Normative Solidarity Research Articles

The comparative politics of solidarity: Political party discourse across three welfare state regimes

AbstractParty political conflict plays an essential role in shaping welfare policies, while they are simultaneously also shaped by these policies. As political parties grapple with the wicked challenges of our times, new forms of solidarity and solidarity conflicts arise across welfare regimes. Despite their significance, these dynamics have not received much recent attention. Our article aims to fill this gap. Through content analysis of party manifestos, we compare the solidarity frames of political parties within and between three distinct welfare regimes—Flanders (Belgium), Sweden, and the United States. Our results confirm our expectations drawn from political feedback literature: while party ideology influences parties' solidarity frame preferences and solidarity conflicts between parties, these preferences and conflicts are also influenced by a welfare regime's societal solidarity norms. Our article highlights the value of analyzing solidarity frames and political solidarity conflicts within welfare‐state regimes to better understand welfare politics and policies.Related ArticlesKönig, Pascal D. 2015. “Moral Societal Renewal or Getting the Country Back to Work: Welfare State Culture as a Resource and a Constraint for Policy Discourse.” Politics & Policy 43(5): 647–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12130.Mioni, Michele, 2021. “The ‘Good Citizen’ as a ‘Respectable Worker:’ State, Unemployment, and Social Policy in the United Kingdom and Italy, 1930 to 1950.” Politics & Policy 49(4): 913–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12425.Wagle, Udaya R. 2014. “The Heterogeneity Politics of the Welfare State: Changing Population Heterogeneity and Welfare State Policies in High‐Income OECD Countries, 1980‐2005.” Politics & Policy 41(6): 947–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12053.

Reception through Mobile Commons. Disrupting Exclusion and Negotiating Solidarity Politics through Brussels’ Squats

This study investigates the complex dynamics of squatting in Brussels, examining its influence on shaping solidarity norms and practices in urban settings. Through activist-ethnography conducted within squats, we identify a recurring pattern: the (re)production and negotiation of mobile commons. Analyzing three squatting instances, we emphasize their role as not only spaces for commons (re)production but also platforms for migrants’ and activists’ social becoming. We argue that squats are not mere shelters but dynamic spaces where negotiation and social transformation occur, challenging conventional humanitarian assistance models. Ultimately, this research highlights the significance of (re)producing alternative dwelling infrastructures for illegalized migrants in shaping the urban commons and thereby impacting everyday urban politics of solidarity.

Intergenerational caregiving among “sandwich grandparents” in China

“Sandwich grandparents” are middle-aged and older adults who have both living parents (or parents-in-law) and young grandchildren. They are faced with competing demands for caregiving from multiple generations. This study examines the prevalence, trends, and patterns of caregiving by sandwich grandparents in China. Drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data, this study estimates that more than 150 million Chinese adults aged 45 and older were sandwich grandparents in 2011. Among them, more than 17 million were dual caregivers who provided care to their own older parents and young grandchildren simultaneously. These numbers fluctuated considerably between 2011 and 2018. This study further tests the associations between three aspects of intergenerational solidarity and caregiving patterns among Chinese sandwich grandparents. Longitudinal regression analysis reveals a significant association between normative solidarity and intergenerational caregiving, but no evidence of functional or structural solidarity at work.

Intergenerational Solidarity During Emerging Adulthood: Associations with Psychological Distress and Satisfaction with Life in Southern Europe.

