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21. Shared Class as an Electoral Heuristic in Brazil’s Local Elections

Author:
Peter G. Johannessen
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Do voters use a candidate’s class as an electoral heuristic? And if so, how? Drawing on observational and experimental evidence from Brazil’s local elections (2004–2016), I provide evidence that voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s type: candidates from different classes receive similar overall levels of support, but receive disproportionate support from voters who share their class. The mechanisms driving this finding vary by a voter’s relative class position: upper-class voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s quality, trustworthiness, and distributive commitments, but lower-class voters only use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s trustworthiness and distributive commitments.
Topic:
Politics, Poverty, Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, and Identities
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Latin America

22. Comparing Global Trends in Multidimensional and Income Poverty and Assessing Horizontal Inequalities

Author:
Francesco Burchi, Daniele Malerba, Nicole Rippin, and Claudio E. Montenegro
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Abstract:
The 2030 Agenda has provided new impetus to two facets of the struggle for poverty alleviation, which is a central goal of the international development community. First, poverty is no longer viewed strictly in monetary terms, but rather as a multidimensional phenomenon. Second, the need to reduce poverty for different social groups and not just at the aggregate, national level is explicitly recognised. Against this background, this paper has three objectives: (1) to analyse the trends in multidimensional poverty in low- and middle-income countries, (2) to explore rural-urban differences in poverty over time, and (3) to assess the validity of the claim that there has been a feminisation of poverty. The analysis relies on a new indicator of multidimensional poverty, the Global Correlation Sensitive Poverty Index (G-CSPI), that incorporates three key components: education, employment and health. The G-CSPI has several methodological advantages over existing measures, including that it is an individual rather than a household-level measure of poverty, which is crucial for gender-disaggregated analysis. Regarding aggregate trends, this paper shows that both income poverty and multidimensional poverty fell between 2000 and 2012. However, the decline in (extreme) income poverty in percentage terms was twice as large as the decline in multidimensional poverty. There is significant heterogeneity in the results across regions. Multidimensional poverty declined the most in Asia, converging towards the relatively low levels of Latin America and Europe, while sub-Saharan Africa’s slow progress further distanced it from other regions. These findings point to the existence of poverty traps and indicate that more efforts are needed to eradicate poverty. Regarding the urban-rural comparison, our analysis shows that poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon: the rural G-CSPI was more than four times the urban G-CSPI. This difference remained nearly constant over time. As for the third objective, we find no gender bias in 2000 at the global level. This contrasts with the claim made in 1995 in Beijing that 70 per cent of the poor were women. However, we find that multidimensional poverty declined more among men (-18.5 per cent from 2000) than women (-15 per cent), indicating a process of feminisation of poverty. This was triggered by the decline in employment poverty, which was much slower among women. As most existing studies conclude that there was no evidence of the feminisation of poverty, this finding is new to the literature.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Poverty, Inequality, Urban, and Rural
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Global Focus

23. Does the rise of the middle class disguise existing inequalities in Brazil?

Author:
Yume Tamiya
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
In 2018/2019 the CGPE launched an annual Gender & Global Political Economy Undergraduate Essay Prize competition, open to all undergraduate students within the School of Global Studies. The winner of the 2018/2019 competition is Isabella Garcia for the essay “How do global supply chains exacerbate gender-based violence against women in the Global South?” Isabella graduated with a BA in International Relations and Development in July and will join the MA cohort in our Global Political Economy programme for 2019/2020. Given the very strong field of submissions, the award committee further decided to award a second-place prize to Yume Tamiya for the essay “Does the rise of the middle class disguise existing inequalities in Brazil?”. Yume graduated with a BA in International Development with International Education and Development. We are delighted to publish both of these excellent essays in the CGPE Working Paper series.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Inequality, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Brazil and Latin America

24. Integral Human Development Through the Lens of Sen’s Capability Approach and the Life of a Faith Community at the Latin American Urban Margins

Author:
Séverine Deneulin
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The concept of integral human development is central to the Catholic social tradition. Yet, it remains under-explored with regard to its integrating components and their implications. What does taking an integral human development perspective mean for social analysis and action? The paper seeks to answer this question on the basis of the four encyclicals in which the idea of integral human development is treated, and in combination with two other sources: 1) the literature on “human development” in the multidisciplinary social science field of international development studies and its conceptual foundations in Amartya Sen’s capability approach; and 2) the life of a faith community in a marginalized Latin American urban neighborhood. Based on a combination of these sources, the paper concludes by proposing an understanding of “integral human development” that it calls a spirituality-extended capability approach to the progress of peoples.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Education, Poverty, Religion, Inequality, Youth, Violence, Christianity, and Catholic Church
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America

25. Can Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Improve Collective Action? Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination and Social Norms

Author:
Sandra Polanía-Reyes
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This study tests an unintended benefit of a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia: the ability to overcome coordination failures. Participants interact with fellow beneficiaries, which gives rise to a coordination device. Beneficiaries participate in a minimum effort coordination game. Those enrolled in the program for over a year are exerting the highest level of effort. The improvement in coordination is not due to potential confounds such as willingness to cooperate or connectivity. A structural choice model illustrates that when beliefs about other’s behavior are sufficiently high the Pareto- dominant equilibrium holds. The findings support nascent initiatives to influence beliefs through policy interventions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Political Economy, Poverty, Communications, Governance, Inequality, Economic Growth, Public Policy, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

