Inequality persistence through vertical vs. horizontal coalitions

This paper aims at contributing to explain the observed high persistence of cross country differences in inequality and levels of redistribution. It focusses on the interactions between inequality and the predominance of either horizontal coalitions (i.e. among individuals of similar economic status) or vertical ones (among individuals with different economic status). The paper shows that the interactions between inequality and the type of coalition formed in a society can give rise to self-sustained social contracts where inequality persists: because the poor take time to organize, when inequality is high, the poor are particularly vulnerable to consumption fluctuations and are willing to give up substantial redistribution in order to be protected from these. For the rich, this 'traditional social contract' is an investment. If the rate of return to alternative investments rises substantially or the elite becomes weakened, this traditional social contract may break, paving the way for working class organization and a permanent decrease in inequality. Differences in inequality between Latin America (and the Middle East) and contemporary Western Europe are discussed in the light of the model. The European transformation in inequality, redistribubtion and social relations in Modern times is also discussed focusing on England

Financial Market Access and Capital Income Inequality

This paper explores the effect of broadening financial market access on inequality. I characterize in a parsimonious model of endogenous market participation how capital income inequality depends on financial market costs. A Kuznets curve type of relationship is uncovered under DARA utility. Data on the contribution of capital income to inequality (CKI) in eleven countries is presented against a measure of equity trading costs. Consistently with the model, during the last few decades of improving market access, the CKI has tended to increase where trading costs have been high, and to decrease where these costs have been low enough. The results imply that financial liberalization may have differential effects for inequality in advanced and in emerging economies

Who votes for Islamist parties - and why?

"When parliamentary elections were held in Tunisia in late October 2014, the Islamist Ennahda party, which had won most of the votes in 2011, was defeated. This shows that if Islamist parties make no concrete improvements, the people who voted for them will punish them. Voters for Islamist parties are often described as poor and easily manipulated, people who trade their votes for the social services provided by Islamist charitable organizations. However, surveys reveal that support for Islamist parties is not primarily about patronage. Even in countries where Islamists supply social services for many people, their voters are not less educated or more often unemployed than voters for "more secular" parties. The fact that Islamist voters agree with central issues of Islamist party programmes suggests that these parties partly use content, rather than offers of selective material incentives, to mobilize voters. Whether a party wins more for clientelistic reasons or more because of its programme influences how accountable it will be to voters. Data from opinion polls show that Islamist voters' values tend to coincide with Islamist party policies, for example, conservative attitudes regarding social issues such as gender equality, the acceptance of homosexuality and the condemnation of corruption. Despite the upheavals of the "Arab Spring", in many countries Islamist parties have no particular influence on political decisions. Opinion polls conducted between 2011 and 2013 revealed that it was the group of Islamist party voters who considered politics and democracy to be most important. The authoritarian consolidation that is taking place in most Arab countries could, however, cause these voters to become alienated from institutional politics or even become radicalized." (GIGA

Inequality Traps in South Africa: An overview and research agenda

There has been considerable eort in ascertaining with condence the trends in income inequality in South Africa. South Africa has traditionally been among the most unequal countries in the world and continues to be so. Surprisingly, levels of inequality have not decreased despite the transition to democratic rule in the 1990s; if any, they seem to have increased. There has also been considerable work on the proximate causes of these high levels of inequality on the basis of inequality decompositions (See Leibbrandt, Levinsohn and McCrary 2010, Leibbrandt. Woolard, Finn and Argent 2010, and Bhorat et al. 2009 for recent analyses). However, much less is known about the underlying causes of this high level of inequality and of its persistence.

Exploring the Contribution of Grassroots Innovations to Justice: Using the Capability Approach to Normatively Address Bottom-Up Sustainable Transitions Practices

There is growing interest in the potential of grassroots innovations for the transition towards more just and sustainable societies. Nevertheless, there is lack of clear normative discussion regarding these processes. The paper strives to propose and test a framework that enables an analysis of how and in which sense specific grassroots innovation processes may be contributing to the construction of more just societies. To this end, we connect elements of the multi-level perspective on sociotechnical transitions (frequently used in the analysis of grassroots innovations) with elements of the capability approach, which offers a multi-dimensional perspective to justice. The framework is used to address two purposively selected empirical cases in two key sectors in Spain: an energy cooperative and a food purchasing group. We draw on the information of 25 individual interviews with members of these two cases, on observation, and on secondary sources. Information was processed by means of a qualitative content analysis. We draw on predefined categories from the framework, which was refined during the analysis. The paper illustrates that grassroots innovations may be contributing to justice in several aspects: they expand capabilities in different dimensions, improve public reasoning processes, and create better structural conditions for human flourishing. Nevertheless, these processes are not free of tensions and contradictions

Wer wählt islamistische Parteien und warum?

