectacle, 6. Artists, designers, decorators and photographers,7. Writers and journalists, 8. Social scientists and specialists inhumanities, 9. Sportsmen and women, 10. Social workers.

Otherprofessionals

1. Airline pilots, 2. Clergy, 3. Police officers and members of thearmed forces.

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extreme example, though this is a very small one composed only of airlinepilots, members of the clergy, and military and police officers.All of these showa clear and consistent political profile across the dimensions, strongly favour-ing the political right.

When we turn our attention to occupational groups with larger member-ships, the three sub-classes ‘traditional professionals’, ‘managers’ and ‘admin-istrative professionals’ are mainly aligned toward Spain’s most conservativeparty, the Popular Party.13 Particularly in the case of the traditional profession-als, the percentages are very similar to those found among entrepreneurs, theself-employed and farmers. As far as voting is concerned, this is the profile ofthe social coalition that makes up Spain’s traditional right.14

On the left, things are more complex because voting preference is splitbetween two significant parties, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and themuch smaller, and ideologically more left wing, United Left (IU). Differenceswithin the middle classes as regards the Socialist Party are insignificant, eventhough it is clear that traditional professionals vote for it less than otherprofessionals do.

However, some relevant differences emerge when we look at the UnitedLeft.The principal distinguishing feature is that this latter party finds relativelystrong support among socio-cultural professionals. It is interesting, moreover,that technical professionals, usually quite close in their preferences to socio-

Table 4 Voting by social class (year 2000)

PP PSOE IU + IC Other

Other professionals 82.4 (28)** 5.9 (2)** 5.9 (2) 5.9 (2)Traditional professionals 59.2 (284)** 19.0 (91)** 8.5 (41)* 13.3 (64)Managers 51.4 (309)** 24.5 (147)** 5.0 (30) 19.1 (115)**Administrative professionals 51.1 (115)+ 26.2 (59)** 5.3 (12) 17.3 (39)+Technical professionals 44.2 (265) 26.5 (159)** 8.8 (53)** 20.5 (123)**Socio-cultural professionals 38.5 (456)** 27.5 (325)** 14.9 (176)** 19.1 (226)**High status non-manual 47.5 (1537)* 28.5 (924)** 6.6 (213) 17.4 (564)**Low status non-manual 57.7 (406) 30.9 (263)* 6.6 (56) 14.8 (126)Entrepreneur 61.8 (580)** 19.3 (181)** 3.7 (35)** 15.2 (143)Self-employed 56.4 (898)** 25.9 (413)** 4.1 (65)** 13.6 (216)Farmer 64.0 (860)** 24.5 (329)** 1.6 (21)** 10.0 (134)**Manual supervisor 42.0 (128) 36.1 (110) 5.6 (17) 16.4 (50)Qualified worker 37.3 (1589)** 44.4 (1890)** 6.5 (275) 11.8 (504)**Unqualified worker 41.0 (1715)** 40.1 (1681)** 6.5 (274) 12.3 (517)**Farming worker 38.6 (502)** 52.2 (678)** 5.2 (67)+ 4.1 (53)**Total 45.8% 34.3% 6.3% 13.6%

+ p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01.Numbers in brackets refer to the number of cases in that particular cell.This table offers row percentages.



cultural professionals, are on this occasion much closer in percentage terms tothe ‘traditional’ group. This might imply that while some socio-cultural pro-fessionals are inclined to the right, mostly probably for economic reasons,many of those who are tempted by the left prefer the more radical of the twoleft-wing party options, as the United Left has a more intellectual aura thanthe more working-class PSOE.This picture is supported if we observe the rowsat the bottom of the data, showing that working-class support is more likely tobe concentrated in the Socialist Party (PSOE).

Ideology

‘Ideology’ is used here to describe how people see or position themselves in apolitical spectrum from far left to far right. As political scientists and sociolo-gists well know, surveys tend to rely on one of several commonly used ques-tionnaire scales. Although these differ slightly one from another, all of themoffer a range of possible political positions and ask the respondent to identifythe one with which s/he feels the highest degree of identification.The one usedin the surveys analysed here ranges from 1, extreme or radical left, to 10,extreme or radical right (see Table 5).

