Author: jdubrow2000
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Effects of Political Inequality on Society
Inequality — economic, political, social — is at the heart of society’s troubles. Political inequality is a particular kind and it has many definitions. In the main, it refers to structured differences in influence and outcomes of political processes. What are the effects of political inequality on society? Here we explore the consequences of political…
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Political Parties: Images and Policy Reputations
What are party images? What is a policy reputation? In the course of their lives, political parties acquire policy reputations. That is, individuals and groups evaluate a party’s position on the issues of the day. The totality of these perceptions is referred to as their “party image”. Distinct issues fragment party images, such that a…
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Power Inequality: Trends in Europe
Inequality is generally understood as long-standing structured differences in social, economic, legal, and political resources. Inequalities intersect, such that power inequality is associated with economic, legal, social, and political inequality. What is power inequality? Power inequality is defined as structured differences in the capacity of principals to realize their will against the interests and efforts…
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Zolberg’s Moments of Madness
I summarize and critique a classic article in the fields of protest and social movements by Aristide R. Zolberg, “Moments of madness.” Politics & Society 2, no. 2 (1972): 183-207. See also… Zolberg’s Thesis Zolberg’s thesis, designed to help us understand social and political change, is simple. During an intense social and political situation, such…
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Social Movement Theory: Fields, Arenas, and Players
Social movement theory typically uses the concepts of fields, arenas, and players or actors. But these concepts seem to be conceptually similar. In this post, I critique two articles by prominent social movement theorists to understand fields, arenas, and players. At the end, I attempt a synthesis. See also: Social Movement Outcomes Social Movement Fields…
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Social Movement Outcomes
Do social movements cause social change? How would we know? We look to the success of the civil rights movement in the United States and conclude, “Yes, social movements matter.” But, there are many social movements around the world, and there are many social changes. How do we know if social movements cause social change?…
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Gender Quotas in Politics
Gender quotas in politics are rules that aim at providing opportunities for women to be in parliament or to appear on candidate lists in elections for political office. In this post, we discuss the types of gender quotas in politics, how parliaments in democracy adopt quotas, whether they are effective in placing more women in…
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Youth and Political Participation
What does “Youth” or “Young” mean in political participation studies? Most studies of political participation that feature multivariate regression use age as a linear variable. The few that do present “age groups” (i.e. age ranges) as a series of dichotomous variables can differ quite a bit on how to conceptualize “youth” and “young” For example,…
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Visions of a Post-Pandemic Society via Street Protest in Poland: NCN Grant (2021/43/B/HS6/01155)
We are looking for hired a post-doctoral scholar and a graduate research assistant to be part of the research team led by dr. hab. Joshua K. Dubrow at IFiS PAN on the implementation of the international research project funded by the National Science Centre, Poland (2021/43/B/HS6/01155) entitled “The Construction of Post-Pandemic Society: Covid-19 Street Protest…
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Political Equality in V-Dem: “Power distributed by gender”
In a previous post, we discussed how the Varieties of Democracy “V-Dem” project measures “political equality.” V-Dem is an expert survey. They guide the expert-respondents’ attention to particular groups’ political equality. These groups are: (a) socioeconomic position, (b) social groups, (c) gender, and (d) sexual orientation. In this post, we discuss how they measure “Power…
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Political Equality in V-Dem: “Power distributed by sexual orientation”
In a previous post, we discussed how the Varieties of Democracy “V-Dem” project measures “political equality.” V-Dem is an expert survey. They guide the expert-respondents’ attention to particular groups’ political equality. These groups are: (a) socioeconomic position, (b) social groups, (c) gender, and (d) sexual orientation. In this post, we discuss how they measure “Power…
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Political Equality in V-Dem: “Power distributed by social group”
In a previous post, we discussed how the Varieties of Democracy “V-Dem” project measures “political equality.” V-Dem is an expert survey. They guide the expert-respondents’ attention to particular groups’ political equality. These groups are: (a) socioeconomic position, (b) social groups, (c) gender, and (d) sexual orientation. In this post, we discuss how they measure “Power…
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Political Equality as Measured by Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
If we want to measure the power structure of society, we can examine the extent of political equality. For a quantitative measure, one can use the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem, as it is commonly referred to) dataset’s “political equality” measure (see also Cole 2018). In this post, I examine and critique the “political equality” measure…
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Political Voice and Economic Inequality: Institutional Factors
We at the POLINQ project examined 18 quantitative cross-national articles by major scholars in the leading journals to develop a typology of institutional factors that influence the relationship between political voice and economic inequality. We comment on how scholars have measured these factors, or “concepts.” At a glance… Institutional Factors that Link Voice to Inequality…
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Why Men Rebel: Ted Robert Gurr, Civil Strife, and Relative Deprivation
In the economic inequality, democracy, and political participation literature, scholars claim to test grievance or relative deprivation theory. When they do, they cite Ted Robert Gurr, whether it is his 1968 article in the American Political Science Review, or the 1970 book, Why Men Rebel. Yet, modern scholars who apply it to political participation, like…
Political Inequality: A blog since 2010 