Status Inequality and Political Preferences

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

While income and wealth inequality have generated significant debates in academia and the policy world in recent years, the idea of status-based inequality has not received enough attention. Yet important political phenomena, including the rise of right-wing populism as manifested through the Trump presidency and Brexit, can only be explained by accounting for the effects of status inequality. On one hand, we observe that the white working class in the West is increasingly willing to vote against its economic interests in order to preserve its status hierarchy, while on the other, indigenous movements across Latin America, caste-based mobilization in India, and post-Apartheid South Africa consistently remind us about the relevance of recognition over strictly material goals. This panel pulls together research from both advanced industrialized countries as well as the developing world to reflect on the effects of status inequality on political preferences.

The first paper explores why political elite from marginal groups often seem to ignore social development even when the vast majority of their constituents live in poverty. Based on comparative historical analysis of two Indian states, it finds that under conditions of high status inequality, marginal groups prioritize concern of dignity and representation over pure redistributive policies. The second paper takes on a similar puzzle from the perspective of voters – why poorly governing ethnic parties continue to find support? Based on ethnographic and experimental evidence from Karachi, Pakistan, the paper finds that in-group members who face more discrimination are more likely to value dignity concerns and hence more willing to trade-off good governance with descriptive representation. The third paper explores the phenomenon of in-group policing in stigmatized groups. Through experimental evidence on African Americans, the paper finds that individuals with higher levels of perception of collective costs due to negative stereotyped behavior by their group members are more likely to engage in ingroup policing. The papers develops a novel measure of individual perceptions of collective costs and defends it against related concepts like linked fate. The fourth paper tackles the question of subnational variation in support for populist radical right parties – why are such parties more successful in areas with low levels of ethnic diversity or those that are not economically depressed? Drawing on experimental and ethnographic evidence from Finland and France, it argues that this variation in support for populist radical right parties is shaped by spatial inequalities in access to public services and economic opportunity, which - combined with constrained mobility - affect citizens’ perceptions of their status, social membership, and receptiveness towards these parties’ rhetoric.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Politics of Dignity: Are Ethnic Parties Bad for Development? - Poulomi Chakrabarti, Queen's University/ Harvard University

• Ingroup Policing and Perceptions of Collective Costs among Black Americans - Hakeem Jerome Jefferson, Stanford University

• Residential Constraints and the Political Geography of the Radical Right - Pauliina Patana, Harvard University

Chair

• Katherine J Cramer University of Wisconsin, Madison

Discussants

• Pavithra Suryanarayan Johns Hopkins University

• Katherine J Cramer University of Wisconsin, Madison