Acknowledged as the defining challenge of our time, economic inequality has far reaching individual and societal consequences. It negatively affects productivity, decision-making, and health outcomes on the one hand, and political stability and economic growth on the other. Increased competition for resources not allocated at the top skews available reference frames and leads to adoption of unachievable standards, generating stressful social comparisons and anxiety that may intensify inter-group conflicts. Yet, as this dissertation shows on data from surveys from across the world, many of the worse off tend to believe that the social world in general is fair and that large differences in incomes are justified and even necessary. To understand why and how are the widespread and entrenched differences in incomes and wealth not being contested at a larger scale, this dissertations links perceptions and judgments of economic inequalities to their perceived, and often misjudged, normativity. It is argued that there is a need for a greater attention and understanding of people’s beliefs about what are the popular opinions and shared values regarding political issues. It is not only that people not know of inequalities, underestimate them, or attempt to rationalize their existence as fair and deserved. It is that people also need to know that their sentiments are shared by others. Based on results of multiple experimental studies, this thesis explored and supported a possibility that people who believe that the unequal status quo is unsatisfactory and that the standing system should be challenged and changed also tend to believe that their views are not shared by the general population. Even more, such thinking tends to get reinforced when someone else is critical of the system in place. Thus, instead of rising in spirit and assuming that others will finally see at least some of the negative outcomes of the way things are, those hoping for change may get demoralized, feel isolated in their views, and may feel drawn to compromises they shouldn't need to consider. In particular, the dissertation mainly utilizes the framework of conservatism being a motivated political cognition (Jost et al., 2003) which proposes that adoption of system-legitimizing attitudes may be motivated by psychological needs to see the social world as orderly, structured, and generally just and fair. In four chapters, the dissertations explores how the conditions theorized to motivate adoption of status-legitimizing attitudes affect not only these attitudes, but also the perceptions of their normativeness. Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive test of the original reading of status-legitimacy hypothesis (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Ni Sullivan, 2003) which implied that those with lower objective status are the most motivated to system-justify, and of the re-specified version (van der Toorn et al., 2015) that posits subjective powerlessness to be the driver of undue system legitimization. Presented are results of a mixed-effects analysis of ISSP data on social inequality, covering almost 50,000 respondents from 28 countries. The results from analysis testing contextual moderation lend more support for the original, rather than the revised reading of status-legitimacy hypothesis - that it is the objectively disadvantaged who may experience greater motivation to defend the system. Chapter 3 adopts Lane's (1986) perspective explaining that political institutions create more dissonance than market institutions, and tests a proposition that while political institutions will be perceived as legitimate by the members of the lower classes, market institutions will be seen as less legitimate. Second, we hypothesize that those over and under-estimating their social class should report higher or lower perceived legitimacy of the system. Analysis of data from General Social Survey (2010-2016; total n = 4142) shows that those in lower classes report higher confidence in political, but not market institutions compared to those members of the upper classes. Similarly, relative to those under- or correctly estimating their class, those over-estimating their class positioning reported higher confidence in political compared to market institutions. Chapter 4 presents two experimental studies testing, on a sample of 201 students (in Tilburg, the Netherlands), how indirect threat to the country's culture and a direct criticism of the country's economic performance influence people's perceptions of attitudinal similarity with their society in general depending on their prior ideological views. The results suggest that those with views critical of the standing socio-political system imagine their co-nationals as more attitudinally different compared to those who consider the standing system to be fair and desirable. In particular, exposure to economic threat, but not cultural threat, increased the perceived ideological distance from the presumed attitudes of the rest of the society among those critical of the system, but not among those who considered the system to be fair and desirable as it is. Chapter 5 presents data from two studies conducted before and after the 2016 US Presidential election (mTurk, n = 478), and before and after the 2017 UK general election (Prolific Academic, n = 617). Data were gathered in two rounds, utilizing the same between-subjects experimental design to assess whether ideological differences moderate how threat (economic system threat) and uncertainty (outcome uncertainty about election) influence the perceived similarity between people's personal normative attitudes (how things should be) and their estimates of socially normative attitudes (what they believe others would say should be). Furthermore, the effect of the result of the election on beliefs about the legitimacy of the standing economic system among supporters of competing political parties was assessed in two studies using within-subjects design (US n = 80; UK n = 329). The findings support the hypothesis that ideology predicts differences in perception of the generalized other when faced with system threat and that people bolster their ideological commitments following threats to their worldview in form of electoral defeat. While liberals tend to overestimate the strength of conservative values within the society in general, conservatives view others as both more conservative and liberal compared to themselves.

