Voter Heuristics and Group Politics in Global Focus

In this chapter I summarize and extend the argument that many people use ethnic and regional heuristics to make inferences about their own future incomes. That, in turn, leads them to think about redistribution differently depending on their ethnic or regional group’s income. I argue that understanding politics requires understanding groups and how people relate to them. I highlight the role of institutions and political actors, and raise the possibility of a progressive’s dilemma in which highlighting ethnic or regional inequality may cause a backlash against redistribution among richer groups. I close by highlighting some paths for future research.

Group Incomes and Preferences for Redistribution

In this chapter, I examine the relationship between group incomes and individual attitudes toward redistribution. One major implication of heuristic theory is that individuals who are members of relatively high income ethnic groups or live in high income regions should oppose redistribution more than those in relatively low income ethnic groups or regions. To test this, I present global data from the World Values Survey, UK data from the British Household Panel Survey, and Czech and Slovak data from the Central and Eastern Eurobarometer. I show that the predicted pattern holds in all three settings across a range of approaches, and close by discussing the methodological lessons from these analyses.

Politicians, Rhetoric, and Heuristics in a Complex World

In this chapter, I argue that the salience of particular groups is affected by the rhetoric of institutions and political leaders. To test this argument, I draw on an observational difference in survey of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom and experiments in that survey and two others, one of which includes Italy. I show that ethnic and regional arguments shape the relationship between group incomes and attitudes toward redistribution, but that these cues do not affect everyone equally.

Methods for Evaluating Cross-National Micro-Level Theories

In this chapter, I describe the methods for analyzing the effect of regional and ethnic incomes on attitudes toward redistribution. I argue that survey analyses of group effects should use a characteristic-issue design, matching the group characteristic that most likely shapes a particular attitude. I then provide background on regional and ethnic inequality in the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Canada, Germany, and Italy. The chapter closes by summarizing the organization of the following chapters, tying each chapter’s empirical analyses into the larger theory developed earlier in the book.

Linked Fate and Economic Optimism

In this chapter, I examine a key step of heuristic theory. That step is the perception in a person’s mind that her fate is linked to that of a larger group. I review some previous work on linked fate, and argue that it is a useful concept for understanding a wide range of countries and groups. I report results from a survey of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Ethnic inequality and regional inequality provide good reason for believing that group members’ interests are tied together, and I show that many individual demographics do not do a good job of predicting who feels linked fate, while group-level variation, especially past experiences of discrimination, do shape linked fate. One key individual level variable that does predict linked fate is regional identity, which raises the salience of the regional cleavage.

Group Memberships and Political Attitudes

In this chapter, I discuss how regional and ethnic inequality shape attitudes toward redistribution. I argue that previous analyses have not adequately explained how people think about their own interests because they have focused too much on either the national level or the individual level. Instead, I suggest that we should turn our attention to the politics of group membership. People can and do use the effect of a policy on other members of their ethnic or regional categories as heuristics for how policy is likely to affect them. I discuss a variety of ways that scholars might use to study these relationships, and argue that a mix of them is necessary for understanding these processes.

Uncertainty, Labor Markets, and Group Heuristics

In this chapter, I examine the effect of uncertainty on the relationship between ethnic and regional incomes, linked fate, and attitudes toward redistribution. Uncertainty is a key ingredient in heuristic theory, as heuristics for learning about future interests are unnecessary where future interests are certain. I test the argument using data from a survey of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Slovak data from the European Social Survey, and the British Household Panel Survey.

Within-Group Inequality, Prediction, and the Value of Heuristics

In this chapter, I argue that groups with greater within-group variation in income are less useful as predictors of future incomes for group members. This implies that members of groups with higher levels of within-group inequality should express lower levels of linked fate and display a lower correlation between the mean group income and attitudes toward redistribution. I test this argument by examining a survey of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, followed by a global sample from the World Values Survey. I close by returning to the three-country survey to show that within-region inequality does not seem to reduce regional identity.

Groups, Interests, and Heuristics

In this chapter, I lay out a heuristic theory of group membership and attitudes toward redistribution. I argue that the impact of ethnic and regional incomes on attitudes is mediated by a sense of linked fate, and that this relationship is stronger when levels of within-group inequality are lower, when economic uncertainty is higher, and when politicians raise the salience of the relevant cleavage. I also argue that federalism can, depending on the form it takes, increase or decrease the relevance of group incomes for redistributive attitudes.

Federal Systems, Decentralization, and Heuristics

In this chapter I argue that federalism has two contrasting effects on the relationship between regional incomes and attitudes toward redistribution. Administrative federalism increases the salience of regional inequality, thereby making the regional income heuristic a more important determinant of attitudes. On the other hand, fiscal federalism, by moving redistributive politics to a within-region conflict, makes regional inequality less relevant to redistributive attitudes.