Essays
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Intergenerational Mobility - Durlauf, Steve N.
This essay describes basic facts about intergenerational mobility as well as some of the mechanisms that have been proposed to explain levels of mobility or persistence of socioeconomic status across generations. Limits of current research are identified. -
Intergenerational Mobility: A Cross‐National Comparison - Mazumder, Bhashkar
A goal in many societies is to ensure that individuals have the same opportunities for success irrespective of their circumstances at birth. While equality of opportunity is an elusive concept to measure, social science researchers have developed measures of intergenerational mobility to serve as a rough barometer. Presumably, societies in which where there is a high likelihood that families can improve their relative socioeconomic standing over generations are likely to be ones characterized by more widespread opportunity. In recent decades, a large and growing body of research that has used a variety of approaches to study intergenerational mobility with respect to income, education, and occupation has emerged. At this stage, the requisite data to conduct this kind of analysis is not available for all countries. Nevertheless, a few key patterns of results have emerged. First, intergenerational mobility appears to be most rapid in Nordic countries. Second, the United States and by some measures the United Kingdom appear to have lower rates of intergenerational mobility than other industrialized countries. Third, intergenerational mobility seems to be lower in developing countries, particularly those in Latin America. These conclusions are still tentative and may be revised as new and better data and more creative methods arise in future research. -
Mediation in International Conflicts - Beardsley, Kyle
Scholars of international conflict mediation have made strides in the last two decades in understanding when mediation occurs and when it is successful. The rationalist framework has allowed theorists to sharpen and expand on early insights, and research using quantitative methods continues to be an important part of the field. Gaining a sense of when disputants might use mediation disingenuously and expanding the scope and comparability of data sets on mediation will push both the study and practice of mediation onto useful new ground. -
Perceptions of the Legitimacy of Collective Decisions - Patty, John W.
In practical terms, political legitimacy is a subjective phenomenon, based on individuals' perceptions. These perceptions are based on four factors: the distributive efficiency of the outcomes from the decision, the distributive fairness of those outcomes, the equal access of the process used to make the decision, and the accountability of that process. In addition to discussing those factors, I also address the related questions of what factors lead individuals to make legitimacy judgments and the types of situations in which these judgments are most important. -
Political Conflict and Youth: A Long‐Term View - Barber, Brian K.
Over the past two decades, the scientific study of youth experience with political conflict has come into its own as a recognized, vibrant field of scholarship. This essay briefly reviews the state of the research. It notes the upsurge in volume and increase in the sophistication of the research, including larger and more representative samples, inclusion of locally defined assessments of youth functioning, and the study of the broader social ecology of youth who experience political conflict. These elements of progress notwithstanding, the research remains overwhelming driven by psychopathology models and has yet to extend either to systematically explore a broader focus on youth social, civic, economic, and political functioning or to seriously consider youth's cognitive and behavioral engagements in political conflict. -
Political Inequality - Manza, Jeff
In the classical model of democracy, governments are responsive to the mass public, making public policies favored by a majority of citizens while respecting the rights of minorities. In the real world, of course, no political system, democratic or otherwise, has ever fully realized this principle of political equality. The focus of this essay is an examination of research on how economic inequalities impact democratic politics. The question has become especially pressing as economic inequality has risen, in some countries quite dramatically, in recent decades. Political inequality may refer to either differential inputs into policymaking processes, in which some actors have more influence than others, or it can refer to policy outputs, in particular those which encourage or sustain income and wealth inequality. In this essay, I review four contemporary theories of political inequality (elite and oligarchic models, power resources theories, globalization models, and participatory inequality models). Each throws light on some aspects of political inequality, but none provides a completely satisfactory account. I conclude with some suggestions for future directions for research. -
Political Psychology and International Conflict - McDermott, Rose
Political psychology takes an individual level of analysis approach to the study of international conflict. This study has traditionally investigated the psychological foundations of decision making among elite leaders in the area of war and peace. Psychological models that have been applied to the examination of this area include those taken from cognitive psychology and evolutionary models. Such approaches include the application of prospect theory to cases of decision making under conditions of risk. Similar work in this area further explores the nature of psychological biases in decision making, particularly in the area of risk assessment. More recent work has explored the biological underpinnings of aggression, and their contribution to the emergence of violent behavior. Past work has tended to neglect the role of emotion, but more recent work has investigated these forces more fully. Future work that seeks to incorporate both biological and environmental forces in precipitating violence appears challenging but worthwhile. In addition, experimental methods drawn from psychology have been applied to the study of international conflict. The use of field experiments to explore the psychological forces that both motivate and sustain conflict appears promising. -
Presidential Power - Howell, William G.