Intergenerational solidarity between parents and emerging adult offspring requires more substantial attention at the present time. Changing demographic structures and transformations in family dynamics over recent decades have increased both opportunities and the need for parent-child interactions and exchanges of support and affection during emerging adulthood. The study had two aims: first, to explore patterns in intergenerational solidarity in accordance with different sociodemographic characteristics of emerging adults; and second, to analyse associations between intergenerational solidarity and emerging adults' psychological distress and satisfaction with life. Participants were 644 emerging adult university students from Southern Europe (Spain and Portugal), aged between 18 and 29 years, who completed a self-report questionnaire designed to assess variables linked to sociodemographic aspects (gender, country of residence, sexual orientation, living status, family income), intergenerational solidarity, psychological distress and satisfaction with life. The results indicated some differences in intergenerational solidarity patterns in accordance with a range of sociodemographic characteristics. They also revealed significant associations between intergenerational solidarity dimensions and emerging adults' satisfaction with life and psychological distress. Moreover, affective solidarity was found to fully mediate the relationship between associational, functional and normative solidarity and emerging adults' adjustment. In the case of conflictual solidarity, affective solidarity was found to partially mediate the relationship between this dimension of intergenerational solidarity and emerging adults' distress and to fully mediate the relationship between this same dimension and emerging adults' satisfaction with life. The results indicate that it is important to take sociodemographic diversity into account when exploring relationships between emerging adults and their parents. They also suggest that affective solidarity acts as a protective factor in promoting emerging adults' adjustment.

How to Design Consent for Health Data Research? An Analysis of Arguments of Solidarity.

The article discusses the impact different concepts of solidarity can have on debates on models of consent for non-interventional research. It introduces three concepts of solidarity that have been referenced in bioethical debates: a purely descriptive concept, a concept that claims some derivative value for most but not all practices of solidarity, as well as a clearly normative concept where solidarity is tied to justice and taken to ground moral duties. It shows that regarding the rivalling models of study-specific consent, tiered consent and broad consent, the first two concepts can be taken to favour tiered consent while only normative solidarity supports a model of broad consent-or an argument to allow non-interventional research without requiring consent at all. As normative solidarity is tied to considerations of justice, however, the argument appears less straightforward than one might expect: It presupposes that the research contributes to overcoming existing social injustices.

Market Dependence as a Boundary Construction for Work Solidarity with the Solo Self-employed

As more people work outside standard employment, the foundations of work solidarity are contested. How does work solidarity arise in atypical forms of work that are characterised by flexible, autonomous and self-dependent organisation, such as in solo self-employment? Drawing on a discursive approach to work solidarity, this article emphasises how market dependence can serve as a boundary construction to create work solidarity. Empirically, this study engages in a discourse analysis on Soforthilfe, a policy measure introduced by the German government to financially assist solo self-employed people during the Covid-19 lockdown. In this discourse, market dependence serves to identify this social group’s need (social boundary) and to set out the corresponding policies for financial assistance (substantive boundary). Four solidarity norms – relief, equality, preservation and quasi-equivalence – support this boundary construction. The article contributes to the current discourse on work solidarity by identifying an additional boundary construction.

Covid and the coalfield: Covid-19 vaccine hesitance in Wales and Appalachia

BackgroundVaccine hesitancy is a barrier to Covid-19 vaccine uptake and displays a social gradient, compounding health disparities. While social gradients are a vital concept in health, they flatten distinctions between types of disadvantaged community. This paper focuses on vaccine hesitance in post-industrial and de-industrialising coalfields. The social consequences of the decline of coal mining may present barriers to vaccine uptake. MethodsWe ran parallel surveys in Wales (N = 4187) and US states overlapping with central Appalachia (N = 4864), to examine whether vaccine attitudes and uptake varied between areas with different coal mining histories. These surveys were accompanied by qualitative interviews of 36 residents of these coalfields to explore vaccination decisions and triangulate with survey data. ResultsFactor analysis identified four axes of attitudes in the survey data: vaccine confidence, covid scepticism, vaccine individualism, and concerned confusion. These themes were echoed in the interviews. Vaccine confidence was lower; and covid scepticism, vaccine individualism, and concerned confusion higher, in residents of areas of Wales with greater mining extent and where pits closed during certain periods. Residents of former US coal counties had lower vaccine confidence and higher covid scepticism, while those in current coal counties had greater vaccine individualism and concerned confusion. In former US coal counties and Welsh areas where pits closed since 1980, vaccine uptake was lower. Differences could not be explained by respondents’ income and education. In the interviews, norms of social solidarity were often invoked by vaccinated respondents, while unvaccinated respondents did not frame decisions in the context of the industrial history of their areas. DiscussionThe legacy of coal-mining's decline presents barriers to public health campaigns. We show evidence of this across two historically significant coalfields. Attention is needed to avert negative public health consequences of global energy transition.

