Perceptions of social challenges in Europe. Disentangling the effects of context, social structure, religion, values and political attitudes to identify potential drivers of societal change

ENIn this chapter I address three current social questions that are central for Europe, namely redistribution, ethnocentrism and environmental awareness. By analyzing perceptions of European citizens in a cross-national perspective it becomes clear that these pressing issues will remain major sources of dissent due to notable value cleavages between and within European states. The aims of my empirical approach, using the data of the four recent waves of the European Values Study (1990, 1999, 2008, 2017) are threefold. First, a cluster analysis based on relevant macro-indicators is conducted to distinguish certain groups of countries with a similar political, economic, social, and cultural profle. As a second step, attitudes towards those social challenges based on a well-functioning operationalisation are depicted using the last wave of the EVS. Additionally, single indicators (using mean comparisons) are analysed over the four time points to highlight the evolution of citizen’s perceptions to those societal challenges. The last part of the analysis computes separate regressions for each country cluster to derive the main antecedents of those attitudes using sociodemographic and structural characteristic, basic value orientations, religious indicators, political opinions and aspects of social inclusion. In general, the study reveals deep value polarisations between major European areas. These divisions are likely to increase in the current pandemic crisis. Keywords: preference for redistribution; cultural diversity; environmental concerns; European values study; value cleavages; European integration.