Political Participation and Democracy

September 12, 2022October 24, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000 ~ 2 Comments

What is the relationship between political participation and democracy?

Democracy and political participation — such as protest or voting — feed off of each other. Social scientists argue that when democracy is strong, more people participate. Why? Because democracy opens up possibilities for political participation such as voting, protest, and working for political parties and other political organizations.

Some cross-national research using surveys bears this out (see Marien et al 2010 and Hooge). Other research finds that democracy is not as important as “good governance,” and when trust in institutions (trust in parliament, or trust in government, and so on) is high, people tend to participate (Hooghe and Marien 2013).

At a glance

What is the relationship between political participation and democracy?

What is political participation?

There are many definitions. A great start is to discuss noted democracy theorist Jan Teorell‘s “Political participation and three theories of democracy: A research inventory and agenda” (2006) and his classic definitions of political participation.

Teorell examines the conception, causes, and consequences of political participation as it connects to three broad theories of democracy. His theory is that what constitutes political participation depends on the theory of democracy.

Political participation is an attempt at influence.

Inspired by the work of Verba and Nie and perhaps the most popular definition, this is about influence over the personnel in government, and over the decisions they make. At heart is responsiveness – in keeping with Dahl’s idea that democracies are forms of government that are responsive to citizen demands, participation is a mechanism that -should- trigger response.

Participation is not a direct way to influence policy decisions – the direct way is to be a part of the group that makes the policy decisions.

Political participation is direct decision-making.

Here, participation in decision-making is done directly by citizens — not through representatives. Proponents of direct decision-making do not want to abolish representative institutions. Rather, they want to provide more opportunities for direct decision-making. The modern idea of participatory budget making is an example of quasi-direct decision making (depending on whether citizen decisions are binding).

Political participation is political discussion.

This follows from the so-called deliberative model of democracy. Deliberation is a means to form interests among the public, or it is the discussion that directly leads to the decisions themselves. Teorell prefers to call the deliberation as “discussion,” because discussion connotes a collective action (more than one person).

But, at the same time, it is different than direct decision making or an attempt at influence through voting and other participatory actions. As he puts it, “The point in defining deliberation as political discussion is that discussions aimed at forming opinions may occur even if no collective decision is to be reached” (791).

We can measure the level of participation in society by thinking of these as three dimensions of participation. The overall level is thus related to the scores on each dimension.

*DALL-E: “Edward Hopper painting of people at a protest holding signs”*

Some consequences of political participation for democracy

Teorell neatly summarizes the theoretical consequences of political participation for democracy in his summary of Voice and Equality (792):

“This outcome-oriented evaluative criterion is given its fullest account in Verba et al.’s (1995) volume on participation in America. Their title, Voice and Equality, is suggestive in this regard. On the one hand, they are concerned with ‘voice’: what ‘preferences and needs’ are being transmitted to the political system through acts of political participation? On the other hand, they assess whether this voice is consistent with a principle of ‘equality’: are the activists representative to the general public in terms of the preferences and needs they transmit to the system? If not, the preferences and needs of each citizen are not given equal consideration. Taken together, these two facets form a picture of the degree of distortion in the participatory process. The more such distortion there is, the more imperfect is the protection of citizens’ interests (Verba et al. 1995: esp. Chapters 6–8, 16).”

Verba et al were concerned with whose voice is heard by government and how responsive the government is to all influencing attempts. The voice of all should be heard – but policy does not have to be a response to all voices.

Teorell summarizes his arguments as follows: a response model of democracy should include the degree to which

the wants and needs of the general public is represented in the influencing attempts and
the government is responsive.

The consequence of influence attempts

The consequence of influence attempts is the equal protection of interests.

Teorell then sets the research agenda, which was subsequently followed by Bartels, Gilens, and others:

“In terms of research design, answers to these questions would require data on preferences, needs and activity at the level of individual citizens, supplemented with elite level data from elected representatives and other key decision makers. Since responsiveness is an aggregate-level phenomenon, it must then be measured either across time within the same democratic system, or simultaneously across several systems. This would allow the necessary evaluation of the entire linkage chain running from citizens’ needs and preferences, over preferences expressed through participation, to preferences perceived, acted upon and dealt with by the elites” (794)

The main consequence of direct decision-making

The consequence of direct decision-making is self-development – it makes better citizens. Teorell’s definition of self-development is not clear. Most research is on the development of political efficacy – the belief that one has influence over government affairs. Also, the causal link is not clear. How do we know that it was direct decision-making that led to self-development?

The consequence of political discussion

The consequence of political discussion is that citizens become better informed, and form preferences. It can also lead to legitimacy of the democratic system: the discussion itself allows people to believe that government hears and understands their preferences; this belief is necessary for citizens to believe that their government is legitimate.

The causes of political participation

The two main causes of participation are resources and incentives. Resources can be physical (material, such as income and wealth), human (education, knowledge, and skills) and social (access to networks that recruit one into a participatory action).

Next are incentives – these can general or selective. Teorell does not define a general incentive – it seems to be an expected reward for the entire collective (or, society). Individuals can still benefit from the reward even if they do nothing about it. If the world was only general incentives, no one would participate- this is the collective action problem. Teorell details selective incentives, which individuals can get specific, individualistic rewards for themselves if they do participate – excitement, money – or they do because there is a social norm (“voting as an obligation”). Thus, people participate if they have the right kind or amount of incentives and resources.

The causes of political participation can lead to political inequality in democracy

If the causes of political participation are material conditions, then any inequality in material conditions becomes a cause of political inequality. Even if the rewards are “selective,” the selectivity may be biased, and thus the outcome is political inequality.

As we discussed, democracy does not necessarily lead to economic equality. Rather, economic inequality has risen alongside the rise of democracy. Political inequality through unequal participation is both a cause of the rise of economic inequality and a cause of democratic backsliding.

Democratic Backsliding: Definition and Measurement

September 11, 2022October 1, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000 ~ 4 Comments

What is democratic backsliding?

Democratic backsliding is when a democratic country shows signs of becoming autocratic or authoritarian. Backsliding can occur when a democracy has just a foothold (e.g. Poland in the early 1990s) or is firmly established as a democracy (the USA).

How do we know when democratic backsliding occurs?

Social scientists typically use democracy measures, such as Freedom House, or Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), or the Global State of Democracy, as a benchmark. First, they measure democracy in one year. That is their benchmark. Then, to measure change, in a subsequent year, they measure democracy again. A country that has a lower score from year to year may be backsliding.

However, democracy measures can have problems. A major problem is that they may not pick up smaller, more subtle signs of backsliding.

Enter Roberto Foa & Yascha Mounk. Their famous 2016 article, The Danger of Deconsolidation, used the World Values Survey, a cross-national survey dataset of many countries around the globe, to understand who supports democracy. They argued that major democracy measures do a passable job, but we also need to understand, from the ground level, changes in mass support for democracy.

In this post, we examine Foa & Mounk’s argument and some of their critics.

History of Democratic Backsliding Studies

The concept of “democratic backsliding” is also called “democratic deconsolidation.” An “established” democracy is consolidated. When it changes to authoritarianism, it has “deconsolidated.”

Democratic consolidation was a popular term in the 1980s and 1990s, around the time that the US had a policy of democracy promotion around the world. Around that time there was a proliferation of quantitative democracy measures.

Foa and Mounk in 2016 revived the term by trying to sound the alarm on “deconsolidation.” Because Foa and Mounk did not properly acknowledge the long history of democratic consolidation studies from the 1990s, they obscured those early studies’ original purpose, which was to sound the alarm on possible deconsolidation.

Foa and Mounk’s critics missed the point. We should be looking for the small and troubling signs of democratic backsliding. Foa and Mounk’s (F&M) 2016 article outlasts their critics because their fundamental point was correct, even if their measures of democratic backsliding had some flaws.

Democratic Backsliding is about Transition

Consolidation is mainly seen as a process from transition democracies to consolidated democracies. The concern has always been the survival of democratic regimes, and thus intrinsically about democratic backsliding. The emphasis of the 1990s literature seemed to be on how transition societies – especially Latin America and Eastern Europe – could solidify their democratic gains into long term stability.

But Consolidated/Consolidation have always been fuzzy concepts. The various definitions can be compared and contrasted, but in the end (it’s sometimes called, “democratic decay”), there has been no singular definition of what a consolidated democracy looks like or what the process of consolidation entails. There are some similarities across authors’ arguments. F&M’s definition is a good place to start, but in the end, they do not offer enough specifics to identify a consolidated from a transitional democracy.

