Political behavior, education and status. A comparative analysis: France, Germany, United Kingdom, Finland and Spain.

Abstract

This paper deals with the study of the relationship between education and political participation by comparing five European countries: Finland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. All of them are classified in the Human Development Index (HDI) prepared by the United Nations (UNDP, 2020), among the most advanced nations in the world, although with great differences between them in terms of educational and income inequality. Taking the European Social Survey (ESS9) as a source, in this analysis we have disaggregated political behavior into four differentiated attitudes based on the practice, or not, of voting and the degree of interest of citizens towards politics: civic attitude- formal, active type 1, active type 2 and disconnection. Among the results obtained, we found evidence of the strong relationship between low educational level and political disconnection, we also observed an effect of social equalization of education on participation in countries with low educational inequality, while in the case of Spain, with higher rates of inequality in the two dimensions analyzed, education and income, the educational level dominates the explanatory centrality of the political behavior of its citizens.