Pub Date : 2023-05-08DOI: 10.1177/02633957231168039
Dorothea Biaback Anong
The COVID-19 pandemic publicly exposed the urgent need for seasonal workers in agriculture. In Germany, an entry ban and entry quotas for seasonal workers at the beginning of the pandemic caused major attention. Taking this moment as magnifying glass, the article asks how the German seasonal labour migration regime is constructed (legally) and legitimated (discursively), and in how far the pandemic has caused shifts within this regime. Based on an analysis of the legal framework and the political discourse around seasonal work from 2018 to 2020 in Germany, the seasonal labour migration regime is characterised as just-in-time migration tailored to the needs of agricultural business, where migrants’ work force is not absorbed homogenously by precarious labour sectors, but rather specific groups of migrant workers are integrated differently through mechanisms of differential inclusion. Within this regime, seasonal workers function as outsourced labour, whose reproduction costs remain abroad. On the discursive level, the article shows how seasonal workers are produced as ‘wanted migrants’ by linking seasonal migration to the interests of the ‘homeland’. While the pandemic momentarily caused some shifts on the discoursively level, the article shows that the seasonal labour regime as a whole remains rather stable in time.
{"title":"Seasonal workers wanted! Germany’s seasonal labour migration regime and the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Dorothea Biaback Anong","doi":"10.1177/02633957231168039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231168039","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 pandemic publicly exposed the urgent need for seasonal workers in agriculture. In Germany, an entry ban and entry quotas for seasonal workers at the beginning of the pandemic caused major attention. Taking this moment as magnifying glass, the article asks how the German seasonal labour migration regime is constructed (legally) and legitimated (discursively), and in how far the pandemic has caused shifts within this regime. Based on an analysis of the legal framework and the political discourse around seasonal work from 2018 to 2020 in Germany, the seasonal labour migration regime is characterised as just-in-time migration tailored to the needs of agricultural business, where migrants’ work force is not absorbed homogenously by precarious labour sectors, but rather specific groups of migrant workers are integrated differently through mechanisms of differential inclusion. Within this regime, seasonal workers function as outsourced labour, whose reproduction costs remain abroad. On the discursive level, the article shows how seasonal workers are produced as ‘wanted migrants’ by linking seasonal migration to the interests of the ‘homeland’. While the pandemic momentarily caused some shifts on the discoursively level, the article shows that the seasonal labour regime as a whole remains rather stable in time.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42881857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-22DOI: 10.1177/02633957231165704
Yerko Castro Neira
This article presents the results of an ethnographic research conducted in the northern border of Mexico from 2019 to 2021, specifically in the city of Tijuana. The objective of this article is to analyse the role of bodies in border and migration management with special emphasis on the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. To do so, I focus on three situations. First is the case of migrants whose bodies are exploited in the precarious work opportunities they find along Mexico’s northern border. Second, I look at migrants who experience detention and confinement in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention centres in the United States. And third, I analyse the situation of missing migrants whose bodies are sought by family members and numerous collectives in Mexico. Through the analysis of these situations, the article demonstrates that by using ‘bodies’ as a productive category for analysing migration and the containment of migratory movements, we can understand both the resulting negative effects on migrants’ subjectivity and bodies and how migrants respond to and challenge the global migration system.
{"title":"Governed bodies, discarded bodies: Notes for an analysis of contemporary migrations during Covid-19","authors":"Yerko Castro Neira","doi":"10.1177/02633957231165704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231165704","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents the results of an ethnographic research conducted in the northern border of Mexico from 2019 to 2021, specifically in the city of Tijuana. The objective of this article is to analyse the role of bodies in border and migration management with special emphasis on the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. To do so, I focus on three situations. First is the case of migrants whose bodies are exploited in the precarious work opportunities they find along Mexico’s northern border. Second, I look at migrants who experience detention and confinement in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention centres in the United States. And third, I analyse the situation of missing migrants whose bodies are sought by family members and numerous collectives in Mexico. Through the analysis of these situations, the article demonstrates that by using ‘bodies’ as a productive category for analysing migration and the containment of migratory movements, we can understand both the resulting negative effects on migrants’ subjectivity and bodies and how migrants respond to and challenge the global migration system.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46458655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-22DOI: 10.1177/02633957231165220
Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias
The soviet social theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin developed the theory of the carnivalesque as a logic of exaggeration, inversion and irony. Beyond carnival events themselves, Bakhtin proposed this logic as a creative instance to foresee openings within an assumed normality. The conceptual gaze of the ‘carnivalesque’ helps to rethink the reconfiguration of actors and practices around mobility, borders and migration during the initial lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. This impasse worked as a corona-carnival in the midst of the current mobility regime. The use of ‘carnivalesque’ in this article is not related to the playful aspects of carnival as a parade, but to the potential of the carnivalesque impasse for envisioning alternatives, which are not necessarily emancipatory but deeply ambivalent, grotesque and unfinished. That carnivalesque momentum, marked by social norms placed on pause, is captured in artistic and linguistic production, acting as a collective legacy for imagining futures otherwise. This paper compiles some keywords which emerged during the corona-carnival impasse, each holding hopeful and dystopian glimpses of possible alterations to the status-quo. These linguistic productions question assumed notions and practices of migration management, opening the social imagination to other ways of engaging with human mobilities.