With the widening socio-economic gap and growing social exclusion in the global north as a backdrop, this study seeks to address the topic of citizen participation in the context of socio-economic inequality by contributing to a deeper understanding of the relatively unexplored perspective of the civil servant organizing and facilitating citizen dialogues. The aim of the study is to describe the lived experiences of civil servant citizen dialogue facilitators/organizers in three Swedish municipalities regarding the implementation of “citizen dialogue on complex issues” in socio-economic vulnerable neighborhoods. Through semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion and a supplementing document analysis, their perceptions of aim and outcomes, their own position/role, and the type of communication taking place between dialogue participants are explored and analyzed using Bickford’s “political listening”, Freire’s “theory of dialogical action” and Quarry and Ramírez’s “champions in context”. In this way, the study aims to contribute new empirical data to the field of citizen participation in socio-economic vulnerable neighborhoods in Sweden.The results demonstrate how the civil servants challenged the municipality to try a more participatory dialogue form by avoiding “banking” style communication, enabling “reflection” and explicitly considering how to “power equalize”. However, focus on the form and on non-polemic joint problem solving overshadowed their reflections on the aim and placed any conflict line outside the dialogue, not fully addressing inherent struggles arising from socio-economic inequality. Furthermore, the study suggests a re-think of the “neutral” facilitator concept since it might obscure power relations, as well as highlights the risk of leaving deeper social justice issues unaddressed as frustrations manifested in the dialogue are affected by structures beyond the local municipality and don’t always lead to “action”.

According to the Pew Research Center, the modern wave of political polarization began in 1994, and is the strongest today than it has ever been during the 23-year period. (2007) Polarization in the US party system is evidenced by several factors including: growing consistent partisan views, partisan antipathy, ideological bubbles, growing difference in preferences, a shrinking political center, and the lack of political compromise. (Pew Research Center 2014) The question I attempt to answer in this thesis is on the factors associated with political polarization within the millennial generation. One of the most pressing issues to this generation is what is known as the Student Loan Crisis, which is the $1.45 Trillion dollars Americans owe to private and federal lenders to attend college. (StudentLoanHero.com). In this thesis, I argue that economic inequality, via the student loan crisis, contributes to political polarization within the millennial generation. My analysis takes place at the level of the individual. I conduct a statistical analysis using the 2016 American National Election Survey Dataset, to test whether political polarization, operationalized as ideological and partisan polarization, is associated with polarization on economic issues that I link to wealth inequality in the millennial generation, controlling for polarization on social issues, interest in politics, and income. The main finding is that party/ideological polarization is positive and significantly related to polarization on economic issues in the millennial generation; whether or not the Student Loan Crisis underlies this link requires further study.

This paper examines the effect of governance on inequality, specifically if improvements in the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators affect inequality as measured by two Gini coefficients: Market Gini, before taxes and redistribution, and Net Gini, after taxes and redistribution. The data for the Gini measurements was taken from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) and the data for the Worldwide Governance Indicators was taken from the World Bank. Data for fifteen (15) years, from the start of the Worldwide Governance Indicators until 2013, was combined with data from SWIID for the same years. In all, data from one hundred fifty-six (156) countries with a full set of six (6) indicators for the years that had at least one corresponding Gini measurements were used in this study: in total one thousand seven hundred and forty-seven (1747) observations. In a pooled OLS regression, controlling for growth with the variable GDP per Capita expressed as a per cent (%) change on an annual basis, the individual indicators gave the following results, where a positive sign indicates increased inequality and vice versa: Control of Corruption and Regulatory Quality showed a positive sign for both Gini measurements. Rule of Law, Government Effectiveness, Political Stability and the Absence of Violence/Terrorism, gave a negative sign for both Gini measurements. Voice and Accountability showed a positive sign for Market Gini and a negative sign for Net Gini. The fact that an improvement in Control of Corruption increased inequality both before and after taxes and redistribution was unexpected and should be further researched.

