Understanding how global rises in inequality are affecting governance regimes across the world is a critical question to the social sciences today. However, knowledge about the causal effects of inequality on governance is surprisingly limited. Where this evidence exists, it is restricted to a handful of advanced democracies. This project will provide new theory and empirical evidence on the relationship between inequality and governance and how social trust and trust towards institutions shapes this relationship in contexts where democratic structures may be unstable or under threat.
Trust is central to understanding the effects of inequality on governance because the way people have confidence in others and beliefs about the legitimacy of governance institutions shape political and social behaviour and mobilisation patterns among different groups.
The project focuses on three countries – Colombia, Mozambique and Pakistan – where democratic institutions have faced considerable challenges, including violence at times. Comparisons will be made with Spain, a country where democracy is well established, but where recent economic pressures have increased social tensions. The project will develop new theory and collect new comparative data using individual-level surveys, behavioural experiments and archival data to better understand how inequalities and trust have evolved across time to shape the governance outcomes we observe today.
In the Mozambique case we explore how past inequalities shape present-day outcomes in a range of domains. As a first step, we will investigate the relationship between political participation and socio-economic inequalities. This involves matching detailed voting behavior to the full census data from 1997 and 2007. We will also review the legacy of labour coercion on different aspects of trust, including willingness to contribute to public goods. This will involve the collection of new data and application of behavioural games. The Mozambique case is run by UNU-WIDER as part of the Inclusive Growth in Mozambique programme.
The project is implemented by a consortium led by Institute of Development Studies (IDS). UNU-WIDER a core partner in the project and will lead the Mozambique case study. Other partner organisations, also included in the project steering committee, include Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), International Security and Development Center (ISDC), Universidad de los Andes, University of Essex, University of Oxford and Georgetown University.
All papers, data, opinion pieces and opportunities to engage relating to this project will be available on this web page.
The research will address SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions and how it is affected by SDG 10: Reduced inequalities.
Focal point: Patricia Justino
Core researchers: Rute Martins Caeiro, Sam Jones
Project support: Iina Kuuttila
Communications: Eeva Nyyssönen
Institute of Development Studies (IDS)
ARTICLE IS ON EARLY VIEW | Forced wage labour (FWL) in colonial-era Portuguese Africa came to encompass a majority of working age men and persisted until the early 1960s. On the basis of reconstructed financial records from the Sena Sugar Estates in...
We study how the stringency of policy measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic affects individuals’ trust in formal institutions. Drawing on micro-level panel data from Germany spanning an 18-month period from the onset of the pandemic, we show that...
We examine the long-term impact of forced labour on individual risk behaviour and economic decisions. For that, we focus on a policy of coercive cotton cultivation enforced in colonial Mozambique between 1926 and 1961. We combine archival sources...
The political consequences of economic inequality have been debated in academic and policy circles for centuries. The nature of this relationship seems highly dependent on specific contexts, with empirical studies showing mixed evidence on how...
Following the abolition of slavery, various forms of compulsory labour were adopted by colonial powers to develop their economies. This paper analyses the contemporary consequences of compulsory cotton production—a forced labour system that operated...
Individuals are at their most mental plasticity in their impressionable years (ages 18–25 years) forming long-term attitudes and behaviours essential to functioning in a society, such as trust.In this paper we ask how exposure to natural disasters...
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, sub-Saharan African countries faced the dilemma of how to minimize viral transmission without adversely affecting the poor. This study proposes an index of lockdown readiness, taking into account housing conditions...
The role of ethnicity in political behaviour remains unsettled theoretically. Instrumentalist theories emphasize cognitive processes, arguing that political actors strategically employ ethnicity to attain certain goals, while expressivist theories...
This paper investigates how persistent changes in trust caused by the Great Recession have affected how governments and citizens across Europe responded to the next global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.We show that increases in individualism and...
Over the past few months, we have been carrying out extensive research in Mozambique as part of the Inequality and governance in unstable democracies...
Organized crime affects security, development, and democracy worldwide, but not much is known about its social consequences. We study how exposure to the presence of organized crime groups shapes the social capital of Italian citizens, including...
The magnitude of returns to colonial-era investments in Africa has been addressed in an extensive literature, as have the nature and legacies of extractive colonial institutions. However, the link between these institutions and the profitability of...
This paper analyses the pathways of technology diffusion through social networks, following the experimental introduction of new technologies in Guinea-Bissau. In the context of an agricultural extension project, we document both the direct effects...
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming states
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