苏联社会理论家巴赫金(Mikhail M. Bakhtin)发展了狂欢主义理论,将其作为一种夸张、倒置和反讽的逻辑。除了狂欢事件本身,巴赫金提出这个逻辑作为一个创造性的实例,以预见在假定的常态中开放。“嘉年华式”的概念性凝视有助于重新思考在COVID-19大流行初期封锁期间围绕流动、边界和移民的行为体和做法的重新配置。在当前的流动性制度下,这种僵局就像一场狂欢。在这篇文章中,“嘉年华式”一词的使用与嘉年华作为游行的好玩方面无关,而是与嘉年华式僵局的潜力有关,这种僵局设想的替代方案不一定是解放的,而是深刻的矛盾,怪诞和未完成的。这种以暂停社会规范为标志的狂欢式势头,被艺术和语言作品所捕捉,作为想象未来的集体遗产。本文收集了一些在冠状病毒-狂欢节僵局中出现的关键词,每个关键词都对现状的可能改变抱有希望和反乌托邦的看法。这些语言作品质疑了移民管理的假设概念和实践,为参与人类流动的其他方式打开了社会想象力。
{"title":"A corona-carnival? A carnivalesque interpretation of (im)mobilities under COVID-19 lockdowns","authors":"Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias","doi":"10.1177/02633957231165220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231165220","url":null,"abstract":"The soviet social theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin developed the theory of the carnivalesque as a logic of exaggeration, inversion and irony. Beyond carnival events themselves, Bakhtin proposed this logic as a creative instance to foresee openings within an assumed normality. The conceptual gaze of the ‘carnivalesque’ helps to rethink the reconfiguration of actors and practices around mobility, borders and migration during the initial lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. This impasse worked as a corona-carnival in the midst of the current mobility regime. The use of ‘carnivalesque’ in this article is not related to the playful aspects of carnival as a parade, but to the potential of the carnivalesque impasse for envisioning alternatives, which are not necessarily emancipatory but deeply ambivalent, grotesque and unfinished. That carnivalesque momentum, marked by social norms placed on pause, is captured in artistic and linguistic production, acting as a collective legacy for imagining futures otherwise. This paper compiles some keywords which emerged during the corona-carnival impasse, each holding hopeful and dystopian glimpses of possible alterations to the status-quo. These linguistic productions question assumed notions and practices of migration management, opening the social imagination to other ways of engaging with human mobilities.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45849509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-13DOI: 10.1177/02633957231164035
L. Cornelissen
This essay approaches the neoliberal tradition of thought through the lens of liberal imperialism. Seeking to bring scholarship on the history of neoliberal ideas together with research on liberal defences of empire, I show that the neoliberal tradition of thought contains a number of formal, explicit, and systematic defences of (European) colonialism. In the first section of the essay, I contextualise neoliberal imperialism by showing that many prominent early neoliberals had close ties to the British Colonial Office. I then offer a close reading of two highly influential instances of the neoliberal defence of empire. The first was articulated between the 1930s and 1940s by Herbert Frankel, who saw colonisation as a form of civilisational improvement that places a heavy ethical and political burden on the coloniser. The second was articulated by Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan between the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to Frankel’s civilisational justification of colonialism, Gann and Duignan articulated a more dispassionate cost-benefit argument, claiming that colonialism’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this shift from a civilisational to a consequentialist frame both for the neoliberal tradition and for liberal imperialist discourse at large.