Ende Oktober 2014 fanden in Tunesien Parlamentswahlen statt. Die islamistische Ennahda-Partei, die noch bei den Wahlen im Jahr 2011 die meisten Stimmen von den Wählern bekommen hatte, ist nun lediglich die zweite Kraft im Parlament. Dies zeigt, dass auch die Wähler islamistischer Parteien im Fall ausbleibender konkreter Verbesserungen diese Parteien abstrafen. Wähler islamistischer Parteien werden oft als arm und leicht manipulierbar dargestellt, die ihre Stimme gegen die sozialen Dienstleistungen islamistischer Wohlfahrtsorganisationen eintauschten. Umfragen zufolge hat die Unterstützung islamistischer Parteien primär jedoch keinen klientelistischen Charakter. Sogar in Ländern, in denen Islamisten mit sozialen Diensten viele Menschen unterstützen, sind ihre Wähler nicht weniger gebildet oder häufiger arbeitslos als Wähler anderer, etwa "säkularer" Parteien. Außerdem teilen islamistische Wähler zentrale Punkte islamistischer Parteiprogrammatik, was für ihre inhaltliche politische Mobilisierung spricht. Ob Parteien eher aus klientelistischen oder aus programmatischen Gründen gewählt werden, beeinflusst stark, in welcher Art sie ihren Wählern gegenüber rechenschaftspflichtig sind. Daten von Meinungsumfragen zeigen, dass sich die Wertvorstellungen islamistischer Wähler in vielen Punkten mit der Programmatik islamistischer Parteien decken. Dies betrifft z.B. eine konservative Einstellung in gesellschaftlichen Fragen wie der Gleichstellung der Geschlechter oder der Akzeptanz von Homosexualität und die Verurteilung von Korruption. Trotz der Umbrüche im "Arabischen Frühling" haben islamistische Parteien in vielen Ländern keinen nennenswerten Einfluss auf politische Entscheidungen. In Meinungsumfragen von 2011 bis 2013 standen die Wähler islamistischer Parteien noch für die Wählergruppe, für die Politik und Demokratie am wichtigsten waren. Die autoritäre Konsolidierung in den meisten arabischen Ländern kann jetzt zu ihrer Entfremdung von institutioneller Politik oder sogar zu Radikalisierung führen

Poor People\u27s Beliefs and the Dynamics of Clientelism

Why do some poor people engage in clientelism whereas others do not? Why does clientelism sometimes take traditional forms and sometimes more instrumental forms? We propose a formal model of clientelism that addresses these questions focusing primarily on the citizen’s perspective. Citizens choose between supporting broad-based redistribution or engaging in clientelism. Introducing insights from social psychology, we study the interactions between citizen beliefs and values, and their political choices. Clientelism, political inefficacy, and inequality legitimation beliefs reinforce each other leading to multiple equilibria. One of these resembles traditional clientelism, with disempowered clients that legitimize social inequalities. Community connectivity breaks this reinforcement mechanism and leads to another equilibrium where clientelism takes a modern, instrumental, form. The model delivers insights on the role of citizen beliefs for their bargaining power as well as for the persistence and transformation of clientelism. We illustrate the key mechanisms with ethnographic literature on the topic

Transformative innovation. Proposals from grassroots innovations towards a human development

Hay muchas maneras de entender y practicar la innovación social. En este artículo queremos abordar una perspectiva concreta: la innovación social colectiva (isc) que busca explícitamente la transformación de los regímenes sociotécnicos. A partir del análisis de dos experiencias que tienen lugar en Valencia (grupos de consumo y una cooperativa energética), caracterizamos el sentido de la transformación de las isc y su direccionalidad. Para lo primero, se recurre al marco de las transiciones sociotécnicas, mientras que para lo segundo el análisis se realiza desde el desarrollo humano. El análisis arroja diferencias sustanciales en la manera en la que las isc entienden la producción, las tecnologías, las políticas y regulaciones, la estructura industrial, los canales de acceso y las fuentes de conocimiento, respecto de las prácticas sociotécnicas dominantes. Asimismo evidencia que sus propuestas se alinean claramente con los principios del desarrollo humano y permiten la expansión de capacidades y de agencia.There are many ways to understand and practice social innovation. In this article we touch upon a specific perspective: grassroots innovations (GI) which explicitly seek the transformation of socio-technical regimes. From the analysis of two experiences that took place in the city of Valencia (consumer groups and an energy cooperative), we characterize thesense of the transformation of the grassroots and its directionality. For the former, the framework of socio-technical transitions is used, while, for the latter, the analysis is being made through the human development approach. The analysis reveals substantial differences in the way in which GI understand production, technologies, policies and regulations, industrial structure, access channels and sources of knowledge, compared with dominant socio-technical practices. It also shows that their proposals are clearly aligned with the principles of human development and allow the expansion of capabilities and agency

Construyendo comunes para el derecho a la ciudad a través de la innovación social colectiva en la distribución y consumo: explorando un marco conceptual y el caso de Valencia

En la actual crisis urbana, el nuevo municipalismo reclama la reconstrucción de comunes urbanos para avanzar en el derecho a la ciudad. Señala al respecto la importancia de los movimientos sociales y de la acción pública municipal para generar procesos de innovación social "desde abajo". Sin embargo, no se ha explorado suficientemente la literatura sobre innovación social con miras a comprender la construcción de comunes urbanos. Por ello, este trabajo propone, a partir de la literatura sobre innovación social de base, un marco para explorar prácticas de generación de comunes desde la ciudadanía, así como políticas municipales que pueden articularse para apoyarlas. El marco se emplea para explorar, con métodos cualitativos, iniciativas en Valencia (Estado español), en los sectores agroalimentario y energético. Los resultados revelan el potencial y la diversidad de las iniciativas de generación de comunes urbanos para el derecho a la ciudad, así como tensiones y contradicciones que pueden emerger

Physical Activity and Exercise: Text Mining Analysis

It is currently difficult to have a global state of the art vision of certain scientific topics. In the field of physical activity (PA) and exercise, this is due to information overload. The present study aims to provide a solution by analysing a large mass of scientific articles using text mining (TM). The purpose was to analyse what is being investigated in the PA health field on young people from primary, secondary and higher education. Titles and abstracts published in the Web of Science (WOS) database were analysed using TM on 24 November 2020, and after removing duplicates, 85,368 remained. The results show 9960 (unique) words and the most frequently used bi-grams and tri-grams. A co-occurrence network was also generated. 'Health' was the first term of importance and the most repeated bi-grams and tri-grams were 'body_mass' and 'body_mass_index'. The analyses of the 20 topics identified focused on health-related terms, the social sphere, sports performance and research processes. It also found that the terms health and exercise have become more important in recent years