Fair Enough, Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This author-meets-critics panel will discuss the forthcoming book by Charlotte Cavaille, titled Fair Enough, Support for Redistribution in the Age of Inequality.

What explains the public's muted response to rising inequality? To answer this question, Fair Enough proposes and tests a new framework for studying attitudes toward redistributive social policies. These attitudes, the book argues, are shaped by at least two motives. First, people support policies that increase their own expected income. Second, they support policies that move the status quo closer to what is prescribed by shared norms of fairness. In most circumstances, saying the “fair thing” is easier than reasoning according to one's pocketbook. But there are important exceptions: when policies have large and certain pocketbook consequences, people take the self-interested position instead of the “fair” one. Fair Enough? builds on this simple framework to explain puzzling attitudinal trends in post-industrial democracies including a decline in support for redistribution in Great Britain, the erosion of social solidarity in France, and a declining correlation between income and support for redistribution in the United States.

Fair Enough lies at the intersection of several subfields in political science, including political economy, comparative politics, American politics and comparative political behavior. The panelists reflect this diversity of approaches. The panel will start with a short overview of the book provided by Cavaille. Each panelist will then critically engage with the book's argument. Two questions will guide their interventions:
1) What are the two main theoretical and/or methodological insights gained reading this book? (i.e., what might one think about or do differently after reading it?)
2) What are the book's main weaknesses and how might future research go about addressing them?

The session will conclude with an open discussion led by the panel chair. To enable audience engagement, attendees are encouraged to read either the book's introductory chapter and/or a 35 pages document summarizing the book's main argument. Both can be found at: https://charlottecavaille.com/book-project/ .

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Chair

• Alan M. Jacobs University of British Columbia

Presenters

• Peter A. Hall Harvard University

• Jonathan Rodden Stanford University

• Gwyneth McClendon New York University

• Andrea Louise Campbell Massachusetts Institute of Technology