For the better part of 40 years, the study of presidential power was understood within a strictly bargaining framework—one that emphasized presidential dependence on other political actors to do things that the president cannot accomplish on his own, and that recognized personal reputation and prestige as the keystones of presidential success. But in the past 15–20 years, the presidency field as a whole has undergone significant change. Scholars have begun to investigate a broader array of actions that presidents can take, many independently, to affect public policy; and the foundations for these actions do not depend, at least exclusively, on the particular endowments of the individual presidents who stand in office. In this short essay, I recognize a sampling of the most significant advancement in three areas of the study of presidential power: unilateral powers, the political control of the bureaucracy, and public appeals. I then underscore the importance of continued investments in theory building for the study of presidential power. -
Public Opinion and International Conflict - Berinsky, Adam J.
Should the opinions of citizens in a democracy matter in decisions of war and peace? The answer to this critical question depends on the stock we place in the ability of the mass public to come to meaningful decisions regarding the conduct of foreign affairs. In this essay, I examine public opinion about war over the past 75 years and make the case that our assessment of the mass public depends in large part on the nature of the information it receives from political leaders. Contrary to the conventional wisdom regarding public opinion and foreign policy that emerges from scholarly and journalistic accounts, events do not directly influence the public. Instead, citizens learn about wars largely from political leaders. Public opinion during times of war is therefore shaped by many of the same attachments and enmities that matter in domestic politics. As in other areas of politics, public opinion is primarily structured by the ebb and flow of partisan and group‐based political conflict. -
Public Opinion, the 1%, and Income Redistribution - Weakliem, David L.
Because of the skewed distribution of income and wealth, a majority of people could make significant financial gains by redistribution from the affluent minority. However, redistribution of this kind is not particularly popular. Moreover, the rapid increase in top salaries since the 1970s has not provoked a strong reaction from the public. This essay considers the paradox of public opinion on redistribution. There are many hypotheses, but until recently there has not been much empirical research. However, recent work on opinions about salaries suggests that most people have quite egalitarian standards of fairness, in which corporate executives would receive only a few times as much as average workers. At the same time, there is often a good deal of support for measures that make taxes less progressive, notably as the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. That is, people seem to think that high salaries are unfair, but do not necessarily support government efforts to move toward a “fair” distribution. The essay discusses some ways to reconcile this apparent contradiction. Two of the most promising are a lack of trust in government and moral objections to redistribution. However, we must also consider the possibility that the pattern of opinions is in some sense irrational: the challenge is to specify a theory of irrationality to make positive predictions. Finally, the essay discusses the availability of data on public opinion, and identifies two major needs: historical and comparative data. -
Race in Latin America - Telles, Edward
Race has long been a primary cleavage in Latin American societies, where people of African, Indigenous, and European origin have been present in large numbers. Although they have promoted race mixture as central to their national identities and often denied racism and racial discrimination, racial hierarchies have also been prominent features up until the present. Today, most Latin American countries have declared themselves multiculturalist and have begun to recognize their black and indigenous populations, largely in response to minority social movements and as these societies have begun to democratize. At the same time, the academic literature on the subject has blossomed. -
Racial Disenfranchisement - Hutchings, Vincent L.