26. How Social Inequalities Affect Sustainable Development: Five Causal Mechanisms Underlying the Nexus

Author:
Bettina Schorr
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Postgraduate Program on Sustainable Development and Social Inequalities in the Andean Region (trAndeS)
Abstract:
Since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987, social inequality has been a topic of concern for the international development community. In the last decade, given the rise of global inequality the subject gained even more prominence as several international organizations (UNDP, World Bank, OECD) began emphasizing the negative impact of social inequality on human well-being. The Agenda 2030, the current development strategy adopted by the United Nations in 2015, elevated “reducing inequality” to one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (Goal No. 10). This paper connects with this growing concern over the impact of social inequalities on the opportunities for sustainable development. It proposes a research agenda for the social sciences to contribute to the debate by identifying the causal mechanisms that constitute the nexus between social inequalities and sustainable development. The focus on these intermediary steps is important in order to understand in more detail the barriers that social inequalities pose for more sustainable social, economic and ecological arrangements. This is especially necessary when it comes to designing or implementing strategies (political or technological) that aim to promote sustainable development, above all in highly unequal societies.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainability, and Ecology
Political Geography:
Argentina, Latin America, and Chile

27. Latin America’s Shifting Politics: Mexico’s Party System Under Stress

Author:
Kenneth F. Greene and Mariano Sanchez-Talanquer
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Democracy
Institution:
National Endowment for Democracy
Abstract:
On 1 July 2018, leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won a decisive victory in Mexico’s presidential election, while a coalition led by AMLO’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) claimed majorities in both houses of Congress. AMLO’s calls for change resonated with voters frustrated by chronic poverty and inequality, rising violence, and corruption, and his win has called into question the stability of Mexico’s party system. Yet AMLO, who strove to assemble a “big tent” coalition, is ultimately more a product of the system than a disruptive outsider. Moreover, clear programmatic differences among Mexico’s major parties persist, as do the institutional advantages they enjoy. It is thus most probable that MORENA’s ascent augurs a recomposition of the party system rather than a process of partisan dealignment.
Topic:
Poverty, Elections, Democracy, Inequality, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Latin America, North America, and Mexico

28. KIDNAPPING OF MIGRANTS IN TRANSIT THROUGH MEXICO AND THE TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORKS FOR THEIR HUMAN RIGHTS: SCOPE AND STRATEGIES

Author:
Monica Salmon Gómez
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs
Abstract:
The human rights crisis in Mexico and particularly the one with migrants in transit through Mexico is not coincidental. The increased securitization of migration has transformed it into a security issue, causing it to be a threat to the national security. The mechanisms and strategies to fight against this crisis has led to terrible consequences to the thousand of migrants that pass through Mexico every year. As stated by David Harvey, the conceptualization of the irregular migration as a threat to the Nation-States has occurred as a consequence of the “global unequal capitalist integration”. This is a structural process that promotes global inequality in a parallel way, creating the undocumented as the others unwanted (Álvarez and Guillot, 2012:24). We then have migration as a phenomenon characterized by the economic globalization and the predominance of the logic of social exclusion, that it reveals itself as a feature for nations and families in their need to seek, among other things, improved living conditions in places that are different from their place of origin
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Migration, United Nations, and Inequality
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, North America, and Mexico

29. Introduction. Challenges to Political Representation in Contemporary Chile

Author:
Rossana Castigliono and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Democratic representation seems to be increasingly under stress in various established democracies, such as Greece, Spain, and the USA. Chile is also following this trend, but there are a number of partic- ularities that make the Chilean case distinctive. After all, Chile is widely regarded as one of the most consolidated democratic regimes in Latin America and as having solid economic performance. However, citizens have shown decreasing levels of satisfaction with democracy and repre- sentative institutions, and are turning to protest and social mobilization to express their discontent. The paradox that Chile is facing today lies in the mismatch between the attitudes of voters and the overall perfor- mance of the regime. In explaining this intriguing puzzle, most of the literature has emphasized the legacy of institutional arrangements inher- ited from military rule. We argue that institutions are necessary but insuf- ficient for explaining the increasing challenges that democratic represen- tation faces. Thus, we also claim that it is necessary to consider not only the expansion of critical citizens and middle income earners, but also the repoliticization of inequalities.
Topic:
Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, Representation, and Middle Class
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile

30. Re)Politicizing Inequalities: Movements, Parties, and Social Citizenship in Chile

Author:
Kenneth M. Roberts
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
For 20 years following the 1989–1990 democratic transition, Chilean politics was characterized by stable forms of party-based political representation, relatively low levels of social mobilization, and a techno- cratic consensus around a neoliberal development model that generated rapid and sustained, albeit highly unequal, patterns of economic growth. This sociopolitical matrix was challenged, however, when hundreds of thousands of students and their supporters took to the streets to protest against educational inequalities, while smaller numbers of protestors mobilized around a plethora of other labor, environmental, and indige- nous rights claims. This wave of social protest occurred in a context of growing detachment of Chilean citizens from traditional parties and representative institutions, and it punctured the aura of inevitability and consensus that surrounded the country’s economic model. The ground- swell of popular protest signified the end of a posttransition political era in Chile and the dawning of a new one defined by the repoliticization of social and economic inequalities, including vigorous debates about the social pillars of the neoliberal model and the reach of social citizenship rights. The Chilean case sheds new light on the processes by which ine- qualities come to be politicized or depoliticized in different structural, institutional, and ideational contexts.
Topic:
Social Movement, Inequality, Citizenship, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile