Welcome

Welcome

Despite the undisputed societal and political significance of economic inequality, we still lack knowledge about its political determinants – especially regarding the role of political parties. While we have learnt a lot about what voters think about (in)equality, we do not know how parties conceive of (in)equality and how this affects policy choices and inequalities. Given the pivotal role assigned to parties in today’s representative democracies, this is a startling omission. To address this gap, the research group Varieties of Egalitarianism draws on the wisdom of the (online) crowd to map parties’ concepts of equality and to assess how these concepts affect policy choices and inequality outcomes.
 

The first aim of the project is thus to gather data on equality concepts of parties in twelve OECD countries since 1970. For instance, parties could focus on equal chances, equal rights, or economic equality. The categorization is done via online crowdcoding of political texts. Every text fragment is repeatedly coded by multiple crowd coders until an agreement threshold is reached – following the idea of the wisdom of the crowd, according to which the aggregation of independent judgments by non-experts can match or outperform real experts. Previous work by the group leader has looked at the scope conditions under which the results of the crowd can match the results of experts for complex tasks. Based on 5000 test questions calibrated by the research group, the category scheme consisting of various equality  concepts will be “scaled up” to 1 million coder decisions in a reproducible manner. This interplay of the crowd and experts will result in a database that allows the research group and the interested public to compare dominant equality concepts between parties, countries, and over time. For instance, we will test the assumption that (certain) parties have abandoned material equity. The second aim is to find out how differences in equality concepts affect political decisions and – eventually – a broad set of (mostly economic) inequality outcomes. We draw on regression analyses and case studies in politically and economically diverse settings to decipher distinct pathways to (in)equality; i.e., different combinations of equality concepts, policy profiles, and inequality patterns.

News

Sept 7, 2024

Alexander Horn and Leo Ahrens present a new paper at APSA 2024 on whether egalitarian parties promoting economic equality and redistribution also implement such policies when in office. The results show that egalitarian parties do implement policies, improving welfare state compensation and pre-distribution, but not regarding fiscal redistribution from the rich to the poor. 

Sept 6, 2024

Alexander Horn and Matthias Enggist present a new paper on the Radical Right, Equality and the Socio-Economic Composition of Governments at the APSA 2024 meeting in Philadelphia. We find that parts  of the Radical Right increasingly cater to the left-authoritarian voters. The paper will be presented in a panel on left authoritarianism organized by Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm.

July 4, 2024

Leo Ahrens and Alexander Horn presented their working paper „How egalitarian governments pursue equality yet evade redistribution“ at EPSA 2024 in Cologne. 

June, 2024

Alexander Horn, Anthony Kevins and Kees van Kersbergen won the SER best article prize 2024 for their article: „The paternalist politics of punitive and enabling workfare: evidence from a new dataset on workfare reforms in 16 countries, 1980-2015“

May 4, 2024

Alexander Horn and Sebastian Kohl have published a new paper in the Journal of European Social Policy. The paper „Beyond trade-offs: Exploring the changing interplay of public and private welfare provision in old age and health in the historical long-run“  can be accessed here.

April 10 – 12, 2024

Alexander Horn, David Weisstanner and Carsten Jensen presented their new working paper „Winning with Equality: How Left-wing Parties Attract Votes but Amplify Electoral Cleavages“ at the In_equality Conference in Konstanz. The paper can be accessed here.

May 11, 2023

Do you work on how parties and voters on the right conceive of (in)equality?  VoE and Noam Gidron hosted the workshop (In)Equality and the Right. We presented the first draft of Right Parties, Economic Equality, and Equal Rights. We show that far right and mainstream right parties are not that different anymore regarding economic equality and equal rights rhetoric.

January 24, 2023

We presented at the In_equality Colloquium! More information.

September 16, 2022

Presentation Nr. 2 at APSAParties’ (non)responses to levels and changes of inequality: Reconciling rival views using new data on equality conceptsCheck out our APSA paperUpdated now!

September 15, 2022

Presentation at APSA in MontrealNeoliberal, meritocratic, and “woke”? Mapping the Left’s concepts of equality (with new data), 1970-2021. APSA paperUpdated now!

July 7, 2022

We are at the Inequality Workshop in Oxford. Great feedback by the discussant David Rueda (i.a.). For more info, check out:

 https://twitter.com/_Alex_Horn/status/1544987774830477314

Varieties of Egalitarianism

Project Description

Available here

Literature

Groundwork

Feasibility Study/Pilot:
Horn, Alexander. 2019. Can the Online-Crowd match Real Expert Judgments? How Task Complexity and Coder Location Affect the Validity of Crowd-Coded Data. European Journal of Political Research 58:1, 236-247.
https://ejpr.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-6765.12278

The project is located at the University of Konstanz and the Cluster of Excellence The Politics of Inequality: Perceptions, Participation and Policies.

For information on upcoming project puplications please have a look at Research section.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Financial support was provided within the research project „Varieties of Egalitarianism. Mapping the Politics of Inequality with Online Crowdcoding“ funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; Project number 428250727) within the Emmy Noether Programme Research Funding. The project is led by Alexander Horn.

The Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) gives exceptionally qualified early career researchers the chance to qualify for the post of professor at a university by leading an independent junior research group for a period of six years. The programme is open to postdocs and junior professors with temporary contracts who are at an early stage in their research careers. Find out more about the program on the DFG website.

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