Conflict perceptions across 27 OECD countries: the roles of socioeconomic inequality and collective stratification beliefs

Abstract

Socioeconomic inequality and conflicts regarding distributional issues have resurfaced in many OECD countries over the past three decades. Whereas most research has focused on the objective determinants of perceived social conflicts, we contribute a new facet to this discussion by assessing the relevance of collective stratification beliefs as an independent driver of vertical conflict perceptions. After formulating theoretical positions that give precedence to two factors in explaining the perceptions of social conflicts - objective inequality and the collective stratification belief - we use individual-level data from the 2009 International Social Survey Programme, along with suitable country-level indicators to evaluate both hypotheses. Amid the diverse collective stratification beliefs, we focus on the role of an egalitarian (middle-) class imagery. We are particularly interested in the extent to which such a class imagery can mediate the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and individual conflict perceptions. The results of our multilevel analyses of 27 OECD countries indicate that an egalitarian (middle-) class imagery held by a certain share of a country’s population constitutes a distinct dimension of reality and clearly dominates country-level objective inequality in the explanation of individually perceived social conflicts.