Project Aims
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
November 25, 2022
January 24, 2023
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.
August 31, 2023
Project Description
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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