The patterns that emerge in Table 5 regarding ideology are similar to thevoting patterns we have examined above. Once again, we see an apparentideological alignment between managers, traditional professionals, farmers,self-employees and entrepreneurs.The match with distributions in voting pref-erences is almost exact, suggesting that the Spanish right is shaped by theunion of a kind of middle class and propertied class conservatism.

At the other end of the political-ideological spectrum, as we might expect,left-wing preferences are largely the preserve of the working class plus onemiddle-class occupational group, socio-cultural professionals. These latter,moreover, provide the largest single proportion of support for the far left.Thusthe left in Spain seems to be made up of a mix of working class and (some)middle-class groups.

If the findings for voting and ideology are brought together, a few prelimi-nary conclusions lead us to question some commonly held ideas about themiddle class. First, it seems difficult to contend that this class is essentiallyconservative or rightist; it is, but parts of it are also very left-wing oriented.Secondly, as many previous scholars have concluded, this is a very fragmentedsocial class. The very idea of the middle class as a united social entity seems tobe at risk. However, though heterogeneity makes an interesting picture,already quite accurately demonstrated across several countries, it is stillincomplete, as the next two sections of the paper will show.

Political participation

Aside from work on social movements and voting, it is quite difficult to findstudies that systematically analyse the complexity of participation in a whole

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Tabl

e5

Ideo

logy

byso

cial

clas

s(1

996–

2000

)

1–3

45

67

8–10

Oth

erpr

ofes

sion

als

5.0

(2)*

*10

.0(4

)20

.0(8

)27

.5(1

1)*

17.5

(7)*

20(8

)*Tr

adit

iona

lpro

fess

iona

ls19

.2(1

22)*

*13

.9(8

8)24

.6(1

56)+

17.5

(111

)*12

.6(8

0)**

*12

.1(7

7)**

Man

ager

s18

.5(1

32)*

**14

.8(1

06)

28.9

(206

)18

.3(1

31)*

*11

.5(8

2)*

8(5

7)A

dmin

istr

ativ

epr

ofes

sion

als

20.1

(56)

13.6

(38)

30.1

(84)

17.9

(50)

9.0

(25)

9.3

(26)

Tech

nica

lpro

fess

iona

ls25

.9(1

94)

17.9

(134

)+23

.3(1

74)*

*17

.1(1

28)+

7.9

(59)

7.9

(59)

Soci

o-cu

ltur

alpr

ofes

sion

als

35.5

(510

)***

17.0

(244

)21

.9(3

15)*

**12

.6(1

81)*

*7.

2(1

03)*

*5.

8(8

4)**

*H

igh

stat

usno

n-m

anua

l23

.4(8

98)

14.5

(558

)*27

.4(1

051)

16.0

(614

)*9.

5(3

65)

9.2

(353

)L

owst

atus

non-

man

ual

21.2

(214

)*15

.3(1

54)

27.9

(282

)14

.9(1

50)

8.8

(89)

11.9

(120

)**

Ent

repr

eneu

r13

.7(1

48)*

**11

.0(1

19)*

**27

.4(2

96)

21.9

(236

)***

13.7

(148

)***

12.3

(133

)***

Self

-em

ploy

ee18

.5(3

28)*

**13

.4(2

38)*

*28

.5(5

05)

18.8

(334

)***

9.0

(159

)11

.7(2

08)*

**Fa

rmer

11.1

(154

)***

10.6

(146

)***

30.2

(417

)*18

.0(2

49)*

**15

.4(2

13)*

**14

.8(2

04)*

**M

anua

lsup

ervi

sor

21.5

(68)

20.2

(64)

*23

.7(7

5)+

13.6

(43)

12.0

(38)

*9.

1(2

9)Q

ualifi

edw

orke

r27

.6(1

298)

***

16.9

(797

)**

29.5

(138

7)**

11.7

(550

)***

7.1

(332

)***

7.2

(339

)***

Unq

ualifi

edw

orke

r26

.5(1

256)

***

16.3

(770

)28

.1(1

329)

13.5

(637

)**

7.8

(371

)**

7.8

(369

)***

Farm

ing

wor

ker

25.5

(313

)21

.4(2

63)*

**29

.0(3

57)

10.4

(128

)***

5.9

(73)

***

7.7

(95)

Tota

l23

.815

.627

.814

.99.

09.

0

+p

<0.

