Politics and Inequality Conference: Program and Abstracts

~ jdubrow2000

We are pleased to present the final program and the titles and abstracts for the conference, “Politics and Inequality across Nations and Time: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches,” December 12 – 14, 2018, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 72 Nowy Swiat, Warsaw, Poland

Politics and Inequality Conference in Warsaw December 2018: PROGRAM

Politics and Inequality Conference in Warsaw December 2018: Abstracts

The conference also features a roundtable on “Aggregating Survey Data: Problems and Solutions.” Here is the description of the conference Roundtable on Aggregating Survey Data 

Funding for this event comes from the National Science Centre, Poland (“Political Voice and Economic Inequality across Nations and Time” 2016/23/B/HS6/03916), from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and a conference grant from the Polish Academy of Sciences, with organizational support from IFiS PAN and CONSIRT – Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program at The Ohio State University and PAN.

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Catherine Bolzendahl to Deliver a Keynote Speech at Politics and Inequality Conference in Warsaw

~ jdubrow2000

Catherine Bolzendahl ( @C_Bolzendahl ) of the University of California – Irvine will deliver a keynote speech at the conference, “Politics and Inequality across Nations and Time: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches,” at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, December 12 – 14, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

Professor Bolzendahl’s keynote title:

“Women’s Political Empowerment: A Path Toward Progress in Uncertain Times”

Abstract:

“Few social changes have been as dramatic and rapid as the increased political representation of women worldwide. Scholars and public figures rightfully tout these gains as remarkable evidence of greater gender equality, yet nowhere do women hold equal power to men in influencing and exercising political authority worldwide and efforts to increase women’s political agency are often actively and violently repressed. Addressing these issues means the comprehensive inclusion of women’s political empowerment as cornerstone of global research. I discuss how this is defined in my co-authored scholarship and using findings from my own current research I illustrate three axioms in this approach. First, women’s political empowerment is not a zero-sum game, and gender equality opens, rather than closes, the political domain to all members of society. Second, sex and gender are used simultaneously to create status inequalities that disadvantage women, thus, women’s political empowerment requires special attention given that women are the largest categorical group today experiencing long-term, ongoing barriers to political incorporation worldwide. Third, inequalities in political empowerment cut across multiple statuses and other sources of inequality. In sum, my work highlights the continued urgency of understand gender inequality through social and political research and data collection.”

catherine bolzendahlCatherine Bolzendahl is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California-Irvine, USA. Professor Bolzendahl’s interests are in political change cross-nationally and over time, gender and politics, and of the meaning of family and gender in the political culture of the U.S. and in Western industrialized democracies. Professor Bolzendahl’s research has appeared in Social Forces, European Sociological Review, and British Journal of Sociology, among others. For information about her research, please visit: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/catherinebolzendahl/

The conference is funded by Poland’s National Science Centre and a grant from the Polish Academy of Sciences, with organizational support from IFiS PAN, and CONSIRT – Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of The Ohio State University and PAN (CONSIRT.osu.edu).

The conference is free and open to the public. Click here for more information about the conference. 

 

Frederick Solt to Deliver a Keynote Speech at Politics and Inequality Conference in Warsaw

~ jdubrow2000

Frederick Solt ( @fredericksolt ) of the University of Iowa will deliver a keynote speech at the conference, “Politics and Inequality across Nations and Time: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches,” at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, December 12 – 14, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

Professor Solt’s keynote title:

“Economic Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Redistributive Outcomes: Building the Empirical Foundations for Dynamic Comparative Research.”

Abstract:

“Does rising income inequality in a country yield greater demand for more redistributive policy among its citizens? Does greater public demand prompt more redistribution? The answers to both of these questions are clearly not simply yes or no, but conditional on other circumstances. Assessing hypotheses regarding these circumstances will require comparable data–on inequality, on public opinion, and on redistribution–across space and time. This paper takes up that task. It first evaluates the author’s long-running project, the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID), as a source of data on income inequality and redistribution for this purpose. It then applies the author’s new approach, Dynamic Comparative Public Opinion (DCPO), to overcome the sparsity and incomparability of available survey data and provide comparable estimates of public opinion regarding redistribution for many countries over many years. Finally, it offers an appraisal of whether the combination of these two datasets can serve as a sound basis for further investigation of these two questions on the consequences of income inequality for politics and policy.”

frederick soltFrederick Solt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Iowa whose interests are in comparative political behavior and political economy from a cross-national perspective. Professor Solt created and maintains the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID). His research appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, and Social Science Quarterly, among others. For a full list of his publications and more information about SWIID, please visit his website: https://fsolt.org/

The conference is funded by Poland’s National Science Centre and a grant from the Polish Academy of Sciences, with organizational support from IFiS PAN, and CONSIRT – Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program of The Ohio State University and PAN (CONSIRT.osu.edu).

The conference is free and open to the public. Click here for more information about the conference.

Political Voice and Economic Inequality Conference in Warsaw, Poland

~ jdubrow2000

The research project, “Political Voice and Economic Inequality across Nations and Time,” funded by Poland’s National Science Centre, is organizing its first event.

Politics and Inequality Conference PRELIMINARY Program

The interdisciplinary conference, “Politics and Inequality across Nations and Time: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches,” will be held at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS PAN), December 12 – 14, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

The conference will bring together young and established scholars of the social sciences from the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. Presentations will be on substantive and methodological issues related to political voice and economic inequality. The event is free to the public by reservation. Please contact Joshua K. Dubrow: dubrow.2@osu.edu.

