Jesper Lindqvist

I'm presenting work w the amazing @jenny-oser.bsky.social and @jesperlindqvist.bsky.social at #EPSA2025 on Thursday.

We combine 40 years of parallel surveys among citizens/MPs + a survey experiment w Swedish politicians on participation and public opinion

Come and say hi - always happy to meet!

Very interesting paper about the left-right dimension!

”Syn på ojämlikhet är kärnfrågan” DEBATT. Vänster eller höger är fortsatt den viktigaste politiska dimensionen i svensk politik. Men den har kommit att få en delvis ny innebörd, framför allt för yngre personer, skriver statsvetare Jes...

Skrev en debattartikel i SvD om vänster-höger-skalan: www.svd.se/a/lwjdXM/syn...

Great to see this finally out! It's an interesting paper because we examine whether unequal representation is caused by how low- and high-income people vote (for example ideological voting). Our findings goes against this idea, meaning that unequal representation must be caused by something else!

New working paper!

How do protesters' demographics and policy preferences affect politicians' responsiveness to their demands? I find no effects of shared demographics btw. protesters and politicians, but asymmetric responsiveness to left-right policy preferences: gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/...

No worries, thank you for sharing yours! :)

I agree!

I should say that this seems likely to be the case. Unfortunately, it is not really possible to control for everything, and I don’t think that an experimental setting can solve this problem.

I think that you are correct to point out that the relationship between variables at the individual level is never one-to-one. In that sense, it is possible that if we could control for every other possible factor, then left-wing individuals would always be at least slightly more egalitarian.

The example you bring up is exactly what I am talking about. It’s important to consider because when individuals vote for the Left, they often take on the left-wing label, no matter the reason for why they voted for the Left.

… whether egalitarian arguments in favour of vegetarianism has a larger effect on left-wing individuals than right-wing individuals. Feel free to email me about any of this if you would like to discuss it more in detail! Very interesting indeed.

If you want to study this (which I think that you should because it sounds fascinating!) then how about using an experiment for very politically interested individuals to see …

So inducing salience for individuals at the individual level does not really create a new left-right scale for them and therefore does not solve the issue in my opinion (if I understand you correctly).

People learn about the left-right dimension and take side depending on the salience at the national level, i.e., what divides the Left and the Right in parliament (or between parties, or between elite members).

Regarding experimentally inducing salience, I don’t know if you can in the way that you are describing it, but that does not matter (I think) because I’m thinking of salience in a different way. The most important part of salience is at the national level, where the left-right scale is “created”.

This is most likely in cases where there is less ideological conflict (such as in new democracies).

and we know that they are not consistently egalitarian (see Malka el al. 2019, BJPS). That means that at the voter level (general population), you could see instances where left-wing individuals are not more egalitarian than right-wing ones.

… (we need more research in more cases but it seems to be true). At this level they are also more likely to be consistently egalitarian. However, at the voter level I’m not sure that this is necessarily true because a lot of voters choose their L-R position for some other reason than egalitarianism,

When it comes to being left- or right-wing, it seems likely that for very politically interested individuals and political activists, your idea holds and there is no need for salience really. Left-wing individuals at this level are probably more egalitarian in all contexts …

I must say that all of this is incredibly interesting! You are getting into the causal mechanisms, where I have some educated guesses (of which only some are core parts of the theory) as to how this works. I agree that egalitarianism often motivates vegetarianism.

In such a case, being right-wing would still not “cause” a person to be more vegetarian (and vice versa), but people on the right would be more likely to be vegetarian (a simple spurious correlation).

In such a context it could be that right-wing individuals are more likely to be vegetarian for some other unrelated reason. For example, if the Right is more popular in urban centres, which is also a more common place for vegetarians. >

Yeah I was unclear! I meant that there could be a political context where vegetarianism is not a salient political issue, and no one therefore chooses side in politics because of this issue (the Left and the Right don’t offer different alternatives on this issue). >

Communists often care about to economic issues, and the far-right often care about ethnic issues. Thus, they can be inconsistent with the acceptance of inequality criterion on other issues - since they do not matter for the position they take (low issue salience at the party level).

A similar example here is the far-right, who sometimes are centrists on economic issues - which doesn’t fit their far-right label! The explanation is that they become far-left or far-right dependent on the issue that makes them take that position - I.e., what they care about. >

The paper is open-access, so full references can be found there, but let me know if you need links! :)

That acceptance of inequality doesn’t separate left- and right-wing individuals in Eastern Europe, only in Western Europe. See mainly Thorisdottir et al. (2007) and Aspelund et al. (2013) - but also Wojcik et al. (2021) and Leykin and Gorodzeisky (2023).

with vegetarianism for some
reason in the other direction. This means that vegetarianism could be related to right-wing orientation by accident in some contexts. Thus, I agree with your assessment for most cases (!), but I’m cautious about the exceptions that could happen.

I agree why it would be, for a lot of vegetarians, related to their egalitarianism. I thought about this while writing my thesis!

However, if it’s not a part of the political debate then people may choose the Left or the Right side of their political landscape for some reason which correlates >

This is very interesting, it seems like it fits! From my paper, the connection between vegetarianism and left-wing orientation would be moderated by the politicisation of the issue.