The literature has tendrils in many topics, such as democracy, democratization, states and regimes, transitions and development, political behavior (voting especially), and democratic values, but also civil society, bureaucracy, and economic development.

In the end, the core idea is that democracy is under threat of backsliding.

Foa and Mounk’s The Danger of Deconsolidation

Foa & Mounk seek to warn us that we may be unjustifiably complacent about the well-being of consolidated democracies. We have not anticipated other extreme events (like the collapse of the USSR) and we may be in the midst of one now.

The authors note that, in North America and Western Europe, trust in institutions (such as parliament and the judicial system), party membership, and voter turnout has declined, and party identification has weakened. Voters are turning to anti-establishment parties, fueling a rise in populism. In these stable regions of the world, democracy seems to be in trouble.

Critics of the “decline of democracy” approach (Inglehart, Wezel, Norris, Dalton) argue that while support for particular governments regularly declines (what they call government legitimacy), support for democracy itself (what they call regime legitimacy) remains robust. The people know that democracy allows them these expressions of discontent and thus support the regime, but not the government.

F&M feel that that the critics argument is optimistic. They seek to challenge that view.

F&M use waves 3 through 6 of the World Values Surveys (1995–2014). With these data, they attempt to measure four types of regime legitimacy:

Support for the whole system
Support for “key” institutions of liberal democracy, e.g. civil rights
Willingness to advance political causes
Openness to authoritarian regimes such as military rule.

In their presentation style, they look at extreme values. The point of the article is to provoke and hunt for any sign, no matter how small, of deconsolidation.

1. Support for the whole system

In Figure 1, they measure support for the whole system with the “Percent of respondents rating it ‘essential’ (a rating of 10 on a 10-point scale) to ‘live in a country that is governed democratically’” (p. 7). They compare the US with “Europe.” The X axis is birth cohort by decade (1930s to 1980s) and the Y axis is percent that rated democracy as essential. Both the US and Europe show a negative relationship. The older cohorts (1930s to 1950s) still support democracy at above 50 percent. The younger cohorts (1960s to 1980s) are at 50 percent or less.

In Figure 2, their second measure of regime support is with “Percent responding that ‘having a democratic political system’ is a ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ way to ‘run this country,’ by age group.” They compare age groups in the US and Europe. Comparing age groups in the US as of 2011, the authors find a range of ca. 12 percent to nearly 25 percent, with older age groups evincing lower percentages. They find something similar in Europe, but the range is very small (from 6 percent to ca. 13 percent).

In sum, older people are more likely to support the regime than younger people.

2. Support for “key” institutions of liberal democracy, e.g. civil rights and 3. Willingness to advance political causes

It is possible that people can support democracy but not support its institutions or politically participate. Here, they don’t have graphs and don’t offer many numbers (but see Fig. 3).

They find that millennials support the idea that it is absolutely essential in a democracy for civil rights to protect liberty less (32 percent) than those born in the interwar and immediate post war environments (41 percent). The spread for Europe is much smaller (39 to 45 percent). They also find that, in the US, 14 percent of baby boomers argue that it is unimportant in a democracy that people “choose their leaders in free elections” as compared to millennials, 26 percent make that argument. In Europe, the spread is smaller and ranges from 9 to 13 percent. They looked at other regions of the world and did not find the same result.

Foa and Mounk claim that there is a widening gap between age groups in “political apathy.” Older cohorts are more likely to be interested in politics and to engage in political participation (both conventional/institutional and unconventional/non-institutional).

In sum, older cohorts are more likely to support the key institutions of democracy than post-baby boomer cohorts.

4. Openness to authoritarian regimes such as military rule

Here, they look for support among Americans and Europeans for military rule that they consider as an anti-democratic idea. Unlike the previous sections, in this section they combine income with age.

First, age: Overall, there is a trend in Americans who believe that it would be a good or very good thing if the army ruled the country (from 1 in 16 to 1 in 6). They note a predictable age gap in this attitude. “In Europe, the generation gap is somewhat less stark but equally clear, with 53 percent of older Europeans and only 36 percent of millennials strongly rejecting the notion that a government’s incompetence can justify having the army “take over”” (13).

Then, income. The authors looked at income groups and conclude that “whereas two decades ago affluent citizens were much more likely than people of lower income groups to defend democratic institutions, the wealthy are now moderately more likely than others to favor a strong leader who can ignore democratic institutions” (13).

And then, the combination of age and income. “In Europe in 1995, 6 percent of high-income earners born since 1970 favored the possibility of “army rule”; today, 17 percent of young upper-income Europeans favor it” (14).

In sum, they conclude that the affluent, the young, and the young and affluent are more likely to support military rule than other age and income groups.

“Is Democracy Deconsolidating?”

They ask the big question of whether all of this adds up to democratic deconsolidation. The authors present the finding of Przeworski and Limongi that “no consolidated democracy with a GDP per capita of over $6,000 in 1985 international prices has ever collapsed.”

The authors claim that this finding has blinded further research in the idea that consolidated democracies can deconsolidate. In this article they address whether data can tell us if stable, wealthy, and consolidated democracies can become unstable and deconsolidated.

How do we know if a democracy is consolidated? The authors quote Linz and Stefan: democracies are consolidated when they are the “only game in town.”

But the authors disagree with the premise, as they question how we would know if democracy is the only game in town. At the end of the article, Foa and Mounk offer their indicators of consolidated democracy:

“In our view, the degree to which a democracy is consolidated depends on three key characteristics: the degree of popular support for democracy as a system of government; the degree to which antisystem parties and movements are weak or nonexistent; and the degree to which the democratic rules are accepted.” (15)

In this article, they looked at “popular support for democracy,” but did not look directly at the degree to which antisystem parties are weak, or directly at the acceptance of democratic rules other than support for civil rights.

The authors note the rise of Trump, the rise of right wing populist parties, and the decline in approval of mainstream and long-established politicians as indicators of a challenge to democratic consolidation. As they summarize:

“Citizens of democracies are less and less content with their institutions; they are more and more willing to jettison institutions and norms that have traditionally been regarded as central components of democracy; and they are increasingly attracted to alternative regime forms.” (16)

Democracies that begin to deconsolidate may not fail, and democracy may not fall out of favor they argue. But, the signs of deconsolidation are apparent, they believe.

Critics of Foa and Mounk Miss the Point

Critique by Ronald Inglehart

Ronald Inglehart challenged the thesis of Foa and Mounk in a 2016 reply called “How Much Should We Worry?”, also published in the Journal of Democracy.

Inglehart argued that the strongest effects of democratic backsliding, as measured by Foa and Mounk, are in the US, and thus F&M’s argument is mostly about America. Inglehart blames political dysfunction, growing economic inequality, and growing political inequality.

Inglehart then adds “value change.” The societies that F&M examine are undergoing a shift from materialism to post-materialism. It is a movement from insecurity to security. Secure people are more tolerant and tend to support democracy. Yet, within these societies, there are people who face an “existential insecurity” and the economic crises has exacerbated this sense. Existential insecurity means greater support for authoritarianism, xenophobia, and a breakdown of norms.

The young are particularly vulnerable, Inglehart argues: “Existential security has been declining for most of the population—especially the young, who face high levels of unemployment, even among those with university or postgraduate educations”.” (21).

In the long-run, modernization will win out. Why? Economic development leads to democracy because it creates the conditions in which democracy can flourish – economic security, an educated workforce, and a rise in self-expressive values.

When one argues that modernization leads to democracy, it is a classic way of theorizing: looking back in time, tying together trends, calling the trend something – modernization, in this case – and then declaring it a theory that would predict such a thing.

Critiques of Data and Methods

The other critics of Foa & Mounk’s 2016 The Dangers of Deconsolidation tend to attack the data and methods, writing that the signs are too small to matter or can be erased if one uses different measures or a different interpretation of the results.

For example, Alexander and Welzel argue that

“Foa and Mounk heavily overstate the age differences in democratic support. Second, the obvious age pattern in indicators of political disaffection has little to do with generations; it is instead a lifecycle effect: younger people showed stronger signs of disaffection already in earlier decades, but this age pattern is not linked to a uniform temporal trend towards increasing disaffection in the electorates of mature democracies…

Alexander and Welzel are right in that a core problem of democratic backsliding is political inequality:

“The source of the problem is certainly not the younger generation and its alleged loss of support for democracy. Instead, it is the growing marginalization of the lower social classes, their resulting ideological divergence from the increasingly progressive mainstream and the failure of the established parties, as well as the media, to adequately address the legitimate concerns of the “left behinds.””

