Tag: clientelism
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Noam Chomsky on Money in Politics
Noam Chomsky is a highly influential public intellectual known for his incisive social criticism and political activism. In this post, we present Chomsky’s critique of wealth and power concentration, the influence of neoliberalism, and the resultant detrimental impact on democracy. See also About Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky, born in 1928, is a renowned American public…
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Piketty: Policy, Institutions, and a Brief History of Equality
Does equality rise? What is the role of policy, institutions, and collective mobilization for increasing equality? This post delves into the work of French economist Thomas Piketty, whose influential books examine wealth and income inequality. Piketty highlights the long-term trend towards greater political, economic, and social equality, driven by political mobilizations, social struggles, and institutional…
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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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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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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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Democracy and Economic Inequality
Why does economic inequality rise in democracies? Economic inequality is rising, and the United Nations reports that economic inequality impacts 70 percent of the world, even when we include democracies such as the US, UK, France, and Germany. Why does democracy not reduce economic inequality? According to democratic theories, giving everyone the vote and allowing…
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POLINQ: Political Inequality and Political Voice across Nations and Time
What is POLINQ Political Inequality? POLINQ is an acronym for political inequality, defined as structured differences in political influence and its consequences. POLINQ is also the acronym of the National Science Foundation, Poland funded project (2016/23/B/HS6/03916), which ran from 2017 – 2022, with Joshua K. Dubrow as the Principle Investigator. POLINQ was housed at the…
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Neoliberalism and Democracy
Neoliberalism has degraded democracy through its ideological control over the economy, polity, and the cultural sphere.
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Elites care about inequality, but probably not in the way that you think
This is a guest post by Matias Lopez, Universidad Católica, Chile. Do the elite care about inequality? A survey of over 800 elites in six Latin American countries reveals that they acknowledge economic inequality as a problem, but see little incentive to reduce inequality. The elite from stronger and more stable democracies tend to be…
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Notes on Winters and Page’s “Oligarchy in the U.S.?”
In this post, I summarize the article “Oligarchy in the U.S.,” by Winters and Page (2009). Winters and Page: Oligarchy in the USA Winters and Page (Hereafter, WP) argue that all modern democracies, regardless of level of democracy, can be oligarchies. Oligarchy and democracy can, and do, “coexist comfortably” (731). WP ask whether the U.S.…
Political Inequality: A blog since 2010 