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Compares cosmopolitan versus communitarian issue positions by mass publics and elites across our study. We investigate whether there is an attitude gap between elites, who tend to adhere to cosmopolitan positions, and mass publics with more communitarian leanings. Contrasting mass opinion surveys with results from our own elite survey, we show that the mass-elite divide on globalization issues is indeed pervasive and found in all five countries of study. We consider both economic causes in the shape of diverging material interests and cultural ones, the latter pointing towards cultural capital and symbolic boundaries defining transnational cosmopolitan class consciousness. The results align more with the cultural than with the economic explanation. Political elites in the five countries display convergent cosmopolitan positions across issues as varied as international trade, climate change, migration and supranational integration. Mass publics are much more divided on these issues. Also, education alone does not explain the mass-elite gap because the elites are still significantly more cosmopolitan than highly educated members of mass publics, even within the same country.

This chapter aims to answer two general questions: Is there conflict on certain core issues relating to globalization within societies; and does the context of globalization matter for the strength of this conflict? Results show quite strong aggregate correlations between economic and cultural globalization and support for migration, between political and cultural globalization and support for internationalized governance, and some support for a relationship between problem loads and issue orientations. At the individual level, our results show that educational differences produce strong differences in issue orientations in particular regarding migration and global warming, the higher the level of education, the stronger the support for migration and, to some extent, for border-crossing authority as well, and the higher the sensitivity to environmental problems. Results also show that the contexts of globalization shape the degree how strong differences between social and ideological groups have an impact on issue orientations. Generally, the more globalized a country is, the more polarized opinions are between social and political groups in society.