De opkomst van de 'nieuwe' sociale klassen binnen de dienstenklasse in Nederland: Politieke oriëntatie van de 'nieuwe' sociale klassen tussen 1970 en 2000 [The rise of ‘new’ social classes within the service class in the Netherlands: Political orientation of the ‘new’ social classes between 1970 and 2000]

The employment structure of the Netherlands and other advanced countries is evolving from an industrial structure to a post-industrial structure. Yet existing social class schemas, like the well-known EGP class schema, were constructed for an industrial employment structure. In this study we adjust the EGP class schema to account for this transformation by using ‘new class’ theories and the literature on post-industrial class structure. Our research question is to what extent does the adjusted EGP class schema explain people’s political orientation better than the standard EGP class schema in the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial employment structure. Our first hypothesis states that the ‘new’ social classes distinguished in the adjusted EGP class schema differ in their political orientation from the ‘old’ social classes in the service class. Our second hypothesis states that, during their formation, the ‘new’ social classes will become increasingly effective in explaining differences (effect size) in people’s political orientation. Experts’ knowledge has been employed to classify the occupations within the service class. Furthermore, we used 18 data sets gathered in the Netherlands between 1970 and 2000. The total number of respondents was 32,700. The adjusted EGP class schema proved substantially better at explaining people’s political orientation than the standard EGP class schema; the ‘new’ social classes did differ substantially in their political orientation from the ‘old’ classes. Furthermore, our results showed that the political orientation of the low-grade social and cultural specialists became more crystallized from 1970 onwards