Which of the following explains how civil society interacts with politics in both Nigeria and Mexico?

The sociological factors behind discontent

As the discussion of inequality shows, it is not possible to draw a straight line from the grievances identified in Chapter 2 to discontent. Discontent is an emotional state, so it is necessary to analyse the psychological impact of these grievances; it is also a collective phenomenon, which means a sociological lens is needed. People’s decisions as to whether and how they express their discontent reflects not only mental calculations but also their emotional state and the extent to which they identify with the other people involved (Stürmer and Simon, 2009[42]), (van Troost, van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2013[43]). Moreover, their attitudes and behaviour are strongly influenced by cultural factors, which in turn reflect the history and beliefs of their society. This report argues that discontent emerges from the interaction of these structural factors with the aforementioned contingent factors.

While these structural factors are highly contextual, this section contends that certain commonalities exist across countries and regions, which it links to the social fragmentation associated with development and modernisation. To make this case, it shows evidence of weakening social networks, declining interpersonal trust and worsening anomie, and it examines clashes between values (the so-called “culture wars”). In doing so, it touches on some of the megatrends discussed in the previous edition of Perspectives on Global Development (OECD, 2018[44]) that are changing the structures of society globally: migration, climate change and demographics. Another megatrend – digital technology – is dealt with at the end of this chapter.

Social networks and civic engagement are diminishing

We thought we could do without tribes and clans. Well, we can't. (Vonnegut, 1981[45])

Sociologists have long examined the impact of modernisation on the health of societies. By affecting our fundamental perceptions of space and time, modernisation is a catalyst for fundamental changes in our activities and social relations (Harvey, 1990[46]). Changes in the way we live and work break the close bonds of family and small communities; if modern life is to be tolerable, these bonds must be replaced by links of trust, reciprocity and solidarity with fellow workers or city dwellers, for example. If not, the individual’s well-being suffers. So too, argued Durkheim, would the entire country, which would become a “sociological monster” unless “between the state and the individual, there is interlaced a whole series of secondary groups near enough to the individuals to attract them strongly in their sphere of action and drag them, in this way, into the general torrent of social life” (1893[47]).

In explaining the health of democracy in the United States in the 19th century, Tocqueville emphasised the importance and breadth of associations, also known as secondary institutions.

Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small…Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common and have applied this new science to the most objects. (1960 [1835][48])

This idea has retained currency: some 150 years after Tocqueville was writing, Putnam attributed the decline of democracy in the United States to the demise of these associations (1995[49]).

Support networks are weakening in many parts of the world. The proportion of people globally who felt that they could count on the support of friends and family in times of need fell slightly from 79% to 78% between 2006 and 2018. This average covers considerable regional variation, with increases in East Asia, post-Soviet Eurasia and Southeast Asia offsetting a five percentage point fall in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and a three percentage point fall in Latin America and South Asia. Across all regions, individuals from the lowest income quintile are substantially less likely to feel that they have support from friends and family than peers with higher incomes (Figure 3.1). The disparity is particularly pronounced in East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia.

The secondary institutions that temper the impact of modernisation at a collective level are also weakening. This tendency not only exacerbates citizens’ feelings of isolation but also contributes to the weakening of citizens’ voices. It is generally not feasible for citizens to communicate directly with the state. They are better able to communicate their interests via institutions that serve as interlocutors between society and state, as well as provide citizens with a group identity.

Union membership is low across the developing world and has declined in countries at all income levels. In 1975, 33% of workers were members of trade unions in OECD countries, but that rate had halved to 16% by 2018. This decline was accompanied by a decline in the proportion of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement, from 46% in 1985 to 32% in 2017 (OECD, 2019[51]). The rate of union membership in the public sector in OECD countries is around three times higher than in the private sector. Across all sectors, union membership is extremely low among low-skill workers, the young and those on part-time contracts (OECD, 2019[51]). There are thought to be many factors behind this decline, including changes to the structure of output (away from manufacturing, towards the service sector), the competitive pressures of globalisation and the growing prevalence of non-standard work contracts.

Time series data for union membership in developing countries are rare, but in countries for which data are available – and using the most recent data since 2010 – average rates of unionisation in non-OECD Americas, non-OECD Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are 15.4%, 16.0% and 15.8%, respectively (ILO, 2020[52]). Of those countries that also have data since the early 2000s, more than half have seen falling rates of unionisation. China is an example of a country where union membership has risen strongly in recent years.

Membership of political parties has also declined. Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke demonstrate that membership of political parties declined in all but 4 of 27 European countries between the late 1990s and the end of the first decade of this century, by which time just under 5% of the electorate belonged to a political party (2012[53]). According to Katz et al., albeit using a smaller sample of European countries, average membership of political parties stood at almost 15% of the electorate in 1960 (1992[54]). There has also been a change in the nature of party membership: party members are nowadays more likely also to have a link to the public sector or state service. As a consequence, parties are becoming less representative of (and less connected to) civil society and more akin to “the outer ring of an extended political class”, with ever-weaker links to the grassroots level (Van Biezen, Mair and Poguntke, 2012[53]). Similar declines have been identified elsewhere around the world, although the United States is very much an outlier in this regard, since voting rights are closely linked to party affiliation (Whiteley, 2011[55]).

Trends in civic engagement outside the workplace vary by region. According to the Gallup World Poll 2019, individuals’ willingness to volunteer time in their communities fell between 2006 and 2018 in East Asia (-14 percentage points), Latin America (-5 percentage points) and South and Southeast Asia (-2 percentage points) but rose in the former Soviet Union (+9 percentage points) and sub-Saharan Africa (+5 percentage points) (2019[50]). Across all regions, civic engagement is lowest among the lower-income quintiles; globally, an average just 28% of those in their country’s lowest income quintile are able and willing to volunteer time in the community.

Religion remains an important part of the daily lives of people in developing countries and thus plays a prominent role in fostering identity and solidarity within groups. Some 47% of people in OECD countries said that religion was important to them in 2018 (Gallup, 2019[50]). In the United States, church membership has fallen by more than 20 percentage points in just over two decades: 47% of Americans said that they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque in 2020 versus 70% in 1999 (Jones, 2021[56]). More than 90% of people in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and more than 80% in the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia said that religion was important to them in 2018. East Asia is an exception; just 20% of respondents ranked religion as important (Gallup, 2019[50]).

Trust in leaders outside government remains significantly higher than trust in politicians in many parts of the developing world. Across Africa, 48% of people professed to having a lot of trust in religious leaders between 2016-18, compared to 35% for both traditional leaders and the president. Logan and Katenda find that trust in traditional leaders has subsequently increased while trust in elected leaders has declined (2021[57]). According to the authors, citizens perceive traditional leaders as having a positive impact on democracy and as bringing development to their communities but are strongly opposed to traditional leaders playing a more active political role. In Latin America, 37% of respondents had a lot of confidence in the church in 2018 while only 6% had a lot of confidence in the national government (Figure 3.2).

Interpersonal trust has declined and stress levels have risen

Interpersonal trust is a fundamental indicator of social cohesion, an essential ingredient of social capital and critical for collective action. Defined as the extent to which individuals feel that people from outside their immediate circle of family and friends can generally be trusted, it tends to be very low across developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the Afrobarometer, 15% of people thought that others could be trusted in 2011, down from 18% in 2000 (2016[58]). The Latinobarómetro indicates that interpersonal trust increased from 15% to 21% between 2000 and 2011 but fell to 14% in 2018 (2018[59]). Interpersonal trust seems to be somewhat higher in Asia; the Asiabarometer indicates that it rose from 28% to 33% between 2002 and 2006 and then stayed more or less the same until the latest available data in 2015 (Inoguchi, 2016[60]).

Regional averages hide considerable country-level variation in interpersonal trust. Countries within the same region seem to have been on different trajectories since the early 2000s (Figure 3.3). Perhaps most striking, however, is that levels of interpersonal trust tend to be very low in developing countries; in no country outside of Asia do more than 25% of people think that others can generally be trusted. Trust is also low in many advanced economies. Pew Research Centre notes that 71% of Americans feel that inter-personal trust has declined in the past 20 years, with half of respondents thinking people are less reliable than they used to be (2019[61]). There is considerable heterogeneity within Europe (Ortiz-Ospina and Roser, 2016[62]).