10,*

p<

0.05

,**

p<

0.01

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p<

0.00

1.N

umbe

rsin

brac

kets

refe

rto

the

num

ber

ofca

ses

inth

atpa

rtic

ular

cell.

Thi

sta

ble

offe

rsro

wpe

rcen

tage

s.



array of political activities.This is what I do in this section (see Table 6). I focuson patterns within the middle classes, as this is my main analytical concern, andalso because the sheer number of items involved means it would be undulycomplex to look at the whole social structure. I also put together administra-tive and technical professionals into a single category, as the frequencynumbers were too low to allow reliable statistical estimations.

The fact that political participation includes a very broad and indeterminateset of activities, many of which lack a clear political interpretation, makes itdifficult to draw definitive conclusions from single topics. In particular, Iwanted to know whether certain behaviours or actions could be labelled asinherently conservative or radical, that is, if people’s overall political inclina-tions could be deduced from their non-electoral political actions. This associa-tion, if it exists, might be logically explained in at least two ways. In the first,individuals’ degree of political radicalism would be reflected in the nature ofthe activities which they approve of or in which they are involved. For instance,institutionally designed and broadly accepted actions within the law would beapproved of by most people, but would be the only actions recognized byconservative citizens as legitimate. In the same way, more disruptive politicalactions (strikes, boycotts etc.) plus clearly illegal or violent activities would besupported mainly by people with particularly liberal or radical views.A secondline of argument is related to the aim of each particular action, implying acase-by-case assessment of goals that is not possible with existing data. We aretherefore restricted for the present to exploring the objective nature ratherthan subjective declared goals of political actions.

The percentages in Table 6 show very interesting patterns. First, socio-cultural professionals are the group most likely to take part in protest actionsof varied intensity, from fundraising for a cause to boycotts and strikes. Thisallows us to represent them as broadly radical or leftist. Secondly, traditionalprofessionals are particularly prone to participate only in institutionally wayswhich require an essentially elite approach, such as contacting a publicservant, politician, lawyer or media source. These are the two categories ofprofessional with the highest inclination toward political participation, butwith radically distinct participatory profiles.

Managers, on the other hand, show low levels of participation. If not takingaction is reason enough to classify someone as conservative, this whole groupwould seem to earn that description. However, if conservatism is definedinstead as a preference for elite, legal and/or institutionalized modes of acting,traditional professionals would be the most salient representatives ofconservatism.

Preliminary conclusions from these findings once again highlight middle-class heterogeneity as regards the frequency and nature of participation.Regarding frequency, managers are the least, and traditional socioculturalprofessionals the most, likely to be involved in some sort of activism. Interms of nature of participation, the traditional and sociocultural groups, bothwith a high orientation to political activism, however diverge. Traditional

Modesto Gayo


Tabl

e6

Par

tici

pati

onin

diff

eren

tty

pes

ofpo

litic

alac

tion

bym

iddl

e-cl

ass

occu

pati

onal

grou

p

Trad

itio

nal

prof

essi

onal

sM

anag

ers

Adm

inis

trat

ive

and

tech

nica

lpro

fess

iona

lsSo

cio-

cult

ural

prof

essi

onal

sTo

tal

%%

%%

Con

tact

apo

litic

ian

17.8

8.6*

12.9

15.7

13.3

Con

tact

anas

soci

atio

n36

.5+

12.3

***

32.1

32.4

*27

.7C

onta

cta

publ

icse

rvan

t37

.8*

22.5

*22

.9+

32.8

*28

.3C

olla

bora

tew

ith

polit

ical

part

y6.

83.

86.

46.

85.

8C

olla

bora

tew

ith

aci

tize

nac

tion

grou

p8.

17.

7*10

.716

.0**

11.8

Col

labo

rate

wit

han

asso

ciat

ion

20.3

+21

.1**

30.0

36.9

***

29.2

Wea

rsy

mbo

lsan

dst

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rs10

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6*11

.418

.8**

13.4

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ape

titi

on36

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*38

.646

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38.3

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pate

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10.6

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23.3

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16.8

15.5

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litic

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67.

19.

28.

7P

arti

cipa

tein

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ses

7320

914

024

967

6

+p

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10,*

p<

0.05

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0.01

,***

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0.00

1.



professionals display a more elite and legalistic approach, while sociocul-tural professionals a more pluralistic and radical repertoire of politicalmobilization.

