Is the left right? The creeping embourgeoisement of social democracy through homeownership

Hadziabdic, Sinisa; Kohl, Sebastian

doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12479

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…If the rental market is well regulated, one might expect, homeownership policies might be needed less. To the extent that voters of traditional left-wing parties underwent processes of embourgeoisement with ever higher participation in higher-income groups, education, and homeownership (Häusermann 2018;Hadziabdic and Kohl 2021), parties of the left may thus have also become a major driver of homeownership-favouring measures. Homeowners usually do not form additional organised groups beyond political parties to defend their interests, while tenant organisation, though existent, face recurrent problems of collective actions and are not as politically important as unions in labour and welfare politics.…”

Section: Explaining Homeowner Supporting Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hidden homeownership welfare state: an international long-term perspective on the tax treatment of homeowners

et al. 2022

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Welfare is traditionally understood as social security decommodifying labour markets or as social investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largely hidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this article introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1901 and 2020 to uncover the “hidden welfare state” of taxes on imputed rent, deductibility of mortgage payments, housing capital gains tax, and value-added tax on newly built dwellings. Summary indices of homeownership attractiveness and neutrality of the tax code show that fiscal homeownership policies have been in decline until the 1980s and risen ever since. They are in place where finance is liberally and labour restrictively regulated. Contrary to the classical welfare state, they are not associated with an economic logic of industrialism or left-wing governments. They rather are an alternative to rent regulation used by Common-law jurisdictions or smaller countries. As welfare for property owners, the logic of fiscal homeownership welfare diverges from the classical welfare for the labouring classes.

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Section: Explaining Homeowner Supporting Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hidden homeownership welfare state: an international long-term perspective on the tax treatment of homeowners

et al. 2022

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“…Even in the study of financialization (Van der Zwan, 2014), the sociology of insurance is very much unknown and certainly dwarfed by the sociology of risk and welfare. While there have been studies on the attitudinal and political consequences of other forms of private wealth—most notably housing assets (André et al., 2018; Ansell, 2019; Hadziabdic & Kohl, 2021) and total private wealth (Nadeau et al., 2011)—the effects of life insurance assets are widely overlooked.…”

Section: Introduction: the Unknown World Of Private Economic Securitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Private spanner in public works? The corrosive effects of private insurance on public life

Hadziabdic

Kohl

2022

British Journal of Sociology

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Contemporary societies are not only “risk societies”, but also insurance societies. While the shift of systemic risks from the community to the individual is a distinctive trait of modernity, research on the consequences of this process has focused almost exclusively on welfare state responses aimed at re‐collectivizing societal risks. Individual‐level reactions associated with the need for a private safety net against the uncertainty brought by risk societies have been largely overlooked. What happens to a society and its individuals when private insurance becomes commonplace? Focusing on Germany, we use the data of the German Socio‐Economic Panel (1984–2018) to investigate the attitudinal antecedents and consequences of contracting private insurance. As one of the most important sources of private welfare, life insurance attracts risk‐averse individuals who are highly concerned with public economic affairs and see the market‐based solutions of conservative parties as the best way to safeguard their economic security. While short‐term attitudinal effects are absent, a longitudinal approach reveals that becoming insured gradually increases economic security but also entails withdrawal from public life and aversion to parties that support social redistribution. The loss of dynamism of a society may thus be related not only to public welfare but also to a private institution at the heart of the financial markets, which moreover has privatizing, welfare‐eroding effects. The paper argues for a more general sociology of insurance.

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“…For this reason, homeownership is recognised within electoral geography for changing the way in which class interests (and conflicts) feature (or not) within politics. Left-wing parties increasingly promote homeownership, while right-wing parties garner support as rising asset prices create a wealth effect that reduces reliance on, and preference for, the welfare state (Hadziabdic and Kohl, 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%

Class

MacLeavy¹

2023

Concise Encyclopedia of Human Geography

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Geographers have long engaged with class as a form of socio-economic classification, a position in the labour market, or as a relationship to the means of production. Yet economic rents (consisting of income derived from ownership or control over a limited asset or resource) and asset inflation (especially in the form of housing price rises) are creating new class divides.Geographical work has sought to connect the proprietorial ethos of the 'asset economy' to increasing inequality and demonstrate that social mobility is now typically achieved through ownership rather than entrepreneurial effort. Within this body of research, inequality and class are shown to be (re)produced in line with broader patterns of social disadvantage, with consequences for life courses and life chances. At times, the novelty of an ownership class of rentier capitalists is emphasized, however postcolonial scholars argue that class cannot be understood outwith the historical subordination of people under various forms of imperialism. While class was traditionally linked to employment, the assetization of property and people was established in colonial practices.

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Is the left right? The creeping embourgeoisement of social democracy through homeownership

Cited by 6 publications

References 46 publications

The hidden homeownership welfare state: an international long-term perspective on the tax treatment of homeowners

The hidden homeownership welfare state: an international long-term perspective on the tax treatment of homeowners

Private spanner in public works? The corrosive effects of private insurance on public life

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