Levels of interpersonal trust vary by demographic group but the absolute level of trust is low across almost all groups. Across Africa, for example, 34% of those with only informal schooling thought that others could generally be trusted in 2011, compared to just 13% of those who had completed secondary school (Afrobarometer, 2016[58]). In Latin America, 13% of those aged 15 to 25 thought that others could be trusted in 2018, compared to 18% of those aged 61 or over.

The determinants of interpersonal trust are a complex combination of social preferences, expectations and intrinsic motivations (Murtin et al., 2018[63]). It is nonetheless clear that the functioning of social, economic and political systems relies to some extent on people’s capacity to trust others; these systems are weaker where trust is weaker. At the same time, trust among actors within a society can be earned and trust can be generated by repeated positive interactions.

Rising stress levels underline the importance of support networks. The proportion of people who experienced stress rose across all regions between 2006 and 2018 (Figure 3.4). The highest increases were in Latin America (+9 percentage points), the Middle East and North Africa (+7 percentage points) and sub-Saharan Africa (+14 percentage points). An index of negative experiences on the day before the interview tells a similar story; the incidence of negative experiences increased everywhere except post-Soviet Eurasia and East, Central and Southeast Europe. This increase in negative experiences was particularly marked in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. As this chapter explains later on, virtual networks are expanding fast but are a poor substitute for real-life interactions and not necessarily conducive to social cohesion or trust in government.

Isolation, declining interpersonal trust and economic marginalisation are widely considered to be defining characteristics of “anomie". Anomie is applied at a societal level to describe the fractures or malaise that occur when social regulation breaks down or when a large body of people lack the (legal) means to achieve goals that society considers to be desirable. The term is also applied to describe an individual’s state of mind and is associated with isolation, frustration and stress (Teymoori et al., 2016[64]). In both cases, anomie is linked to eras of change (be it political or economic) and has a profound impact on social cohesion and individual well-being; it lies at the heart of the “deaths of despair” that, according to Case and Deaton, expose the social cost of modern capitalism, especially for the economically disadvantaged (2020[65]). Anomie is thus an important input to discussions about discontent, not least because a popular movement might bring together individuals who had previously felt isolated and disconnected from society, for better or for worse (Kornhauser, 1959[66]).

Anomie is a structural phenomenon; it is not attributable to a particular policy, and no single institution is to blame for its emergence. At a societal level, it underscores the need for a broad range of policies to promote cohesion, inclusion, equality and voice. Reconciling societies structured around mass consumption with the urgent demands of environmental sustainability is emerging as a critical challenge. Anomie points to the need for significant investment in mental health services. More broadly, it underlines the point that individuals invariably view their own success not only with reference to that of others but also to what society as a whole expects; in a changing, unequal and increasingly interconnected world, the latter can be extremely difficult to identify and a source of discord in itself.

Culture wars are emerging

The third component of this structural analysis focuses on the relationship between culture and values. When analysing the drivers of discontent discussed so far in this chapter, it is important to bear in mind that their impact in societies will vary according to the attitudes of that society (or sub-group thereof). As Inglehart and Welzel demonstrated, values vary across both space and time (2010[67]): it is therefore impossible either to predict how a particular phenomenon will affect a society or to propose a single set of policies that will mitigate its impact.

According to Inglehart and Welzel (2010[67]), societies fit on two major dimensions of cross-cultural variation:

• Traditional versus secular-rational values: traditional societies favour family values, deference to authority and national pride, while secular-rational societies are more likely to be accepting of divorce, abortion and euthanasia.

• Survival versus self-expression values: societies exhibiting survival values put considerable stress on economic and physical security, while societies favouring self-expression values are likely to focus more on environmental protection, gender equality and political and economic participation.

The “map” from Inglehart and Welzel, which locates countries at different levels of development according to the prevailing values, demonstrates clear regional trends that reflect cultural and economic factors. Populations in less developed economies tend to exhibit traditional and survival values, while people in more developed economies are more likely to exhibit secular-rational and self-expression values. The authors also note that certain values, notably self-expression, are more conducive to democracy and an active civil society than others. However, there is considerable variation between and within countries. A number of Latin American countries, for example, exhibit values that are considerably more traditional than their level of development might suggest. Moreover, values within the same society will often vary by age group, place of residence and occupation.

A study of religious attitudes conducted in more than 100 countries by the Pew Research Center, for example, shows that young adults (aged 18 to 39) in almost every country are less religious than those who are older; the gaps are largest among Christian populations in the Americas and Europe (2018[68]). Jones points out that political differences are interacting with religious differences in the United States to heighten intergenerational divides (2021[56]).

The relationship between income and values highlights the consequences of economic inequality for social cohesion. A high degree of inequality can narrow the scope for consensus within a society: if groups within a society (or indeed globally) experience different economic trajectories – increases versus decreases in income, security versus vulnerability of economic status – their values are likely to diverge. This will not only exacerbate polarisation, but it might also lead to a divergence in how inequality might best be addressed: groups will display different attitudes not only regarding policies but also processes. Where vulnerability begets conservatism, support for radical change and collective action might wane, jeopardising structural reforms intended to lessen the vulnerability. This polarisation is magnified considerably if one or more groups feel that they do not receive the recognition they deserve, leading to what is colloquially termed a culture war. As the next section discusses, such conflicts are muddying ideological waters.

Differences in values have a profound impact on support for public policies. As Algan et al. show, attitudes towards the desired level of redistribution in France vary significantly across groups at a similar income level according to variables such as level of education and religious beliefs; moreover, individuals at opposite ends of the income distribution and the ideological spectrum can have similar attitudes towards redistribution (2019[69]). The authors also show that interpersonal trust is closely linked to people’s outlook towards major public policy issues, such as climate change and migration: individuals who are less trusting of others are less likely to accept migrants or support policies to address climate change.

Attitudes towards migration vary greatly across regions and income groups. Survey data indicated that individuals from the lower income quintiles were less likely to be accepting of migration in all regions in 2016 (Figure 3.5A). However, there are indications that national income is negatively correlated with acceptance of migrants: respondents in Latin America and the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are more accepting of migrants than those in OECD countries. This is likely in part to reflect a perception of respondents in OECD countries that they are the principal destination of migrants from countries in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Attitudes towards climate change also vary globally. Respondents in Asian economies are much more likely to believe that enough is being done to preserve the environment than those in other regions (Figure 3.5B). In Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East and North Africa, the proportion of respondents who feel that enough is being done tends to decline with income, while in OECD countries (many of which are among the largest carbon emitters), attitudes do not vary much by income: close to half the population at each income level believe enough is being done. Kahan notes a “striking convergence” between perceptions of global warming and political outlooks, with individuals on the political right much less likely to believe in the phenomenon (2015[70]). He detects a strong cultural divergence between those who believe in the science on climate change and those who do not, which will not be easily shifted by public information campaigns, concluding, “whether people ‘believe in’ climate change, like whether they ‘believe in’ evolution, expresses who they are.”

In the cases of both migration and climate change, varying tolerance for different policies across groups means it will be challenging to gain consensus on the appropriate policy response either at a national or international level. Put simply, “best practice” on these issues will never be considered optimal by everyone. Even achieving consensus about the need to do anything at all might be difficult. The Pew Research Center shows that supporters of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States agree on the extent to which migration policy is a priority for the government (Pew Research Center, 2021[71]). However, the two parties are far apart on whether or not the administration should act on climate change: only 14% of Republicans believe climate change should be a top priority versus 59% of Democrats.

In the context of the COVID-19 crisis and the public policies implemented to control the pandemic, the level of trust in government is particularly important. So too is trust in scientists, on whose guidance many of these policies were implemented. In most countries, only one in three people professed to have “a lot” of trust in scientists in their country in 2018 (Figure 3.6). The experience of the pandemic (and variable support for different public policy responses) is almost certain to affect these attitudes. It is notable that trust in governments rose in the initial months of the outbreak (between January and May 2020) but by January 2021 had reverted to the pre-pandemic level (Edelman, 2021[72]). The same survey showed scientists to be the most trusted group, although trust in scientists declined by seven percentage points from the previous year.

