Pub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00207152231199307
Büşra Sağlam
{"title":"Book reviews: The Politics of Punishment: A Comparative Study of Imprisonment and Political Culture","authors":"Büşra Sağlam","doi":"10.1177/00207152231199307","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231199307","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45227266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00207152231196509
Federico M Rossi
Combining agonistic pluralism and social movements literature with trust studies, I propose a conceptualization for how the organizational dilemma is tackled in social movements. Defined as a trust-building organizational learning process, I show the role-played by social trust—meaning, the construction of the relational boundaries of a shared goal without diluting the heterogeneity of self-identities and interests—as an organizational prerequisite for democratic organization of a political group. Empirically, I identify four alternative pathways to the (democratic) organizational dilemma: innovation through new organizational models; repetition of past experiences; reformulation of practices; and emulation of previous organizational models.
{"title":"Democracy as a trust-building learning process: Organizational dilemmas in social movements","authors":"Federico M Rossi","doi":"10.1177/00207152231196509","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231196509","url":null,"abstract":"Combining agonistic pluralism and social movements literature with trust studies, I propose a conceptualization for how the organizational dilemma is tackled in social movements. Defined as a trust-building organizational learning process, I show the role-played by social trust—meaning, the construction of the relational boundaries of a shared goal without diluting the heterogeneity of self-identities and interests—as an organizational prerequisite for democratic organization of a political group. Empirically, I identify four alternative pathways to the (democratic) organizational dilemma: innovation through new organizational models; repetition of past experiences; reformulation of practices; and emulation of previous organizational models.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49210128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00207152231199295
Hemin Aziz
The scope of the book “POLICING IRAQ: LEGITIMACY, DEMOCRACY, AND EMPIRE IN A DEVELOPING STATE” which is published by the University of California Press in 2021, is broad and would be of interest to not only academics (sociology, political science, and criminal justice), but also anyone interested in developments in the Middle East. The author, Jesse Wozniak, an associate professor at West Virginia University, successfully intersects several complex issues (policing, state legitimacy, occupation, neoliberalism, democracy, and institution building) and articulates new and important knowledge. The book focuses on the police and the legal justice system in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. Wozniak uses a postconflict reconstruction program by the United States and its allies in Iraq post-2003 as an example for how neoliberalism has been applied and is reflected in the state’s institutions and its functions. He made multiple trips to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, from 2011 to 2017, during which he gathered a wide range of data, including ethnographic observations, interviews, surveys of police officers and judges. He also used various written documents, including government publications, syllabi from the academy of police, human rights reports, and news articles from local and international media outlets. The central argument of the book is that the modern nation-state can be defined by the functions of its criminal justice systems and especially the police. With his historically informed analysis of policing in Iraq in post-2003, Wozniak shows how neoliberalism in the case of Iraq had failed and created unwanted consequences for the Iraqi people. This is so because the state is neither politically independent nor sovereign, and hence unable to function effectively. Chapter 1 begins by a description of life and political circumstances in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, where Wozniak conducted his study. In Chapter 2, the author discusses the nature of the nation-state in terms of legitimacy, effectiveness, and sovereignty and demonstrates how the institution of policing in the Iraqi was negatively impacted by the American-led invasion. Chapter 3 discusses how the post-2003 neoliberal state building efforts by the United States and its allies not only exacerbated persistent problems in Iraq but also created new ones, including corruption, ghost payrolls, and emerging uncontrollable nonstate actors who sometimes act as a quasi-government. Moreover, according to Wozniak, “the few remaining operational state-owned firms were explicitly prohibited from participating in the repair of any of the damaged facilities” (p.54). Therefore, if the many neoliberal reforms which were designed to primarily benefit the United States and its coalition partners, it came with a heavy cost for the Iraqi people. And the promise of democracy and neoliberal prosperity did not materialize for anyone except for a few politicians and opportunists. In Chapters 4 and
{"title":"Book reviews: Policing Iraq: Legitimacy, Democracy, and Empire in a Developing State","authors":"Hemin Aziz","doi":"10.1177/00207152231199295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231199295","url":null,"abstract":"The scope of the book “POLICING IRAQ: LEGITIMACY, DEMOCRACY, AND EMPIRE IN A DEVELOPING STATE” which is published by the University of California Press in 2021, is broad and would be of interest to not only academics (sociology, political science, and criminal justice), but also anyone interested in developments in the Middle East. The author, Jesse Wozniak, an associate professor at West Virginia University, successfully intersects several complex issues (policing, state legitimacy, occupation, neoliberalism, democracy, and institution building) and articulates new and important knowledge. The book focuses on the police and the legal justice system in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq. Wozniak uses a postconflict reconstruction program by the United States and its allies in Iraq post-2003 as an example for how neoliberalism has been applied and is reflected in the state’s institutions and its functions. He made multiple trips to the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, from 2011 to 2017, during which he gathered a wide range of data, including ethnographic observations, interviews, surveys of police officers and judges. He also used various written documents, including government publications, syllabi from the academy of police, human rights reports, and news articles from local and international media outlets. The central argument of the book is that the modern nation-state can be defined by the functions of its criminal justice systems and especially the police. With his historically informed analysis of policing in Iraq in post-2003, Wozniak shows how neoliberalism in the case of Iraq had failed and created unwanted consequences for the Iraqi people. This is so because the state is neither politically independent nor sovereign, and hence unable to function effectively. Chapter 1 begins by a description of life and political circumstances in the Iraqi region of Kurdistan, where Wozniak conducted his study. In Chapter 2, the author discusses the nature of the nation-state in terms of legitimacy, effectiveness, and sovereignty and demonstrates how the institution of policing in the Iraqi was negatively impacted by the American-led invasion. Chapter 3 discusses how the post-2003 neoliberal state building efforts by the United States and its allies not only exacerbated persistent problems in Iraq but also created new ones, including corruption, ghost payrolls, and emerging uncontrollable nonstate actors who sometimes act as a quasi-government. Moreover, according to Wozniak, “the few remaining operational state-owned firms were explicitly prohibited from participating in the repair of any of the damaged facilities” (p.54). Therefore, if the many neoliberal reforms which were designed to primarily benefit the United States and its coalition partners, it came with a heavy cost for the Iraqi people. And the promise of democracy and neoliberal prosperity did not materialize for anyone except for a few politicians and opportunists. In Chapters 4 and","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47903344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-07DOI: 10.1177/00207152231199296
Lucy Jarosz
{"title":"Book reviews: Upsetting Food: Three Eras of Food Protest in the United States","authors":"Lucy Jarosz","doi":"10.1177/00207152231199296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231199296","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46508192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-10DOI: 10.1177/00207152231188405
S. Mejia
Social scientists have long debated the impacts of foreign investment for developing countries. However, the relationship between foreign investment and child mortality is still heavily contested among comparative international social scientists despite decades of research. I bring new cross-national evidence to bear on this contested debate, where the competing arguments of neoclassical economic theory and foreign investment dependency theory are evaluated using fixed effects, dynamic, and two-stage least squares panel regression models. I find that inward foreign direct investment stock exerts a beneficial effect on child mortality in less-developed countries, net of relevant statistical controls. These results are also robust to a variety of regression diagnostics and alternative choices of econometric specification. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature finding that traditional sociological measures of foreign direct investment—in some cases—generate beneficial effects in less-developed countries.
{"title":"Globalization, foreign direct investment, and child mortality: A cross-national analysis of less-developed countries, 1990–2019","authors":"S. Mejia","doi":"10.1177/00207152231188405","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231188405","url":null,"abstract":"Social scientists have long debated the impacts of foreign investment for developing countries. However, the relationship between foreign investment and child mortality is still heavily contested among comparative international social scientists despite decades of research. I bring new cross-national evidence to bear on this contested debate, where the competing arguments of neoclassical economic theory and foreign investment dependency theory are evaluated using fixed effects, dynamic, and two-stage least squares panel regression models. I find that inward foreign direct investment stock exerts a beneficial effect on child mortality in less-developed countries, net of relevant statistical controls. These results are also robust to a variety of regression diagnostics and alternative choices of econometric specification. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature finding that traditional sociological measures of foreign direct investment—in some cases—generate beneficial effects in less-developed countries.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46766611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-22DOI: 10.1177/00207152231188406
A. Jeannet
Mass immigration is transforming the politics of income redistribution in European welfare states. Some scholars argue that immigration erodes public support for redistribution, while others argue it could have the opposite effect. Until now, the literature has attempted to isolate a generic role of immigration without distinguishing between different immigration categories. This article analyzes the relationship between internal European migration and public support for income redistribution in 17 Western European countries using the European Social Survey’s seven rounds (2002–2014). It finds that some forms of internal migration, namely, migration from new Central and Eastern European countries, are positively related to Western European support for income redistribution. The study also sheds light on the crucial role of the welfare state, finding that the compensation effect is stronger in countries with higher social protection. The results support group-specific understandings of the relationship between immigration and income redistribution. In sum, the relationship varies by immigrant group and depends on the generosity of social protection.
