Thomas Piketty has developed the idea of a multi-elite party system, with politics increasing becoming a division between the Brahmin Left vs. Merchant Right. With the "Brahminization" of the progressive forces, white working classes have shifted to the populist right. Minorities overwhelmingly also vote for the "liberal" or "left" forces as they are the most supportive of minority rights.
In the 1950s-1960s, the vote for “left-wing” (socialist-labour-democratic) parties was
associated with lower education and lower income voters. This corresponds to what
one might label a “class-based” party system: lower class voters from the different
dimensions (lower education voters, lower income voters, etc.) tend to vote for the
same party or coalition, while upper and middle class voters from the different
dimensions tend to vote for the other party or coalition.
Since the 1970s-1980s, “left-wing” vote has gradually become associated with higher
education voters, giving rise to what I propose to label a “multiple-elite” party system
in the 2000s-2010s: high-education elites now vote for the “left”, while highincome/high-wealth elites still vote for the “right” (though less and less so).
I.e. the “left” has become the party of the intellectual elite (Brahmin left), while the
“right” can be viewed as the party of the business elite (Merchant right).
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Piketty2018.pdfExpanded to 21 countries:
https://wid.world/document/brahmin-left-versus-merchant-right-changing-political-cleavages-in-21-western-democracies-1948-2020-world-inequality-lab-wp-2021-15/ While he doesn't explicitly say it, the Brahmin-left is stronger in countries where the dominant "progressive" option is not a social democratic or labor party - i.e. the US Democratic Party or the Liberal Party of Canada. So maybe "Brahmin liberalism" is the better term?
