Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities: A Study of Fifty Democracies, 1948–2020

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Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities

A Study of Fifty Democracies, 1948–2020

Edited by: Amory Gethin , Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty

Language: English

Published/Copyright: 2021

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About this book

The empirical starting point for anyone who wants to understand political cleavages in the democratic world, based on a unique dataset covering fifty countries since World War II.

Who votes for whom and why? Why has growing inequality in many parts of the world not led to renewed class-based conflicts, seeming instead to have come with the emergence of new divides over identity and integration? News analysts, scholars, and citizens interested in exploring those questions inevitably lack relevant data, in particular the kinds of data that establish historical and international context. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities provides the missing empirical background, collecting and examining a treasure trove of information on the dynamics of polarization in modern democracies.

The chapters draw on a unique set of surveys conducted between 1948 and 2020 in fifty countries on five continents, analyzing the links between voters’ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics, such as income, education, wealth, occupation, religion, ethnicity, age, and gender. This analysis sheds new light on how political movements succeed in coalescing multiple interests and identities in contemporary democracies. It also helps us understand the conditions under which conflicts over inequality become politically salient, as well as the similarities and constraints of voters supporting ethnonationalist politicians like Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro, Marine Le Pen, and Donald Trump.

Bringing together cutting-edge data and historical analysis, editors Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano, and Thomas Piketty offer a vital resource for understanding the voting patterns of the present and the likely sources of future political conflict.

Reviews

This book is a breakthrough in the existing literature on the politics of social inequality. Not merely is the analysis intensively data-based, it goes beyond the usual confines of a small number of western democracies to a set of fifty democracies (or semi-democracies) in different continents over many decades. The analysis throughout is highly sensible, informative, and insightful.
-- Pranab Bardhan, University of California, Berkeley

This monumental book presents the first international and historical analysis of political cleavages and of their interplay with inequality. This is a must-read book for anyone wanting to understand electoral politics in today’s democracies—the rise of ‘identity politics’ in some countries but not others, and the multiplicity of possible futures for the dynamic of inequality.
-- Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley

This impressive book will rapidly become the central reference point for systematically charting trends in voting alignment across the globe. By including nations from the global South alongside established liberal democracies, Gethin and his colleagues challenge endemic Western biases in political research and reveal the systematic ways that inequality and credentialism have redrawn voting patterns over recent decades. Gethin and his coauthors offer exactly the kind of big picture perspective which political activists and campaigners, as much as social scientists, will hugely appreciate.
-- Mike Savage, author of The Return of Inequality

This ambitious collection tackles a set of timely questions about the interplay among inequality levels and trends, political preferences and electoral behavior, and voters’ demographic and economic characteristics. Ideally, the volume will land in the hands of diverse audiences concerned with political polarization and social inequalities—including multidisciplinary social scientists, political actors, and social activists.
-- Janet C. Gornick, Director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Here is a welcome throwback to the ambitious political sociology of the mid-twentieth century. The analyses are solid and the geographical range is appealingly broad. The authors’ portraits of shifting social cleavages raise fascinating questions about the nature and implications of ‘class politics’ in the contemporary world.
-- Larry M. Bartels, Vanderbilt University

Combining ambition with humility, this volume explores cross-national and temporal variation in the structure of political cleavages with an eye to explaining the conditions under which income and wealth inequality becomes a topic of political contestation (or not). Refreshingly, the volume sidesteps longstanding debates among political scientists and illustrates how looking for patterns in macro data can yield new insights. Harmonizing election surveys from fifty countries, the database assembled by Piketty and his collaborators itself represents a major contribution.
-- Jonas Pontusson, University of Geneva

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	1
1. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities in Fifty Democracies, 1948–2020 A. Gethin, C. Martínez-Toledano and T. Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	7
2. Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right: Rising Inequality and the Changing Structure of Political Conflict in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, 1948–2020 Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	85
3. Electoral Cleavages and Socioeconomic Inequality in Germany, 1949–2017 Fabian Kosse and Thomas Pikett Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	136
4. Changing Party Systems, Socioeconomic Cleavages, and Nationalism in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, 1956–2017 Clara Martínez-Toledano and Alice Sodano Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	150
5. Political Cleavages, Class Structures, and the Politics of Old and New Minorities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, 1963–2019 Amory Gethin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	191
6. Historical Political Cleavages and Postcrisis Transformations in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, 1953–2020 Luis Bauluz, Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Marc Morgan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	221
7. Party System Transformation and the Structure of Political Cleavages in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, 1967–2019 Carmen Durrer De La Sota Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	254
8. Political Conflict, Social Inequality, and Electoral Cleavages in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, 1990–2018 Attila Lindner, Filip Novokmet, Thomas Piketty and Tomaszz Awisza Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	287
9. Caste, Class, and the Changing Political Representation of Social Inequalities in India, 1962–2019 Abhijit Banerjee, Amory Gethin and Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	311
10. Social Inequality and the Dynamics of Political and Ethnolinguistic Divides in Pakistan, 1970–2018 Amory Gethin, Sultan Mehmood and Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	332
11. Political Cleavages and the Representation of Social Inequalities in Japan, 1953–2017 Amory Gethin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	353
12. Democratization and the Construction of Class Cleavages in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia, 1992–2019 Amory Gethin and Thanasak Jenmana Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	375
13. Inequality, Identity, and the Structure of Political Cleavages in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, 1996–2016 Carmen Durrer De La Sota and Amory Gethin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	405
14. Democracy and the Politicization of Inequality in Brazil, 1989–2018 Amory Gethin and Marc Morgan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	434
15. Social Inequalities, Identity, and the Structure of Political Cleavages in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, 1952–2019 Oscar Barrera, Ana Leiva, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Álvaro Zúñiga-Cordero Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	458
16. Extreme Inequality, Elite Transformation, and the Changing Structure of Political Cleavages in South Africa, 1994–2019 Amory Gethin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	508
17. Social Inequalities and the Politicization of Ethnic Cleavages in Botswana, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, 1999–2019 Jules Baleyte, Amory Gethin, Yajna Govind and Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	531
18. Inequality, Identity, and the Long-Run Evolution of Political Cleavages in Israel, 1949–2019 Yonatan Berman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	568
19. Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities in Algeria, Iraq, and Turkey, 1990–2019 Lydia Assouad, Amory Gethin, Thomas Piketty and Julie Uraz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	587
Conclusion Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	617
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	623
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	625
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed	627

Publishing information

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

eBook published on:

March 2, 2022

eBook ISBN:

9780674269910

Pages and Images/Illustrations in book

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674269910

eBook ISBN: 9780674269910

Keywords for this book

Political cleavages; Political divides; Political parties; Party systems; Elections; Voting; Inequality; Democracy; Populism; Globalization; Identity politics; Cultural politics; Ethnic conflicts; Class conflicts; Class cleavages

Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities

Overview

About this book

Reviews

Topics

Table of contents

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