Political participation and new technologies

Digital technologies have deeply affected the way people think and act politically, as it has happened in many other aspects of individual and social life. This has led many scholars to update and reconsider some consolidated visions on political participation, starting from the definition of political participation itself. In this article I review the main findings of research on e-participation with respect to different types of activism, from individual acts to activities taking place in collective settings, like those of social movements and political parties. Finally, I reflect on the consequences of new digitally-driven forms of participation for the health of democracy, considering three specific aspects: participation inequality, the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of digital activism, polarization. As we will see, each of these fields shows a lively ongoing debate among observers

Essays on archaic institutions and modern technology

I present three essays discussing the impact of archaic institutions and technology on inequality in wages and political participation. First I examine a modern facet of the Indian caste system: political quotas for disadvantaged minorities and their impact on political participation. I find that aggregate turnout falls by 9% of the baseline and right-wing parties win 50% more often, but electoral competition is not significantly affected. Detailed individual-level data for one state suggests that voter participation falls among women and minorities. This suggests that restricting candidate identity to minorities may cause some bias in voter participation. Next, I study caste and human capital: specifically why workers remain in lowpaying hereditary occupations, providing an explanation for both occupational specialization and hereditary occupations. I use a simple model of insurance provision in which parents pass on human capital to their children in return for insurance in the event of sickness, and find that workers with low human capital are likelier to participate in the arrangement, and that a higher cost of sickness can sustain higher human capital transfers. I conclude by studying human capital and technology- the impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on wage inequality. We tested the hypothesis that information and communication technologies (ICT) polarize labour markets, by increasing demand for the highly educated at the expense of the middle educated, with little effect on low-educated workers. Using data on the US, Japan, and nine European countries from 1980-2004, we find that industries with faster ICT growth shifted demand from middle educated workers to highly educated workers, consistent with ICT-based polarization. Trade openness is also associated with polarization, but this is not robust to controlling for Research and Development. Technologies account for up to a quarter of the growth in demand for highly educated workers

The inequality of electoral participation in Europe and America and the politically integrative functions of the welfare state

Electoral turnout is shown to be higher and less socially skewed in member states of the enlarged European Union than in the United States. The differences in the levels of turnout can partly be related to differences in election procedures, but since the procedural rules provide similar incentives or disincentives to all social groups they cannot explain the much higher inequality of electoral participation in America. There is some evidence to sustain the notion that the higher inclusiveness of the West European welfare state fosters political integration and the equality of electoral participation. In line with this notion differences between Europe and America diminish considerably when the analysis is confined to the pensioner generation whose integration into welfare state schemes is largely similar on both sides of the Atlantic. --

Technical Change and Polarization of the Labor Market: Evidence for Brazil, Colombia and Mexico

We use occupations descriptions for Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, to build computer-use related tasks intensities, and link then to series of cross sections of data of each country in order to empirically assess to what extent the observed empirical regularities, and the reallocation of workers across occupations that require different tasks intensities, are consistent with the SBTC or polarization models. We find an increase of both wages and workers at the extremes of the wage or skills occupations distribution, the less routinaire/computerizabe, particularly pronounced in the period since personal computers began to be introduced in the region. This finding, along with other empirical regularities, provides support for some of the main implications of the polarization model in the cases of Colombia and Mexico.Relative Wages, Income Distribution, Technical Change.

Policy Platforms, Campaign Spending and Voter Participation

We model electoral competition between two parties in a winner-take-all election. Parties choose strategically first their platforms and then their campaign spending under aggregate uncertainty about voters' preferences. We use the model to examine why campaign spending in the United States has increased at the same time that politics has become more polarized. We find that the popular explanation ­ better targeting of campaign spending ­ is not a likely explanation. While better targeting does lead to greater spending, it leads to less polarization. Instead we argue that the likely explanation is that voters references have become more volatile. This will both raise campaign spending and increase polarization. At the same time it is consistent with the observation that voters have become less committed to the two parties.Non Voting Paradox, Electoral Plataforms, Turnout

Universal versus economically polarized change in age at first birth : a French–British comparison

