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URPP Equality of Opportunity

Inequality, group identities and political demands

Structural inequalities between social classes, men and women, as well as ethnic minority and majority groups do not translate directly into politically relevant and salient conflictive divides. Hence, we need to understand the processes of politicization of inequality, in order to establish a link between inequalities and democratically sustainable policies supposed to address them. Therefore, this sub-project studies how increasing economic inequalities translate into the political sphere in three regards: (i) how structural economic inequalities and political narratives drive changing perceptions of inequalities, as well as changing political group identities among voters; (ii) how these group identities shape political demands in terms of social policy, taxation and education policy; and (iii) how group identities and policy demands affect the electoral sphere in terms of voting behavior.
This high-risk research is innovative because it requires the integration of new types of data in order to disentangle the ways in which political preferences and social norms are shaped by structural conditions (bottom-up), as well as political agency and mobilization (top-down). Most projects to date were unable to address these questions as they relied on empirical data over short time spans. Therefore, we consider combining inductive methods (in particular focus groups) with both observational and experimental public opinion surveys, as well as automated text analysis of political statements/narratives of parties over several years (panels). The long-term focus of the data collection is a major advantage, as it will not only allow us to establish group inequality perceptions and policy demands in a reliable way, but also to study the relative effect of agency and structure on these inequality perceptions. The long-term perspective also makes this subproject particularly suitable for the URPP, which provides a longer funding horizon that most other public research funding schemes.
 

 

Prof. Silja Häusermann

Prof. Silja Häusermann
Deputy Director of the URPP and Project Leader
Department of Political Science

Palmtag

Tabea Palmtag
Post-Doc
Department of Political Science

Prof. Stefanie Walter, Department of Political Science

Prof. Stefanie Walter
Project Leader
Department of Political Science

 

 

Data used

Online Survey with 5000 respondents in Germany. Age range 18-57, representative quotas for gender and region of residence. We have also surveyed Swedish high students about their economic preferences, plans for further education, and CGI.

A comparative multi-country survey was conducted in Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, the UK, and France, with 2,000 respondents per country and quotas for gender, age, and education. This builds on the previous single-country study, expanding its inequality modules to include a deeper examination of opportunity structures.

For further information about the project and data availability please contact: palmtag@ipz.uzh.ch