Political Inequality Research Articles

Understanding the Role of Racism in Contemporary US Public Opinion

In the contemporary context, it is inescapable that racism is a factor in US public opinion. When scholars take stock of the way we typically measure and conceptualize racism, we find reason to reconceptualize the racial resentment scale as a measure of perceptions of the reasons for political inequality. We also see reason to move beyond thinking of racism as an attitude, toward conceptualizing it as a perspective. In addition, we see reason to pay closer attention to the role of elites in creating and perpetuating a role for racism in the way people think about public affairs. The study of racism is evolving in parallel with the broader public discussion: toward a recognition of the complex and fundamental ways it is woven into US culture and political life.

Dynamic Political Interest: How Personality Differences and the Political Environment Shape Political Interest

AbstractIn order to explain differences in political interest, two strands of literature point to the relevance of either dispositional or situational factors. I remedy this and show how political interest is shaped by the interplay between personality differences and the political environment. Specifically, I demonstrate that people with a stable motivation for engaging with new ideas are more interested in politics when exposed to new political events, e.g. during election campaigns and when unexpected events unfold. The results have implications for our understanding of political inequalities in democratic engagement and shed light on how citizens' interest in politics can be relatively stable over time as well as responsive to the political environment in predictable ways.

Physician Attitudes Toward Reproductive Justice: Results From an Institution-Wide Survey [21J

INTRODUCTION: Reproductive justice (RJ) is a framework that promotes universal reproductive rights by addressing underlying economic, social, and political inequities. Although increasingly integrated into reproductive health specialties, broader physicians’ attitudes toward RJ have been unexamined – even though knowing and promoting RJ principles could improve patient care and public and social health. METHODS: Using mail and online recruitment methods, we surveyed clinical faculty at the largest academic medical center in one Midwestern state. On a five-point Likert-type scale (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”), physicians responded to five principles adapted directly from widely held RJ tenets. RESULTS: 913 physicians representing 20 specialties responded (67% response rate). Majorities somewhat or strongly agreed that every woman has the right to parent or not parent a child if she chooses (89%); health systems should ensure that every woman has access to the full range of contraceptives (93%) and abortion (87%); health systems should ensure everyone achieves full autonomy over reproductive decisions (90%) and raises children in safe and healthy environments (96%). Given high reliability (Cronbach alpha=.85), we collapsed items into a bivariate outcome of support for all five principles vs any opposition. A majority (88%) supported all five principles. Chi-square tests of independence (P<.05) found that men, physicians over 40 years of age, religious physicians, and those who oppose legal abortion were less likely to support RJ principles. CONCLUSION: Physician support for RJ was high but not unanimous. We join the call to incorporate RJ principles into medical curricula and healthcare policy.

Issue Conclusion: Sociology, Political Inequality, and Democracy Beyond 2020

The articles in this special issue all contribute to a broader and richer understanding of racial and gender politics. They help reveal how racialized and gendered barriers to political participation reflect and reproduce intersecting racialized and gendered systems of domination. In doing so, they provide insights that can be applied to uncover political processes, cultivate political praxis, and draw our awareness to empowering modes of social and political transformation. Given all this, I propose a renewed sociology of political inequality that focuses on advancing democracy. This agenda includes (1) emphasizing the state of democracy over the state of political party competition, (2) highlighting how democratizing social change happens at various levels, (3) developing and practicing empirically grounded public advocacy, (4) seeing social and political structures are interconnected, and (5) employing sociology in the service of democracy.

Krise der liberalen Demokratie? Nein! Krise des individualistischen Liberalismus

AbstractThe current crisis of liberal democracy is actually a crisis of individualistic liberalism as recent literature shows by its analysis and more often by its example. Whilst social inequality by many authors is seen as main source of the crisis, it is only the consequence of a contradiction inherent in individualistic liberalism: Equal individual liberty leads to social and in the consequence to political inequality because of the inevitable differences in the use of that individual liberty. However, political equality is a necessary condition of individual liberty as a reciprocal right. Therefore, it is necessary to overcome a purely individualistic understanding of liberty that threatens not only democracy but individual liberty itself.