In the context of the COVID-19 crisis and the public policies implemented to control the pandemic, the level of trust in government is particularly important. So too is trust in scientists, on whose guidance many of these policies were implemented. In most countries, only one in three people professed to have “a lot” of trust in scientists in their country in 2018 (F). The experience of the pandemic (and variable support for different public policy responses) is almost certain to affect these attitudes. It is notable that trust in governments rose in the initial months of the outbreak (between January and May 2020) but by January 2021 had reverted to the pre-pandemic level (Edelman, 2021[72]). The same survey showed scientists to be the most trusted group, although trust in scientists declined by seven percentage points from the previous year.

Elgar, Stefaniak and Wohl analyse the relationship between different forms of trust and COVID-19 mortality in 84 countries (2020[73]). They find that mortality was negatively associated with confidence in institutions but positively correlated with social trust, a finding they suggest might be linked to behavioural contagion and non-adherence to social distancing regulations among closely-knit groups. The authors also find mortality to be positively correlated with inequality and negatively correlated with civic engagement. These conclusions suggest social capital (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4) has played an ambiguous role during the pandemic.

A survey produced by Edelman in May 2021 showed that the pandemic has changed attitudes on issues that extend beyond public health or confidence in the government. Some 24% of respondents from 14 countries said that the pandemic had made them believe that climate change needs to be taken more seriously while 34% said it had made them believe that they are in the midst of an information crisis and 28% that their country is too reliant on products from other countries (2021[74]).

The politics of discontent

The rise of discontent reflects a political failure. It can also have profound consequences for national politics and international relations. The rise of ethno-nationalist and so-called populist movements, particularly in advanced economies, reflects this failure but is unlikely to address its underlying causes. This section examines how some of the trends identified in the first two chapters have affected politics, explores the growing tendency of political systems to aggravate rather than assuage discontent, and investigates the negative impact of polarised and exclusive political systems on inequality, social cohesion and efforts to improve lives.

The report’s interest in politics concerns its role in resolving contestation and fostering co-operation among groups in a society. This entails a perpetual search for compromise regarding who sets the rules that govern society and, as such, a continual tussle for power. An integral part of these power dynamics relates to the distribution of scarce resources: the question of “who gets what, how?” posed by Lasswell (1936[75]). Politics is both a contingent and a structural factor behind discontent: it changes day by day, but the power relations that lie beneath are well established and play a key role in determining political outcomes. The political parties whose rivalry provides the most visible manifestation of these power struggles are not the only component of political life but will nonetheless be the focus of this section.

As discussed in Chapter 2, lack of voice and an absence of representation are fundamental to discontent. Citizens are less likely to vote when they do not see their interests or their outlook represented by a political party, which in turn also diminishes their trust in institutions and their confidence in democracy (in a broad sense). They take to the streets to make their grievances heard because they lack alternative mechanisms. Where a political system excludes a large and (in many places) growing proportion of the population, it will not be able to fulfil its function of reconciling differences and fostering co-operation across society; social cohesion will weaken further as a result. Nor, at a structural level, will it enable a fairer redistribution of power and resources, which will in turn undermine efforts to reduce inequality.

These phenomena imply a loss of consent among civil society towards the state and the prevailing political, economic and ideational power structures. According to Gramsci, loss of consent thus opens the way towards new ways of organising society and implies that government authority is based no longer on leadership but instead on dominance, a weaker foundation (1971[76]). This situation does not necessarily result in revolution but does generate what he describes as “morbid symptoms” – a term that resonates with the discontent visible today.

Economic changes are contributing to a fragmentation of political identities

Their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. (Orwell, 1949[77])

The structural changes in the global economy outlined in Chapter 1 have had profound political consequences. In advanced economies, shifts in production and new forms of work organisation have contributed to a fragmentation of political identities that had coalesced into the left- and right-wing blocs that defined politics in the 20th century. As political landscapes fragment, “party identification has weakened and party membership has declined” (Foa and Mounk, 2016[78]). While they might initially have benefited from weakening of political ideologies, centrist parties are now suffering: support for social democratic parties in Europe has declined significantly during the 2000s (Zur, 2021[79]).

As fundamental questions of how to organise the economy – particularly the role of the state therein – became less important, the perceived performance of the economy in the hands of a particular party has become increasingly important in determining their electoral success. In this context, voters have proven more likely to change parties as they feel less loyalty to a particular movement. Crouch contends that “[voting] has become an experience closer to consumer activity, responding to advertising, rather than the expression of deeply felt social solidarities” (2020[80]).

Focusing on recent experiences in Latin America, Lupu attributes the collapse of around 25% of well-established political parties in the region between 1978 and 2007 to a dilution of party brands and a poor economic performance under their watch (2016[81]). As party brands dilute, their perceived competence in overseeing the economy becomes more important. Mainwaring finds that the institutionalisation of political parties in Latin America is positively correlated with governments’ economic success but not, surprisingly, with strong programmatic linkages, a strong state apparatus, ideological polarisation or partisan identification (2018[82]). The study also contends that measures of higher economic development are negatively correlated with party identification and participation in Latin America, and that party systems in the region are now converging with those in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where party institutionalisation and programmatic differentiation are limited. Barrera et al. emphasise the influence of personalist leaderships and historical cleavages over ideological divides in determining the evolution of political landscapes across the region (2021[83]).

Roberts explains the reconfiguration of political parties in Latin America with reference to economic and social realignment linked to globalisation (2014[84]). He argues that the end of import substitution models in the region represented a critical juncture for political parties. The state of the party system in a given country during the import substitution era had a profound influence on the fate of particular parties after its demise, with left-wing or populist parties suffering particular losses during the instability of the 1980s where these had previously been dominant. A country’s party-political landscape was then profoundly affected by whether it was left- or right-wing parties that led market reforms in the 1990s, which blurred traditional ideological boundaries and fractured constituencies.

As traditional ideological divides become less influential in the party-political landscape, issues associated with recognition (such as cultural identity and immigration) are becoming at least as important as the issues that previously defined the ideological divide, such as the role of the state and the degree of redistribution (Algan et al., 2019[69]). A working-class voter might thus prioritise recognition over redistribution and support a right-wing party (Häusermann, Kemmerling and Rueda, 2020[85]). In this context, ideological terms can be used to disparage political opponents even where this rivalry is not based on differing policy attitudes but on clashes of identity (Mason, 2018[86]).

There is also a professional-geographical dimension to political fragmentation. Service industries and advanced manufacturing techniques have very different geographical requirements to those of the industries predominant in the last century: firms tend to cluster in particular areas (usually primary cities), which become hubs for innovation and attract high-skilled labour from across the country. Both tendencies create large gaps between these hubs and old industrial areas, small towns or rural areas not only in terms of their productivity but also their prospects – gaps that are reflected in differing political attitudes (McQuarrie, 2017[87]; Weisskircher, 2020[88]). The decline in unionisation has compounded this process.

Chapter 1 identifies a large global constituency – characterised by its economic vulnerability and low prospects – that is likely to challenge the status quo of political systems. However, this constituency, termed the “precariat” by Standing (2011[89]), is not an organisation per se: it is characterised by marginalisation rather than being bound together by a particular identity, and it has various factions whose needs are diverse and might even be mutually exclusive. Nor does it possess a unifying ideology or a particular political agenda. This description resonates with “the masses” identified by Arendt, who sees a large group of atomised individuals as easy for totalitarian movements to exploit (1958[90]).

At the same time, the disaffected (and vulnerable) middle classes described in Chapter 2 are not bound to a particular political identity. Fromm explains how a loss of status and need for a group identity felt by the lower middle classes in Germany during the 1920s was essential to the rise of Nazism (1941[91]). The author warns that “nothing is more difficult for the average man to bear than the feeling of not being identified with a larger group….The fear of isolation and the relative weakness of moral principles help any party to win the loyalty of a large sector of the population once that party has captured the power of the state”.