Ethnic and religious identities in Russian penal institutions: A case study of Uzbek Transnational Muslim prisoners

Russia has become one of the main migration hubs worldwide following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The vast majority of migrant workers travel to Russia from three Central Asian countries. However, Russian immigration laws and policies are ambiguous and highly punitive. The result is that many migrants resort to undocumented status working in the shadow economy, which places them in a disadvantaged and precarious position. In this position they are vulnerable to becoming targets of the Russian criminal justice system as they take to crime to overcome economic uncertainty, become embroiled in interpersonal conflicts ending in violence, or fall victim to fabricated criminal charges initiated by Russian police officers under pressure to produce their monthly quota of arrests. The impact on Russian penal institutions is that they have become ethnically, culturally, and religiously diverse sites as a consequence of the incarceration of growing numbers of transnational prisoners. Using person-to-person interviews conducted in Uzbekistan with men and women who served sentences in Russian penal institutions during the past two decades, we show in this article how the large-scale migratory processes have transformed Russian prisons into sites of ethnic and religious plurality, in which formal rules and informal sub-cultures - the colony regime, so-called thieves' law (vorovskoy zakon), ethnic solidarity norms, and Sharia law - coexist and clash in new ways compared with the status quo ante. Thus, we argue there is a need to revise the prevailing understanding about the power dynamics in Russian penal institutions. Our findings undermine the prison service's insistence of the ethnic and ethno-religious neutrality and cosmopolitanism of Russian penal space, which is presented as a latter-day manifestation of the Soviet-era 'friendship of nations' policy. Russian prisons today must be understood as sites of ethnic and religious pluralism.

Fostering the Global Common Good: The Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching to Public Health Debates

Given the scope and intensity of its impact, the COVID-19 pandemic proves instructive as an example of the shortfall in regnant legal and policy approaches to global health issues. Secular discussions of such issues tend to rely on a perspective best described as “policy realism”, with current international arrangements and institutions viewed as the acceptable context for future reform. Much of recent Catholic social teaching (hereinafter, CST) has challenged such realism in fundamental ways. While CST is often dismissed as merely prophetic in its tone, I defend its salience by assessing several aspects of its distinctive perspective: (1) the broad theological and anthropological vision reflected in the Catholic framework of basic norms, especially the norm of solidarity; (2) issues that arise in identifying different modes of moral discourse in modern CST; and (3) an effort to resolve such apparent tensions that unifies a distinctively Catholic approach to global health even as it suggests a series of “talking points” between the Catholic theological vision and various secular philosophical and political perspectives.

Bureaucratic Acquiescence as an Institutional Strategy in the African Union

Abstract The paper conceptualizes acquiescence as a strategy bureaucrats adopt to deal with contestation between themselves and political leaders. The literature on bureaucratic politics argues that policy outcomes result from a game of bargaining between bureaucrats and political leaders. These actors employ diverse strategies like bargaining for more authority, exploiting loopholes, challenging the political class, and, at other times, using the threat of resignation to implement their preferred priorities. However, we advance the above argument by introducing another strategy that bureaucrats use, acquiescence. We analyze African Union (AU) bureaucratic politics through speeches, press releases, and secondary materials. The paper argues that rather than opting for standard bureaucratic strategies, AU bureaucrats acquiesce because the institutional structure, material resources, and the AU solidarity norm make it difficult for them to do otherwise. Acquiescence is the reluctant acceptance of decisions in bureaucratic politics in the form of silence or an absence of protest. We show examples of AU institutional reform and the Burundi crisis debates, where acquiescence can explain decision-making outcomes in the organization. We conclude that acquiescence is a relevant conceptual tool in explaining the outcomes of bureaucratic politics in the AU and can be generalized to investigate institutional politics in other international organizations within and outside of the continent.

