Unequal at the Starting Line: The Intergenerational Persistence of Political Inequality

Author(s):  
Kay Lehman Schlozman ◽  
Sidney Verba ◽  
Henry E. Brady

This chapter takes into account information about parents' education and political involvement and about the home political environment, which adds another dimension to the persistence of inequalities of political voice. These processes, in short, work across generations. Those who had well-educated parents are, for two reasons, more likely to be politically active as adults. For one thing, they are more likely to have grown up in politically stimulating homes with parents who were politically active and an environment of frequent political discussion. More important but less often noticed, because educational attainment is likely to be handed on across generations, those whose parents were well educated are more likely to become well educated themselves, with consequences for the acquisition of many other factors that encourage political participation.

Author(s):  
Kim Leonie Kellermann

AbstractWe theoretically investigate how political abstention among certain social groups encourages populist parties to enter the political stage, trying to absorb inactive voters. We design a two-stage game with two established parties and n voters who jointly determine a taxation policy. The electorate is divided into two groups, the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Voters’ decisions on whether to participate depend on a party’s tax rate proposal and on general party ideology. Effective political participation requires a certain amount of financial, social and intellectual resources to, for example, evaluate party programs or to engage in political discussion. As the disadvantaged are endowed with fewer resources, they lack political efficacy, resulting in less political participation. Consequently, the established parties propose a tax rate which is biased towards the preferences of the advantaged. The unused voter potential among the disadvantaged draws the interest of a populist challenger. To win support from the disadvantaged, the challenger party optimally proposes a respectively biased tax rate, which then works to polarize the political spectrum.Please confirm if the author names are presented accurately and in the correct sequence (given name, middle name/initial, family name). Author 1 Given name: [Kim Leonie] Last name [ Kellermann]. Also, kindly confirm the details in the metadata are correct.All correct.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Wong

This book examines the political experience of the Hmong Americans immigrants, who first came to the United States as refugees of Vietnam War. In growing numbers, candidates of Hmong American ethnicity have competed successfully in elections to win seats in local and state legislative bodies in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. At the same time, average levels of Hmong American educational attainment still lag far behind levels in the U.S. population and high rates of poverty persist. Their relatively high levels of political engagement defy the logic of resource-based theories of voting, which explain a greater propensity of some individuals to vote resources available to them, such as higher levels of educational attainment or income compared to others Intergenerational mechanisms of social voting underlie political participation of Hmong Americans. Individuals are mobilized to vote through intergenerational social connections already established in associational, neighborhood, ethnic community, family, and clan networks. Identity narratives adapted to modern-day circumstances and popular notions from ancient oral texts serve to motivate collective action to redress of disparities of economic opportunity and cultural misrecognition. Only when local institutions effectively teach civic and political skills to immigrants and their descendants can political participation be sustained and deepened to combine voting with effective policy advocacy, the building of alliances across racial-ethnic divides, and collective action. The research included interviews of community leaders and grassroots residents from diverse backgrounds, primarily in three cities: Fresno, California; Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Hickory, North Carolina.


Author(s):  
ROBERTO F. CARLOS

Extensive research on political participation suggests that parental resources strongly predict participation. Other research indicates that salient political events can push individuals to participate. I offer a novel explanation of how mundane household experiences translate to political engagement, even in settings where low participation levels are typically found, such as immigrant communities. I hypothesize that experiences requiring children of Latinx immigrants to take on “adult” responsibilities provide an environment where children learn the skills needed to overcome the costs associated with participation. I test this hypothesis using three datasets: a survey of Latinx students, a representative survey of young adults, and a 10-year longitudinal study. The analyses demonstrate that Latinx children of immigrants taking on adult responsibilities exhibit higher levels of political activity compared with those who do not. These findings provide new insights into how the cycle of generational political inequality is overcome in unexpected ways and places.


Res Publica ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-88
Author(s):  
Carl Devos ◽  
Elke Matthyssen ◽  
Herwig Reynaert ◽  
Jacqueline Van Hoe

The way politicians get in contact with local polities in Flanders bas been examined based on the sociological distinction between ascribed and achieved status positions.  Politically active relatives were considered characteristic of ascribed local mandates.Membership of different associations was seen as a way of personally achieving a local mandate. The results indicate that a combination of both was most frequently occuring. In spite of popular convictions, family was still quite important to get in contact with politics. This is shown in the high rates of respondents having politically active relatives.Next to this, a lot of political involvement occured via participation in a diversity of associations. Participations considered were membership, diligence and officeholding in a political party, a union, a health insurance organisation, an advisory body and all other political or non-political associations.


Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Grasso ◽  
Katherine Smith

This paper contributes to the literature by examining gender inequalities in political participation and political engagement among young people from a comparative perspective. By analyzing data on young people from nine European countries collected in 2018, we examine gender inequalities in participation in various modes of conventional and unconventional activism as well as related attitudes, broader political engagement and key determinants, cross-nationally, in order to provide a detailed picture of the current state of gender inequalities in political activism among young people in Europe. Our results allow us to speak to extant theorizing about gender inequalities by showing that the extent of political inequality between young men and women is less marked than one might expect. While the gender gaps in political participation for activities such as confrontational types of protest are small or absent, we find that young women are actually more active in petitioning, buycotting, and volunteering in the community. Young men instead are more active than young women in a majority of the nine countries analysed with respect to more institutional forms of participation linked to organizations and parties, various types of online political participation, and broader political engagement measures, such as internal political efficacy and consumption of political news through various channels. However, young men also appear to be more sceptical at least of certain aspects of democratic practice relative to young women.


Author(s):  
Kay Lehman Schlozman ◽  
Sidney Verba ◽  
Henry E. Brady

This chapter investigates the differential voice of the advantaged and the disadvantaged. It first considers whether the participatory advantage of those who are high in socio-economic status (SES) persists over time and, in particular, whether the widely noted increase in economic inequality since the late 1970s has been matched by increasing socio-economic stratification of political voice. Then the chapter uses three-wave panel surveys to ask whether ongoing inequalities of political voice reflect not just continuing activity by the same kinds of people but persistent activity by the same individuals. It shows not only that political voice is characterized on an ongoing basis by bias in the direction of the well-educated and affluent but also that, among those who are politically active at any particular time, high-SES political activists are more likely than activists who are lower on the socio-economic ladder to continue to take part politically in the future.


Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel

Beginning in 1948 when war in the Middle East caused minor unrest in the city of Marseille, this chapter traces the way in which disagreements over Israel became a way to debate inequities in French minority policies at home and in North Africa. In Marseille, the gathering point for Jewish clandestine migration to Palestine, Algerian Muslims' anger toward what they perceived as French complicity in migration schemes was compounded by frustrations that French officials seemed to be favoring Jewish refugees over newly minted French Algerian Muslim citizens. Conflicts around war in the Middle East thus became an opportunity for politically active Muslims and Jews to negotiate their relationship with the French state, as the former established new parameters for political participation in the aftermath of the Holocaust by pushing the French government to support Israel, and the latter tested the limitations on a citizenship that never made good on its promises.


Author(s):  
Robert B. Talisse

Democracy is hard work. It can flourish only when citizens actively participate in the business of collective self-government. Yet political participation gives rise to deep political divides over core political values. In the midst of these divisions, citizens are required to recognize one another as political equals, as fellow participants who are entitled to an equal share of political power. Research shows that political engagement exposes citizens to forces that erode their capacities to regard their political opponents as their equals. In the course of democratic participation, we come to see our opponents as inept and ill-motivated, ultimately unfit for democracy. This tendency is especially pronounced among those who are the most politically active. Democratic citizenship thus can undermine itself. With this conflict at the heart of democratic citizenship, we must actively pursue justice while also treating those who embrace injustice as our equals. Sustaining Democracy navigates this conflict. It begins by exploring partisanship and polarization, the two mechanisms by which citizens come to regard their opponents as unsuited for democracy. It then proposes strategies by which citizens can mitigate these forces without dampening their political commitments. As it turns out, the same forces that lead us to scorn our opponents can also undermine and fracture our political alliances. If we are concerned to further justice, we need to uphold civil relations with our opponents, even when we despise their political views. If we want to preserve our political friendships, we must sustain democracy with our foes.


2020 ◽  
pp. 318-335
Author(s):  
Herbert Kitschelt ◽  
Philipp Rehm

This chapter examines four fundamental questions relating to political participation. First, it considers different modes of political participation such as social movements, interest groups, and political parties. Second, it analyses the determinants of political participation, focusing in particular on the paradox of collective action. Third, it explains political participation at the macro-level in order to identify which contextual conditions are conducive to participation and the role of economic affluence in political participation. Finally, the chapter discusses political participation at the micro-level. It shows that both formal associations and informal social networks, configured around family and friendship ties, supplement individual capacities to engage in political participation or compensate for weak capacities, so as to boost an individual’s probability to become politically active.


2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Escher

AbstractThis article is focusing on the state of research into the extent to which the opportunities for information, communication and participation opened up by the Internet have led to greater mobilisation of the public for political participation. After briefly presenting the diversity of conflicting expectations towards the Internet’s role for the political process, the article discusses the relevance of digital media as a means for mobilising greater and more equal political participation from a liberal-representative perspective on democracy. At the core of the article is a discussion of the last 15 years of research empirically testing the mobilisation hypothesis as well as the theories proposed to explain the observed participation patterns. What becomes dear is that the Internet does indeed slightly increase rates of political participation but with few exceptions those newly mobilised come from parts of the population that are already politically active. At the same time, the explanations still exhibit considerable gaps that remain to be dosed. To this end future research needs to address a number of challenges which are discussed in the final section of the article.


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