Amory Gethin is Research Fellow at the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics. Clara Martínez-Toledano is Assistant Professor at Imperial College London and Wealth Distribution Coordinator at the World Inequality Lab. Thomas Piketty is Professor of Economics and Economic History at L’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and at the Paris School of Economics and Codirector of the World Inequality Lab.
This book is a breakthrough in the existing literature on the
politics of social inequality. Not merely is the analysis
intensively data-based, it goes beyond the usual confines of a
small number of western democracies to a set of fifty democracies
(or semi-democracies) in different continents over many decades.
The analysis throughout is highly sensible, informative, and
insightful.
*Pranab Bardhan, University of California, Berkeley*
This monumental book presents the first international and
historical analysis of political cleavages and of their interplay
with inequality. This is a must-read book for anyone wanting to
understand electoral politics in today’s democracies—the rise of
‘identity politics’ in some countries but not others, and the
multiplicity of possible futures for the dynamic of inequality.
*Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley*
This impressive book will rapidly become the central reference
point for systematically charting trends in voting alignment across
the globe. By including nations from the global South alongside
established liberal democracies, Gethin and his colleagues
challenge endemic Western biases in political research and reveal
the systematic ways that inequality and credentialism have redrawn
voting patterns over recent decades. Gethin and his coauthors offer
exactly the kind of big picture perspective which political
activists and campaigners, as much as social scientists, will
hugely appreciate.
*Mike Savage, author of The Return of Inequality*
This ambitious collection tackles a set of timely questions about
the interplay among inequality levels and trends, political
preferences and electoral behavior, and voters’ demographic and
economic characteristics. Ideally, the volume will land in the
hands of diverse audiences concerned with political polarization
and social inequalities—including multidisciplinary social
scientists, political actors, and social activists.
*Janet C. Gornick, Director, Stone Center on Socio-Economic
Inequality at The Graduate Center, City University of New York*
Here is a welcome throwback to the ambitious political sociology of
the mid-twentieth century. The analyses are solid and the
geographical range is appealingly broad. The authors’ portraits of
shifting social cleavages raise fascinating questions about the
nature and implications of ‘class politics’ in the contemporary
world.
*Larry M. Bartels, Vanderbilt University*
Combining ambition with humility, this volume explores
cross-national and temporal variation in the structure of political
cleavages with an eye to explaining the conditions under which
income and wealth inequality becomes a topic of political
contestation (or not). Refreshingly, the volume sidesteps
longstanding debates among political scientists and illustrates how
looking for patterns in macro data can yield new insights.
Harmonizing election surveys from fifty countries, the database
assembled by Piketty and his collaborators itself represents a
major contribution.
*Jonas Pontusson, University of Geneva*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
