Is Diversity Detrimental? Ethnic Fractionalization, Public Goods Provision, and the Historical Legacies of Stateness

Wimmer, Andreas

doi:10.1177/0010414015592645

Cited by 60 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 77 publications

(98 reference statements)

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“…Though the concept of status is relatively unexplored in political science, the findings of this research present several parallels with the broad tenets of the literature on ethnicity and nationalism (Wimmer, Cederman, and Min 2009;Wimmer 2002;Horowitz 1970). According to this school, the transformation of societies from hierarchical empires to modern nations involves the incorporation of ethnic groups into the state-building process.…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationssupporting

confidence: 53%

The Politics of Dignity: How Status Inequality shaped Redistributive Politics in India

Chakrabarti

2020

Preprint

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Conventional theories of the welfare state are premised on the interests of social classes – the wealthy elite oppose redistribution, while the working class supports expansive social rights. I argue that in multiethnic societies with long histories of discrimination, ethnic groups are motivated by concerns of enhancing their material well-being as well as their social status. Political elites from dominant groups are more likely to oppose redistributive policies, but unlike the working class, the policy preference of marginal groups is mediated by the level of status inequality. Under conditions of high inequality, concerns of dignity find precedence over pure redistribute policies. The politics of dignity is most concretely manifested through demands for symbolic and descriptive representation. I demonstrate this in the context of India by examining the caste identity of legislators, patterns in public spending and historical accounts of demands by lower caste mobilizations in major states over five decades.

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Section: Theoretical Implicationssupporting

confidence: 53%

The Politics of Dignity: How Status Inequality shaped Redistributive Politics in India

Chakrabarti

2020

Preprint

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“…All minority groups included in our analysis have preserved distinct identities for centuries, and in a number of countries the relations between them and the majority group have been hostile and discriminating. One possible explanation for this is the long-term state policy being the exogenous determinant of majority-minority relations (Singh & vom Hau, 2016;Wimmer, 2016). Accordingly, we would then expect that the hostility and discriminating attitudes towards the minorities are based on pure cultural distinctiveness, which nevertheless leads to prejudice that is coded in terms of social status.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Neighbourhood Disorder on Life Satisfaction of Ethnic Majority and Minority Group Members: Evidence From 12 Central-Eastern European Countries

Letki

Toruńczyk-Ruiz

Kukołowicz³

2019

SPB

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While research has shown a negative relation between neighbourhood disorder and indicators of well-being, this evidence comes predominantly from Western European countries, relies on subjective measures of disorder, and is indifferent to ethnic specificities. In this paper, we examine the relationship between neighbourhood disorder and life satisfaction across neighbourhoods in 12 Central-Eastern European countries. We use an exogenous measure of disorder, and account for the presence of respondents’ own ethnic group in the neighbourhood, as we propose that it may condition the effect of disorder on life satisfaction. Using survey data covering 18,743 residents of 897 local areas across 12 countries, we found that neighbourhood disorder was negatively related to life satisfaction for both ethnic majority and minority respondents, over and above individual and neighbourhood characteristics. This effect was, however, differently moderated by ethnic in-group share in the neighbourhood for ethnic majorities and minorities. Among ethnic majority members, disorder had a negative effect on their life satisfaction only when there were high levels of co-ethnics' presence in the neighbourhood, but not at low levels. By contrast, for minority members, the negative effect of neighbourhood disorder was significant at lower of levels of co-ethnic concentration, but not at its higher levels. These results suggest that whereas for minority groups the presence of co-ethnics buffers the negative effects of the aversive environment on well-being, for ethnic majority members it plays an opposite role. We argue that members of the dominant, majority population find having to attribute disorder to their in-group problematic, which results in lower life satisfaction.

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“…In this context, the expansion of literacy serves to facilitate state-society interaction by bridging the linguistic and human capital barriers separating citizens and central officials. Here, it is worth noting that in many (but certainly not all) European states, this expansion took place against the backdrop of state-sponsored schooling (Darden and Grzymala-Busse 2006, 94, 98;de Swaan 1988, 81;Wimmer 2016Wimmer , 1415. Within such institutions, students acquired a bundle of skills that would prove useful in dealing with the state.…”

Section: Literacy and Communicative Transaction Costsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A different concern relates to the potential for reverse causality. It is plausible that areas with high levels of statesociety interaction provide individuals with both greater incentives and opportunities to obtain literacy in the official language (Laitin 2007(Laitin , 1998Weber 1976, 84-89, 323-29;Wimmer 2016Wimmer , 1412. Ideally, we would address this issue by exploiting a policy change that induces exogenous variation in literacy.…”

Section: Addressing Reverse Causalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…See note 2. On the consequences of broader cultural homogenization for administration and control, seeSlater and Kim (2015) andScott (1998).4 SeeAnderson (2006, 44, 77, 84),Darden and Grzymala-Busse (2006, 98-99), Mylonas (2016, 1456),Meyer (1977, 69) andWimmer (2016Wimmer ( , 1412. On the role of language as a marker of ethnic or national identity, see e.g.,Laitin (2007;,Liu (2015, 8-9), andLodge (1993, 24).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Literacy and State–Society Interactions in Nineteenth‐Century France

Zhang

Lee

2020

American J Political Sci

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Modern states are distinguished by the breadth and depth of public regulation over private affairs. This aspect of state capacity and state power is predicated on frequent and dense encounters between the state and the population it seeks to control. We argue that literacy in the language of state administration facilitates state-society interaction by lowering the transaction costs of those encounters. We support this claim with evidence drawing upon detailed historical data from nineteenth-century France during a crucial period of state and nation building. Focusing on the specific domain of French marriage regulations, we find that increasing literacy predicts greater popular involvement with local authorities across French regions over time. These results demonstrate that literacy plays an important role in political development not solely by enhancing loyalty to the state, as the literature has recognized, but also by lowering linguistic and human capital barriers to state-society interaction. Verification Materials: The data and materials required to verify the computational reproducibility of the results, procedures, and analyses in this article are available on the American Journal of Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YQSBOA. M odern states are distinguished by the breadth and depth of public regulation over private affairs. Indeed, a defining axiom of the contemporary international state system is that state institutions should provide the predominant (if not exclusive) rules and regulations governing social and economic behavior over a given territory (Migdal 1988, 14). Many scholars therefore consider the ability to make and enforce binding rules to be central to conceptions of stateness and state capacity (

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Is Diversity Detrimental? Ethnic Fractionalization, Public Goods Provision, and the Historical Legacies of Stateness

Cited by 60 publications

References 77 publications

The Politics of Dignity: How Status Inequality shaped Redistributive Politics in India

The Politics of Dignity: How Status Inequality shaped Redistributive Politics in India

The Effects of Neighbourhood Disorder on Life Satisfaction of Ethnic Majority and Minority Group Members: Evidence From 12 Central-Eastern European Countries

Literacy and State–Society Interactions in Nineteenth‐Century France

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