This thesis will work on implementing the Political Economic Theory of Wall Construction on the case of Saudi Arabia. To further contribute to the study of border walls, the PETWC is applied to a different methodology than in the original paper where it was first introduced, taking into consideration neighboring countries without border walls into analysis. Ultimately, the thesis will show that PETWC sets good foundation for further development of a broader border wall theory, and that border walls concerning Saudi Arabia are consequence of low regional integration and internal instability at home and abroad.

Based on the political economy of the media perspective, this paper explores the media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation over the early 21st century (2000 to 2018) based on a large-scale corpus of seven German daily and weekly newspapers. Germany is a useful case study, being one of the most unequal countries in the Eurozone area in terms of wealth inequality. Drawing on text mining methods and corpus linguistics, it shows that wealth and inheritance taxation is a relatively infrequent topic over the entire period, with the exception of a few intense months of increased reporting. On the occasions that the media do report on the topic of wealth and inheritance taxation, it is mainly covered in terms of a political debate. This debate centres on the politics of a possible reform process and the connected difficulties of finding compromise between different actors, rather than focussing on the potential economic impact. Furthermore, this paper explores the power of agents (both on the organisational and individual level) as the primary definers of social reality. It shows that market-liberal and conservative organisations and economists dominate the news over social-democratic and left-wing ones. Overall, the findings indicate a hostile news coverage concerning the introduction of wealth taxation and the increase of inheritance tax. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The continuous rise of socio-economic inequality over the past decades with its connected political outcomes such as the Brexit vote in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump are currently a matter of intense debate both in academia and in journalism. A significant sign of the heightened interest was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a "media Sensation" and Piketty himself as a "rock star Economist". This paper, drawing from a major international and cross-disciplinary study, investigates the print media treatment in four European countries of economic policy proposals presented in Capital. Applying social semiotic and critical discourse analysis, we specifically focus on articles which are in disagreement with these proposals and identify five categories of counterarguments used against Piketty: authorisation, moralisation, rationalisation, portrayal of victimhood and inevitability. Providing textual and linguistic examples we demonstrate how the use of linguistic resources normalises and conventionalises ideology-laden discourses of economic means (taxation) and effects, reinforcing particular views of social relations and class as common sense and therewith upholding and perpetuating power relations and inequalities. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Esta pesquisa aborda a relação entre território e moeda. O objetivo central é analisar a relação entre a expansão territorial do crédito bancário e a desigualdade econômica inter-regional no Brasil contemporâneo (2000-2010). A hipótese subjacente é que a redução das desigualdades econômicas inter-regionais favoreceu a expansão territorial do crédito bancário no país durante o período analisado. Para alcançar o objetivo e comprovar a hipótese central, a metodologia utilizada abarca uma análise teórica por meio do diálogo entre três das principais abordagens sobre o tema, a saber: marxista, pós-keynesiana e economia cultural. Além disso, analisamos o contexto histórico e apresentamos um estudo empírico, que abrange tanto as análises estatísticas de regressões temporais quanto as análises cartográficas. Os resultados principais da pesquisa mostram que as quebras das barreiras financeiras, sobretudo regulatórias e macroeconômicas, associadas com políticas sociais propiciaram um maior poder de compra em especial às populações de regiões com alta demanda reprimida, como também um maior acesso ao crédito para consumo para essas regiões. Isso acarretou no maior crescimento do crédito que o país já presenciou e também em uma significativa expansão territorial do crédito dos bancos comerciais. / This research addresses the relationship between territory and money. The main objective is to analyze the relationship between territorial expansion of bank credit and interregional economic inequality in contemporary Brazil (2000-2010). The underlying hypothesis is that the reduction of inter-regional economic inequalities favored the territorial expansion of bank credit in the country during the above period. To achieve the objective and prove the central hypothesis a methodology is used, which includes a theoretical analysis based on three major approaches, namely Marxist, Post-Keynesian and Cultural Economy. Furthermore, we analyze the historical context and perform an empirical analysis, which consists both of a statistical analysis with temporal regressions as well as a cartographic analysis. The main results of the research show that the breaks of financial barriers - particularly regulatory and macroeconomic - associated with social policies provided a greater purchasing power, especially for populations of regions with repressed high demand, as well as greater access to consumer credit for these regions. This resulted in the highest credit growth that the country has ever experienced and also in a significant territorial expansion of commercial bank credit.

