ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at responses from five countries—Australia, Great Britain, Italy, the United States, and West Germany—whose populations were surveyed in both years. It examines those questions repeated word-for-word, or nearly word-for-word, in both years. The chapter uses citizen survey data to characterize the dominant tendencies in the political attitudes and identifications of professionals in contemporary advanced industrial societies. It aims to show common, cross-national patterns in the politics of professionals, including common patterns of internal division. Based on the International Social Survey Project data and other cross-national studies, it is reader view that the possibilities of meaningful cross-national generalizations about professional politics are limited. Professionals in all five countries were consistently more liberal than blue-collar workers on civil liberties issues. Professionals were sometimes more liberal, sometimes more conservative than blue-collar workers on welfare state issues. Blue-collar workers have been stalwarts of the "old politics" of welfare state expansion in industrial societies, so they make a useful reference group.