Keynote Speakers:

Frederick Solt, University of Iowa

“Economic Inequality, Demand for Redistribution, and Redistributive Outcomes: Building the Empirical Foundations for Dynamic Comparative Research”

Catherine Bolzendahl, University of California – Irvine

“Women’s Political Empowerment: A Path Toward Progress in Uncertain Times”

The conference also features presentations by:

Katerina Vrablikova, University of Bath, UK

Jan Falkowski, University of Warsaw, Poland

Constantin Manuel Bosancianu, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany

Renira Angeles, Central European University, Hungary

Matias Lopez, Catholic University of Chile

Gwangeun Choi, University of Essex, UK

Piotr Zagorski and Andrés Santana, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

and

Professor Renata Siemienska, The R. B. Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, Head of UNESCO Chair “Women -Society- Development”, University of Warsaw, Poland, whose presentation is titled, “Gender inequality and its sources: comparison of politicians and scientists.”

A complete list of presenters and the event program will be available soon.

Funding for this event comes from the National Science Centre, Poland (“Political Voice and Economic Inequality across Nations and Time” 2016/23/B/HS6/03916), from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and a conference grant from the Polish Academy of Sciences, with organizational support from IFiS PAN and CONSIRT – Cross-National Studies: Interdisciplinary Research and Training Program at The Ohio State University and PAN.

How Do Digital Technologies Impact Political Inequality?

~ jdubrow2000

Part I.

Digital technologies have enabled a dystopic political inequality where politics is possible for the few and impossible for the many. The way out is a variant on Timothy Leary’s life advice with a Luddite twist: Turn off the machines, tune out the information noise, and drop in to the homes of family and friends. The way forward is to pop the information bubble, re-connect with human beings, boycott the segmenters, and dare to be brave.

Please allow me to explain.

Voice & Response

Politics is a tool used to gain power over important decisions that impact our lives. This tool has two parts: Voice and Response.

Voice is how we express our political complaints, desires, demands, and interests to our fellow human beings across nations, to our fellow citizens within nations, and to government. Voice activates directly through what social scientists call “political participation,” such as public marches, writing letters to our representatives or to the media, boycotting products, and voluntarily organizing the political interests of particular groups, to name a few. We also activate our political voice indirectly via people and organizations that claim to carry our voice into government, such as parliamentarians, political parties, non-governmental organizations in civil society, and special independent arms of the government (the ombudsperson or special envoy, for example).

Response is what the decision-makers do with our voice. They can respond with mere symbols, such as declaring Black History Month to address institutional racism. They can respond with formal and informal policy initiatives.

We Are Politically Unequal

Today’s modern societies in which digital technology plays a starring role is characterized by political inequality. Political equality is the assumed foundation of modern democracy. Yet, everywhere there is democracy – indeed, everywhere there is politics – there is political inequality. Political inequality is structured differences in influence over government decisions and the outcomes of those decisions. It is inequality of voice and it is inequality of response.

Continue reading “How Do Digital Technologies Impact Political Inequality?” →

New Project: Political Voice and Economic Inequality across Nations and Time

~ jdubrow2000

Poland’s National Science Centre has awarded a grant for the project, “Political Voice and Economic Inequality across Nations and Time” (2016/23/B/HS6/03916) for the period 2017 -2020. The Principal Investigator is Joshua K. Dubrow, Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences.

The purpose of the project is to advance the theory, methods, and empirical base for studying the relationship between political inequality and economic inequality. The fundamental research questions are:

(1) How and to what extent are the main components of political voice inequality – political participation and party representation – related to each other once main features of political and economic institutions are accounted for?

(2) At the macro-level, how and to what extent do political voice inequality and economic inequality influence each other?

This project builds on empirical research on how economic resources and political voice connects, accounting for how political institutions moderate this connection.

The social sciences do not have appropriate cross-national and over-time measures of political voice inequality and thus has never adequately addressed our research questions. Thus, we will create the Political Inequality Database (POLINQ) which is a multi-country multi-year dataset with cross-national measures of political voice inequality from harmonized survey and non-survey data for over 65 democratic countries from 1990 to 2015.

 

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When Local Governments Protest

~ jdubrow2000

by Irina Tomescu-Dubrow and Joshua K. Dubrow, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences

Trump administration policies are inspiring mass protests. Yet, we have not seen local government protest – resolutions, ordinances, town hall proclamations – against Trump administration policy. The history of local gov’t protest suggests that we are due for a nation-wide protest.

The US Presidential election sparked protests across the nation: Mass demonstrations over immigration and refugee policies, pro-Trump rallies, town hall debates over health care, the Women’s March on Washington, and declarations of support for sanctuary cities, to name just a few. We have not seen such mass protests since the Tea Party in 2009.

The US has a long history of protests. Yet, local government protest (this is when city, town, or village governments vote on resolutions to symbolically denounce a federal policy) has not occurred on a large scale.

If history is our guide — and the conditions are ripe — then these protests are likely on the way.

What Is Local Government Protest?

In an article published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, we investigated local gov’t protest over the USA PATRIOT Act (United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001). The Patriot Act came as a direct response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and signed into law a little over a month later.

Patriotactsigning
President Bush signing the Patriot Act into law (photo by Eric Draper)

What’s interesting here is the scale of local government resistance to the Patriot Act.

On January 7, 2002, the city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, passed a resolution condemning aspects of the Patriot Act and, among other things, urged local law enforcement officials to not enforce parts of the law that seemed in violation of constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. The resolution stipulated that a copy be distributed to President Bush, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Michigan’s members of Congress. Two and a half months later, the city council of Denver, Colorado passed a similar resolution. Within four months of Denver, seven local governments from a diverse group of states, including Massachusetts and North Carolina, took similar actions. As of March 2005, close to 300 places (as defined by the US Census), 45 counties, and four states passed some form of resolution regarding perceived negative aspects of the Patriot Act.

This was one of the largest-scale local government protests against a singular federal action in US history.

Continue reading “When Local Governments Protest” →