Inquiries into racial disenfranchisement offer a crucial lens through which to critically assess the capacity of the US political system to sufficiently respond to the demands of an increasingly diverse society. Various social science disciplines have employed a range of theoretical frameworks and methodologies to explore the institutional, cultural, and psychological antecedents of disenfranchisement, as well as strategies to achieve racial equity. This essay reviews a small slice of the scholarly perspectives offered on racial inequity. It provides particular emphasis on theories of racial subjugation, racial attitudes, and the political behavior of racial minorities. The discussion of current and future trends in research on racial disenfranchisement explores the questions raised and insight offered by examinations of the distinct experiences of diverse racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as the potential impact of the “Obama era” on the state of race relations in the United States. -
Reconciliation and Peace‐Making: Insights from Studies on Nonhuman Animals - Koski, Sonja E.
Conflict resolution is the part and parcel of living in groups. In social circumstances competition over limited resources is inevitable. For individuals to benefit from group living, the costs should not disrupt social cohesion or relationships. Animals use many ways to avoid conflicts and to mitigate their damage. Post‐conflict reconciliation is an effective way to reduce emotional stress after aggression and to repair the damaged relationship between the former opponents. We now know that reconciliation is common in social species with individualized relationships. The necessity to reconcile is higher when individuals fight with someone who provides them with valuable benefits. Also, general benevolence between individuals reduces the risk to reconcile, increasing thus its likelihood. There are also preventive mechanisms to avoid costly conflicts, and ways to prevent its escalation once started. In many species, bystanders interact with conflict participants when aggression is over, often with affinitive behavior. Such ‘bystander affiliation” serves many functions, some of which may be cognitively demanding and resemble human consolation or mediating. However, we still know little of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of animal conflict resolution. Understanding the mechanisms of behavior is the next step in animal conflict resolution research. It will help illuminate the mysterious minds of social animals and, ultimately, the evolutionary history of human peacekeeping. -
Social Class and Parental Investment in Children - Gauthier, Anne H.
This essay critically reviews the literature on social class differences in parental investment in children including differences in (i) parenting practices or behavior; (ii) parenting styles, logics, and strategies; and (iii) parenting values and ideologies. The essay reveals how structural and cultural barriers contribute to creating social class differences in the ways parents interact with their children, as well as in the way they protect and promote their children's development and well‐being. This essay covers some of the foundational research in the field as well as newer research which has started to question the strict social class divide in parental investment. In particular, this essay discusses recent research on the resistance to the dominant ideology of good parenting, and studies of the complex interactions between social class, race and ethnicity, and gender. This essay concludes with a discussion of future research avenues including a call for a better empirical operationalization of the concept of parental investment. -
Stratification and the Welfare State - Moller, Stephanie
The welfare state is one of the most important predictors of inequality cross‐nationally, and research in this area is profuse. An expanding line of welfare state and stratification research focuses on the role of welfare states in addressing the needs created by increasing inequality, which has been generated by changing economic structures in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries. This essay discusses the welfare state in light of changing economic structures and politics to explain why some countries have attenuated the rise in inequality, while others (notably the United States) have not. It concludes with suggestions for further research. -
Stratification in Hard Times - Gangl, Markus
This essay reviews current research on the relationship between economic inequality and social stratification. Stratification, that is, the intergenerational reproduction of the distribution of incomes and socioeconomic advantage, is likely to be related to the level of economic inequality because parental incomes and wealth are important resources in families' investment in children's earnings capacity. The relationship is likely to be moderated, however, by the fact that monetary resources are not the sole family resource of importance, and by counterbalancing effects of progressive policy, notably as far as educational policy is concerned. Also, the relationship between inequality and stratification is likely to exhibit considerable time lags, and empirical analyses of contemporaneous correlations are unlikely to be informative in consequence. Owing to the substantial data requirements, few convincing empirical studies on the inequality–stratification relationship are available at present. More reliable evidence is available from studies of the relationship between inequality and educational attainment, arguably the key interim process in stratification. Here, empirical results suggest rising inequality to cause rising inequality of educational achievement, notably because well‐off families are able to increase children's attainment in the face of rising economic incentives, whereas lower income families are less able to do so. The essay concludes by suggesting key areas of future research, likely to be spurred by the increasing sophistication of analytical models and the increasing quality of available intergenerational data on earnings, incomes and socioeconomic standing. -
The Egg Freezing Revolution? Gender, Technology, and Fertility Preservation in the Twenty‐First Century - Inhorn, Marcia C.
