FRA_F_05 Socioeconomic Inequality and Social Cohesion

Objectives/ Research Questions

In view of increasing economic disparities in the Federal Republic of Germany as well as in other Western countries (cf. Atkinson 2015; OECD 2011), this project addresses the question of the possible consequences for the acceptance of basic minimal narratives of a procedurally “cohesive” society. Drawing on both general considerations of the relationship between economic inequality and social coexistence (such as Wilkinson and Pickett 2009, 2018) and the political-sociological literature on the socioeconomic determinants of social and political trust (Uslaner 2002; Uslaner / Brown 2005), it can be presumed that increasing inequality of income and wealth, the underlying structural changes in labour markets and employment structures, as well as increasingly uncertain individual labour market prospects may have contributed to an erosion of social cohesion.

Within the framework of the project, the significance of changed economic conditions for social cohesion will first be worked out and empirically assessed with a view on the Federal Republic of Germany since reunification. Understood as a dispositive concept in which the expectation of and willingness to engage in mutually beneficial contingent interactions is expressed in addition to the aspect of affective connectedness, the extent of generalised (social) trust in fellow citizens as well as the extent of trust in fundamental democratic institutions and decision-making processes will be used to empirically operationalize social cohesion. Over the course of the project, convictions derived from this, such as the willingness to show solidarity towards specific population groups (such as the poor, immigrants, and/or refugees) or processes of exclusion (boundary making or in-group/out-group differentiation) will also be included in the analysis. In the empirical analysis, these elements of subjective belief systems will be placed in relation to factual macroeconomic changes, the personal economic position, factual economic mobility experiences, and their respective subjective perception. The central question of the analyses will be whether when or under which circumstances and for which population groups (macro or micro)economic factors influence value attitudes that are constitutive of social cohesion. As far as empirically possible, processes of status anxiety as well as spatial and functional social segregation will be operationalized and elaborated as possible mechanisms of connection between economic framework conditions and social cohesion.

Thematic Reference to Social Cohesion

Questions about fundamental social and institutional trust in the population address fundamental values and orientations that are constitutive of voluntaristic and procedural cohesion in a liberal democratic society. The project aims to determine whether and to what extent these values are endangered by macro-structural economic changes or by personal economic uncertainties. The approach of the project is empirical-analytical and serves to analyse the sources or possible threats to social cohesion as well as, in a broader sense, the cumulative development of a theory of the connection between economic framework conditions and social cohesion.

Literature

Atkinson, Anthony B. 2015: Inequality. What Can Be Done?, Cambridge, MA.

Brown, Mitchell; Uslaner, Eric M. 2005: Inequality, Trust, and Civic Engagement, in: American Politics Research 33:6, 868-894.

OECD (Hrsg.) 2011: Divided We Stand. Why Inequality Keeps Rising, Paris.

Uslaner, Eric M. 2002: The Moral Foundations of Trust, Cambridge.

Wilkinson, Richard; Pickett, Kate 2009: The Spirit Level. Why Equality Is Better for Everyone, London.

Wilkinson, Richard; Pickett, Kate 2018: The Inner Level. How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing, London.