Pippa Norris argues that, although backsliding has occurred in some countries, it has not done so in the West.

“Culturally, when more systematic survey data is examined across a broader range of more than two-dozen Western democracies and over a longer time period, in fact the claims by Foa and Mounk fail to prove consistently reliable and robust. The generational gaps presented by the authors are exaggerated both by cherry-picking cases and by the visual presentation and treatment of the survey data. Far from a uniform ‘European’ pattern, countries vary widely in public perception of democratic performance and persistent contrasts are observable. The data also suggests a persistent life-cycle effect.”

Erik Voeten argues that there simply has been no change.

“Millennials are not very different in their views of political systems than were young people in the mid-1990s. The evidence suggests that millennials in the U.S. are somewhat more skeptical of democracy than people of similar ages were twenty years ago. Nevertheless this evidence comes from one survey. Moreover, when we look at confidence in actual democratic institutions, then the opposite pattern emerges: older generations have lost faith in U.S. Congress and the Executive to a greater extent than millennials.

The take-away is not that there is no threat to consolidated democracies but rather that this does not come from abstract procedural preferences among (some part of) the populace for alternative regime types.”

However, these critics miss the point of Foa and Mounk: there are small and troubling signs of deconsolidation. The signs may be small. But they are troubling. Social scientists tend to miss major historical happenings and then jump to explanations of them after they occur. Foa and Mounk warned us of this in the first paragraphs of their article.

Foa and Mounk argue that, to prevent democratic backsliding, we need to pay attention to the small changes.

Further Reading

Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. 2005. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Alexander & Welzel. 2017. “The Myth of Deconsolidation: Rising Liberalism and the Populist Reaction” Journal of Democracy.

Diamond, Larry. 1999. Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Kwak, Joonghyun, Irina Tomescu-Dubrow, Kazimierz M. Slomczynski, and Joshua K. Dubrow. 2020. “Youth, Institutional Trust, and Democratic Backsliding.” American Behavioral Scientist 64, no. 9: 1366-1390.

Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of democratic transition and consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and postcommunist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Przeworski, Adam, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi. 2000. Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Democracy and Economic Inequality

September 10, 2022September 22, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000 ~ Leave a comment

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 them to participate in democracy through protest should make policy-makers responsive to the public and reduce harm to them. Yet, this does not happen. Inequality rises in democracies.

Inequality may be the undoing of democracy.

This post explains why democracy has not reduced economic inequality. I rely on the innovative arguments of Dena Freeman in her seminal work, “De-Democratisation and Rising Inequality: The Underlying Cause of a Worrying Trend.”

Rising Inequality in Democracy: Elite Distribution and Voting Suffrage

Why has economic inequality increased alongside the rise in democratization? This is an old problem. Elites in the 19th century feared that the “universal suffrage” part of democracy would lead to the redistribution of wealth.

How would this redistribution happen? The democracy-reduces-inequality argument is the following:

In theory, the disadvantaged have greater voice in democracy, and therefore have greater impact on government response. This is an electoral politics argument about an agreement between the elite and the masses, otherwise known as “the class compromise of the post-war period.” It’s an exchange: The elite agree to redistribute economic resources through social welfare spending to the disadvantaged because the elite need the votes of the disadvantaged. The sheer size of the voting citizenry ensures that political parties operating within democracies must listen to a large and heterogeneous population. Thus, spending should be more universal than merely targeted to particular groups.

This is based, in part, on the median voter theory. This theory says that people are rational actors seeking to maximize benefits: parties want to win elections and thus end up proposing economic redistribution policies that benefit the median voter.

Democracies allow substantial bargaining power of labor — unions— that they can use to extract wages and other resources that reduce economic inequality.

Economic Redistribution Stopped Reducing Economic Inequality in the 1970s

Inequality did fall during the initial period of universal suffrage. But things changed dramatically during the 20th Century. As Piketty’s U-shaped graphs of economic inequality show, inequality declined, and then, in the 1970s, it rose.

Why the U turn? Unionization had helped to reduce economic inequality in the US, until the 1970s, when there was a great shift and a strong downturn in unionization. Some argue that the early 20th Century reduction in inequality was due to unusual circumstances. Once those circumstances ended, inequality resumed its normal upward path.

What were those circumstances? After the 1970s, there were major technological and economic changes:

Technological advances, especially computerization that lead to a dramatic increase for skilled workers and decreased wages for the “unskilled.”
Skyrocketing income and wealth compensation for CEOs and senior management.
Global finance: It has become easy to move money around the globe, and to hide it.

Freeman’s Thesis: Vox Populi Lost Control over the Economy

Dena Freeman offers a different argument. She argues that the vox populi, the people in democracy, have lost control over the economic process. “Decisions regarding the organisation and functioning of economic matters,” Freeman writes, “have become less subject to democratic influence.”

In essence, democracy itself has changed, and not for the better.

Within the democratic process, people ceded control over the economy to private interests and the market, and thus lost political control over how the economy functions. This loss of control limits the policies that elected representatives can create and get through the legislative system.

The result, Freeman argues, is that “economic policies have increasingly been made in the interests of capital and the class compromise of the post-war period has been undermined.”

Neoliberalism and Democracy

Freeman blames neoliberalism. The economic crises of the 1970s introduced a change in economic ideology toward what would be called, “neoliberalism.” In neoliberalism, the economy is self-regulating, and thus the state should leave it alone. According to Freeman, Hayek’s “ideas about constitutional limits to democracy were effectively ways to ensure that the economic sphere would be carefully insulated from the demos and thus that democracy’s redistributive threat would be neutralized.” The economy should be lightly managed by experts and technocrats whose prime directive is to let the market dictate its own future.

Neoliberalism demands free markets that spread across the world. The free movement of capital around the world accelerated after the 1970s. The rich got richer and hid their wealth in tax havens.

Monetary Policy, Trade Agreements, and Democracy

Independent central banks that set monetary policy are out of the control of vox populi. “Monetary policy is instead increasingly governed by the financial markets and the interests of financial capital,” writes Freeman. Policy is a tug of war between the interests of capital and the interests of labor, and capital is winning.

International trade agreements can create enduring and hard-to-revoke rights of capital in terms of strengthening property rights; these rights are designed to outlast the government that signed on to them, to endure as democratic elections produce new governments. Trade agreements can impose harsh penalties on governments that try to reverse the policy.

International Financial Institutions and Democracy

International Financial Institutions (IFIs) – G7 and G20, World Economic Forum, etc. – are global organizations that are not representative of all of the countries that they impact. Membership is based on invitation only, and the wealthy elite are the ones who control the invitations. These institutions define the space in which policies are discussed and decisions are made.

This restricts the policy options available to individual nations for a few reasons: The elite nations:

are deeply committed to neoliberalism and the global trade agreements that restrict national policies that could deal with within-nation income inequality;
promote international competition for international corporations to locate their businesses there (e.g. low corporate tax rates);
favor policies that promote economic growth instead of social welfare.

“In the post-1970s” Freeman writes, “firms and their interest associations have lobbied governments for rollbacks and efficiency-oriented reforms in national systems of social protection. They have argued that social programmes negatively affect profits, investment, and job creation and they have also used the threat of relocation to more favourable environments in order to put pressure on domestic policymakers.”

Rich countries have tools to resist these changes. Poor countries do not. As a result, the developing poor countries reduce public spending and take loans from the IMF and others to pay for what public spending they do.

The consequence is a spiral of debt and loans and more debt that reduces what little political leverage these countries have to change the policies of global finance. In addition, this debt is increasingly financialized, “packaged and repackaged in different forms of securities and traded on the bond market.” Thus, poor developing countries have a difficult time renegotiating and managing their debt with the rich countries.

In the mid-1970s, rich democracies decided to limit vox populi on their democratic control over the economic system and the distribution of economic resources, especially over social welfare.

“Two new approaches were developed at this time – New Public Management Theory (NPM) and Governance theory. Both promoted their changes in the name of costcutting and efficiency. NPM can be seen as an extension of neoliberal theory as applied to the public sector. It calls for governments to embrace private sector management strategies.”

While the de-centralization of decision making within governments over economic matters can be seen as, on paper, more democratic, it ignores the basic problem of political inequality:

“While some have argued that this new form of policy-making is in fact more democratic than top-down government – because a wider range of stakeholders are involved, including also NGOs, consumer groups and other elements of civil society – it must be remembered that the resources available to large companies, TNCs and business associations to engage in these processes is far, far greater than that available to civil society groups, many of which are poorly funded and under-resourced. As one commentator noted, it is like lining up rowing boats against battle ships. Rather the shift to decision-making in multi-stakeholder policy networks has led to an increased representation of the private sector, and thus of capital, in the policy making process.”

