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Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-cos-10.1177_00207152231177238 for Religious life in schooled society? A global study of the relationship between schooling and religiosity in 76 countries by Leandros Kavadias, Bram Spruyt and Toon Kuppens in International Journal of Comparative Sociology

In recent political events and trends we see that conflict does not revolve per se around economic indicators (e.g. income, occupation, class), but rather education. This can be explained in different ways such as cultural capital or political interest/sophistication, but there is also evidence that education can be a basis for status and identity, and as such, such political conflict could (to an extent) be organized around education-based groups. This perspective raises two questions. First, in what ways does this conflict express itself? The principal way this education-based conflict would express itself is in affective polarization between the higher and less educated, which would then be related to a range of political outcomes. These outcomes are likely to be more in the realm of general functioning of democracy and institutions, rather than specific political attitudes. Opinion polarization is possible, as educational conflict might increase frustrations among the less educated, leading to polarization, but these are secondary effects and likely strongly dependent on the political supply side. As such, while educational conflict might mobilize the less educated and increase political interest – education bias would primarily be related to political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and populism. We see especially the factor of political trust and satisfaction with democracy not directly as outcomes of education bias – rather, they are entwined processes that capture the general frustration that the less educated might have from being excluded from political processes, a frustration that is understood as revolving around educational conflict. Hence, educational conflict – or rather, understanding the political processes as (partly) revolving around educational conflict, are politically mobilizing factors. Political engagement and populism would on the other hand be primarily an effect of education bias – where those with stronger negative education bias towards the higher educated would be more prone to be politically interested or express populist sentiment. However, feedback effects are likely, as political interest and supply side effects from populist parties and rhetoric might increase the sense of educational conflict. Two, in what contexts does this conflict express itself the strongest? Due to limited data, this question has not been explored extensively. The strength of the effect of education on indicators of status (e.g. subjective status, misrecognition) differ across countries, but conflict itself has not been scrutinized. However, there are reasons to expect that the centrality of this conflict differs across countries as well. Some countries can be seen as more ‘schooled’ than others, in such societies the education system plays a more influential role in distributing status and opportunities, is more visible, and is seen as more separate from economic class inequality (e.g. education as more purely cultural or political inequality). Further, in some countries class remains the primary lens to understand politics, such as the UK – which, like other Anglo-Saxon countries, is a schooled society, but politics seems to revolve still mostly around class. As such, likely countries where these effects are the strongest are The Netherlands, Belgium, and Denmark.

In many Western countries populism has gained momentum during the last decade(s). Besides the continued electoral success of populist and radical politics, events like Brexit, the election of Trump, and the storming of the Capitol building, have also proven that populist forces can have clear tangible and threatening effects. In response to such events, much research has been carried out that studies who supports populist and radical politics, and under what circumstances. Much less is known about whether some citizens explicitly reject the primacy of the people in politics, or formulated differently: Who feels threatened by ‘the people’ and supports a form of elitism that clearly rejects the primacy of ‘the people’ in politics? In answering this question we start from 5 propositions: · The rise and success of populism is often seen as a warning signal (e.g. Mény and Surel, 2002; Taggart, 2002) and linked to group-conflict: ‘populism has its roots in a reaction of the ruled to their rulers’ (Taggart, 2002, pp. 72-3). Public opinion research on the support for populist attitudes has shown a consistent relationship with educational attainment. Moreover, in recent years educational differences in political opinions and behavior have increasingly been approached from an intergroup perspective. Rather than seeing education purely as a source of human capital, it has been argued that labels like ‘the less educated’ and ‘higher educated’ are associated with stereotypes. People can identify with these labels and rendering educational differentials ‘salient’ may be an independent source of intergroup behavior. · The relationship between the less and higher educated can be considered a relationship of dominance (cf. Jackman, 1994), that is, a relationship where one group has a structural advantage over the other and institutional practices guarantee and ‘freeze’ the relationship between both groups. Indeed, educational credentials serve as a form of objectified symbolic (or social?) capital, and this frees those who hold them from the need to constantly demonstrate their superior skills and knowledge (i.e., Diplomas as ‘a “being perceived” guaranteed as a right’; Bourdieu, 1985, p. 733). Dominant groups stand to gain from the status quo, the ‘inertia is on their side’ (Jackman, 1994, p. 379). Open conflict threatens the status quo and drastically reduces the dominant group’s opportunities to exert influence. For dominant groups like the higher educated, it is more appealing to represent the dominated as 'different' and subsequently express a general appreciation for differences. According to Jackman (1994, p. 180), dominant groups develop attitudes that can best be described as 'paternalism', a conditional appreciation in which the dominant hangs on to a positive picture of the dominated for as long as the dominated do not fundamentally question the dominant’s socio-political position. · The key question, then, becomes what happens when the dominant group (here: the higher educated) faces a situation where the status quo is questioned? There are many reasons to assume that the success of populism can be perceived as a threat to the status quo (i.e., Brexit, the election of Donald Trump). · One of the core characteristics of populism is its ‘people centrism’. Populism is about “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Canovan, 1999: 10). In populism, ‘the people’ - sometimes called ‘ordinary people’ or ‘the common man’ - are considered good and wise. Given the centrality of the category ‘the people’ in populism, the key question becomes: do dominant groups (the rulers) react to the success of populist forces by reporting perceived threat from ‘the people’? And what factors moderate this relationship? · There are reasons to assume that when people feel threatened by ‘the people’, they will reject the ‘people centrism’ component of populism and flee into a form of elitism. The latter was exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s statement that “you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call a basket of deplorables”. More importantly, in recent years several political philosophers (e.g., Daniel Bell, Jason Brennan) have openly questioned basic democratic principles and plead for a political meritocracy where people who are better politically informed have more to say . They complain about voting pollution (cfr., Brennan) and argue that “the uncomfortable truth is that the best (perhaps only) way to reduce the political influence of ignorant voters is to deprive them of the vote” (Bell, 2015: 30). In this way, anti-people elitism has become a real phenomenon and the outcome variable that we study has ecological validity. The latter further underscores the importance of advancing our understanding of the support of anti-people elitism among the public at large.