tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/elites-34809/articles
Elites – The Conversation
2023-02-23T06:15:25Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199474
2023-02-23T06:15:25Z
2023-02-23T06:15:25Z
Class and the City of London: my decade of research shows why elitism is endemic and top firms don’t really care
<p>During the COVID pandemic, as most wages <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-happened-to-wages-in-the-coronavirus-pandemic/#:%7E:text=Since%20November%202020%2C%20wages%20have,November%202020%20and%20December%202021.">stagnated</a>, workers in the City of London were enjoying <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/11/what-cost-of-living-crisis-bumper-executive-bonuses-make-a-comeback">bumper pay packets</a>. Average partner salaries in one corporate law firm <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lawyers-lead-the-way-as-million-pound-salaries-rain-down-on-the-city-rdmxjfs67">exceeded £2 million</a> for the first time. Investment bankers received their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/16/weve-had-a-run-on-champagne-biggest-uk-banker-bonuses-since-financial-crash">highest bonus payouts</a> since 2008.</p>
<p>City bosses have long justified these exceptional rewards by claiming that they are available to anyone with sufficient intellect and willingness to work hard – regardless of their gender, ethnicity or social class. In the <a href="https://www.goldmansachs.com/our_firm/investor_relations/financial_reports/annual_reports/2003/pdf/GS03AR_businessprncples.pdf">words of Goldman Sachs</a>, one of the City’s most iconic players:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Advancement depends on merit … For us to be successful, our people must reflect the diversity of the communities and cultures in which we operate. That means we must attract, retain and motivate people from many backgrounds and perspectives. Being diverse is not optional; it is what we must be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But studies tell a different story about the City of London’s culture and demographics. In October 1986, the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)">Big Bang</a>” – the name given to the sudden deregulation of financial markets to enhance London’s status as a global financial centre – was also supposed to signal the creation of a new, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37751599">more egalitarian</a> City. Yet four decades on, <a href="https://www.thebridgegroup.org.uk/news/partner-law">research</a> <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c18e090b40b9d6b43b093d8/t/5f6c69ea4d0d1b29037581f3/1600940523386/BG_SEB_Partner_Law_Sep2020_SUMMARY_FINAL.pdf">shows</a> that more than half of all partners at the leading law firms are white, male and privately educated, while more than 90% of bosses at eight top financial service firms are from society’s most privileged backgrounds – a demographic that comprises just over 30% of the entire UK population.</p>
<p>I began <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293014505_Understanding_social_exclusion_in_elite_professional_service_firms_field_level_dynamics_and_the_%27professional_project">researching</a> this <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/highly-discriminating">issue</a> more than ten years ago, after briefly working in business development for a City law firm. Despite being appointed in almost equal numbers to men, women were significantly under-represented at the firm’s senior levels, comprising fewer than 20% of its partners. There was also a striking lack of ethnic diversity among all staff, and it was especially rare to see any black lawyers.</p>
<p>Soon after I joined, I was offered a session with a style consultant who, my manager explained, would help me appear “more professional”. The consultant’s primary advice was to wear more make up and put on skirt-suits.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>In any industry where people are regularly spotlighted as a firm’s most important resource, hiring staff for any other reason than their ability might appear to make little sense. In the City, however, white middle-class men have always been particularly valued for other qualities.</p>
<p>Consider this exchange I had with asset manager Toby* in 2019. I started by asking on what basis his clients selected their financial advisers, to which he replied: “They have expectations of meeting people with expertise, really.”</p>
<p>But when I asked how they assess this expertise, Toby said it was “a difficult question”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think they’re choosing us basically on whether they like the sound of us or the look of us. Most of our sales force is [made up of] white, middle-class males … Let’s try a thought experiment. If we turned up with, I don’t know, a black woman and a white bloke, but a bit spivvy with an Essex accent … Yeah, I don’t know. I really don’t know. God, that sounds really bad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many City executives have told me that a certain type of “social ease”, often cultivated at private schools, allows colleagues to get away with bullshit and bluff. Or as one senior executive at a FTSE 100 firm put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We all know that people with the right accent and mannerisms … sound much more believable. Equally, I want to say that we can see through that – but the truth is, we can’t.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>‘We give the jobs to other posh people’</h2>
<p>Many of my interviews were conducted in the late 2010s, a time when “diversity and inclusion” was a buzz phrase among elite City firms. I was keen to find out how serious these firms – spanning finance, legal services, management consulting, accounting and auditing – were about changing the social makeup of their staff, particularly those earning the biggest bucks.</p>
<p>Prestigious City firms, some with billion-pound revenue streams, have long tried to position themselves as “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/376f3374-cf1e-4923-8c24-e4dbafe70b6d">money meritocracies</a>”, where success and promotion is based purely on an employee’s performance and the profits they generate.</p>
<p>Privately, however, City insiders I spoke to repeatedly blamed deviations from this rule on outright favouritism. One hedge fund manager, Michael, confided: “It’s easy to explain. Basically, we give the top jobs to other posh people who are our mates.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four white men in suits walking away from the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509253/original/file-20230209-16-4q8zqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Businessmen in the City of London financial district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-20-april-2019-business-1822728791">I.R. Stone/Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Investment manager James said that frequently, recruitment and promotion “becomes a subjective call”, at which point decision-makers typically revert to type. I asked him what “type” that might be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Myself … I’m already doing that role and I know what I’m doing. Therefore, I’m more likely to go towards the sort of people who are like I am, which is why you end up with the stereotypical male – mid-40s, white. It’s why the profession’s full of them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To date, efforts to diversify according to gender and ethnicity appear to have had very limited results. In 2014, <a href="https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/pathways-banking-education-background-finance/">The Sutton Trust</a> found that within <a href="https://www.theglobalcity.uk/financial-professional-services">financial services</a>, more than 60% of bosses educated in the UK had attended private schools, as opposed to just 7% of the population at large. And despite many interventions designed to improve representation of women at senior levels, a <a href="https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/under-10-of-top-city-dealmakers-are-women-its-still-very-testosterone-fuelled-20200810">2020 study</a> of the City’s top “deal-makers” in investment banks found that less than one in ten were women.</p>