Summary and Conclusion

Democracy was supposed to reduce economic inequality through economic redistribution to the masses. As the masses allow the elite to become representatives, the representatives were supposed to allow political control over the economic policies that make sure redistribution works.

This worked, until the 1970s. After then, there were large scale changes to the economy. There was a technological change that rewarded a small group of workers. Growing automation will only accelerate this trend. CEO compensation went through the roof. And the rules of global finance, accelerated through neoliberalism, made it easier to move money around the world, incentivizing the wealthy to hide their wealth (Panama Papers) and create tax havens (Pandora Papers).

Freeman argues that the people mentioned in “We the people” — vox populi — have lost political control over the economy. Democracy outsourced knowledge on financialization to the market and to political appointees who believe in the power of markets.

The result is the inequality grows, and democracy does little to stop it.

Further Reading

Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson. 2008. Persistence of Power, Elites and Institutions. American Economic Review, 98: 267-291.

Boix, Carles. 2003. Democracy and Redistribution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brady, David, Beckfield, Jason & Wei Zhao. 2007. The Consequences of Economic Globalization for Affluent Democracies. Annual Review of Sociology, 33: 313-334.

Freeman, John, and Dennis Quinn. 2012. The Economic Origins of Democracy Reconsidered. American Political Science Review, 106: 58–80

Gradstein, Mark and Milanovic Branko. 2004. Does Liberte = Egalite? A Survey of the Empirical Links between Democracy and Inequality with some evidence on the Transition Economies. Journal of Economic Surveys, 18,4: 515-537

Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (trans: Arthur Goldhammer)

Timmons, Jeffrey. 2010. Does Democracy Reduce Economic Inequality? British Journal of Political Science, 40, 4: 741-757.

Why does economic inequality rise in democracies?

How Political Voice Fares in an Age of Rising Inequality: Frederick Solt’s Research on Economic Inequality and Democracy

July 5, 2019September 13, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

Political Voice and Economic Inequality

The basics of modern life — job, education, and income — can shape our interest in politics, our desire to discuss politics with others, and our decision to vote. In the parlance of social science, occupation and socioeconomic status may impact “political engagement,” otherwise known as political voice.

We politically engage, or not, during an age of rising economic inequality.

Economic inequality matters. It chastens social mobility: the rich stay rich and the poor have extreme difficulty, especially in hard times, to climb up the social ladder.

Economic inequality is something you can see. You can see somebody driving down the street in a car that you can’t afford. You can walk the city and gape at the rich neighborhoods. The economic “gap” can stimulate or irritate; it is something you feel.

Frederick Solt, now an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, thought that the economic inequality all around us influences our socioeconomic situation which, in turn, influences our political engagement.

This is a story of two of Fred Solt’s research articles on how political voice fares in an age of rising economic inequality.

Theories of Democratic Engagement

If economic inequality touches so many areas of modern life, then, he reasoned, it must also play a role in whether people care about politics and show up to the voting booth. But how can inequality – that there are rich and poor and that there is a large gap between them – influence political engagement?

Solt consulted the literature on politics and inequality and sorted through the explanations, old and new. He read Moore, Dahl, Brady, Schlozman, and Verba. He read de Tocqueville, Schattschneider, Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, Lijphart, and Lukes.

He built on their work and devised three main theories.

Power is Relative

One explanation is what Solt called, “relative power theory.” It works like this: in capitalist democracies, money translates easily into political voice. The rich have lots of money and enjoy strong connections to their fellow economic elite. Money and connections are resources that allow the rich, more so than the poor, to win open political conflicts over economic redistribution. You don’t need a conspiracy of the elite for this long-term winning to happen: it’s simply a matter of the rich fighting hard to win arguments in matters where their interests lie. The rich can even control the agenda – what gets said and debated, and whose voice is heard and how loud. The rich win so often that the poor are ground down, dispirited and broken. The poor see the arena from afar, but don’t think to enter it. Eventually, they don’t even care enough to watch the game on TV.

At high levels of economic inequality there is a very wide power gap. Over time, the rich gain even more power. As a result, the poor feel ineffectual and powerless.

The rich assume that they don’t have a worthy opponent among the poor; why do the rich fight in the political arena? Well, Solt reasoned, the rich still have to fight among themselves for resources. So, the rich engage in politics among themselves, leaving the poor to languish on the political sidelines.

Conflict Theory: Get in the Ring

Solt offered a competing explanation that he called, simply, “conflict theory.” The same things happen as in “relative power” theory, but the political outcome is different. In conflict theory, the poor see inequality as something to fight. What policy do they fight over? The poor want a policy called, “redistribution.” In redistribution, the pie is more equally shared, presumably through government policy. The rich do not mind some redistribution, but too much sharing would be too much for them. The poor, far from being ground down, broken and dispirited, are riled up about this inequality. They fight back, hard.

In conflict theory, greater inequality leads to more political engagement, not less.

Resource Theory of Democratic Engagement

Solt then wrote of a third theory, what he called, “resource theory.” It starts, like conflict theory and relative power theory, with the premise that the resources you have matters for political engagement. Now, this sounds similar to relative power theory. But in resource theory, economic inequality is a specific mechanism that differentiates rich and poor: it creates more resources for the rich to engage and less for the poor.

There’s another difference from relative power theory, and it’s in the assumptions as to why rich and poor would be politically engaged. In both relative power and conflict theories, the fight is over the political agenda and the distribution of resources.

In resource theory, people treat engagement as a cost-benefit decision. If they have the resources, they’ll engage. If they don’t, they won’t.

Inequality badly distributes the economic resources needed for political engagement. The rich pat their fat wallets and gaze upon their iPhone contact list chock-a-block with powerful friends and, gliding down the golden escalator, enter the political arena. The poor finger the lint in their pockets and see everyone they know in the same situation; they sit out the political fight.

Only in conflict theory are the poor politically mobilized. In relative power and resource theories, the poor are demobilized.

Solt wanted to see if some other factors, as suggested by the scholars before him, also explain political engagement. For example, people tend to vote if they are compelled, by law, to vote: He looked at “compulsory voting.” Solt thought that if you’re married with kids, you might care about politics, but you also might be too darn busy to do anything about it, and thus being married with kids would make you less likely to be politically engaged. He thought being in a labor union might make you more politically active. Same thing for churches – you can discuss all sorts of things in and around church, politics included. He also thought that people talk about politics more when there’s an election year. He included age of the respondents, as well as their gender, education, income, and employment status. He included some other stuff, too.

Look at the Evidence of the relationship between political voice and economic inequality

Theories are good in, well, theory. How can he know which theory is right? For that, he needed data.

If you want to know if people care about politics and vote, a good way is to look at surveys. Many cross-national surveys claim to have a representative sample of everyone in the country. The surveys that Solt was interested in had particular questions about socioeconomic status and political engagement. The surveys ask, how interested are you in politics? And they ask, how often do you discuss politics with your friends? And they ask, did you vote in the last election? With all that, he knew how to what extent survey respondents are interested in politics, how much they discuss politics, and whether they vote.

Solt thought these theories should be tested around the world. But, he reasoned, these theories would not work in all countries. He argued that the theories he came up with wouldn’t work in countries such as Afghanistan and Zimbabwe where the elites there win almost all the time and the authoritarian government represses everyone and, as a result, the poor have little chance to be engaged. He used survey data from a little over 20 democracies, like the UK, the USA, France, Germany, and other places where people can discuss politics openly, criticize the government, and probably not get shot while voting. The time period when those surveys were conducted was the 1980s and 1990s.

Fred Solt needed to measure “economic inequality” at the level of countries. In 2008, he turned to the Luxembourg Income Study, “LIS.” At the time, LIS was the best data available for comparing economic inequality across nations and time. Solt would later develop a better dataset for this purpose.

Results: A Relative Winner

Solt analyzed how economic inequality at the national level relates to political engagement for people and groups. He found that, across more than 20 democracies, people who live in high economic inequality countries are less likely to be interested in politics, to discuss politics with friends, and be less likely to vote.

Well, not all people: inequality doesn’t touch the richer folks in this way. In high economic inequality countries, the rich, compared to those lower down the social ladder, are more likely to be interested in politics, to discuss politics with others, and to vote.

What theory won?

