Circles of Solidarity: Redistribution and the National Contexts of Diversity

• In Event: Diversity, Immigration, and Redistribution

Abstract

The relationship between redistributive policy and racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity has gained significant scholarly attention in recent years. Macro-comparative research in political economy has cemented the notion that more diverse democracies are less cohesive and thus maintain smaller welfare states. However, a separate literature, focused on individual-level behavior, has found that intergroup solidarity varies by its contextual environment, particularly by the levels of intergroup inequality and geographic isolation. How, then, do different socioeconomic and geographical structures influence the relationship between ascriptive diversity and redistribution in different democracies? Bridging the gap between the two debates, I argue that higher diversity dampens welfare policies only and insofar as it is reinforced by either intergroup inequality or by regional segregation. These two mediating factors, however, have different redistributive implications. Diversity with higher intergroup inequality fractures national solidarity along class lines, and, therefore, advances regressive welfare policies that underprioritize the needs of poorer groups. Diversity with higher regional segregation, by contrast, fosters regional solidarities that advance decentralized redistribution at the expense of a robust national system. I find empirical support in these hypotheses using cross-sectional time-series data from 22 developed democracies over 31 years. My paper, therefore, not only demonstrates that racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity operates as part of complex social structures, but also that the latter have different redistributive implications.

Author

• Alon Yakter, Tel Aviv University