Living excluded from the world: essentialism in development discourse and its percolation into Santomean self-perceptions

Using an analysis of development discourse in and about São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), this article aims to trace the relationship between sociocultural constructions of difference and socio-economic structures of exclusion in the global development project. Using ethnographic data from a rural fishing village and from development professionals, I show how development discourse constructs STP as a place that is perpetually marginal and assigns essentialist traits to the islands and their people. In response, Santomeans imagine their society as one that is isolated and insular from global processes, even though they have historically always been incorporated into global networks of capital, labour, culture and commodities. I argue that this process, whereby Santomeans imagine and reproduce their own marginality, has an under-appreciated impact not only on their collective identity but also on their action and potentiality. I reflect on how the construction of marginality serves the global political, economic and social inequalities upon which the development project depends.

Direct Democracy, Constitutional Reform, and Political Inequality in Post-Colonial America

The ratification of constitutional changes via referendum is an important mechanism for constraining the influence of elites, particularly when representative institutions are captured. While this electoral device is commonly employed cross-nationally, its use is far from universal. We investigate the uneven adoption of mandatory referendums by examining the divergence between Northern and Southern U.S. states in the post-independence period. We first explore why states in both regions adopted constitutional conventions as the primary mechanism for making revisions to fundamental law, but why only Northern states adopted the additional requirement of ratifying via referendum. We argue that due to distortions in state-level representation, Southern elites adopted the discretionary referendum as a mechanism to bypass the statewide electorate when issues divided voters along slave-dependency lines. We demonstrate the link between biases to apportionment and opposition to mandatory referendums using a novel data set of roll calls from various Southern state conventions, including during the secession crisis of 1861.

Biases in machine learning models and big data analytics: The international criminal and humanitarian law implications

AbstractAdvances in mobile phone technology and social media have created a world where the volume of information generated and shared is outpacing the ability of humans to review and use that data. Machine learning (ML) models and “big data” analytical tools have the power to ease that burden by making sense of this information and providing insights that might not otherwise exist. In the context of international criminal and human rights law, ML is being used for a variety of purposes, including to uncover mass graves in Mexico, find evidence of homes and schools destroyed in Darfur, detect fake videos and doctored evidence, predict the outcomes of judicial hearings at the European Court of Human Rights, and gather evidence of war crimes in Syria. ML models are also increasingly being incorporated by States into weapon systems in order to better enable targeting systems to distinguish between civilians, allied soldiers and enemy combatants or even inform decision-making for military attacks.The same technology, however, also comes with significant risks. ML models and big data analytics are highly susceptible to common human biases. As a result of these biases, ML models have the potential to reinforce and even accelerate existing racial, political or gender inequalities, and can also paint a misleading and distorted picture of the facts on the ground. This article discusses how common human biases can impact ML models and big data analytics, and examines what legal implications these biases can have under international criminal law and international humanitarian law.

Getting Old Well in Sub Saharan Africa: Exploring the Social and Structural Drivers of Subjective Wellbeing among Elderly Men and Women in Uganda.

While literature attempts to explain why self-reported subjective wellbeing (SWB) generally increases with age in most high-income countries based on a social determinants of a health framework, little work attempts to explain the low levels of self-report SWB among older persons in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the 2013 Uganda Study on Global Aging and Health with 470 individuals, this research examines (i) direct and indirect effects of age on SWB through social and structural determinants, and (ii) how direct and indirect effects vary by gender. Results show a significant direct and negative effect of age on SWB (β = 0.42, p = 0.01). Six indirect paths were statistically significant and their indirect effects on wellbeing varied by gender. Providing support, education, working status, asset level, financial status and financial improvement were significantly positively associated with men’s SWB, whereas younger age, providing community support, participating in group activities, number of close friends/relatives, government assistance and all socio-economic variables were significantly positively associated with women’s SWB. Strategies to address gendered economic, social and political inequalities among and between elderly populations are urgently needed.