Egg freezing is the “newest” new reproductive technology, a form of flash‐freezing that allows human eggs to be successfully stored in egg banks. Touted as a “revolution in the way women age,” egg freezing is being heralded as a way for older career women to “rewind the biological clock.” This essay will examine the many factors in American women's lives—education, career, financial stability, relationship status, medical diagnosis and prognosis—that affect their egg freezing and disposition decisions. “Medical” egg freezing is being used by cancer patients, while “social” or “elective” egg freezing is being used by professional women in their late 30s and early 40s, both of whom face the threat of future infertility. Egg freezing among professional women represents a technological concession to ongoing gender inequalities in American society. These include employment constraints facing career women, the growing demographic surplus of college‐educated women who cannot find college‐educated male partners, and women's resultant delays in marriage and childbearing. Ultimately, egg freezing reveals a new and important interface of science and society—one with major implications for human reproduction, women's lives, and family formation in the twenty‐first century. -
The Emerging Psychology of Social Class - Kraus, Michael W.
The objective material conditions of our lives shape social perceptions and relationships in fundamental ways. In this essay, I survey research examining the influence of one's social class position in society on basic psychological processes—including conceptions of the self and relationships with others. Insights from this research indicate that relatively lower class individuals are characterized by contextualized selves—selves that are more intertwined with the social environment and other individuals—whereas relatively upper class individuals are characterized by solipsistic selves—selves that are independent from the environment, and instead linked with internal goals, wishes, and motivations. Understanding these class‐based differences in the social self—evidenced in social behavior, cognition, and emotion profiles—has the potential to inform interventions that reduce societal problems related to constrained social class mobility and rising economic inequality. -
The Future of Class Analyses in American Politics - Stonecash, Jeffrey M.
Although the role of class has been extensively studied, this essay suggests several important matters that have been neglected and deserve more attention. The focus on occupational positions limits our understanding of the possible role of class. We need to devote more attention to household income and its impact on opportunity. We need to ask people about their aspirations and sense of fairness in American society and how that affects class voting. The presumption that class divisions have been reduced by racial and cultural issues has been embraced too quickly and needs more careful analyses. The use of nationally aggregated individual‐level surveys is limiting because it neglects how the distribution of classes across legislative districts and their representation through that matters for the emergence of class issues. Finally, the focus on multivariate analyses may satisfy academic notions of rigor but it removes analyses from having relevance for politicians. -
The Gendered Transition to Parenthood: Lasting Inequalities in the Home and in the Labor Market - Evertsson, Marie
We discuss the slow process through which the gendered transition to parenthood has changed in Western societies and the degrees to which this process challenges economic theories on the utility‐maximizing rational man, woman, and/or couple. The transition to parenthood has long‐term consequences for women's careers, often even in couples in which the woman earns more than the man. The reason for the slow‐changing process can partially be found in gender norms and the physical aspects of the transition to motherhood, including breastfeeding and norms regarding how long the child benefits from being in the mother's care. One of the challenges faced by research on the gendered transition to parenthood is how to distinguish where the boundaries between biology and gender norms lie. We discuss the gendered transition to parenthood and its career‐related consequences, and we elaborate on potential ways in which research may advance to dismantle the interconnected nature of biology, gender, and economic reasoning in couples' transition to parenthood. -
The Politics of Disaster Relief - Oliver, Alexander J.