The continued rise of socio-economic inequality over the past decades with its connected political outcomes such as the Brexit vote in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump are currently a matter of intense debate both in academia and in journalism. One significant sign of the heightened interest was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the twenty-first Century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a "media Sensation", with Piketty himself as a "rock star Economist". This paper, drawing from a major international and cross-disciplinary study, investigates the print media treatment in four European countries of economic policy proposals presented in Capital. Applying social semiotic and critical discourse analysis, we specifically focus on articles which are in disagreement with these proposals and identify five categories of counterarguments used against Piketty: authorisation, moralisation, rationalisation, portrayal of victimhood and inevitability. Providing textual and linguistic examples we demonstrate how the use of linguistic resources normalises and conventionalises ideology-laden discourses of economic means (taxation) and effects, reinforcing particular views of social relations and class as common sense and therewith upholding and perpetuating power relations and inequalities.

Esta pesquisa aborda a relação entre território e moeda. O objetivo central é analisar a relação entre a expansão territorial do crédito bancário e a desigualdade econômica inter-regional no Brasil contemporâneo (2000-2010). A hipótese subjacente é que a redução das desigualdades econômicas inter-regionais favoreceu a expansão territorial do crédito bancário no país durante o período analisado. Para alcançar o objetivo e comprovar a hipótese central, a metodologia utilizada abarca uma análise teórica por meio do diálogo entre três das principais abordagens sobre o tema, a saber: marxista, pós-keynesiana e economia cultural. Além disso, analisamos o contexto histórico e apresentamos um estudo empírico, que abrange tanto as análises estatísticas de regressões temporais quanto as análises cartográficas. Os resultados principais da pesquisa mostram que as quebras das barreiras financeiras, sobretudo regulatórias e macroeconômicas, associadas com políticas sociais propiciaram um maior poder de compra em especial às populações de regiões com alta demanda reprimida, como também um maior acesso ao crédito para consumo para essas regiões. Isso acarretou no maior crescimento do crédito que o país já presenciou e também em uma significativa expansão territorial do crédito dos bancos comerciais. / This research addresses the relationship between territory and money. The main objective is to analyze the relationship between territorial expansion of bank credit and interregional economic inequality in contemporary Brazil (2000-2010). The underlying hypothesis is that the reduction of inter-regional economic inequalities favored the territorial expansion of bank credit in the country during the above period. To achieve the objective and prove the central hypothesis a methodology is used, which includes a theoretical analysis based on three major approaches, namely Marxist, Post-Keynesian and Cultural Economy. Furthermore, we analyze the historical context and perform an empirical analysis, which consists both of a statistical analysis with temporal regressions as well as a cartographic analysis. The main results of the research show that the breaks of financial barriers - particularly regulatory and macroeconomic - associated with social policies provided a greater purchasing power, especially for populations of regions with repressed high demand, as well as greater access to consumer credit for these regions. This resulted in the highest credit growth that the country has ever experienced and also in a significant territorial expansion of commercial bank credit.