The Political and Economic Geography of Southern Secession

We study the economic and political determinants of the Southern secession movement of 1860/61. While economic historians emphasize the importance of slavery to the South’s economy as the primary factor behind the movement, we demonstrate the important role that political inequality among whites played in facilitating secession. In particular, secession was decided in state conventions, which allowed secessionists to exploit biases to representation and may have been pivotal in Alabama and Georgia. Our results suggest that the region’s investment in slavery alone may not be sufficient to explain the electoral success of the movement in the largest Lower South states.

How do political elites persist? Political selection, political inequality and empirical historical research

How do political elites persist? Populist movements highlight the continued tension between citizens and political elites. This article reviews some recent research on political selection and inequality. I consider political inequality as the persistent political selection of specific individuals or their relatives over time. Empirical historical research employing statistical analysis of natural experiments can help to understand the connection between specific democratic institutions, such as elections or lotteries, and political selection, political behaviour, or political inequality over time. Some democratic features enable elites to persist, yet there is much variation in political inequality over time and space. Further research could aim to disentangle institutional causes of this variation from determinants of institutional choice.

Economic Citizenship: Neoliberal Paradoxes of Empowerment

Economic Citizenship: Neoliberal Paradoxes of Empowerment

Integrated watershed revitalization: the experience of the Mersey Basin Campaign

The collaborative partnership approach has been used extensively in the practice of integrated river basin management across the world for at least the last two decades. This is despite the fact that there has been widespread acknowledgement that partnership working has operational difficulties, especially in the face of political inequality in a real-life context. This paper draws on the results of a research project investigating a concrete example of collaborative partnerships, the Mersey Basin Campaign, a government-sponsored 25-year initiative that aimed to improve water quality and the waterside environments of the Mersey River Basin. This research explores how the Campaign came to be formed, how it was organized and how partnership projects were implemented. The mechanism of the partnership service delivery is developed under three headings: consensus building, facilitation and open participation. The analysis of the results shows that governance and leadership partnership arrangements, which have evolved over time to reflect changing political and institutional environments, are critical for the implementation of watershed partnerships. The results from revisiting the practice of the Mersey Basin Campaign should be of assistance to planners to improve governance of watershed partnerships.

Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age

Unequal and Unrepresented: Political Inequality and the People’s Voice in the New Gilded Age

Feminising politics: notes on material and temporal feminist modal logics in action

Feminist activism aims to work to change the inequitable structures of the world. But feminists themselves get bound up in actions and intentions that are tied to their large object of critique (the patriarchy, the planet, the media, the canon, etc), and the micropolitics of the subjects constituting and constituted by those objects can be swept up in humanistic rhetorical gestures and words. How can we teach the modalities and the genealogy of feminist actions that offer tools for everyday living and for a community practice, and which also offer some ways to engage with the affective matter of the world from a posthumanist perspective, and thereby work to shift cultural attitudes? In addition to the valuable work done by those that tirelessly figure methods of communicating social inequities, the work of research led feminist informed teaching and governance can not only excavate the histories of social, political, speciesist, and biological inequities, but also offer a critique of these positions by the terms of their epistemological construction, and provide different modalities of practice. This article focuses on the latter, discussing how we might design curriculum and engage a pedagogy of recognition for a feminist modal ethics. How modes of feminist new materialist practice take the questions of affect, and agency, to enable ethical political practices is a pressing concern for many communities concerned with generating a planetary ethics. How new materialist methodology is useful for thinking the vernacular political reality was the topic of an intensive discussion and debate that took place in November 2017 in Barcelona. Taking an example of the concrete work undertaken by Barcelona Councillor Gala Pin in relation to the neighbourhood ofCiutat Vella,the article proposes that we explore and extend the genealogy of a feminist modal logics.