Attitudes and values

In this section, values are examined following the ideas proposed by theAmerican scholar R. Inglehart (1991) a few decades ago.This does not pretendto be an evaluation of the value of his work, but a reasonable way to deal witha dimension that is very complex in itself. This approach uses a classificationwhich reflects the continuum materialism/postmaterialism.As it is well known,on the one hand, materialism means that people give priority to political aimsrelated to issues as economic development, security and social order. On theother hand, postmaterialism emphasizes topics as political rights, socialchange, and rural and urban aesthetics.

If we look at Table 7, it can be observed that differences of percentagesbetween the middle-class occupational groups, on the average, are not largeones. I can even contend that most of the groups share a single pattern.However, if differences are stressed, it is possible to identify three quite clearprofiles:

1. Inclined towards materialism: ‘other professionals’ is a group clearly over-represented among materialists.

2. Mixed alternatives oriented: extreme profiles, the materialist andpostmaterialist ones, accumulate lower percentages while the mixed profilein the middle is the largest one. In other words, the distribution describesa sort of Bell-curve. The occupational groups represented at the centre ofthe distribution are managers and traditional, administrative and technicalprofessionals.

3. Inclined towards postmaterialism: socio-cultural professionals are the bestrepresentatives of this value orientation.

How do patterns in the other social classes compare with this one for the(occupational) middle classes? First, middle-class groups taken together aremore postmaterialist than any other social class if we exclude administrativeprofessionals and the small group of ‘other professionals’. In any case, theadministrative sub-class is quite postmaterialist. Secondly, if we leave thenon-manual ‘clerical’ workers classes aside (see Table 7), the other socialclasses are part of a cluster that we can call ‘materialist’. Thirdly, ‘other pro-fessionals’ is clearly a deviant category within the middle class, as one of themost ‘materialist’ groups among all social classes.

My analysis up to this point, which has looked at voting, ideology andpolitical participation, has suggested fragmentation as an accurate depiction ofthe middle class. This heterogeneity goes hand in hand with the existence ofpolitical alliances between some professional groups and managers with otherright-wing classes, but also of other professional groups with the left-wing

Modesto Gayo


Tabl

e7

Mat

eria

lism

/pos

mat

eria

lism

acco

rdin

gto

soci

alcl

ass

(EC

VT

surv

ey)

Mat

eria

list

Mix

ed(m

ater

ialis

t)M

ixed

Mix

ed(p

ost-

mat

eria

list)

Post

mat

eria

list

Oth

erpr

ofes

sion

als

21.9

***

22.8

28.9

13.2

13.2

Trad

itio

nalp

rofe

ssio

nals

7.9*

*19

.6**

33.8

20.4

*18

.3**

*M

anag

ers

10.3

+20

.0**

*35

.619

.4**

*14

.6**

*A

dmin

istr

ativ

epr

ofes

sion

als

10.0

21.2

+36

.318

.514

.1Te

chni

calp

rofe

ssio

nals

8.1*

**18

.8**

*33

.422

.0**

*17

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*So

cio-

cult

ural

prof

essi

onal

s3.

9***

14.5

***

30.7

***

20.7

***

30.2

***

Hig

hst

atus

non-

man

ual

9.3*

*22

.934

.819

.3*

13.8

*L

owst

atus

non-

man

ual

9.7*

**23

.935

.718

.6**

12.2

Ent

repr

eneu

r16

.1**

*31

.2**

*31

.8*

12.9

***

8.1*

**Se

lf-e

mpl

oyee

14.5

***

28.1

***

34.8

14.7

***

8.0*

**Fa

rmer

17.4

***

30.9

***

35.4

11.1

***

5.2*

**M

anua

lsup

ervi

sor

12.9

25.5

36.8

16.2

8.6*

Qua

lified

wor

ker

12.0

+27

.0**

*36

.0+

16.0

*9.

1***

Unq

ualifi

edw

orke

r12

.026

.7**

36.5

*15

.6*

9.2*

**Fa

rmin

gw

orke

r15

.4**

*28

.7**

*34

.514

.1**

7.3*

**L

owra

nkin

gpo

licem

enan

dso

ldie

rs23

.8**

*31

.9**

*30

.0+

9.8*

**4.

6***

Tota

l11

.324

.534

.917

.212

.2

+p

<0.