Financial Solidarity or Autonomy? How Gendered Wealth and Income Inequalities Influence Couples’ Money Management

It is well established that women have lower income and wealth levels than men. These inequalities are most pronounced within heterosexual couples and grow once partners get married and have children. Nevertheless, equality in controlling money within couples is highly valued and might ameliorate women’s disadvantages in income and wealth ownership. Previous research has focused on explaining gender wealth inequalities at the household level; less is known about the possible consequences of these inequalities on how couples manage their money. In this article, we investigate how income and wealth inequalities among couples are associated with joint or independent money management. In theoretical terms, we perceive money management systems as representing two different norms of reciprocity within couples for buffering income and wealth inequalities between partners, depending on the transferability of resources and their institutional regulation. We apply pooled logistic regression models to data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study. Our findings confirm that income and wealth are relevant but have opposite associations with couples’ money management strategies. While couples with unequal income constellations tend to pool their money, couples with unequal wealth constellations manage their money independently. Accordingly, couples seem to use labour income to buffer gender inequalities by sharing resources, thereby following the norm of partnership solidarity. In contrast, gender wealth inequalities are reproduced by keeping resources separate, thus representing the norm of financial autonomy.

A predictive and normative model for the “smart city” implementation concept in expert discourse

The smart city concept strikes a discourse in the academic, media, political field in the present period. Discursive topics for that matter are the concept implementation model of choice determination, including its main structural parameters and the horizons of future develop-ment establishment. The challenge is the lack of a comprehensive approach to provide the effectiveness of social elements in the model of implementation of the concept of the smart city. The research issue includes an expert diagnosis parameter of the citizen as a subject. Set of parameters characterizing the social space of the city, namely, activity, identity, norms of trust and solidarity of the population, which together reflect the level of citizens’ subjectivity is proposed to take as a system indicator of the model of concept’s realization. The author model of the smart city concept implementation complements and expands the quadruplehelix model. The purpose of the work is aimed at predictive-normative model diagnostics by the expert community of the city for its integration into the management practice. Representatives of authorities, businesses, non-profit organizations of six cities as experts (Tyumen, Tobolsk, Khanty-Mansiysk, Surgut, Salekhard, Novy Urengoy) evaluated the implementation, prospects of the approach in their cities and the possibility of including the subjective model in management practice. The survey uncovered some degree of contradictions in the positions of experts on the predictive and normative model for the concept’s implementation. Most experts admit the increasing city dwellers subjectivity, but do not see opportunities and conditions for new forms of its institutionalization. As whole expert attitudes are not predictive, but rather demonstrate a prolongation of the existing provisions and trends of urban development. Nevertheless, the study showed that the parameters of the subject model are not in conflict with the existing model and can be used in the practice of urban management.

Numerical Flexibility Practices in Working Relations and Their Effects on Intergenerational Solidarity Processes

This study examines the interactions between the numerical flexibility practices emerging in today’s working relations and intergenerational solidarity relations and in this context aims to describe in depth the effect these practices have on these relations. This study is structured within the framework of the phenomenological design, a qualitative research method, with data being collected using semi-structured interview forms. The study uses the program MAXQDA Pro Analytics 2020 to analyze the data and conducted three-stage thematic coding to form code co-occurrence clusters. According to the analysis results, i) numerical flexibility practices in working relationships are multidimensional in terms of how they reflect onto individuals and are closely related to the precariousness of work conditions, ii) flexible work hours affect individuals’ functional and associational sharing with their parents, and iii) individuals’ consensual status with their parents regarding work shapes the processes of affectual solidarity. The interaction of normative solidarity in the cultural context is seen to be a crucial factor for making sense of the solidarity process, with normative solidarity’s interaction with material resources possibly being the cause of solidarity processes taking different than expected forms.