In the absence of a political identity, subjective factors become increasingly important. In examining the French presidential election of 2017, Algan et al. find that supporters of the two candidates in the second and final round of voting – one a centrist, the other on the far right – were poles apart in terms of education and income (2019[69]). However, these differences did not manifest themselves in ideology – they shared similar views on redistribution, for example – but rather in subjective factors. Voters who displayed lower life satisfaction, lower interpersonal trust and felt anger more frequently were more likely to vote for the far-right candidate. The supporters of both candidates were more individualistic in outlook than the candidates from traditional left- and right-wing parties, suggesting a degree of atomisation.

The importance of subjective factors, in particular emotions, in driving political choices is having important consequences for the style of political messaging, which seeks to generate an emotional response rather than appeal to a voter’s reason. At the same time, political groups are working hard to differentiate themselves from each other linguistically and even creating rival versions of reality (Box 3.2). These tendencies make it difficult to establish a productive dialogue between opposing groups.

Box 3.2. The political polarisation of language and fragmentation of reality

There is no story that is not true. (Achebe, 1958[92])

Communication is a pre-requisite for resolving contestation and fostering co-operation; a worrying trend of today’s political landscape is the inability to find a common language. As discussed later in this chapter, people who share political views increasingly communicate only with each other rather than with people who hold opposite views, creating an “echo chamber” effect that further polarises opinion. However, the divergence is much more fundamental than that. Even when people with opposing views interact, language is serving to push them apart rather than pull them together. Moreover, political discourse increasingly portrays such different realities that truth and facts lose their absolute quality. These tendencies, which make political compromise even harder, are in large part a consequence of political strategy.

The polarisation of political discourse in the United States has been demonstrated by Gentzkow, Shapiro and Taddy in their analysis of congressional speech between 1873 and 2016 (2019[93]). Their variable of interest was partisanship, defined as the ease with which one can infer which of the two main political parties legislators belong to based simply on the language they use. They found that partisanship was relatively low until the mid-1990s, whereupon it increased sharply and has remained high ever since. The authors find that the inflection point corresponds with a strategy of the Republican Party to differentiate itself from the Democratic Party and (with the help of marketing companies) to communicate on these issues through language that most resonated with voters.

The deliberate use of language to foster political identities and establish distinct narratives has filtered down into civil society, where this polarisation functions on a sub-conscious level. Demszky et al. find evidence of partisanship on Twitter not just in the language used to describe events but also the way topics are chosen, how events are framed and how they are perceived (2019[94]). Politicisation of news in its broadest sense (often magnified by the political leanings of the news agencies themselves, in the narrower sense of the term) entails the loss of a common interpretation of events, to the extent that notions such as “facts” and “truth” become subjective rather than objective. This phenomenon is at the heart of suggestions that we are living in a “post-truth” world.

While this phenomenon has greater scope to flourish given the fragmentation of the media discussed later in this chapter, it has strong historical resonances; the post-truth leader echoes the charismatic leader articulated by Weber (1968[95]). Charismatic leaders gain legitimacy through their exceptional nature; their authority is not bestowed by tradition or a rational, rules-based system, and their supporters do not expect them to focus on the day-to-day realities of society but to pursue higher truths and embody a vision for the future (Spoelstra, 2020[96]). The charismatic leader is thus able to challenge prevailing power structures, be they cultural or ideological, where these exercise control over the narratives and beliefs that regulate society; charismatic leaders can thus be catalysts for far-reaching change.

Even if charismatic leaders are not expected to engage with reality, their visions will nonetheless have to be articulated via some form of policy agenda, which in turn must take reality into account. At that point, the question becomes: which reality? A post-truth world poses profound challenges to policy makers: the fragmentation of perceptions across society makes it extremely difficult to agree which problems need fixing, undermines trust and drains the legitimacy from attempts to do so. Returning to the starting point of this discussion, the first step in meeting this challenge involves finding the appropriate language with which to frame these problems, mindful of the fact that, as Foucault argues, language and the act of framing a problem are themselves an expression of power (1994[97]).

Winner takes all: The political consequences of inequality

Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. (Towne, 1974[98])

The inequalities emerging across a number of dimensions world wide that are documented in this report present a direct challenge to the legitimacy of political systems that might account for the growing discontent identified in this report. The equality implied by a democratic system, whereby one individual’s vote is never worth more or less than another’s, jars with the inequalities evident in many electoral democracies globally. Many countries are moving away from a situation whereby the political direction is broadly determined by the interests of the “median voter” towards a winner-takes-all politics that reinforces the advantages of an economic elite whose incomes and wealth have increased spectacularly over the past three decades (Hacker and Pierson, 2010[99]; Piketty, 2014[7]).

In this context, the term “winner-takes-all” should not be confused with first-past-the-post electoral systems, which, unlike proportional representation systems, confer considerable power on the party or politician who receives the most votes, even if they are not supported by a majority of the electorate. Rather, it is the idea that a small part of the population exercises disproportionate power over society – a sentiment that is widely held in Latin America, for example: according to Latinobarómetro, 79% of Latin American citizens believed that their country was governed in the interests of a few powerful groups in 2018, the highest level since Latinobarómetro began to collect this data in 2004 (2018[100]).

To begin this brief examination of the channels through which economic inequality interacts with politics, it is important to recognise the limitations of the median voter theory. This chapter has already shown the decline in voter turnout, a shrinking sample that makes it ever harder to identify the median voter. The fragmentation of political identities described above is also a challenge. Moreover, the approach places considerable emphasis on elections as the determinants of policy and thus risks overlooking how politics functions across the electoral cycle as a whole: citizens are constantly able to influence political decisions through a variety of channels, including (but certainly not limited to) the protests described at the start of the chapter.

At the same time, it is not possible to reject the median voter theory completely (Holcombe, 1989[101]): as Piketty demonstrates, many advanced economies significantly increased taxes and transfers to reduce inequality over the course of the 20th century, although this growth tended to level off from the 1980s onwards (2014[7]). However, Bartels finds that social spending in advanced economies, as reported by the OECD, tends to be significantly lower than it would be if policies were fully responsive to the wishes of the population as a whole, leading him to conclude that “political inequality is rampant in contemporary affluent democracies” (2017[102]). This resonates with the OECD, which reports that around 60% of respondents in 21 OECD countries believe that the government does not take their opinion into account when designing public policy, a figure which rises with age (2019[103]). Moreover, it is important also to look beyond redistributive policies (including minimum wages) when considering how policy makers influence economic inequality (Hacker and Pierson, 2010[99]).

There are various channels through which the better-off members of civil society – be they individuals, companies or organisations – can influence policies. The first is by direct lobbying – a catch-all term for the various ways in which private entities press policy makers for policies that directly benefit them, often in exchange for financial support. Although lobbying has attracted considerable attention of late, the practice has a long history; indeed, close relations between business and government are an integral part of state building and have been highly influential in international relations, as Chapters 4 and 5 discuss.

Lobbying legalises and institutionalises corporate influence in modern democracies, which allows these interests outsized say in public policy and inhibits collective action on issues as important as reducing inequality or addressing climate change.

In advanced capitalist economies, with strong formal institutions and rule of law, unequal access to political influence is found in lobbying systems, through which big corporations and interest groups can legally exercise overwhelming influence on policymaking. Because unequal access to political influence profoundly shapes the making of laws and policies, it affects inequality in all other realms: income, access to public services, exposure to risks. (Ang, 2020[104])

Where lobbying becomes institutionalised, Hacker and Pierson argue that “the art for policy makers is not to respond to the median voter; it is to minimize the trade-offs when the desires of powerful groups and the desires of voters collide” (2010[99]). This balancing act requires policy makers to avoid situations where a particular policy can clearly be seen to benefit a particular group; lobbyists will therefore focus their energies less on policy design and more on regulation or implementation. Policy makers can also satisfy interest groups passively, simply through inertia or drift. The decline in the membership and influence of unions, combined with dwindling grassroots political engagement, implies a lack of civil society as a counterweight to business organisations. It is also important to consider the demand side of lobbying: the changing nature of politics-as-spectacle requires that politicians spend heavily on media and advertising, which in turn requires them to raise funds from private interests (Hacker and Pierson, 2010[99]).