{"title":"Europe’s internal migration and public support for income redistribution: The role of social protection","authors":"A. Jeannet","doi":"10.1177/00207152231188406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231188406","url":null,"abstract":"Mass immigration is transforming the politics of income redistribution in European welfare states. Some scholars argue that immigration erodes public support for redistribution, while others argue it could have the opposite effect. Until now, the literature has attempted to isolate a generic role of immigration without distinguishing between different immigration categories. This article analyzes the relationship between internal European migration and public support for income redistribution in 17 Western European countries using the European Social Survey’s seven rounds (2002–2014). It finds that some forms of internal migration, namely, migration from new Central and Eastern European countries, are positively related to Western European support for income redistribution. The study also sheds light on the crucial role of the welfare state, finding that the compensation effect is stronger in countries with higher social protection. The results support group-specific understandings of the relationship between immigration and income redistribution. In sum, the relationship varies by immigrant group and depends on the generosity of social protection.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48297785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-22DOI: 10.1177/00207152231187196
Pál Susánszky, Bernhard Kittel, Á. Kopper
During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.
{"title":"Acceptance of political restrictions and societal polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A comparative study of Austria and Hungary","authors":"Pál Susánszky, Bernhard Kittel, Á. Kopper","doi":"10.1177/00207152231187196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231187196","url":null,"abstract":"During the COVID-19 pandemic, some governments took measures to restrict political liberties, claiming that these restrictions were necessary to contain the spread of the virus. In this study, we scrutinize differences in citizens’ willingness to accept three types of political restrictions: restricting the media, banning protests, and introducing extensive state surveillance. We focus on two European countries: Austria and Hungary. While we find that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions, we also find that citizens differ in their willingness to support the three types of restrictions depending on whether the given measure affects them directly. We also find differences between Austria and Hungary concerning the way political trust and political values affect the acceptance of restrictions, which may be rooted in the larger polarization of Hungarian society. Furthermore, we observe that perceived health threats, political values, ideological orientation, and political trust are important predictors of accepting political restrictions.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42823633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1177/00207152231187047
Anthony Roberts, Emma Casey, Baylee Hodges
Prior studies on emerging economies contend that increasing returns to human capital has contributed to the growth of wage inequality over the last few decades. However, this explanation fails to account for an important dynamic of contemporary wage inequality: the growth of top labor incomes. Research on advanced economies show the emergence of a wage premium in the financial sector increased top labor incomes, but studies have yet to investigate whether a financial wage premium is contributing to the growth of top labor incomes in emerging economies. The present study addresses this theoretical and empirical gap by conceptualizing and measuring the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the most important subset of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Drawing on harmonized labor force data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we utilize unconditional quantile regression modeling and treatment effect estimation to examine the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the BRIC before and after the Great Recession. Consistent with studies on advanced economies, we find a substantial wage premium among top earners in the financial sectors of the BRIC, which has grew in the post-recession period. However, we find significant variation in size and growth of the financial wage premium because of the variegated nature of financialization across the BRIC. We conclude by suggesting that subsequent studies should explore the heterogeneous effects of subordinate and state financialization on wage dynamics in emerging economies.
{"title":"Financialization and top incomes in emerging economies: A comparative distributional analysis of the financial wage premium in the BRIC","authors":"Anthony Roberts, Emma Casey, Baylee Hodges","doi":"10.1177/00207152231187047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231187047","url":null,"abstract":"Prior studies on emerging economies contend that increasing returns to human capital has contributed to the growth of wage inequality over the last few decades. However, this explanation fails to account for an important dynamic of contemporary wage inequality: the growth of top labor incomes. Research on advanced economies show the emergence of a wage premium in the financial sector increased top labor incomes, but studies have yet to investigate whether a financial wage premium is contributing to the growth of top labor incomes in emerging economies. The present study addresses this theoretical and empirical gap by conceptualizing and measuring the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the most important subset of emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC). Drawing on harmonized labor force data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we utilize unconditional quantile regression modeling and treatment effect estimation to examine the financial wage premium across the distributions of labor income in the BRIC before and after the Great Recession. Consistent with studies on advanced economies, we find a substantial wage premium among top earners in the financial sectors of the BRIC, which has grew in the post-recession period. However, we find significant variation in size and growth of the financial wage premium because of the variegated nature of financialization across the BRIC. We conclude by suggesting that subsequent studies should explore the heterogeneous effects of subordinate and state financialization on wage dynamics in emerging economies.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47176868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-21DOI: 10.1177/00207152231188316
O. Lavrinenko
Women’s International Non-Governmental Organizations (WINGOs) are a major force in spreading world culture at the national level. At the same time, women’s political empowerment is one of the spaces in which world culture manifests itself. WINGOs, often in conjunction with emancipative values, may potentially have an impact on a country’s level of women’s political empowerment. However, scholars rarely integrate them into theory and empirical tests. Using the world culture approach as the larger frame, I build this framework and test it. Specifically, Hypothesis 1 tests whether there is a potential positive association between women’s political empowerment and the number of WINGO ties. Hypothesis 2 examines the potential interaction between emancipative values and WINGOs. Employing mixed-effects linear regression on the aggregated World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS/EVS) dataset and administrative data, I observe that WINGOs and emancipative values have separate effects on women’s political empowerment. However, there is no significant evidence that emancipative values interact with WINGOs.