Normative solidarity and compassion as determinants of ageism in nursing students: An analysis of mediation and moderation

BackgroundGlobally, the proportion of the older population increases daily. Discrimination against older people, or negative ageing attitudes, is increasing parallelly. To improve the quality of care provided to older people, it is important to determine the factors that lead to negative attitudes and behaviours of nurses toward older people. AimThe present study aimed to examine normative behaviours and compassion as determinants of ageism in nursing students. MethodsA descriptive-relational study. This study was conducted in one nursing faculty in Turkey. One hundred sixty-eight fourth-year nursing students participated in this study. Data were collected with an information form, the Ageism Attitude Scale, the Intergenerational Normative Solidarity Scale, and the Compassion Scale. Multiple regression, regulatory, and mediation analyses were performed for data analysis. ResultsBeing a male student, visiting a nursing home, wanting to work in the geriatric unit, living in a rural area, intergenerational normative solidarity, and humanitarianism and empathy subdimensions of compassion scale were identified as determinants that prevent ageism. Intergenerational normative solidarity affects ageism both directly and indirectly through the compassion scale. Discussion/ConclusionsIncreasing intergenerational normative solidarity and compassion positively affects nursing students' attitudes toward ageism.

Leveraging digital and relational governance mechanisms in developing trusting supply chain relationships: the interplay between blockchain and norm of solidarity

PurposeDrawing on the signaling theory and the relational exchange theory, this study investigates how buyer–supplier trust is influenced through the congruence and incongruence between blockchain and norm of solidarity. The moderating role of technology uncertainty is further examined.Design/methodology/approachUsing a survey data of 110 Chinese firms, this study empirically tests not only the combined effect of blockchain and norm of solidarity on trust, but also how this combined effect is moderated by technology uncertainty. The proposed hypotheses are tested using the polynomial regression analysis and the response surface methodology.FindingsThe results suggest that trust increases along with an increasing congruence between blockchain and norm or solidarity, but in a diminishing rate (i.e. an inverted U-shaped relationship). Simultaneously, incongruence between blockchain and norm of solidarity can also guarantee sufficient trust (i.e. a U-shaped relationship). Moreover, technology uncertainty overturns the inverted U-shaped relationship between blockchain and norm of solidarity congruence on trust into a U-shaped relationship and nullifies the U-shaped relationship between blockchain and norm of solidarity incongruence on trust.Originality/valueThis study enriches supply chain governance literature by introducing the emerging blockchain governance and examining the blockchain governance's interplay with a conventional relational norm. The study emphasizes that the combined effects of these two are quite complex. Blockchain and norm of solidarity can offset each other’s limitations when both are at low to moderate levels. But simultaneous pursuit of both high blockchain and norm has only limited marginal benefits. Furthermore, the study also highlights the importance of technology uncertainty under which the combined effects between the two governance mechanisms vary. Collectively, the results provide nuanced insights into the design of supply chain governance portfolios in the digital era.

Cohabiting Adult Children's Transfers to Parents in the United States.

This brief report presents national estimates of transfers of time and money from cohabiting adult children (ages 18 to 65) to their parents (own and in-laws) to test whether cohabiting adults give differently from their counterparts. Previous U.S. studies use data collected in the late 1980s and mid-1990s, when cohabitation was an emerging family form; they find mixed results. Rising rates of cohabitation and an aging population of parents who may rely on transfers from adult children necessitate updated estimates that can help develop the theory of institutionalization of cohabitation. This study used the 2013 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Rosters and Transfers Module, a sample of U.S. households (N=6,340), and logistic and negative binomial models to estimate the likelihood of giving any time or any money to parents by the respondent's union status, the amounts given, and parent type (own, in-laws). Cohabitors were less likely to give time to their own parents than their never married counterparts, and gave fewer hours, but were more likely to give time and gave more hours than married adults. For financial transfers to own parents, cohabitors and married respondents gave similarly, but both were less likely to give any money than are single respondents. Cohabitators gave more hours to their in-laws than married respondents. Cohabitors behave somewhere in-between marital "greedy institution" norms and broader norms of solidarity with parents. More work should be done to understand how union status affects transfers to parents.

Gruppensolidarität zwischen Rationalität und Ritualität

Abstract Group solidarity requires that members are committed to solidarity norms. Addressing the question of how such commitments are socially (re)produced, the starting point of this article is Lindenberg's Theory of Social Rationality (TSR) and its notion of solidarity frames. These frames consist of solidarity as a goal of action and associated stocks of knowledge and moral feelings. TSR makes it clear that solidarity frames are fragile and precarious. They must be regularly recharged with motivational energy and symbols in order to prevail over compet-ing motives. However, TSR cannot satisfactorily explain how this works. This shortcoming is addressed by Collins' Interaction Ritual Chains Theory (IRCT). It is argued that solidarity frames are a potential outcome of interaction rituals and it is clarified under which conditions this can be expected. A distinction is made between three essential types of rituals: identity rituals, governance rituals, and exchange rituals.

Extending a Hand: Corruption and Solidarity with the Less Privileged Domestically and Beyond

Social cohesion, often operationalized using measures of generalized social trust, has received enormous amounts of attention in previous scholarly work. However, another dimension of this broad phenomenon, norms of social solidarity, has meanwhile largely been overlooked in previous research. This study analyzes the association between micro-perceptions of corruption and solidarity with the less privileged both domestically and beyond, and how this association might vary across different societies with different types and forms of corruption. The data come from ISSP Citizenship II and include 33 countries, analyzed with multilevel regression models. The results show that the link between individual corruption perceptions and global solidarity varies so that it is comparatively weak and positive in contexts judged as more corrupt according to the Corruption Perception Index, while it is strong and negative in contexts judged by experts as relatively corruption free. For domestic solidarity, in turn, there is some evidence of a comparatively weak positive association but no significant contextual variations.

THE TURN OF THE “BAD FEMINIST”: PROBING MONSTROSITY IN THE SHARED UNIVERSE OF THE HANDMAID’S TALE

This essay aims at tentatively probing the figure of the “bad feminist” in the shared universe of The Handmaid’s Tale, composed as it is by Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s homonymous 1985 novel and the Canadian author’s 2019 sequel, The Testaments. After briefly examining the figure of the “bad feminist” in the context of the fourth wave of feminism, we offer notes on how the characters of June Osborne in Hulu’s series and Aunt Lydia in The Testaments may have been rendered monstrous bad feminists for their rejection of norms of solidarity, a constitutive and dominant tenet of fourth-wave feminism, seeing how the monster could be described as the embodiment of the anti-norm which renders normatvie social configurations visible and stable.

Displaying intergenerational solidarity on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic: understanding the implications in the grandparent-grandchild relationship

ABSTRACT The habits of families are affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, with limitations to socialization or visits. Grandparents and grandchildren use social media to sustain interpersonal relationships, as well as display intergenerational solidarity to others. This paper presents a qualitative content analysis of the display of different dimensions of intergenerational solidarity between grandparents and grandchildren during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, on TikTok. The analysis extends the understanding of intergenerational solidarity between grandparents and grandchildren on TikTok, by highlighting which characteristics or activities they find important to display to other users of the platform. The results suggest that grandparents and grandchildren value qualities of physical touch and family celebrations (i.e. affectual solidarity), and big life events (i.e. normative solidarity). Moreover, grandparents and grandchildren refrain from consensual solidarity on TikTok, but other categories of intergenerational solidarity provide clues to differences in the public display of their respective roles.