The capacity for elites to influence government is heightened further by the “revolving door” phenomenon, whereby individuals move between senior positions in the public and private sectors (Brezis, 2017[105]). Hemingway finds that “legislators from business backgrounds are more likely to support income inequality and small government, as well as less likely to consult with labour groups, than those from working-class and other backgrounds” (2020[106]). Yet it is not necessary for public servants to have worked in the private sector for them to represent the interests of the economically advantaged: if they themselves tend to come from the upper echelons of society, it is very possible they will be influenced by the ideas and interests of that group. According to Lupu and Warner, “[around] the world, legislators' preferences are consistently more congruent with those of affluent citizens” (2020[107]). They find this to be particularly the case with economic issues, noting that the values of poorer individuals tend to be better represented in cultural issues. Park and Hawley conclude that “elites are particularly likely to diverge from the rest of the population on issues related to economic and domestic policy” in the United States, but this is less the case on foreign policy (2020[108]). The gender imbalances in political representation and management positions discussed in Box 3.1 are likely to hamper efforts to promote gender equality across all domains.

The overall effect of these phenomena, which operate via a range of channels (structural and contingent, conscious and unconscious), is to reinforce economic inequality. Elections serve to regulate these tendencies to an extent but certainly do not eliminate them. Where a political system is strongly influenced by financial power, there is a clear path from economic to political dominance, especially if allied to control over the media. In general, constituents with outsized power have an interest in maintaining the status quo; a closure of political space is likely to ensue that prevents the kinds of reforms needed to combat profound inequality from even being discussed, which in turn diminishes the incentive for the disadvantaged to vote. The declining electoral turnouts documented in Chapter 2 are both a consequence of and boon for corporate capture of politics – corruption by another name.

Political scientists have labelled this new, narrow kind of politics as “post-democracy”:

[While] elections certainly exist and can change governments, public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle, managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the techniques of persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind this spectacle of the electoral game politics is really shaped in private by interaction between elected governments and elites, which overwhelmingly represent business interests. (Crouch, 2000[109])

A road to populism

His object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. (Hamilton, 1792[110])

While the social atomisation and contestation described in the previous section create a horizontal distance between people, the tendencies described in this section create a vertical distance between political systems and civil society, as well as between an economic and political elite and the rest of the population. In response, new movements are emerging that challenge the concentration of power and seek to represent the large constituency whose needs and values are not reflected in the prevailing political landscape. Populist parties, of the kind that have appeared in many advanced economies over the past decade, are an example of such movements, although it is also possible for an established party to take a populist turn. Populist movements can be from the ideological left or right, often depending on the context that gave rise to them. Mudde argues that it is often appropriate to ascribe to them a “thin” ideology that reflects their tendency to have specific opinions on a relatively narrow range of public policies and to use a “host ideology” (socialism or nationalism) to complete their agenda (2004[111]).

Elites can harness populist forces and populist forces can represent elite interests. Coalitions between the elite and the people can emerge where both favour deregulation or protectionism, for example.This coalition might prove short-lived: gains from deregulation are unlikely to persist (and may generate undesirable social and environmental externalities), while protectionism (either from trade or migration flows) does not constitute a policy that might ensure long-term growth in wages and employment in the sectors most affected by changes in technology or global trade patterns. To combat this coalition, progressive parties with strong social or environmental agendas would need to convince voters that they can create and sustain jobs for low-skilled workers.

While populist movements often share a number of characteristics, they are not homogenous. It is also not clear how meaningful the term is when analysing the politics of developing countries outside Latin America (Box 3.3). In most cases, populist movements represent a challenge to the political and corporate beneficiaries of post-democracies by giving a voice to the marginalised and challenging the elites. However, they can simultaneously represent “not an antidote to post‐democracy, but an extreme extension of it” (Crouch, 2019[112]). Despite the evolving complexities and definitional uncertainties around the term, three common tendencies among populist movements appear especially germane.

The first relates to the low likelihood of addressing the grievances of their supporters. As Rodrik points out, “the people” is a huge constituency with diverse and probably even conflicting demands that are impossible to reconcile through a detailed policy agenda (2017[22]). As a consequence, populist parties or politicians rally their supporters around stories, symbols and slogans that tell voters “here is what is happening, this is why, and these are the people who are doing it to you”. For right-wing movements, the most effective symbol for uniting this broad constituency is often the nation itself, which explains why many ethno-nationalist parties are populist and why both groups might vilify minorities and foreigners. In a context where social capital is deteriorating, inclusive political movements generate a sense of identity and group belonging that can be an important attraction.

The second point relates to potential damage to democratic institutions. Populist parties of whatever ideology challenge prevailing power structures, often implying that any group that threatens the direct rule of the majority is complicit in “anti-democratic” practices. Unelected democratic institutions, such as the civil service, judiciary or free press, risk being perceived as impediments to popular endeavours. Challenging institutions that represent vested interests might be a legitimate democratic agenda (Shapiro, 2011[113]), but undermining them removes an important restraint on the executive and can weaken a country’s capacity for collective action unless replaced by more responsive and representative institutions. According to Funke, Schularick and Trebesch, populist governments also tend to do substantial long-term harm to the economy (2020[114]).

Thirdly, the first two tendencies create a space between politics and civil society: people lack a strong political identity and politics becomes a game of elites. Populism exacerbates this divide by by-passing the secondary institutions that link individuals to political life. As Chapter 4 discusses, political systems need to be revived from the bottom up, but this cannot be done without a vibrant civil society that has space in which to function and to form its own institutions.

Box 3.3. The mixed evidence of populism in developing countries

The majority of the literature around populism focuses on its causes and manifestations in advanced economies, where it has surged in the 2000s after lying dormant for a century or so. Despite the emergence of populist movements or leaders across developing countries over the past decade, the significance of populism in such contexts is much less discussed, which prompts the question “why?”, when developing countries share many of the social problems discussed in this chapter with advanced economies.

It is widely acknowledged that populism was a common feature of Latin American politics in the 20th century, starting with Peronism in Argentina in the 1930s. Populist parties across the region have received more than 20% of votes since the 1960s; although there was a decline for populist parties between 1980 and the early 2000s, their share of the vote has since recovered and is on an upwards trajectory (Rodrik, 2017[22]). Overwhelmingly, populist movements in Latin America have been left wing, reflecting the high levels of structural inequality and well-established elites, both of which bear strong links to the region’s reliance on extractive industries.

Populism in Africa has played an important role in the post-colonialist nation building that has taken place since the middle of the 20th century. Kaltwasser et al. suggest that there have been two populist phases over this period (2017[115]). In the first, during the 1980s, populist leaders emerged from coups against first-generation post-colonial governments, emphasising their credentials as men of the people and defining themselves in opposition to the elites that gained power following independence, as well as to the colonial powers themselves. The second phase, in the 2000s, has seen populism used as an electoral technique by opposition parties to oust well-entrenched incumbents. These have often focused their appeal towards young, urbanised individuals, often in informal employment – groups often excluded from economic gains. At the same time, the importance of retaining support from rural voters has led populists to emphasise their ethnic identity.

According to Kaltwasser et al., populism is an “extremely rare species” of politics in East and Southeast Asia (2017[115]). They contend that Asia’s ideological space is very different from that of Europe and Latin America, since the “left-right divide is not structured by Marxist class theory”, and that it is harder for populists to emphasise a defence of traditional values because “East Asian societies have not witnessed a shift towards post-material values”. A distinction between the elite and the people is not meaningful in Asia, although it has been possible for populist leaders to represent themselves as “friends of the poor” or to establish common enemies in the form of criminals that threaten society.

The net result of these manifestations of populism across developing countries is hard to quantify, especially in the absence of a counterfactual. The prevalence of democracy of some form across Africa, Asia and Latin America suggests success of a sort, but persistent levels of inequality in Latin America (and one ongoing catastrophe) call into question the effectiveness of the region’s populist movements to date, despite their sustained support. The often weak institutional development across certain developing countries in general makes it difficult to know what effect populist governments have had in this area.

COVID-19: A cause of further discontent or an opportunity to reset?

The COVID-19 pandemic, and associated social and economic crises, is exposing and exacerbating many of the factors behind discontent identified in this chapter. As the crisis maintains its grip in 2021, some regions – in particular, Latin America – confront massive loss of employment, an upsurge in poverty and inequality, and a collapse in public finances. The political impact of the pandemic on countries where discontent was already evident could be profound.