It looks like relative power won and that’s bad news for democracy. He put it like this:

“…because it increases the relative power of richer citizens, economic inequality undermines political equality. The declining political engagement of nonaffluent citizens with rising inequality suggests that issues on which a consensus exists among richer individuals, such as redistribution, become increasingly unlikely even to be debated within the political process regardless of whether poorer citizens would care to raise them.” (2008: 57)

Resource theory also works because political engagement of the rich strengthens their control over the political apparatus. Almost tired of so much winning, the affluent control more and more of the political debate. Conflict theory lost: economic inequality was not associated with an increase in the political engagement of the less affluent.

In 2008, he published this paper in the American Journal of Political Science.

But there was more to do.

Solt’s Updates and Innovations to Analyses of Voice and Inequality

Fred Solt continued to publish various papers in the field of politics and inequality and in 2015 he revisited his 2008 paper with updated data, different specifications, and a data innovation.

In the 2008 paper, the data were a little old – the 1980s and 1990s. For the new paper, he updated the study to the early 21st Century, but just for Europe, albeit 25 countries of that continent.

He changed other things, too. One change was that his “conflict theory” was now “grievance theory.” Conflict and grievance work the same way: economic inequality deeply bothers the poor and the fact of high inequality should mobilize them to protest.

Protest is a kind of political engagement. For the 2015 paper, instead of discussion, interest, and voting, Solt looked at the chances a person in the last year would sign a petition, boycott, or attend a public demonstration.

As with the 2008 paper, Solt thought that the distribution of political power should boost everyone’s chances of participating. Drawing on the work of Hanspeter Kriesi from the European University Institute and Katerina Vrablikova now at the University of Bath, Solt reasoned that both presidential and federal systems allow a greater number of access points to the political machinery and thus better enable people to voice their policy-preferences within it. He knew from the literature that people in the newer democracies of Europe, such as Poland and Hungary, are less likely to protest than those in the older democracies, and so he also looked at the age of the democracy.

As with the 2008 paper, Fred Solt needed to measure “economic inequality” at the level of countries. To do that, Solt turned to one of 21st century social sciences’ most needed innovations: the Standardized World Income Inequality Database, or SWIID, that he had created. The SWIID deserves its own story, but for the moment, let’s remember that before the SWIID, measures of income inequality, usually with the Gini coefficient and put out by organizations such as LIS and the United Nations, was widely used, but there were problems: these measures were not available in many countries around the world; worse yet, for many countries, the measures were not comparable. Solt developed a methodology to make these measures more widely available and comparable; he “standardized” the measure, and the SWIID was made.

With the SWIID in his toolkit, Solt discovered that, even with 21st Century data and limiting the analyses to protest in Europe, relative power theory wins again. Europe’s affluent within high levels of economic inequality are more likely to protest than are the poor. “By increasing the political power of richer individuals relative to poorer ones,” Solt writes, “greater inequality leads people of all but the highest income quintile to become less likely to participate in nonviolent protests.” (1325) In 2015, he published the results in Social Science Quarterly.

Conclusion: Why the Rich Fight

An underlying assumption of the relative power theory is that the specter of too much economic redistribution motivates the rich to be engaged, and to stay engaged. It assumes, though with surveys we do not directly observe it, that the affluent are fighting to keep some of the inequality that benefits them.

We remember, too, that the rich engage in politics to battle their fellow members of the elite over money and power. The policy results, as Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found in 2014, are that the rich tend to get the policies they want, and the poor do not.

As titans battle in the political arena, leaving the rest of us on the hopeful end of a trickle-down economy, Solt’s articles tell a story of how the political voice of everyday folk fares in an age of rising economic inequality. As he concluded over a decade ago (2008: 58):

“Greater economic inequality increasingly stacks the deck of democracy in favor of the richest citizens, and as a result, most everyone else is more likely to conclude that politics is simply not a game worth playing.”

In the end, the rich fight among themselves to get more of what they have and to preserve as much of the inequitable status quo that society will allow.

Notes

This was written by me, Joshua K. Dubrow, and was funded in part by the National Science Centre, Poland (2016/23/B/HS6/03916). It is based on the articles “Economic Inequality and Democratic Political Engagement” by Frederick Solt in American Journal of Political Science 2008, 52(1): 48–60 and “Economic Inequality and Nonviolent Protest” by Frederick Solt in Social Science Quarterly 2015, 96(5): 1314-1327. I showed a draft of this piece to Fred Solt who, in response, kindly offered some factual corrections. I then revised the piece. Any errors in the piece then and now are mine.

Fred Solt’s SWIID is free and available on his website, fsolt.org, and he describes it at length in Solt, Frederick. 2016. “The Standardized World Income Inequality Database.” Social Science Quarterly 97(5):1267-1281.

I also reference the work of Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page (2014): ‘Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.’ Perspectives on Politics 12(3): 564–81.

On theory names: Solt built on the previous literature (see his extensive reference list in his articles) and he named the theories based on the literature he read.

From the 2008 to the 2015 paper, the expectations of relative power theory changes slightly. In the 2008 paper, Solt argued that economic inequality depresses everyone’s engagement, including the rich: “Inequality should therefore have a negative impact on the political engagement of richer citizens as well as poorer citizens, although its effect on the former should be smaller than its effect on the latter” (49). Indeed, in 2008, this is what Solt found (p. 56, Table 2). But in 2015, this expectation was not specifically mentioned, and the probabilities of the richest quintile reflect this expectation only in the case of signing a petition and boycotting, and not in attending a demonstration (p. 1324, Figure 2).

A word or two on the use of surveys to understand political voice: perhaps our theories of what drives political voice would be further strengthened if we knew the topics of engagement and protest. The best cross-national survey data are an excellent tool for the study of political voice, but past surveys are just one of many possible points of observation and they have unpleasant limits. With extant survey data on political voice, we do not directly see what the political rally or demonstration was about, or what was the subject of their political discussion, or what it said on the petition that they signed, or what product they boycotted. Qualitative data and protest event data drawn from newspapers are also tools to use, but they, too, have their limits.

Interview with Piotr Zagorski on Education and Support for Right-wing Populist Parties in Central and Eastern Europe

January 31, 2019September 16, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

Piotr Zagorski and Andrés Santana, of Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain, recently presented their paper, “Voice or Exit: Education, Support for Right-wing Populist Parties, and Abstention in Central and Eastern Europe,” at the Politics and Inequality conference held December 2018 in Warsaw, Poland.

Piotr Zagórski is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Faculty of Law, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He holds an MA in Sociology from Universidad de Granada. His research interests include electoral behavior with a special focus on turnout and comparative politics with an emphasis on European populist parties. Zagorski’s co author, Andrés Santana, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Pompeu Fabra University, an MA in Sociology from the Juan March Institute, and a Graduate Degree in Data Analysis from the University of Essex. Dr. Santana has published in the European Sociological Review and Politics & Gender, among others, as well as several book chapters and books. His fields of interest are electoral behavior, populist parties, political elites, women’s representation, research methodology, and quantitative research techniques.

We asked Piotr Zagorski for an extended abstract of their Politics and Inequality conference paper and, via email, some questions about their research.

Extended Abstract of Zagorski and Santana

The growth in the success of populist parties in many developed democracies has prompted a parallel increase in the studies on the electoral sociology of right-wing populist parties (RPP) in Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). However, the relationship between populism and turnout has been understudied in the literature. Existing scholarship fails to clarify whether voting for RPP and abstention are two largely interchangeable outcomes provoked by a common set of factors or two alternative courses of action undertaken by different types of individuals. If the former were true, RPP might be a corrective for democracy in terms of closing the representational gap for citizens whose preferences are unmet by the political supply of other parties. Thus, RPP might manage to reduce the existent political inequalities in political participation. This paper aims at examining the sociodemographic characteristics of those who vote for RPP and those who abstain, in comparison to those who cast their ballots for other parties. As education reduces the propensity of both voting for RPP and of abstention, we focus on explaining when low levels of education lead to voice (voting for RPP) and when do they increase the chances of exit (abstention). We estimate multinomial logistic regression models using cross-sectional data of the 2014 European Elections Study for 9 CEE countries. This approach enables us to show that education affects RPP voting and abstention differently. We find that, after taking into account anti-immigration attitudes and Euroscepticism, education has no independent effect on RPP support. Moreover, anti-immigrant and anti-EU attitudes do not mobilize highly educated citizens to cast a ballot for RPP. We also show that, although RPP are successful in drawing the low educated and anti-immigrant or Eurosceptic citizens to the polls, many of them choose to stay home on the election day.

Interview with Piotr Zagorski

The research co-authored with Andrés Santana that you presented at the Politics and Inequality conference was on voting for right wing populist parties in Central and Eastern Europe. How did you get interested in this topic? And how is this topic connected to other research that you are doing?

Nowadays it is quite hard to avoid to study populism in Political Science. Due to a remarkable number of papers presented on this topic during the last ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) General Conference in Hamburg, the joke was that it should be renamed as “European Consortium for Populism Research”. Given the recent surge of populist parties and candidates around the world, it does not come as a surprise that political scientists try to understand and explain this phenomenon. From my own perspective, as I come from Poland, my interest in right-wing populist parties (RPP) in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is obviously related to the success of Law and Justice and its consequences for democracy in my homeland.

As we point out in the paper, research linking RPP voting with electoral turnout is scarce, especially for CEE. Both Andrés and I are passionate about studying electoral turnout. Andrés wrote his dissertation on the rational calculus of voting, and he is also one of the supervisors of my dissertation on electoral turnout in CEE. In this paper, we wanted to assess the connections between turnout and voting for populist parties. The rationale behind it was to see whether RPP can have a corrective effect on democracy, by reducing some of the political inequalities produced by the distinct levels of electoral participation among citizens with different social profiles. To put it differently: can voting for RPP and abstention be considered as two alternative courses of action (voice or exit, respectively) for citizens who do not find non-populist parties as attractive options?

Continue reading →

Interview with Jan Falkowski on Political Power and Land Inequality in Poland

January 18, 2019September 16, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

Jan Falkowski, of the University of Warsaw, Poland, recently presented a paper, “Do Political and Economic Inequalities Go Together? Mayors’ Turnover, Elite Families and the Distribution of Agricultural Land” at the Politics and Inequality conference held in Warsaw, Poland.

Jan Falkowski is an Assistant Professor with the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences, Chair of Political Economy. His primary research interests are in the impact of institutions and politics on economic processes, and the reciprocal influence of economic conditions on institutional environment and political life. His paper, “Promoting Change or Preserving the Status Quo? The Consequences of Dominating Local Politics By Agricultural Interests” was published in Land Use Policy (2017), and his paper with Grażyna Bukowska and Piotr Wójcik, “The Political Power of Large‐Scale Farmers and Land Inequality: Some Evidence from Poland,” was just published by Sociologia Ruralis (2018).

Interview with Jan Falkowski

The research you presented at the Politics and Inequality conference was on the economic impact of the distribution of political power. How did you get interested in this topic? And how is this topic connected to other research that you are doing?

The interlinkage between political and economic power has always been of interest to me. Looking at the connection between political and economic inequalities seemed to me as a natural consequence of studying the former relationship since the distribution of power and the distribution of resources (be it political or economic) are closely related.

In this paper, you use an original dataset. Please briefly describe these data and why they are well-suited for your research.

Measuring economic inequality poses some difficulties as people are typically not so willing to share with others detailed information on how much wealth they have. We needed therefore to overcome this problem or, at least, to try to do so. We discovered that it should be possible to achieve this goal by looking at a specific, but coherent, part of the population, namely farmers. What we do in the paper is we take advantage of the fact that in Poland the information on those who received agricultural subsidies is public. So it is possible to gather, at the individual level, the information on how much money a given person received in the form of the so-called direct payments. In the system that Poland uses to subsidize farmers, direct payments are granted to farmers based on a national flat rate per eligible hectare, and – contrary to what we observe in many other EU Member States – they do not depend on the historical reference period. Thus, the distribution of direct payments at the municipality level can serve as a good approximation of land use distribution. This, in turn, can be used to measure the distribution of wealth. Obviously, the shortcoming is that it can serve as a good approximation of wealth distribution only in rural areas, in which the dependence on agriculture as a source of living is high. In the paper we collate these data with the data on mayors’ turnover which we use as an approximation of political inequality.

What surprised you most about your research on political power distribution?

The first surprise was to observe that, even though we have good theories describing potential determinants of the distribution of political power or the theories predicting various consequences that the distribution of political power may bring about, actual evidence (especially the quantitative one) on these issues is sparse. The second surprise was that the distribution of political power can have many different impacts also in areas which we typically do not associate so much with the way in which political resources are distributed.

Imagine that you only have a minute or two to tell someone about your paper. What is the main message of your paper that you want people to remember?

With the caveat that this is still ‘work in progress’, the main message would be as follows: in municipalities characterized by a higher levels of political inequality we observe that the most influential families are able to amass disproportionately large amount of land.

What’s the next step for your research on this topic?

The next step is to better understand the origins of political inequality and in particular to link it to the functioning of informal institutions as measured by (the changes in) religious behavior.

Please list two of your recent favorite articles or books in the field of politics and inequality, and why you chose them.

One could be Pablo Querubin’s work on political dynasties in Philippines and the other one the work by Michael Albertus on land reforms and land inequality. Both of them use fantastic datasets and very sound empirical methods to uncover new things about the way in which politics and economics interact with each other.

What’s an older article or book in the field of politics and inequality that you like, and why?

I think one can find a lot of inspirations from reading Albert O Hirschman. The relatively recently edited book by Princeton University Press entitled “The Essential Hirschman” could be a good reading I believe.

The interview was conducted via email by Joshua K. Dubrow, who also edited this piece, including the embedding of web links. This work was funded in part by the National Science Centre, Poland (2016/23/B/HS6/03916).

Political Inequality and the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine

January 10, 2017September 16, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

This is a guest post by Olga Zelinska, Polish Academy of Sciences, based on an early article (2015) on local Maidans.

The Start of Euromaidan in Ukraine

It was the summer of 2013 and the people of Ukraine felt helpless.

During this time of ‘soft authoritarianism,’ they saw rampant corruption while corporations and other business interests enjoyed a privileged place in the center of Ukrainian politics. The highly centralized state apparatus, controlled by one political and business ‘family’, made public influence over policy-making ineffective. Frustrated with meaningless mechanisms to participate in political decision-making and suffering from economic hardships, those unhappy with the status quo demanded social change with the contentious means.

While the right to political participation is guaranteed by the Constitution, Ukrainian democracy’s various mechanisms, such as public hearings or public councils, remained weak and did not bring the desired results.

The government’s order to reverse the foreign policy course on European integration was a last straw. Ukrainians marched onto public squares in Kyiv and in towns and villages throughout the nation.

It was the Maidan protest movement, and what was called the Revolution of Dignity.

From Euromaidan to Local Maidans

To understand the many local Maidans that had sprung from Euromaidan, I asked three main questions:

How did the claimants identify themselves and their actions?
How did they justify their actions?
What did the claimants want?

Data and Methods of the Study

I analyzed 94 resolutions issued by local Maidans in the 57 cities and towns of the country. My analysis suggests that the Revolution of Dignity was not only about European integration or the impeachment of Ukrainian President Yanukovych.

Results of the Study

I found that:

• Protestors, or “claimants” in the language of Contentious Politics (Tilly and Tarrow 2007) primarily identified with their right to direct democracy, including influence over national and local policies. Activists associated themselves with the popular assemblies, or ‘viches.’ The viches proclaimed their legitimate right to exist and promoted the decisions they adopted.

• The claimants framed their actions as a legitimate non-violent civic resistance campaign. They perceived themselves as “civil society in action,” guarding the country’s democracy by monitoring the government’s conduct of foreign policy and European integration, implementation of human rights, and protection of constitutional rights for peaceful assembly.

• National-level factors played a key role in leading people to the streets. Outrageous human rights violations, a deepening political crisis, and major institutional failures were, to the claimants, the key triggers of contention.

To address these problems, protesters demanded resignations of top national officials and snap elections of the president and the parliament. The desired changes included change in the ranks of the political elite and a significant transformation of political structures. Protesters issued further specific demands of increased public oversight and more meaningful and effective institutions of political participation. This included direct democracy, designed to enhance everyday citizen impact on political decisions.

This is based on the article “Who Were the Protestors and What Did They Want? Contentious Politics of Local Maidans across Ukraine, 2013-2014”, published in Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, issue 23 (4) Fall 2015: 379-400.

Olga Zelinska obtained her PhD at the Polish Academy of Sciences after completing her doctoral training at the Graduate School for Social Research. She was a Petro Jacyk Visiting International Graduate Student at the Center of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently a researcher, project PI. Institute of Social Sciences, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. “The Relationship between Social Movements and Political Parties for the Democratic Representation of Social Groups in Europe” project funded by Poland’s National Science Centre (UMO-2021/40/C/HS6/00229).

Further Reading

Zelinska, Olga. 2017. “Ukrainian Euromaidan protest: Dynamics, causes, and aftermath.” Sociology Compass. 1–12

Zelinska, Olga. 2020. “How Protesters and the State Learn From One Another: Spiraling Repertoires of Contention and Repression in Ukraine, 1990-2014.” American Behavioral Scientist, 64(9),

Zelinska, Olga. 2021. “How Social Movement Actors Assess Social Change: An Exploration of the Consequences of Ukraine’s Local Maidan Protests.” International Journal of Sociology, doi: 10.1080/00207659.2021.1910429

Cover photo by Volodymyr Tokar on Unsplash

Neoliberalism and Democracy

The planet earth swimming in an unreal sea of money

December 16, 2016September 24, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

This is a guest post by Alex Afouxenidis, Professor at the National Centre for Social Research, Athens, Greece. It is based on his chapter in, Political Inequality in an Age of Democracy (Routledge).

What is neoliberalism and how does it impact democracy?

Neoliberalism is based on the idea of ignoring fundamental human needs.

The success of neoliberal political strategies rests on a mixture of rhetoric and control of democracy’s major local and global institutions. It is also based on the erosion of the key actors and institutions that are the main underpinnings of contemporary democracies, such as pressure groups, civic organizations, and educational institutes.

In neoliberalism’s economic sphere, economic growth does not need to translate into growth of equality. Considering rising social, economic, and political inequalities, we are looking at abuse being taken for granted.

Table of Contents

What is neoliberalism and how does it impact democracy?

Understanding Democracies’ Political Shift toward Neoliberalism

The pervasive counter-democratic ideological force of neoliberalism has had a deep impact on people’s lives, identities and beliefs despite its obvious failure to sustain any meaningful sense of ‘economic growth’. This is evident in many regions across the world where economies are being re-structured and reformed generating greater forms of inequality and limiting political freedom. Political crises have become everyday occurrence for many nations. Governments are in a continuous state of instability and many turn to (semi?) authoritarian rule in order to retain power.

Market idealization is not working: it has generated profound constraints on people’s liberty and self-determination.

As one reflects upon the countless analyses and informed criticisms on the impact of neoliberal ideology and strategy, it becomes increasingly clear that the main constitutive element of this sort of ‘philosophy’ is related to the idea of ignoring fundamental human needs. This conceptualization has generated a rupture with respect to western classical liberal discourses such as those, for example, put forward by J. Locke, J.S. Mill or J. Rawls. For, even though they strongly suggested personal autonomy, they equally forcefully reflected upon the idea that if the needs of individuals are not adequately met then liberty will be limited.

This radical shift in the liberal ideological agenda that emerged during the early 1980s used the language of freedom and individuality to promote a basically dehumanizing and oppressive status quo. Humanity thus was re-defined vertically and horizontally along and across the usual bi-polarities: poor/wealthy, in/out of work, males/females, gay/straight, western/non-western, north/south, black/white, moral/immoral, productive/un-productive, private/public and so forth. The question, in this respect, is not so much whether these categories actually exist or not, but rather how and in which ways they are used to generate and reproduce a vocabulary and a subsequent series of political practices and agendas.

In fact these are populist images of societal structures based on rather simplistic belief systems. In cultural terms, they advocate exclusivity of the ‘West’ over all others, intentionally promoting ideas which view the ‘West’ as a single all embracing cultural unit. In political terms, the market and economic ‘freedom’ are dissociated from the inner workings of democracy. Hence, if democratic procedures and/or processes contradict neoliberal thinking, then they may be overlooked.

Success of neoliberal political strategies rests on a mixture of rhetoric, force and, more importantly, control of the major local and global institutions such as the state and/or international financial organizations. In addition, it is also very much based on the slow or rapid fragmentation and, ultimately, severe erosion if not destruction of diverse agents such as public actors, pressure groups, civic organizations, think tanks, educational institutes and a variety of other structures which have formed the main underpinnings of contemporary democracies.

Neoliberalism and Four Dimensions of Democratic Organization

Over the past 35 years, a very powerful fable has been used to legitimize economic and social intervention operating across the four major areas of democratic organization, namely the economic, political, social and cultural spheres.

Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Economic Sphere

In the economic sphere, the main neoliberal idea is that societies and countries have to shift away from policies related to integration and replace them with policies – and the corresponding ideologies – of divergence. Economic growth therefore does not need to translate into growth of equality.

Divergence and accompanying growing gaps in political inequality and social inequality have become accepted as systemic norms.

Accordingly, the nature of political systems has to be altered to accommodate for increased inequality, inequity and exploitation coupled by a reduced public sphere and an enlarged, dominating private sector through the diminution of all sorts of political participation and a reduction of the state’s capacity to organize civil life.

Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Cultural Sphere

In simpler terms, in an enforced alteration of political culture, the façade of a well organized democracy is only required to counter-balance the harsh re-constitution of society: to make it somewhat more respectable to the eyes of people. In total, neoliberal strategies have played a significant role in the realignment of the cultural sphere and cultural politics.

In global terms ‘neoliberalism’ itself has become part of popular culture packed with iconic figure heads such as Thatcher or Reagan and reactionary representational references to anti-statism, individuality, and consumerism.

*DALL-E “Gustav Klimt painting of democracy and money”*

Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Crisis

Although some writers seem to be rather optimistic on the reversal of the neoliberal political project, mostly because of the effects of the current crisis, we should be more cautious.

For a long time the system has gone through various crises, and has nevertheless flourished despite massive reactions from a variety of people and organizations across the world. Neoliberal ideology has not been fundamentally challenged and if anything it seems that neoliberalism has gained, for example via the post-2008 crisis, influence and as a consequence a whole new range of economic, political, social and cultural strategies have been deployed.

The political process has been ‘de-legitimized’ to a large extent and liberal democracy appears deficient, and yet for the neoliberal political agenda this is probably good news. When one looks at the rising figures of social and political inequality, the widening gap between rich and poor and instances of extreme poverty within and across nations and regions, one looks at the same time at abuse being taken for granted. And much more research is required precisely on that last point.

Prof. Alex Afouxenidis is a Researcher at the National Centre for Social Research, Athens, Greece and specializes in Political Sociology. He is the editor of The Greek Review of Social Research, and recently edited a special issue on social media and politics. He can be reached at www.ekke.gr and afouxenidis@ekke.gr

This piece is based on the chapter “Neoliberalism and Democracy”, in Dubrow, J. (ed), Political Inequality in an Age of Democracy: Cross-national Perspectives, London: Routledge, pp. 40-48.

Elites care about inequality, but probably not in the way that you think

October 18, 2016September 30, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000 ~ Leave a comment

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 more aware of inequality as a political problem. Yet they do not view equitable income re-distribution as the answer.

The Problem of an Elite in Democracy

Latin America has some of the highest levels of economic inequality in the world, and it also has many democracies.

That a tiny elite accumulates excessive wealth and power prompts concern about the future of democracy. We know from several studies that this inequality may generate conflict and support for non-democratic leadership — a perilous situation recognized by citizens of the United States and Europe.

Questions:

What do elites themselves think about the risks of inequality?
Do they feel comfortable living with these risks, or do they feel worried about them?
And if they feel worried, what are they willing to do about it?

Exploring Elites and Democracy in Latin America

To answer these questions, Latin America provides a very useful set of cases.

Many large and durable democracies in the region, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, have high levels of economic inequality even though this inequality creates urban violence and social unrest. Extreme inequality in a democracy is a problem for average citizens because it puts in doubt Lincoln’s principle of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Meanwhile, elites also have good reasons to fear inequality as they are clearly impacted by the political turmoil and the social violence that can follow.

I looked at the University of São Paulo survey conducted in six Latin American countries of over 800 members of the elite in the realms of politics, business, and civil society.

I found out that most of the elite share the usual concerns about inequality and democratic stability.

But the relationship between concern and action has not to do with inequality itself, but with the strength and stability of democracy.

Stronger and more stable democracies tend to have more members of the elite concerned about inequality. This seems intuitive, since stronger democracies may have more to lose from the sort of social menaces that accompany extreme inequality.

But if concern over the perils of high inequality would, rationally speaking, lead the elite to act to reduce inequality, then my second finding is counter-intuitive:

I also found out that, by and large, the Latin American elite have little desire to lower the level of economic inequality.