Severe weather events provide unexpected tests of political leadership. From the perspective of the social scientist, disaster relief provides an excellent vantage point to observe the responses of both elected officials and voters to these dramatic events that, though not caused by politics, require a distinctly political response. This essay provides an overview of the research on the politics of disaster relief in the United States. The topic is vast and we focus specifically on the response of voters and politicians in the aftermath of severe weather events. We review the foundational research, discuss more recent advances, and then address what we see as the most important issues for future research on this topic. -
The Politics of Secularism in the United States - Campbell, David E.
Secularism is on the rise within the United States. Religious nonaffiliation has increased dramatically, while other measures of religiosity—worship attendance, belief in God, belief in scripture—are waning. This essay considers the political implications of this secular turn, in light of the historically high rates of religiosity within the United States. In doing so, we distinguish between passive and active secularism and describe measures of each. Passive secularism refers to not being religious—not identifying with a religion, not attending religious services, and not believing in God. Active secularism is the affirmative adoption of a secular worldview and identity. With this distinction, we can trace Americans' growing political polarization along religious–secular lines. One form of passive secularism—religious nonaffiliation—is often triggered by a backlash to the Religious Right. More generally, both passively and actively secular voters are moving to the political left. Furthermore, while smaller in number than passive secularists, active secularists are highly engaged in politics, comprising a sizeable share of the Democratic Party's activist base. -
The Process of Racial Resegregation in Housing and Schools: The Sociology of Reputation - Wells, Amy Stuart
The United States has a long history of racial and ethnic segregation in housing patterns and public school enrollment as well as efforts to dismantle this segregation. This essay discusses what we have learned in the United States about how difficult it is to halt the patterns of housing and school segregation even as our nation becomes more diverse, racial attitudes are reportedly improving, and the twentieth century urban‐suburban racial distinctions disappear. To explain the process of resegregation that occurs repeatedly, the author developed a new interdisciplinary framework to foster a deeper understanding of how racialized perceptions of places or neighborhoods and the schools embedded within them perpetuates segregation despite changing demographics, attitudes and metro migrations across urban‐suburban lines. The sociology of reputation, the bias of crowds, and the choices of home buyers with the most capital amid the existing separate and unequal structures are the bodies of research the author draws upon to help us see familiar segregation patterns anew. -
The Role of Social Mechanisms in the Formation of Social Inequalities - Diewald, Martin
Despite lacking a commonly shared definition, social mechanisms have recently received considerable attention in sociology. Social inequality research has been a trailblazer in providing examples of how social mechanism can further, theoretically and methodologically, progress. Two different understandings of social mechanisms are reflected in the literature. One refers to theoretical and methodological precision when describing the causal chains that lead from specific antecedents to specific outcomes. The other is a program designed to articulate a complete taxonomy of a limited number of mechanisms as abstract ideas to explain social inequalities. I discuss both approaches how they can fruitfully refer to each other. In the final section, I discuss social mechanisms in the view of a new challenge to social inequality research, that is, a growing interdisciplinary interest in gene–environment interference. By superseding the old and fruitless nature‐versus‐nurture debate, new fields of social inquiry emerge, but pose also the question what it can add to a better understanding of inequality‐generating social mechanisms. As I will show, the inclusion of genetic information in social science explanations does not threaten sociology as a discipline, but will potentially enrich both the currently proposed mechanistic approaches in social inequality research. -
The Transnationalized Social Question: Migration and Social Inequalities - Faist, Thomas
The social question is back. Yet today's social question is not primarily between labor and capital, as it was in the nineteenth century and throughout much of the twentieth. The contemporary social question is located at the interstices between the global South and the global North. It finds its expression in movements of people, seeking a better life or fleeing unsustainable social, political, economic, and ecological conditions. It is transnationalized because migrants and their significant others entertain ties across the borders of national states in transnational social spaces; because of the cross‐border diffusion of norms; and because there are implications of migration for social inequalities within national states. In earlier periods class differences dominated political conflicts, and while class has always been crisscrossed by manifold heterogeneities, not least of all cultural ones around ethnicity, religion, and language; it is these latter heterogeneities that have sharpened over the past decades.