Yet the COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to address a number of dysfunctions in a society, including its politics. As Crouch argues, crises can regenerate democracy

when enthusiasm for it is widespread [and] many diverse groups and organisations of ordinary people share in the task of trying to frame a political agenda which will at last respond to their concerns; when the powerful interests which dominate undemocratic societies are wrong-footed and thrown on the defensive; and when the political system has not quite discovered how to manage and manipulate the new demands. (2000[109])

Pushing back against populism will achieve little if it restores the narrow, distant politics that prevailed previously and spawned the upheavals of recent years. Political systems that operated according to a winner-takes-all logic have failed to take into account the interests and voice of the population as a whole or to encourage broad-based secondary institutions as intermediaries in the democratic process. While global economic forces played a key role in the rise of populism, for example through the deindustrialisation of many advanced economies, the consequences of trade liberalisation for working-class employment and industrial regions were foreseen (Meeropol, 1998[116]).

For better or worse, populism has fundamentally altered political attitudes. For example, protectionism might be strongly linked to populist and isolationist rhetoric, but it is increasingly accepted as a legitimate means of safeguarding livelihoods among those vulnerable to the forces of globalisation. A survey conducted by Tella and Rodrik shows that, contrary to what economics textbooks might say, a majority of people across the political spectrum believe that trade restrictions are a more appropriate response to economic shocks that threaten jobs than providing financial assistance to displaced workers (2019[117]).

Greater citizen engagement is a sine qua non of a healthy political system and more inclusive societies. As Chapter 4 explains, this engagement should not be limited to politics in the narrow sense of the term; the polarisation of societies by status, wealth and identity – a phenomenon exacerbated by new forms of technology – reflects fault lines across all aspects of modern life that can only be addressed by a holistic, consensus-driven approach that begins at the grass roots of society. Policies to address the contingent and structural causes of discontent will be important but so too will processes and the institutions that arise at every level of society to mediate these interactions.

References

[33] Abbs, L. (2020), “The hunger games: Food prices, ethnic cleavages and nonviolent unrest in Africa”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 57/2, pp. 281-296, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343319866487.

[92] Achebe, C. (1958), Things Fall Apart, Heinemann, London.

[58] Afrobarometer (2016), Afrobarometer, https://afrobarometer.org (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[133] Ahinkorah, B. et al. (2020), “Rising Above Misinformation or Fake News in Africa: Another Strategy to Control COVID-19 Spread”, Frontiers in Communication, Vol. 5, p. 45, http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00045.

[1] Aleksievich, S. (2016), Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets, Penguin Random House, New York, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541184/secondhand-time-by-svetlana-alexievich/.

[3] Alesina, A. and P. Giuliano (2011), “Preferences for redistribution”, Handbook of Social Economics, Vol. 1, pp. 93-131, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53187-2.00004-8.

[69] Algan, Y. et al. (2019), Les Origines Du Populisme: Enquête sur un schisme politique et social, Seuil et La République des Idées, Paris, http://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/les-origines-du-populisme-yann-algan/9782021428582 (accessed on 2 February 2021).

[104] Ang, Y. (2020), China’s Gilded Age, The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305741021000102 (accessed on 4 February 2021).

[90] Arendt, H. (1958), The Origins of Totalitarianism, Meridian Books, New York.

[123] AUC/OECD (2021), Africa’s Development Dynamics 2021: Digital Transformation for Quality Jobs, OECD Publishing, Paris/African Union Commission, Addis Ababa, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/0a5c9314-en.

[28] Ayoub, P. (2019), “Intersectional and transnational coalitions during times of crisis: The European LGBTI movement”, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, Vol. 26/1, pp. 1-29, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxy007.

[83] Barrera, O. et al. (2021), “Social Inequalities, Identity, and the Structure of Political Cleavages in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, 1952-2019”, World Inequality Lab, No. 2021/11.

[102] Bartels, L. (2017), “Political inequality in affluent democracies: The social welfare deficit”, No. 5-2017, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, CA, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csdi/research/papers.php (accessed on 5 March 2021).

[23] Becker, B. (2021), “Temporal change in inequality perceptions and effects on political attitudes”, Political Research Exchange, Vol. 3/1, pp. 1-21, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2474736x.2020.1860652.

[105] Brezis, E. (2017), “Legal conflicts of interest of the revolving door”, Journal of Macroeconomics, Vol. 52, pp. 175-188, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmacro.2017.04.006.

[11] Buttrick, N., S. Heintzelman and S. Oishi (2017), Inequality and well-being, Elsevier B.V., http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.016.

[140] Calvano, E. and M. Polo (2021), “Market power, competition and innovation in digital markets: A survey”, Information Economics and Policy, Vol. 54, p. 100853, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.infoecopol.2020.100853.

[65] Case, A. and A. Deaton (2020), Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism.

[129] Castellacci, F. and H. Schwabe (2020), “Internet, unmet aspirations and the U-shape of life”, PLOS ONE, Vol. 15/6, p. e0233099, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233099.

[80] Crouch, C. (2020), Social Europe – A Manifesto, Social Europe, Berlin, http://www.socialeurope.eu/book/social-europe-a-manifesto (accessed on 25 January 2021).

[112] Crouch, C. (2019), “Post-democracy and populism”, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 90, pp. 124-137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12575.

[109] Crouch, C. (2000), Coping with Post-democracy, Fabian Society, London, http://www.fabians.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Post-Democracy.pdf (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[43] Demertzis, N. (ed.) (2013), Emotions of protest, Palgrave Macmillan, London, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137025661_10.

[94] Demszky, D. et al. (2019), “Analyzing polarization in social media: Method and application to tweets on 21 mass shootings”, NAACL HLT 2019 – 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies - Proceedings of the Conference, Vol. 1, pp. 2970-3005, http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/N19-1304/ (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[47] Durkheim, É. (1893), De la Division du Travail Social, http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1522/cla.due.del1.

[15] Easterlin, R. (1974), “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence”, in Nations and Households in Economic Growth, Elsevier, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-205050-3.50008-7.

[74] Edelman (2021), 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer Spring Update: A World in Trauma, Edelman, New York, https://www.edelman.com/trust/2021-trust-barometer/spring-update.

[72] Edelman (2021), Edelman Trust Barometer 2021, Edelman, New York, http://www.edelman.com/trust/2021-trust-barometer (accessed on 2 February 2021).

[73] Elgar, F., A. Stefaniak and M. Wohl (2020), “The trouble with trust: time-series analysis of social capital, income inequality, and COVID-19 deaths in 84 countries”, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 263, p. 113365, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113365.

[78] Foa, R. and Y. Mounk (2016), “The danger of deconsolidation: The democratic disconnect”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 27/3, pp. 5-17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2016.0049.

[97] Foucault, M. (1994), The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, Vintage Books, New York, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/55037/the-order-of-things-by-michel-foucault/ (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[91] Fromm, E. (1941), Escape from freedom, Farrar & Rinehart.

[114] Funke, M., M. Schularick and C. Trebesch (2020), “Populist Leaders and the Economy”, CEPR Discussion Paper, No. DP15405, https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3723597 (accessed on 7 March 2021).

[50] Gallup (2019), Gallup World Poll 2019, http://www.gallup.com/analytics/318875/global-research.aspx (accessed on 1 February 2021).

[93] Gentzkow, M., J. Shapiro and M. Taddy (2019), “Measuring group differences in high‐dimensional choices: Method and application to congressional speech”, Econometrica, Vol. 87/4, pp. 1307-1340, http://dx.doi.org/10.3982/ecta16566.

[17] Gurr, T. (1970), Why Men Rebel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1955058.

[99] Hacker, J. and P. Pierson (2010), “Winner-take-all politics: Public policy, political organization, and the precipitous rise of top incomes in the United States”, Politics & Society, Vol. 38/2, pp. 152-204, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0032329210365042.

[132] Haidt, J. and J. Graham (2007), “When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize”, Social Justice Research, Vol. 20/1, pp. 98-116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11211-007-0034-z.

[110] Hamilton, A. (1792), Enclosure: objections and answers respecting the administration of the government, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-12-02-0184-0002.

[46] Harvey, D. (1990), “Between space and time: Reflections on the geographical imagination”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 80/3, pp. 418-434, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1990.tb00305.x.