France and the United Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s represented two contrasting institutional models for the integration of employment and motherhood: The ‘universalistic’ regime type offering subsidized child-care and maternity-leave benefits at all income levels; and the ‘means-testing’ regime type mainly offering income-tested benefits for single mothers. Using the two countries as comparative case studies, we develop and test the hypothesis that the socio-economic gradient of fertility timing has become increasingly mediated by family policy. We find increasing polarization in age at first birth by pre-childbearing occupation in the U.K. but not in France. Early first births persisted in the U.K. only among women in low-skill occupations, while shifts towards increasingly late first births occurred in clerical/secretarial occupations and above. Age at first birth increased across all occupations in France, but was still much earlier on average than for all but low-skill British mothers

Employment Data for Buffalo

The types of jobs available in Buffalo have changed post-recession, with midlevel skilled jobs disappearing and high and low skill jobs growing. The loss of jobs in fields such as teaching, office administration, factory work and construction work during the recession is exacerbated by the fact that many midlevel jobs, such as manufacturing, are being automated or sent to cheaper markets. Growth has occurred on the high and low skill ends of the spectrum, however, with increases in fields that require high-level business skill, healthcare expertise, computer training, engineering, etc. At the low end, there has been growth in food preparation, personal care, and jobs such as store clerks and child care providers. These changes are reflected in the fact that 31.2% of employed persons in Buffalo work in management, professional, and related occupations, and 20.8% work in service occupations, as of 2012. The data suggests the need for workers in Buffalo to acquire more education, training, and skills to ameliorate growing inequality and polarization in the job market, and for expansion of policies like living wages to ensure that the high number of low-skill jobs does not result in higher poverty

Group Violence, Ethnic Diversity, and Citizen Participation: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper addresses the impact of violent conflict on social capital, as measured by citizen participation in community groups defined for four activity types: governance, social service, infrastructure development and risk-sharing. Combining household panel data from Indonesia with conflict event information, we find an overall decrease in citizen contributions in districts affected by group violence in the early post-Suharto transition period. However, participation in communities with a high degree of ethnic polarization is less strongly affected and even stimulated for local governance and risk-sharing activities. Moreover, individual engagement appears to be dependent on the involvement of other members from the own ethnic group, which points to emphases on bonding social networks in the presence of violence. Finally, in conflict regions, the wealthier households are more likely to engage into cooperative and infrastructure improvement activities, while they are dropping from security groups. On the contrary, the poorest households get more involved in social service activities and less in infrastructure groups. Our results illustrate the danger of generalizations when dealing with violence impact on community activities. We found a large variety of responses depending on the considered activity and its expected economic or social function. We also found large observed and unobserved individual heterogeneities of the effect of violent conflict on activity participation. Once an appropriate nomenclature of activities is used and intensive controls for observed and unobserved heterogeneity are performed, we found that some activities can actually be stimulated by conflict situations. In this respect, the ethnic configuration of society seems to be central in understanding this type of social capital building.

The Politics of Fragmentation in an Age of Scarcity: A Synthetic View and Critical Analysis of Welfare State Crisis

A general perception of crisis at the end of the postwar period of growth has spawned two types of theoretical response: while a conservative theory of overload focusses on ungovernability caused by postmaterialist value change, radical analysis points to the structural contradictions of the welfare and intervention state. This article suggests that the current crisis is characterized by postmaterialist persistence and structural contradictions under the conditions of economic constraint. It examines polarization and potential mobilization of fragmented postindustrial societies in the context of neo-conservative politics, and it suggests a regime of economic dualism and/or corporatism as the most likely outcome

DISTRIBUTION OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, CHILD LABOR AND POVERTY IN INDIA

This paper contributes to the growing debate on regional economic inequality and polarization in India. The specific objectives of this paper are to: (1) analyze regional development disparities amongst various states in India to determine if they are on a convergent course; (2) analyze the evolution of regional inequalities amongst states with respect to a number of socioeconomic indicators and factors that have been suggested to affect the incidence of child labor; (3) investigate and test empirically whether polarization is taking place in Indian states; and (4) investigate whether regional indices of human development and child labor incidence follow similar patterns. Using a consistent data series and applying a number of recently developed measures, trends over the decades of 1961-1991 are documented. The results show that there is little evidence to suggest that any convergence of either the Ò or ã type is taking place amongst the states in India and while there has been no significant decrease in regional inequalities relating to human development, inequalities relating to child labor incidence have increased.Labor and Human Capital,