Inequality, over the past decade, has decreased significantly in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Chile. I found that countries whose inequality dropped also have elite who show the highest levels of concern. Brazil is a very interesting case in this regard. The country’s inequality has recently fallen but remains among the highest in the world. As in other Latin American countries, Brazilian elites share concern over the problem of inequality, but do not feel that they should be part of the solution. For example, they are strongly averse to paying more taxes, as shown in the figure below.

Figure 1. Brazilian Elite Agreement with Further Social Investment and with Further Taxation

Source: USP 2008

Except for union leaders, all elite sectors in Brazil scored much higher for welfare spending than for taxation. Union leaders may believe that they will not be the ones paying extra taxes, as they often picture themselves as part of the working class, not the elite. Business elites seem to be aware that they would be preferential targets of taxation. On average, the elite do like the idea of increasing social welfare, as long as they are not asked to contribute more to it.

Summary

In sum, the elite often worry a lot about inequality. But they also feel that they get away with doing nothing substantive about it, and feel no need to sacrifice their own resources to end it.

This article is based on the chapter, “Elite Perception of Inequality as a Threat to Democracy in Six Latin American Countries,” in the book, Political Inequality in an Age of Democracy: Cross-national Perspectives.

Matias Lopez is a PhD candidate in political science at the Universidad Católica, Chile. His research is on democratic stability in contexts of high inequality. He can be reached at matiaslopez.uy[at]gmail.com

The Political Voice of Xenophobes

October 4, 2016September 16, 2022 ~ jdubrow2000

This is a guest post by Irina Tomescu-Dubrow, Polish Academy of Sciences and Kazimierz M. Slomczynski, The Ohio State University

Xenophobes and those discriminated based on ethnicity have political voice

In an inclusive and tolerant society that values political equality, expression of political voice is supposed to be open to everyone.

Let’s consider those who feel discriminated for their ethnicity and those who espouse anti-immigrant attitudes, i.e. xenophobes – two groups at the heart of the socio-cultural cleavage common in European democracies.

Are they similar?

Definitions of Xenophobes and the Discriminated

We define the ethno-discriminated as people who feel they were discriminated against based on their culture, ethnicity, religion or language. We define xenophobes as individuals who express the views that immigrants damage the economic, cultural and social fabric of the receiving country.

Ethno-discriminated and xenophobes can be seen as extremes, and form, in principle, minorities in opposition to each other.

Yet, scholars have analyzed these groups’ political behaviors separately, that is, either for ethnic minorities, or for persons with anti-immigrant attitudes. Moreover, far more attention is given to ethnic minority participation.

Our Study of the Political Voice of Xenophobes and the Discriminated

We used the European Social Survey 2012 to examine how these groups engage with two complementary expressions of political voice: attitudes toward key democratic institutions, and political participation.

To understand how the ethno-discriminated and the xenophobes behave politically, we argued that marginalization theory and group conflict theory should be synthesized. We argued that the two groups are similar in some civic domains while quite different in others.

We found clear empirical support for these two hypotheses:

1. Trust in institutions matters

On trust in democratic institutions, the effect of belonging to either of these two groups is negative and relatively strong (net of other factors).

2. Those discriminated based on ethnicity participate in politics more than the xenophobes

On political participation, those who feel ethno-discriminated tend to participate more, while xenophobes tend to participate less (in comparison with the wider society).

Moreover, feeling discriminated based on ethnicity has a positive influence on working with political parties or other organizations. We also predicted that xenophobes would differ significantly from the ethno-discriminated, but not from the wider society. Yet, we found that, other things equal, xenophobes are engaged in this kind of activity significantly less than the society’s majority.

Future studies of the political participation of xenophobes should focus on national contexts

Other political contextual factors likely influence the democratic engagement of these groups. We suspect that a substantial presence of right-wing parties and the strength of the multicultural environment are key factors that would determine how the ethno-discriminated and the xenophobes participate.

In political campaign seasons, right-wing parties hold political rallies that attract the xenophobic and repel the ethno-discriminated. Once in government, right-wing parties use legitimate democratic platforms – parliamentary debates, for example – to publicly express their worldviews. Both situations attract media attention and thus right wing parties can use newspapers, television, radio and Internet to broadcast xenophobia. This environment would likely encourage expression of relatively unpopular, anti-immigrant policy preferences in either forums of public discourse – such as lawful demonstrations – or to work directly with the right-wing political organizations.

The extent to which this environment discourages the democratic engagement of the ethno-discriminated depends on the countervailing multiculturalist forces that already exist in the political environment (e.g. the strength of pro-immigrant left-wing parties and the country’s recent history in promoting multiculturalism and fighting xenophobia).

This article is based on the chapter, “Democratic Engagement of Xenophobes and the Ethno-Discriminated in Europe,” in Political Inequality in an Age of Democracy: Cross-national Perspectives, edited by Joshua K. Dubrow (Routledge 2015).

Irina Tomescu-Dubrow is a Professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Director of the Graduate School for Social Research.

Kazimierz M. Slomczynski is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University.

What is the relationship between political participation and democracy?

What is political participation?

Political participation is an attempt at influence.

Political participation is direct decision-making.

Political participation is political discussion.

Some consequences of political participation for democracy

The consequence of influence attempts

The main consequence of direct decision-making

The consequence of political discussion

The causes of political participation

The causes of political participation can lead to political inequality in democracy

What is democratic backsliding?

How do we know when democratic backsliding occurs?

Related to this article

History of Democratic Backsliding Studies

Democratic Backsliding is about Transition

In the end, the core idea is that democracy is under threat of backsliding.

Foa and Mounk’s The Danger of Deconsolidation

1. Support for the whole system

In sum, older people are more likely to support the regime than younger people.

2. Support for “key” institutions of liberal democracy, e.g. civil rights and 3. Willingness to advance political causes

In sum, older cohorts are more likely to support the key institutions of democracy than post-baby boomer cohorts.

4. Openness to authoritarian regimes such as military rule

In sum, they conclude that the affluent, the young, and the young and affluent are more likely to support military rule than other age and income groups.

“Is Democracy Deconsolidating?”

Critics of Foa and Mounk Miss the Point

Critique by Ronald Inglehart

Critiques of Data and Methods

Foa and Mounk argue that, to prevent democratic backsliding, we need to pay attention to the small changes.

Why does economic inequality rise in democracies?

Rising Inequality in Democracy: Elite Distribution and Voting Suffrage

Economic Redistribution Stopped Reducing Economic Inequality in the 1970s

Freeman’s Thesis: Vox Populi Lost Control over the Economy

Neoliberalism and Democracy

Monetary Policy, Trade Agreements, and Democracy

International Financial Institutions and Democracy

Summary and Conclusion

Political Voice and Economic Inequality

Theories of Democratic Engagement

Power is Relative

Conflict Theory: Get in the Ring

Resource Theory of Democratic Engagement

Look at the Evidence of the relationship between political voice and economic inequality

Results: A Relative Winner

What theory won?

Solt’s Updates and Innovations to Analyses of Voice and Inequality

Conclusion: Why the Rich Fight

Interview with Piotr Zagorski

Interview with Jan Falkowski

The Start of Euromaidan in Ukraine

From Euromaidan to Local Maidans

Data and Methods of the Study

Results of the Study

What is neoliberalism and how does it impact democracy?

Understanding Democracies’ Political Shift toward Neoliberalism

Market idealization is not working: it has generated profound constraints on people’s liberty and self-determination.

Neoliberalism and Four Dimensions of Democratic Organization

Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Economic Sphere

Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Social and Political Spheres

Neoliberalism and Democracy: The Cultural Sphere

In global terms ‘neoliberalism’ itself has become part of popular culture packed with iconic figure heads such as Thatcher or Reagan and reactionary representational references to anti-statism, individuality, and consumerism.

Neoliberalism, Democracy, and Crisis

Do the elite care about inequality?

The Problem of an Elite in Democracy

Exploring Elites and Democracy in Latin America

I found out that most of the elite share the usual concerns about inequality and democratic stability.

I also found out that, by and large, the Latin American elite have little desire to lower the level of economic inequality.

Figure 1. Brazilian Elite Agreement with Further Social Investment and with Further Taxation

Summary

Xenophobes and those discriminated based on ethnicity have political voice

Definitions of Xenophobes and the Discriminated

Our Study of the Political Voice of Xenophobes and the Discriminated

1. Trust in institutions matters

2. Those discriminated based on ethnicity participate in politics more than the xenophobes

Future studies of the political participation of xenophobes should focus on national contexts