Between Fault Lines and Front Lines

Shifting Power in an Unequal World

Katja Hujo, Maggie Carter, Katja Hujo, Maggie Carter

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781350229020
• eBook ISBN: 9781350229044
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Social Sciences

Inequality is one of today's greatest challenges, obstructing poverty reduction and sustainable development. As the power of elites grows and societal gaps widen, institutions representing the public good and universal values are increasingly disempowered or co-opted, and visions of social justice and equity side-lined. This book explores the roles of elites and institutions of power in the deepening of social and economic cleavages across the globe, by asking how inequalities have reshaped structures from the local to the transnational level, and what consequences they have wrought. In addition, the contributors present examples of peaceful processes of policy change that have made societies greener and more socially just, levelled out social stratification, and devolved power and resources from elites to non-elites, or towards marginalized or discriminated groups. Based on cutting-edge empirical research, the chapters in this volume bring together conceptual thinking and a number of case studies from the Global North and South, combining different levels of analysis and a range of qualitative research methods to present solutions for closing the inequality gap.

Part I

Inequalities in Context

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Between Fault Lines and Front Lines: Shifting Power in an Unequal World

Katja Hujo and Maggie Carter

Understanding Inequality: A Power-Centered Approach

Reducing poverty has long been on the agenda of policy and development actors the world over, culminating in its inclusion as the first of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in 2000. In discussions about poverty and its many ills, however, the relationship with inequality historically has received scant attention. Yet in recent years, the focus has begun to shift from the bottom of the pyramid to the top. “Inequality” has become the word on all our lips, the ugly exposed truth of a world in which growth trickles upwards to the few, whereas the many are deprived of basic needs and life chances, a world in which 22 men own more wealth than all the women in the continent of Africa (Oxfam 2020). At the heart of this relationship is a gross imbalance of power, driven by economic dominance. This shift in how we understand the massive disparities of our time—typified by the inclusion of inequality as the 10th of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015—opens the door for, even compels, investigation into the inner workings of these power imbalances: Who and what drive these inequalities? Which beliefs, policies and institutions produce and reproduce them? What are the consequences for economies, societies, nature and people? And what can be done about it? These are some of the questions this book aims to address.

Inequality is highly detrimental for our societies and economies, undermining well-being and health, democracy and participation, as well as social, environmental and economic sustainability (e.g., Chancel 2017; Stiglitz 2012; Therborn 2013; UNDP 2019; UNRISD 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). Not all inequalities are a problem, but at least three factors indicate when inequalities have become an issue of economic and social justice:¹ first, when inequality is the result of discrimination and systematic disadvantage such as fewer opportunities and lack of access to essential services, basic living standards, decent work or meaningful participation in public life; second, when inequalities are growing at exponential rates, leading to power concentration on the one hand and disempowerment on the other, creating multiple fractures and biases in our political and economic systems which undermine societal progress; and third, when social discontent and sentiments of unfairness are expressed in (violent) protest, political radicalization and “Othering” (see Roman-Alcalá in this volume), posing a threat to social cohesion and democracy.

The inequalities that shape our current times meet these three criteria: they reveal deep-seated power asymmetries and patterns of exclusion; economic inequalities have risen steadily in most places over four decades, with no turning point in sight; and people are increasingly raising their voices against them, claiming justice.

The chapters in this volume were first presented and discussed at the international conference “Overcoming Inequalities in a Fractured World: Between Elite Power and Social Mobilization,” convened by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in November 2018 (Hujo and Carter 2018). In a context where the international development community had agreed, for the first time in the history of the United Nations (Freistein and Mahlert 2016; Köhler 2015), to reduce inequalities within and between countries as well as other forms of inequality, such as gender disparities, in the context of the SDGs (UN 2015), the key objective of the conference was to better understand the political economy of inequality. This was motivated by the fact that development actors, at least in their official discourse, tend to ignore questions of power and politics in their problem analysis, leading to apolitical and technocratic approaches and a focus on poor populations, whereas the role of the rich and powerful remains unexplored and unaddressed.

Contrary to this, our approach puts power at the center of analysis, both the power of elites and the counterpower of those who organize collectively to redress social injustices. The focus on poor and vulnerable people and the silence on elites in current development approaches evoke notions of charity and the attempt to explain inequalities through agentless processes such as globalization or the (in-)famous invisible hand of the market (see Meagher in this volume). However, as Dorling states, “growing inequality is not an unfortunate by-product of highly efficient competitive markets, but the end product of subtle rises in protectionism” (Dorling 2019: 57). A social justice approach, on the other hand, requires that actors and relationships be made explicit. This volume approaches inequality as a product of entrenched power structures, in which a small group of people have highly disproportionate control over and access to resources, and understands that, inversely, inequality is essential for the maintenance of these structures.

In this volume we explore the ways in which:

• global inequalities are in large part reproduced and compounded by elite capture of economic and political power, and the growing concentration of income and wealth;

• the same power asymmetries that drive inequality tend to inhibit policy and institutional change that are needed to address it;

• recent global crises such as the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic have exacerbated inequalities, while opening up discursive space and highlighting the value and urgency of alternative policy pathways and broad coalitions for egalitarian change;

• combating elite power and reducing inequality require reimagining paths to social change through collective mobilization and strategic alliances, in a complex context of shifting class structures and identities, new forms of citizenship and social contracts, the changing world of work and technological change, increased connectivity and restricted mobility.