10,*

p<

0.05

,**

p<

0.01

,***

p<

0.00

1.B

old

valu

esm

ean

that

thos

epe

rcen

tage

sar

esi

gnifi

cant

lybe

low

the

aver

age

ofth

atpa

rtic

ular

colu

mn.



working classes. In other words, while ruling out the notion of middle-classconservatism, these findings do not seem to call into question the thesis ofmiddle-class fragmentation. Here we see why also studying values is so impor-tant, as it adds insights into whether, and in what sense, it might continue to bemeaningful to consider the middle class as a single, albeit internally diverse,unit rather than abandoning the category altogether and seeking new ways toapproach the relationship between politics and social structure.

If the middle class still represents a politically relevant position or stance,the category continues to be meaningful. It is well known that the middle classhas been linked to the stability of democracy during several decades, at leastsince the aftermath of the Second World War (Lipset, 1987; Chauvel, 2006).15

It might still be true that the middle class presents a characteristic understand-ing of politics that I might tentatively label ‘postmaterialist’, since results forvalue-related questions do in fact show that the occupational middle classeshave a very characteristic profile not shared by any other social class.

Final remarks: the ambivalent existence of the middle class

The political behaviour of the middle class has been an important subject insociological research since the 1950s. Studies on the topic abound and haveproduced significant and well-established conclusions. Three of the mostenduring include, first, the contention that this is a conservative class, verykeen on reproducing itself and the status quo and with members whose mainobjective is to keep their existing privileges. We might term this the ‘tradi-tional’ view. A second established conclusion uses the fragmentation or het-erogeneity of occupational groups in the middle of the social structure toargue a need to use the plural when talking about those categories. ‘Middleclasses’ would then be the correct term, and these would be expected topresent a mixture of left and right orientations, progressive and conservativestances. We might term this the ‘heterogeneity’ view. Last but not least, somestudies deduced the existence of a radical or leftist social class, an understand-ing I call the ‘alternative’ view, and which emerged mainly in the 1960s and1970s at the same time as the heterogeneity view.

All these conclusions were reached by studies mostly based on single topicanalysis. The conclusions about conservatism and heterogeneity come mainlyfrom works on voting, while the radicalism thesis is typically associated withstudies about social movements or political activism.All of these contributionshave been instrumental in creating our common shared political image of themiddle class.

My contention that the conclusions of these one-dimensional or partialaccounts cannot be extrapolated to other areas of the behaviour of thosepeople we currently understand as middle class was the rationale behind mycurrent research. I wanted to design a study in which a range of dimensionswere considered and incorporated from the very beginning. This paper has

Modesto Gayo


presented the results of this endeavour applied to evidence from Spain. Tra-ditional, heterogeneity and alternative views have been shown here to be allpartially right, but also partially inaccurate. Middle-class people can be homo-geneous or heterogeneous, right wing or left wing. Over recent decades socio-logical work has understood fragmentation as taken for granted, obscuring thefact that unity has also been a frequent pattern of middle-class political behav-iour.Additionally, middle-class occupations have sometimes behaved similarlyto other social classes, but have on other occasions shown a distinctive profile,the kind of variance that has led others even to conclude that there is no suchthing as the middle class.

Personally I do not subscribe to that ‘abolitionist’ stance, nor to othercommonly held optimistic or pessimistic conclusions about the existence of themiddle class. Rather, I see these findings as strengthening the view that themiddle class is more of an ambivalent category than a group of people withsome common features. This ambivalent view is a product of post-World WarII sociology’s efforts to deal with the intellectual challenges presented by asociety undergoing rapid change over just a few decades.

Finally, if we accept the necessary place of ambivalence in our con-ceptualizations of the middle class, we may need to promote less essentialistviews about social classes in general. This is due to the recognition that notonly are classes constituted historically and over time, making them fluid andendlessly changing, but that the middle class is a contingent result of strugglesover particular economic and symbolic issues within a social structure. See, forexample, Marx’s historical writings or Bourdieu’s idea of a social space. In thelast analysis we must remember that the middle class is an approach or a wayto better understand social phenomena, not to be confused with reality itself.The term might accordingly help to explain some social phenomena well, butothers not at all.