{"title":"Neoliberal imperialism","authors":"L. Cornelissen","doi":"10.1177/02633957231164035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231164035","url":null,"abstract":"This essay approaches the neoliberal tradition of thought through the lens of liberal imperialism. Seeking to bring scholarship on the history of neoliberal ideas together with research on liberal defences of empire, I show that the neoliberal tradition of thought contains a number of formal, explicit, and systematic defences of (European) colonialism. In the first section of the essay, I contextualise neoliberal imperialism by showing that many prominent early neoliberals had close ties to the British Colonial Office. I then offer a close reading of two highly influential instances of the neoliberal defence of empire. The first was articulated between the 1930s and 1940s by Herbert Frankel, who saw colonisation as a form of civilisational improvement that places a heavy ethical and political burden on the coloniser. The second was articulated by Lewis Gann and Peter Duignan between the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to Frankel’s civilisational justification of colonialism, Gann and Duignan articulated a more dispassionate cost-benefit argument, claiming that colonialism’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this shift from a civilisational to a consequentialist frame both for the neoliberal tradition and for liberal imperialist discourse at large.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42629911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-06DOI: 10.1177/02633957231162822
Cecilia Vergnano
Pandemic-induced border lockdowns in the spring of 2020 severely disrupted the migrant-labour supply in Western EU economies. This disruption of the EU border regime took place for different, even opposite reasons than the so-called ‘crisis’ of 2015, which is also known as the ‘long summer’ of migration. Indeed, where the latter originated from migrants’ massive appropriation of mobility, the disruption of 2020 resulted from state-imposed restrictions on mobility. However, by comparatively analysing two models of work organisation in the agro-industrial sector, characterised by a strong reliance on mobile labour and thus particularly affected by the border lockdowns of 2020 (harvest of crops in Italy and meat processing in the Netherlands), I argue that states’ response to the disruption of border regime in 2020 relied on a pre-existing logistical approach in migration management, adopted in the aftermath of 2015. More specifically, during the pandemic the ethical minimalism intrinsic in the logistical approach allowed a decoupling of migrant workers’ right to mobility, on one hand, and social and economic rights, on the other, thus resulting in increased discipline in the workplace, exposure to infections, exploitation, and dependency on the employer, to which migrant workers opposed more or less visible forms of resistance.
{"title":"The ‘Long Spring’ of migration management: Labour supply in the pandemic-induced EU border regime","authors":"Cecilia Vergnano","doi":"10.1177/02633957231162822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231162822","url":null,"abstract":"Pandemic-induced border lockdowns in the spring of 2020 severely disrupted the migrant-labour supply in Western EU economies. This disruption of the EU border regime took place for different, even opposite reasons than the so-called ‘crisis’ of 2015, which is also known as the ‘long summer’ of migration. Indeed, where the latter originated from migrants’ massive appropriation of mobility, the disruption of 2020 resulted from state-imposed restrictions on mobility. However, by comparatively analysing two models of work organisation in the agro-industrial sector, characterised by a strong reliance on mobile labour and thus particularly affected by the border lockdowns of 2020 (harvest of crops in Italy and meat processing in the Netherlands), I argue that states’ response to the disruption of border regime in 2020 relied on a pre-existing logistical approach in migration management, adopted in the aftermath of 2015. More specifically, during the pandemic the ethical minimalism intrinsic in the logistical approach allowed a decoupling of migrant workers’ right to mobility, on one hand, and social and economic rights, on the other, thus resulting in increased discipline in the workplace, exposure to infections, exploitation, and dependency on the employer, to which migrant workers opposed more or less visible forms of resistance.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43493427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1177/02633957231159351
Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi
This article explores the manifold lineages of crisis and revolt currently afflicting the Islamic Republic of Iran, most recently bursting forth in the 2022/2023 national uprisings where women-led mass protests and forceful rejection of mandatory veiling laws captured global attention. This interdisciplinary piece of research, bringing together several different theoretical approaches and historical literatures, interrogates and reflects upon what I call following Stuart Hall a ‘conjunctural crisis’ along the four major axes of (1) gender oppression and social reproduction; (2) the ethnocentric, dominative, and centralising nation-state and the still unresolved ‘ethno-national question’; (3) ‘religious democracy’ and the impasse of the Reform movement; and (4) authoritarian neoliberalism and the Islamic Republic’s political economy of predation. The article aims to show not only how these distinct crises have longer and more complicated lineages than might initially appear to be the case but also demonstrate how they have mutually constituted and shaped one another over the course of several decades, constituting part of a larger political and social system. Moreover, it aspires to provide a systematic and historically contextualised account of ongoing emancipatory struggles for democratic rights and liberation in today’s Iran.