[85] Häusermann, S., A. Kemmerling and D. Rueda (2020), “How Labor Market Inequality Transforms Mass Politics”, Political Science Research and Methods, Vol. 8/2, pp. 344-355, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2018.64.

[12] Hauser, O. and M. Norton (2017), “(Mis)perceptions of inequality”, Current Opinion in Psychology, Vol. 18, pp. 21-25, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.07.024.

[106] Hemingway, A. (2020), “Does class shape legislators’ approach to inequality and economic policy? a comparative view”, Government and Opposition, pp. 1-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/gov.2020.27.

[31] Hengel, L. (2021), Famine alert: Hunger, malnutrition and how WFP is tackling this other deadly pandemic, World Food Programme, https://www.wfp.org/stories/famine-alert-hunger-malnutrition-and-how-wfp-tackling-other-deadly-pandemic (accessed on 21 May 2021).

[21] Hirschman, A. (1973), “The changing tolerance for income inequality in the course of economic development”, World Development, Vol. 1/12, pp. 29-36, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0305-750X(73)90109-5.

[76] Hoare, Q. (ed.) (1971), Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, Lawrence & Wishart, London, https://lwbooks.co.uk/product/selections-from-the-prison-notebooks.

[101] Holcombe, R. (1989), “The median voter model in public choice theory”, Public Choice, Vol. 61/2, pp. 115-125, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00115658.

[126] Hootesuite/We Are Social (2021), Digital 2021 Global Overview Report, https://datareportal.com/reports/?tag=Digital+2021 (accessed on 2 February 2021).

[24] Houle, C. (2019), “Social Mobility and Political Instability”, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 63/1, pp. 85-111, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022002717723434.

[29] ICVA (2021), Open Letter Famine Prevention, International Council of Voluntary Agencies, Geneva, Switzerland, http://www.icvanetwork.org/OpenLetterFaminePrevention.

[52] ILO (2020), ILOSTAT, International Labour Organization, Geneva, https://ilostat.ilo.org/ (accessed on 27 January 2021).

[67] Inglehart, R. and C. Welzel (2010), “Changing mass priorities: The link between modernization and democracy”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 8/2, pp. 551-567, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1537592710001258.

[60] Inoguchi, T. (2016), Asiabarometer, http://www.asiabarometer.org/data/abdl/php.

[56] Jones, J. (2021), U.S. church membership falls below majority for first time, Gallup Inc., Washington, DC, https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx (accessed on 6 April 2021).

[13] Jost, J. and O. Hunyady (2003), “The psychology of system justification and the palliative function of ideology”, European Review of Social Psychology, Vol. 13/1, pp. 111-153, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10463280240000046.

[70] Kahan, D. (2015), “Climate-Science Communication and the Measurement Problem”, Political Psychology, Vol. 36/S1, pp. 1-43, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12244.

[115] Kaltwasser, C. et al. (eds.) (2017), The Oxford Handbook of Populism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198803560.001.0001.

[54] Katz, R. et al. (1992), “The membership of political parties in European democracies, 1960-1990”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 22/3, pp. 329-345, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.1992.tb00316.x.

[66] Kornhauser, W. (1959), The Politics of Mass Society, The Free Press, Glencoe, IL.

[25] Lasch, C. (1995), The revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy, W. W. Norton, New York.

[75] Lasswell, H. (1936), Politics; Who Gets What, When, How, Whittlesey House, New York, London, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3167194W/Politics_who_gets_what_when_how?edition=politicswhogetsw00lass (accessed on 2 February 2021).

[100] Latinobarómetro (2018), Informe Latinobarómetro 2018, Corporación Latinobarómetro, Santiago, http://www.latinobarometro.org/latNewsShowMore.jsp?evYEAR=2018&evMONTH=-1.

[59] Latinobarómetro (2018), Latinobarómetro, http://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[131] Lewandowsky, S., U. Ecker and J. Cook (2017), “Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the ’post-truth’ era”, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, Vol. 6/4, pp. 353-369, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008.

[57] Logan, C. and L. Katenda (2021), “African citizens’ message to traditional leaders: Stay in development, stay out of politics”, Afrobarometer Dispatch, No. 443, https://afrobarometer.org/publications/ad443-african-citizens-message-traditional-leaders-stay-development-stay-out-politics (accessed on 21 May 2021).

[134] Loomba, S. et al. (2021), “Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA”, Nature Human Behaviour, pp. 1-12, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01056-1.

[81] Lupu, N. (2016), Party Brands in Crisis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139683562.

[107] Lupu, N. and Z. Warner (2020), Affluence and Congruence: Unequal Representation Around the World, Harvard Dataverse, Cambridge, MA, http://noamlupu.com/A&C.pdf (accessed on 5 March 2021).

[82] Mainwaring, S. (ed.) (2018), Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781316798553.

[30] Mani, A. et al. (2013), “Poverty impedes cognitive function”, Science, Vol. 341/6149, pp. 976-980, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1238041.

[86] Mason, L. (2018), “Ideologues without Issues: The Polarizing Consequences of Ideological Identities”, Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 82/S1, pp. 866-887, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfy005.

[87] McQuarrie, M. (2017), “The revolt of the Rust Belt: place and politics in the age of anger”, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 68/S1, pp. 120-152, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12328.

[116] Meeropol, M. (1998), Surrender : how the Clinton administration completed the Reagan revolution, University of Michigan Press.

[125] Merton, R. (1957), Social theory and social structure, Free Press, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1959-00989-000 (accessed on 1 February 2021).

[142] Michaelsen, M. (2020), The digital transnational repression toolkit, and its silencing effects, Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/digital-transnational-repression-toolkit-and-its-silencing-effects.

[14] Mijs, J. (2019), “The paradox of inequality: income inequality and belief in meritocracy go hand in hand”, Socio-Economic Review, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwy051.

[111] Mudde, C. (2004), “The populist zeitgeist”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 39/4, pp. 541-563, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x.

[63] Murtin et al. (2018), “Trust and its determinants: Evidence from the Trustlab experiment”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, No. 2018/02, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/869ef2ec-en (accessed on 1 February 2021).

[20] Must, E. and S. Rustad (2019), “’Mtwara will be the New Dubai’: dashed expectations, grievances, and civil unrest in Tanzania”, International Interactions, Vol. 45/3, pp. 500-531, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2019.1554569.

[34] Newman, E. (2020), “Hungry, or hungry for change? Food riots and political conflict, 2005-2015”, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 43/4, pp. 300-324, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2018.1454042.

[136] Newman, N. et al. (2020), Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/ (accessed on 27 April 2021).

[124] OECD (2021), Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India 2021: Reallocating Resources for Digitalisation, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/711629f8-en.

[36] OECD (2021), Man Enough? Measuring Masculine Norms to Promote Women’s Empowerment, Social Institutions and Gender Index, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/6ffd1936-en.

[121] OECD (2020), OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2020, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/bb167041-en.

[39] OECD (2020), Women at the core of the fight against COVID-19 crisis, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/women-at-the-core-of-the-fight-against-covid-19-crisis-553a8269/.

[38] OECD (2019), Gender, institutions and development database, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=GIDDB2019 (accessed on 1 June 2021).

[51] OECD (2019), Negotiating Our Way Up: Collective Bargaining in a Changing World of Work, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/1fd2da34-en.

[103] OECD (2019), Risks that Matter: Main Findings from the 2018 OECD Risks that Matter Survey, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/Risks-That-Matter-2018-Main-Findings.pdf (accessed on 3 March 2021).

[35] OECD (2019), SIGI 2019 Global Report: Transforming challenges into opportunities, Social Institutions and Gender Index, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/bc56d212-en.

[44] OECD (2018), Perspectives on Global Development 2019: Rethinking Development Strategies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/persp_glob_dev-2019-en.

[122] OECD et al. (2020), Latin American Economic Outlook 2020: Digital Transformation for Building Back Better, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/e6e864fb-en.

[8] Oishi, S., S. Kesebir and E. Diener (2011), “Income inequality and happiness”, Psychological science, Vol. 22/9, pp. 1095-100, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611417262.

[62] Ortiz-Ospina, E. and M. Roser (2016), Trust, Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/trust (accessed on 21 May 2021).