Review of The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America

Review of The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America

(In)Justice of Environmental Protection

Environmental issues are among the most critical scientific and social problems of today. The human environment is an environment of inequality and crisis, and a platform for debate on the fairness of social order. The crisis is the result of human behaviour, which reflects the failure of development and unjust distribution of consequences. The gap between rich and poor on a global scale is evident in the disproportionate climate change impacts on countries and their ability to cope. In this respect, the economic and political inequalities between First and Third World countries are fortified by ecological ones. The development of international environmental mechanisms such as the Kyoto Agreement is instrumental in this kind of change. The pursuit of tackling and controlling climate change has its unforeseen consequences, whereas in specific communities the existent inequalities are emphasised in new forms. If mechanisms developed for the environment, such as the market of carbon emissions and the carbon balance, lead to environmental injustice and disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, it raises the question of their purpose. On the path of Rawl’s idea on the fairness of social institutions, such system demonstrates itself as contradictory and unjust.

Uneven energy transitions: Understanding continued energy peripheralization in rural communities

This paper problematizes the uneven nature of low carbon energy transitions in the context of uneven geographical development and core/periphery asymmetries. It explores the impacts of transition for peripheral communities lacking political power and agglomerative advantages. While decentralised developments that emerge with energy transition promise to bring new opportunities to remote areas, factors of economic and political inequalities render those opportunities socially and spatially segregated. Exploring experiences of rural and exurban communities in South Wales, the paper establishes links between low carbon transition and its actually existing implications on the ground. It demonstrates that even if having an abundance of natural resource and physical space to harness low carbon energy, many rural communities are trapped in the chronic positions of energy peripheralization.

Toponymy, Pioneership, and the Politics of Ethnic Hierarchies in the Spatial Organization of British Colonial Nairobi

Toponyms, along with other urban symbols, were used as a tool of control over space in many African countries during the colonial period. This strategy was epitomized by the British, who applied it in Nairobi and other parts of Kenya from the late 1800s. This paper shows that toponymy in colonial Nairobi was an imposition of British political references, urban nomenclature, as well as the replication of a British spatial idyll on the urban landscape of Nairobi. In early colonial Nairobi, the population was mainly composed of three main groups: British, Asians, and Africans. Although the Africans formed the bulk of the population, they were the least represented, socially, economically and politically. Ironically, he British, who were the least in population held the political and economic power, and they applied it vigorously in shaping the identity of the city. The Asians were neither as powerful as the British, nor were they considered to be at the low level of the native Africans. This was the deliberate hierarchical structure that was instituted by the colonial government, where the level of urban citizenship depended on ethnic affiliation. Consequently, this structure was reflected in the toponymy and spatial organization of the newly founded city with little consideration to its pre-colonial status. Streets, buildings and other spaces such as parks were predominantly named after the British monarchy, colonial administrators, settler farmers, and businessmen, as well as prominent Asian personalities. In this paper, historical references such as maps, letter correspondences, monographs, and newspaper archives have been used as evidence to prove that toponyms in colonial Nairobi were the spatial signifiers that reflected the political, ideological and ethnic hierarchies and inequalities of the time.

Political and Economic Inequality: Insights from Philippine Data on Political Dynasties

There is an extensive empirical literature on economic inequality, yet few studies examine its political underpinnings. This article contributes to the nascent literature in this area by developing and analyzing a new measure of political inequality. Drawing on a comprehensive provincial-level dataset on local government leadership in the Philippines, this article develops a political inequality index based on the concentration of elective positions among political dynasties. It then empirically examines the possible links among economic inequality, political inequality, and development outcomes across Philippine provinces. This study finds that economic inequality displays a nonlinear relationship with indicators of human development—there is a positive correlation at lower levels of human development, and a negative correlation at higher levels. On the other hand, unlike economic inequality, political inequality seems to be associated with weaker development outcomes, regardless of the level of development the province is in. This finding emphasizes how future research on political inequality could yield new insights into the persistence and depth of poverty, human development, and other forms of social and economic inequality.