Authors contributing to this volume engage with these themes while following their own intellectual paths grounded in diverse disciplines such as anthropology, economics, geography, international relations, political science, public administration, public policy and sociology. Hence, the chapters in the book address the theme of inequality and power in different and sometimes contradicting ways, applying various analytical lenses and methodological approaches ranging from historical analysis, to political economy, to structuralism, to actor- or agency-centered analyses, with entry points such as ideas/ideology, behaviors and perceptions. Finally, some contributions also reflect scholar-activist perspectives that transcend academic boundaries, as exemplified most strongly in the epilogue to this volume. While this diversity arguably stands in the way of a more consistent and sustained perspective, it reflects the plurality of relevant critical research in this field, a plurality which is often ignored in decision-making circles dominated by one-size-fits-all methods and “randomista economics” (Kabeer 2020) but which can equally fall victim to siloed thinking and paradigmatic warfare in academia. To help the reader navigate this complex field of research, this introduction aims to make sense of not only the different approaches and cases, highlighting the connections and complementarities, but also contradictions that naturally emerge from an interdisciplinary engagement of the multiple linkages between inequality and power in the age of contested hyper-globalization.

Inequality and Its Discontents: A Brief Historical Overview

The belief that inequalities—those which impede people from developing their capabilities and full potential, and limit social mobility across class, identities and space—must be reduced was a fundamental pillar of the postwar multilateral order in which most countries in the world committed to international norms of human rights, peace, security, development and international cooperation (UN 1946, 1948).

Nevertheless, inequality, in particular economic inequality, did not receive much attention during the early period of postwar development when inequalities in wealth and income were actually decreasing (Piketty 2014, 2019), and a rising tide of economic growth seemed to lift all boats. States were eager to establish comprehensive social security systems such as pensions, unemployment insurance or social assistance that would maintain social peace and act as automatic stabilizers in times of economic downturns. Investments in education, health, social housing and public transport created synergies between the interests of employers to access “human capital,” workers who saw their social wage and purchasing power increase and governments that reaped benefits in terms of increased tax revenue and electoral gains. During the same period, equality of rights improved dramatically, in particular with regard to political rights and antidiscrimination law, which made great progress during the wave of democratization and decolonization, culminating in the 1990s, as well as regarding women’s rights and greater equality of rights for Indigenous peoples and disabled persons (UN DESA 2006).

This twentieth-century social contract associated with democratic welfare states in the global North, combining growth, redistribution and expansion of social rights, started to unravel with fiscal crises and stagflation in the 1970s. Its dissolution continued when a new paradigm of neoliberal globalization gained ground in the 1980s, the negative results of which are well known: the end of the developmentalist social contract in the global South during the lost decade of austerity policies and structural adjustment (Ocampo 2014; see Meagher in this volume), jobless growth, rising precarity and an increasing share of national income accruing to capital compared with labor in the global North (ILO 2016; Standing 2011), and rising inequalities and environmental destruction worldwide. These problems have worsened over the last two decades or so during a period that economists such as Piketty call “hyper-capitalism” and that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) calls “hyper-globalization”—the dominance of capital owners, private finance and large corporations increasingly capturing markets and engaging in rent-seeking activities, leading not only to previously unseen levels of inequalities and climate crisis but also to extreme levels of debt, heightened insecurity, and stalling of investment and structural change (Hujo 2021; Piketty 2019; UNCTAD 2020).

During the first phase of neoliberal globalization, and in particular after the demise of socialism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (Piketty 2019), inequality was not a policy issue despite the fact that it was increasing: when unleashed market forces, technological change and reduced redistribution had negative effects on income equality in the 1980s, it was argued that efficiency was more important than equity (Le Grand 1990; Okun 1975). Growth, assumed to be driven by high savings rates of the rich channeled into investment, was supposed to automatically trickle down to the poor, whereas large-scale redistribution through state policies was considered detrimental for employment creation and growth. This perspective is not as monolithic as it used to be following mounting criticism of the free market ideology and its adverse ecological, social and economic impacts (Stiglitz 2002; UNRISD 1995), but it is still the dominant discourse of a significant proportion of elite actors (see Moraes Silva et al. in this volume).

Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Vladimir Popov delve more deeply into these issues in Chapter 2, arguing that the growth performances in developing countries have been uneven and the few successes of catching up cannot be linked to free market ideology, a narrative that was, for example, promoted by the World Bank to explain the so-called East Asian miracle (World Bank 1993). Historically, the multiplicity of developmental trajectories suggests that there are no universal recipes for rapid catch-up growth, while the managed development approach of Asian countries became increasingly popular. Nor is the inequality picture clear-cut: the chapter unpacks the paradox of inequality among countries reducing in aggregate measures, while within most countries income and wealth inequalities have been increasing. According to Jomo and Popov, the data suggest that rising inequality is due to rising profit rates, as the income shares of the richest have been growing for decades. The authors contend that such increases in wealth concentration will be difficult to reverse despite pressures for progressive redistribution, due to the prevailing neoliberal economic ideology, declining fiscal space and the concentration of political power skewed toward the benefit of the wealthy. They nevertheless consider that reversing this pattern is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I INEQUALITIES IN CONTEXT
• Part II ENGINES OF INEQUALITY: INSTITUTIONS, POLITICS AND POWER
• Part III ELITE IDEOLOGY AND PERCEPTIONS OF INEQUALITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR REDISTRIBUTION AND SOCIAL COHESION
• Part IV A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT: ALLIANCES FOR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
• Epilogue: Oneness versus the 1 Percent: Economic Polarization and the Threat to Freedom
• Index
• Copyright