Celine Teney and Marc Helbling, "Solidarity Between Elites and Masses in Germany"

This paper investigates elite-mass opinion (in-)congruence on topics related to civic and redistributive solidarity. Among others we will ask to what extent a potential gap between the elite and the masses and thus a lack of solidarity between these two groups might put in danger national social cohesion. The elite is often considered to be more liberal than the population. This might lead to more openness towards cultural issues and more awareness of social issues. It might however also be that the elite does not feel concerned by social problems as it is on average better off than the average citizen. Finally, we expect that the strength of the gaps varies across sectors and that for example the business elite holds different opinions than the political elite. We argue that national identity is a crucial element to understand support of these different forms of solidarity. Moreover, we suggest that identification with supranational communities –the so-called cosmopolitan identification—also plays a significant role in supporting solidarity. We use data from the new elite survey “Decision Makers in Germany: Values and Attitudes” (2011/12) that is one of the few representative elite surveys that consists of a relatively large sample, includes the main relevant sectors of society and focuses not only on socio-structural characteristics of the elite but also on their values and attitudes. The phrasing of the questions matches the item wording from the 2006 World Value Survey. We are thus able to directly compare attitudes among the population and the elite.