[77] Orwell, G. (1949), 1984, Harcourt, Brace and Company.

[27] Overstreet, N., L. Rosenthal and K. Case (2020), “Intersectionality as a radical framework for transforming our disciplines, social issues, and the world”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 76/4, pp. 779-795, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josi.12414.

[108] Park, H. and G. Hawley (2020), “Determinants of the opinion gap between the elites and the public in the United States”, The Social Science Journal, Vol. 57/1, pp. 1-13, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2018.12.008.

[71] Pew Research Center (2021), Economy and COVID-19 Top Americans’ Policy Agenda for 2021, Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/01/28/economy-and-covid-19-top-the-publics-policy-agenda-for-2021/ (accessed on 21 May 2021).

[61] Pew Research Center (2019), Trust and Distrust in America, Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/trust-and-distrust-in-america/.

[68] Pew Research Center (2018), “The age gap in religion around the world”, http://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/the-age-gap-in-religion-around-the-world/ (accessed on 6 April 2021).

[7] Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-first Century, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Pres, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006.

[135] Pomerantsev, P. (2019), This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, PublicAffairs, http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/peter-pomerantsev/this-is-not-propaganda/9781541762138/.

[49] Putnam, R. (1995), “Bowling alone: America’s declining social capital”, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 6/1, pp. 65-78, http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/bowling-alone-americas-declining-social-capital/ (accessed on 4 February 2021).

[84] Roberts, K. (2014), Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511842856.

[22] Rodrik, D. (2017), “Populism and the economics of globalization”, NBER Working Paper, No. 23559, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w23559.

[18] Runciman, W. (1966), Relative Deprivation and Social Justice : A Study of Attitudes to social inequality in Twentieth-Century England, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.

[128] Sabatini, F. and F. Sarracino (2017), “Online networks and subjective well-being”, Kyklos, Vol. 70/3, pp. 456-480, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12145.

[127] Sabatini, F. and F. Sarracino (2016), Keeping up with the E-Joneses: Do online social networks raise social comparisons?, SSRN Electronic Journal, Elsevier BV, Amsterdam, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2771042.

[26] Sandel, M. (2020), The Tyranny of Merit, Allen Lane.

[130] Seabrook, E., M. Kern and N. Rickard (2016), “Social Networking Sites, Depression, and Anxiety: A Systematic Review”, JMIR Mental Health, Vol. 3/4, p. e50, http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/mental.5842.

[6] Sen, A. (1979), Equality of what?, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Sen-1979_Equality-of-What.pdf.

[113] Shapiro, I. (2011), The Real World of Democratic Theory, Princeton University Press, Princeton, Oxford, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s2q9 (accessed on 3 February 2021).

[118] Simon, P. (1986), The Boy in the Bubble, Warner Records.

[19] Siroky, D. et al. (2020), “Grievances and rebellion: Comparing relative deprivation and horizontal inequality”, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 37/6, pp. 694-715, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0738894220906372.

[16] Smith, H. and T. Pettigrew (2015), “Advances in relative deprivation theory and research”, Social Justice Research, Vol. 28/1, pp. 1-6, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11211-014-0231-5.

[32] Smith, T. (2014), “Feeding unrest”, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 51/6, pp. 679-695, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022343314543722.

[2] Solzhenitsyn, A. (1963), One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Bantam Press, London.

[96] Spoelstra, S. (2020), “The truths and falsehoods of post-truth leaders”, Leadership, Vol. 16/6, pp. 757-764, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1742715020937886.

[89] Standing, G. (2011), The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury Academic, London, http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-precariat-9781849664561/ (accessed on 25 January 2021).

[119] Sterne, J. (2003), “Bourdieu, technique and technology”, Cultural Studies, Vol. 17/3-4, pp. 367-389, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0950238032000083863a.

[139] Stetka, V. (2012), “From multinationals to business tycoons: Media ownership and journalistic autonomy in Central and Eastern Europe”, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 17/4, pp. 433-456, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1940161212452449.

[42] Stürmer, S. and B. Simon (2009), “Pathways to collective protest: calculation, identification, or emotion? A critical analysis of the role of group-based anger in social movement participation”, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 65/4, pp. 681-705, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01620.x.

[117] Tella, R. and D. Rodrik (2019), “Labor market shocks and the demand for trade protection: Evidence from online surveys”, NBER Working Papers, No. 25705, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w25705.

[64] Teymoori, A. et al. (2016), “Revisiting the measurement of anomie”, PLoS ONE, Vol. 11/7, p. 158370, http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158370.

[120] Thompson, E. (1966), The Making of the English Working Class, Vintage Books, New York, http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/178147/the-making-of-the-english-working-class-by-e-p-thompson/.

[48] Tocqueville, A. (1960 [1835]), De la Démocratie en Amérique, MacMillan & Co Ltd, London, http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/De_tocqueville_alexis/democratie_1/democratie_tome1.html.

[98] Towne, R. (1974), Chinatown, Paramount Pictures, Hollywood, CA, http://www.paramount.com/movies/chinatown.

[141] Tufekci, Z. (2017), Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259292/twitter-and-tear-gas.

[9] Twenge, J., W. Campbell and N. Carter (2014), “Declines in Trust in Others and Confidence in Institutions Among American Adults and Late Adolescents, 1972–2012”, Psychological Science, Vol. 25/10, pp. 1914-1923, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797614545133.

[41] UN Women (2021), Beyond COVID-19: a feminist plan for sustainability and social justice - In brief, https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2021/06/feminist-plan.

[37] UN Women (2020), “Facts and figures: Ending violence against women”, http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures (accessed on 26 March 2021).

[40] UN Women (2020), The Shadow Pandemic: Violence against women during COVID-19, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, New York, http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/in-focus-gender-equality-in-covid-19-response/violence-against-women-during-covid-19 (accessed on 26 March 2021).

[4] UNDESA (2020), World Social Report 2020: Inequality in a rapidly changing world, United Nations, New York, http://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-social-report-2020.html (accessed on 25 March 2021).

[53] Van Biezen, I., P. Mair and T. Poguntke (2012), “Going, going,...gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe”, European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 51/1, pp. 24-56, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2011.01995.x.

[143] Villani, C. et al. (2018), Donner un Sens à l’Intelligence Artificielle : Pour une stratégie nationale et européenne, Secrétaire général du Conseil national du numérique, Ivry-sur-Seine, France, http://www.aiforhumanity.fr/pdfs/9782111457.

[138] Vizcarrondo, T. (2013), “Measuring concentration of media ownership: 1976-2009”, International Journal on Media Management, Vol. 15/3, pp. 177-195, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14241277.2013.782499.

[45] Vonnegut, K. (1981), Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, Delacorte Press of Penguin Random House, New York, http://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/184340/.

[95] Weber, M. (1968), On Charisma and Institution Building: Selected Writings, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo74177611.html.

[88] Weisskircher, M. (2020), “The strength of far‐right AfD in Eastern Germany: The East‐West divide and the multiple causes behind ‘Populism’”, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 91/3, pp. 614-622, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12859.

[55] Whiteley, P. (2011), “Is the party over? The decline of party activism and membership across the democratic world”, Party Politics, Vol. 17/1, pp. 21-44, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354068810365505.

[137] Winseck, D. (2008), “The state of media ownership and media markets: Competition or concentration and why should we care?”, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2/1, pp. 34-47, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00061.x.

[5] Yagci, A. (2017), “The great recession, inequality and occupy protests around the world”, Government and Opposition, Vol. 52/4, pp. 640-670, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/gov.2016.3.

[10] Yang, Z. and Z. Xin (2020), “Income inequality and interpersonal trust in China”, Asian Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 23/3, pp. 253-263, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12399.

[79] Zur, R. (2021), Stuck in the middle: Ideology, valence and the electoral failures of centrist parties, Cambridge University Press, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123419000231.

Which of the following explains how civil society interacts with politics in both Nigeria and Mexico quizlet?

Which of the following accurately compares the nature of social cleavages in both Nigeria and Mexico?

Which of the following best explains a characteristic of elections in Mexico and Nigeria?

Which of the following best explains an implication of the author's argument on Mexican officials relationship with citizens?