{"title":"WINGOs as conduits of world culture, their relationships with emancipative values, and women’s political empowerment worldwide, 1981–2020","authors":"O. Lavrinenko","doi":"10.1177/00207152231188316","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231188316","url":null,"abstract":"Women’s International Non-Governmental Organizations (WINGOs) are a major force in spreading world culture at the national level. At the same time, women’s political empowerment is one of the spaces in which world culture manifests itself. WINGOs, often in conjunction with emancipative values, may potentially have an impact on a country’s level of women’s political empowerment. However, scholars rarely integrate them into theory and empirical tests. Using the world culture approach as the larger frame, I build this framework and test it. Specifically, Hypothesis 1 tests whether there is a potential positive association between women’s political empowerment and the number of WINGO ties. Hypothesis 2 examines the potential interaction between emancipative values and WINGOs. Employing mixed-effects linear regression on the aggregated World Values Survey/European Values Survey (WVS/EVS) dataset and administrative data, I observe that WINGOs and emancipative values have separate effects on women’s political empowerment. However, there is no significant evidence that emancipative values interact with WINGOs.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43201767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-19DOI: 10.1177/00207152231185282
T. Sakamoto
Social investment (SI) policies have been implemented by governments of affluent countries in hopes of safeguarding against new social risks and mitigating social exclusion by encouraging employment and making it easier for parents to balance work and family. Governments hope that human capital investment (education and job training) will better prepare workers for jobs, promote their employment and social inclusion, and reduce poverty. This article investigates whether SI policies contribute to lower poverty and inequality by analyzing data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1980 and 2013. The analysis finds, first, that SI policies (education and active labor market policy (ALMP)) alone may be less effective in generating lower poverty and inequality without redistribution, but when accompanied and supported by redistribution, SI policies are more effective in creating lower poverty and inequality. I propose the explanation that SI policies create lower-income poverty and inequality by creating individuals and households that can be salvaged and lifted out of poverty with redistribution, because SI policies help improve their skills and knowledge and employability, although they may be not quite able to escape poverty or low income without redistribution. As partial evidence, I present the result that education is associated with a lower poverty gap in market income. The analysis also finds that education and ALMP produce lower poverty and/or inequality in interaction with social market economies that redistribute more, and that augments the equalizing effects of education and ALMP. The results, thus, suggest the complementary roles of SI policies and redistribution.
{"title":"Poverty, inequality, and redistribution: An analysis of the equalizing effects of social investment policy","authors":"T. Sakamoto","doi":"10.1177/00207152231185282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00207152231185282","url":null,"abstract":"Social investment (SI) policies have been implemented by governments of affluent countries in hopes of safeguarding against new social risks and mitigating social exclusion by encouraging employment and making it easier for parents to balance work and family. Governments hope that human capital investment (education and job training) will better prepare workers for jobs, promote their employment and social inclusion, and reduce poverty. This article investigates whether SI policies contribute to lower poverty and inequality by analyzing data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries between 1980 and 2013. The analysis finds, first, that SI policies (education and active labor market policy (ALMP)) alone may be less effective in generating lower poverty and inequality without redistribution, but when accompanied and supported by redistribution, SI policies are more effective in creating lower poverty and inequality. I propose the explanation that SI policies create lower-income poverty and inequality by creating individuals and households that can be salvaged and lifted out of poverty with redistribution, because SI policies help improve their skills and knowledge and employability, although they may be not quite able to escape poverty or low income without redistribution. As partial evidence, I present the result that education is associated with a lower poverty gap in market income. The analysis also finds that education and ALMP produce lower poverty and/or inequality in interaction with social market economies that redistribute more, and that augments the equalizing effects of education and ALMP. The results, thus, suggest the complementary roles of SI policies and redistribution.","PeriodicalId":51601,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Comparative Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46695419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}