{"title":"Iran’s uprisings for ‘Women, Life, Freedom’: Over-determination, crisis, and the lineages of revolt","authors":"Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi","doi":"10.1177/02633957231159351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231159351","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the manifold lineages of crisis and revolt currently afflicting the Islamic Republic of Iran, most recently bursting forth in the 2022/2023 national uprisings where women-led mass protests and forceful rejection of mandatory veiling laws captured global attention. This interdisciplinary piece of research, bringing together several different theoretical approaches and historical literatures, interrogates and reflects upon what I call following Stuart Hall a ‘conjunctural crisis’ along the four major axes of (1) gender oppression and social reproduction; (2) the ethnocentric, dominative, and centralising nation-state and the still unresolved ‘ethno-national question’; (3) ‘religious democracy’ and the impasse of the Reform movement; and (4) authoritarian neoliberalism and the Islamic Republic’s political economy of predation. The article aims to show not only how these distinct crises have longer and more complicated lineages than might initially appear to be the case but also demonstrate how they have mutually constituted and shaped one another over the course of several decades, constituting part of a larger political and social system. Moreover, it aspires to provide a systematic and historically contextualised account of ongoing emancipatory struggles for democratic rights and liberation in today’s Iran.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45671327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-23DOI: 10.1177/02633957231158073
Fabián Belmar, Mauricio Morales, B. Villarroel
In 2020 Chile began a constitution-making process that will culminate in writing a new constitution through a 155-member constitutional convention. The Chilean party system is often described as one of the most institutionalised in Latin America, so the election results of the convention’s members were even more surprising. Of the 155 people elected, only 50 (32.2%) are party members, 41 (26.4%) are independents adopted as candidates by a party, 48 (30.9%) are independents outside a party, and 17 (10.9%) are representatives of indigenous peoples, all of them independents. Compared to proximate legislative elections, the number of independent candidates (ICs) and winners was substantially higher. We suggest that this increase was not only due to a political climate of growing distrust of parties but also to an electoral law that allowed ICs to form electoral apparentments with one another, thus combining their votes and increasing their chances of success, especially in low-income municipalities of the capital.
{"title":"Writing a constitution without parties? The programmatic weakness of party-voter linkages in the Chilean political change","authors":"Fabián Belmar, Mauricio Morales, B. Villarroel","doi":"10.1177/02633957231158073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231158073","url":null,"abstract":"In 2020 Chile began a constitution-making process that will culminate in writing a new constitution through a 155-member constitutional convention. The Chilean party system is often described as one of the most institutionalised in Latin America, so the election results of the convention’s members were even more surprising. Of the 155 people elected, only 50 (32.2%) are party members, 41 (26.4%) are independents adopted as candidates by a party, 48 (30.9%) are independents outside a party, and 17 (10.9%) are representatives of indigenous peoples, all of them independents. Compared to proximate legislative elections, the number of independent candidates (ICs) and winners was substantially higher. We suggest that this increase was not only due to a political climate of growing distrust of parties but also to an electoral law that allowed ICs to form electoral apparentments with one another, thus combining their votes and increasing their chances of success, especially in low-income municipalities of the capital.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45155494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-14DOI: 10.1177/02633957231156084
K. Dommett, S. Power
Digital election campaigning has undergone increased levels of scrutiny in recent years, with numerous calls for improved transparency. One key innovation has been the creation of online advertising archives offered by social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Snapchat. In this article, we compare what we know about digital campaigning in the United Kingdom from official election returns and Facebook and Google’s online advertising archives. We analyse whether both transparency sources provide agreed standards of completeness, consistency, accuracy, and accessibility. We find that – despite the United Kingdom having an effectively world-leading transparency regime – this is not the case. We therefore consider a number of potential reforms to increase knowledge of the workings of campaigns at the national level.
{"title":"Monitoring digital election campaigns: Assessing the transparency ecosystem in the United Kingdom","authors":"K. Dommett, S. Power","doi":"10.1177/02633957231156084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231156084","url":null,"abstract":"Digital election campaigning has undergone increased levels of scrutiny in recent years, with numerous calls for improved transparency. One key innovation has been the creation of online advertising archives offered by social media platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Snapchat. In this article, we compare what we know about digital campaigning in the United Kingdom from official election returns and Facebook and Google’s online advertising archives. We analyse whether both transparency sources provide agreed standards of completeness, consistency, accuracy, and accessibility. We find that – despite the United Kingdom having an effectively world-leading transparency regime – this is not the case. We therefore consider a number of potential reforms to increase knowledge of the workings of campaigns at the national level.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47077233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-28DOI: 10.1177/02633957221148951
Mathew Y. H. Wong
This article investigates how the relationship between economic development and income inequality is conditioned by corruption and the informal sector. While corruption has traditionally been believed to worsen inequality through resource concentration, this study suggests that it can also lead to the opposite through the informal sector. In countries with a high level of corruption or a large informal sector, individuals can bypass regulations and barriers by offering bribes or participating in the informal economy; this allows the benefits of economic development to be widely distributed, thereby reducing inequality. The reverse is true when corruption is low or the informal sector is small. However, at low levels of economic development, an increase in informal economy or corruption alone would not lead to a more egalitarian distribution without an economic expansion. The arguments are supported with a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 127 countries from 1964 to 2007. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the relationship between corruption and the informal sector and how they affect inequality jointly with economic development.
{"title":"Economic development, corruption, and income inequality: The role of the informal sector","authors":"Mathew Y. H. Wong","doi":"10.1177/02633957221148951","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221148951","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how the relationship between economic development and income inequality is conditioned by corruption and the informal sector. While corruption has traditionally been believed to worsen inequality through resource concentration, this study suggests that it can also lead to the opposite through the informal sector. In countries with a high level of corruption or a large informal sector, individuals can bypass regulations and barriers by offering bribes or participating in the informal economy; this allows the benefits of economic development to be widely distributed, thereby reducing inequality. The reverse is true when corruption is low or the informal sector is small. However, at low levels of economic development, an increase in informal economy or corruption alone would not lead to a more egalitarian distribution without an economic expansion. The arguments are supported with a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 127 countries from 1964 to 2007. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the relationship between corruption and the informal sector and how they affect inequality jointly with economic development.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45504595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-15DOI: 10.1177/02633957221144010
Y. Zhou
Why do people in authoritarian countries think more positively of their governments than people in democratic countries? Existing research suggests three explanations: (1) people in authoritarian countries lie; (2) people in authoritarian countries are indoctrinated; and (3) authoritarian governments have better performance than their democratic counterparts. In this study, I explore a fourth explanation – people in authoritarian countries apply lower standards. To test it, I apply the anchoring vignettes method developed by Gary King and others to original data from China, Vietnam, Russia, Mexico, and the United States, and from the cities of Beijing and Taipei. Adding a case study of Taiwan’s economic trajectory as a robustness check, I conclude that people in authoritarian countries tend to use lower standards when reporting political trust and government responsiveness, but the lower standards are likely to be caused by fast economic growth rather than authoritarianism.
{"title":"Do people in authoritarian countries have lower standards when evaluating their governments? An anchoring vignettes approach","authors":"Y. Zhou","doi":"10.1177/02633957221144010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957221144010","url":null,"abstract":"Why do people in authoritarian countries think more positively of their governments than people in democratic countries? Existing research suggests three explanations: (1) people in authoritarian countries lie; (2) people in authoritarian countries are indoctrinated; and (3) authoritarian governments have better performance than their democratic counterparts. In this study, I explore a fourth explanation – people in authoritarian countries apply lower standards. To test it, I apply the anchoring vignettes method developed by Gary King and others to original data from China, Vietnam, Russia, Mexico, and the United States, and from the cities of Beijing and Taipei. Adding a case study of Taiwan’s economic trajectory as a robustness check, I conclude that people in authoritarian countries tend to use lower standards when reporting political trust and government responsiveness, but the lower standards are likely to be caused by fast economic growth rather than authoritarianism.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42731122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}