Universidad Diego Portales Received 25 July 2011Finally accepted 26 October 2012

Notes

1 This is not the same as contending that ‘middle class’ and ‘service class’ are treated as identicalconcepts in the tradition of sociological analysis in Spain. In fact, different conceptualizationsof the term middle class can be found in Spanish sociological research, but the essential pointhere is that the idea of the service class has been widely incorporated into analysis of theSpanish case.

2 Details about the definition of the service class and the whole social class schema to which itbelongs, can be found in Erikson and Goldthorpe (1993).

3 French scholar Louis Chauvel (2006: 10) contends in a recent book on the middle classes:‘l’efficacité économique, la stabilité sociale et la dynamique démocratique dépendentétroitement de la participation de ce groupe intermédiaire à la construccion de l’avenir’.

4 These authors state that, from a political point of view, the new middle classes are much moreliberal than the middle classes were before the 1930s.



5 The following quotations outline the most widely accepted version of what has become knownas the theory of the new class: ‘The heart of the theory of the New Class is that a post-industrialeconomy has given rise to a variety of identifiable elite groups whose objective class interestsrequire increasing government intervention in the economy, and that these groups do indeedadopt attitudes favoring increased intervention’ (McAdams, 1987: 24). ‘New Class theoristshypothesize that growing segments within the educated middle classes are receptive to liberalor left-wing ideas and are disposed to participate in struggles for social change on the basis oftheir material interests in, or ideological commitments to, protecting and expanding the publicand non-profit sectors of the economy. These sectors are said to provide members of the NewClass with their primary source of power and employment opportunities with the result ofplacing them in a distinct class’ (Manza and Brooks, 1999: 68).

6 This is by no means a comprehensive list, but a few examples that show the most common wayof proceeding.

7 Known in Spanish as the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), a governmental bodydependent on the Ministry of the Presidency (Ministerio de la Presidencia). Regarding thejustification for aggregated use of these surveys, it is useful to read Caínzos (2001).

8 The aggregation procedure followed the work of Goodman (1981). It consisted in comparingthe chi-squares of two tables, in one of which two occupational categories are pooled togetherand in the other of which they are kept separate. This allows us to determine whethersignificant information is lost from a statistical point of view, using the chi-square of the tableas a reference point for comparison.

9 Some Spanish readers would no doubt dispute the nomenclature of ‘national’ elections;nonetheless, I use it here in the simple sense as referring to elections carried out across thewhole of the existing recognized national territory.

10 The research was on the period 1986–2008.11 In Spanish, Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales.12 In Spanish, Encuesta de Calidad de Vida en el Trabajo.13 In order for the reader to understand the parties referred to, some explanation is necessary.

‘PP’, the Partido Popular or, in English, Popular Party, is a conservative party. The PSOE, orPartido Socialista Obrero Español, is a socialist party which notwithstanding its name ishowever only mildly or perhaps centre-left. Finally, the IU is a leftist coalition organized byand around the PCE, Communist Party.

14 Readers should know that the ‘other parties’ column is mainly filled, in Spain, by nationalist orregionalist political parties, most of whom are essentially centre-right parties. That means thatthe total conservative vote could be somewhat higher than the one reported in this paper,something not controlled for in the current analysis since the total numbers or frequencies inthe ‘other parties’ column are very small and the effect is not central to the argument made bythe paper.

15 Another line of reflection, studying the relationship between the middle class and capitalism,proceeds from sociological understandings of industrialism. This is clearly represented by theMarxist tradition from the end of the 19th century, in particular what was known as ‘revision-ism’. The line of work mentioned above in the main text, linking the middle class and democ-racy, was developed mainly within political science and political sociology.

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Appendix

Table 8 Number of surveys used and how they were pooled together

Issue Number of surveys used

Voting (vote recalling) Elections 2000: 2384, 2387, 2389, 2392, 2394, 2395,2396, 2398, 2400, 2401, 2402 and 2405

Ideology (self-positioning) Period 1996–2000: 2210, 2218, 2219, 2240, 2244, 2254,2264, 2270, 2274, 2285, 2293, 2294, 2307, 2312, 2316

Political participation 2450 (2002)Political attitudes ECVT (1999–2003)



Revisiting middle-class politics: a multidimensional approach - evidence from Spain.

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