<p>I believe that City firms’ efforts to become more diverse and inclusive, and to deliver more equal representation at the top, have not worked <em>because they were never meant to</em>. Instead, they are a form of “reputation laundering”, offering only the illusion of change in order to protect their privileges and rewards. This conclusion is based on my interviews with more than 400 City leaders and workers – among them diversity experts and human resource managers charged with trying to change the culture of this rarefied world.</p>
<h2>The phoney ‘war for talent’</h2>
<p>Class-based recruitment strategies are perceived to offer City firms certain benefits – in particular, sustaining the impression of status and prestige to competitors, clients, potential colleagues and even policymakers. This in turn helps justify the high fees they charge, and the exceptional profits they generate.</p>
<p>Defining employee “talent” in narrow terms creates an artificial impression of scarcity in available skills. At entry level, City firms battle to attract graduates from the UK’s most elite universities. This “war for talent” is largely phoney – in reality, the skills the firms need are available from a much wider cohort of graduates – but it has helped convince both City firms and clients of these employees’ exceptional worth.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three Black men in suits chatting outside an office building" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509254/original/file-20230209-26-2cg6g6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Non-white employees are typically much less likely to reach client-facing executive roles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-20-april-2019-business-1819187273">I.R. Stone/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>This narrative was invoked in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis when, despite being closely implicated in this catastrophic collapse, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d4f02d66-1d84-11e0-a163-00144feab49a">top bankers argued</a> against punitive regulation on the basis that it would drive “scarce” UK financial talent <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2011/06/banks-threats-tax-government">to other countries</a>. More recently, it was used to justify the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/14/bankers-bonuses-double-since-2008-crash-tuc-study-finds">very large bonuses</a> paid out to UK bankers in 2022 amid the growing cost of living crisis.</p>
<p>One law firm partner explained why his firm preferred to appoint “polished” candidates from elite universities, in preference to the very best who might be educated elsewhere:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From a business perspective, you can’t afford to have people in meetings who will not look good to the clients, [even if] some might be very, very bright.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In part, this can be explained by City managers adopting a risk-averse strategy to recruitment. In the context of a considerable oversupply of job applications, a “good” degree from an “elite” university acts as an easy signal of probable competency. As asset manager Reena explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If we hire somebody from a completely different background and they don’t work out, the person who hires them is going to look like a fool. [Whereas] if we continue to hire the exact same type of person – the Oxbridge-educated white male, for argument’s sake – and that person doesn’t work out, which often happens, nobody will blame the hiring manager for making that decision.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Leigh, a former <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trader.asp#:%7E:text=A%20trader%20is%20an%20individual,the%20person%20holds%20the%20asset.">City trader</a>, describes himself as a working-class “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrow_boy">barrow boy</a>”. He said that following the Big Bang in 1986, the City’s banks all started saying they had to recruit “only the best” university students:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They came from Oxford or Durham or wherever – anywhere that looked good and if they could bullshit their way in … Some of them were good, but not all. They’d come in as graduates and have to learn on the job, but they had no common sense.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is not to say that the City has no diversity at all. But demographics differ between job roles, and class differences are most tolerated in more technical or “quantitative” roles such as trading, where performance can be more objectively measured and perceived success does not depend on personal relationships with clients. However, even these roles remain dominated by men, while diversity is considerably more likely in less prestigious and often lower-paid <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/middleoffice.asp#:%7E:text=What%20Is%20the%20Middle%20Office,technology%20(IT)%20as%20well.">middle</a>- and <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/backoffice.asp#:%7E:text=What%20Is%20Back%20Office%3F,%2C%20accounting%2C%20and%20IT%20services.">back-office</a> jobs.</p>
<h2>The City’s way of ‘doing diversity’</h2>
<p>In the early 2010s, when diversity and inclusion agendas were still quite new, Liam, a black corporate lawyer, sounded somewhat cynical when I spoke to him about the sincerity of these strategies:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their dream scenario is to try and find a nice, uncontroversial way to try and ‘do diversity’ without having to change much of anything else.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Several years after that, Gus, a partner at one of the “big four” accountancy firms, reflected on why they had adopted these diversity agendas:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Why does anything like this become popular? I guess we were quite influenced by what other firms were doing around the same time – and that’s probably still true today … It was just the buzz in the City at the time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While some firms have made efforts to become more diverse in their higher-profile, client-facing and revenue-generating jobs, when it comes to social class the focus has largely been on access rather than career progression. Thousands of young people, generally aged between 16 and 21 and from working-class backgrounds, have taken part in these <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350590737_Organisational_Social_Mobility_Programmes_as_Mechanisms_of_Power_and_Control">social mobility programmes</a> – often conducted with charities such as the Social Mobility Foundation, UpReach, the Sutton Trust and the City Brokerage.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/londons-skyscrapers-tell-a-rich-story-about-the-citys-worship-of-finance-69743">London's skyscrapers tell a rich story about the City's worship of finance</a>
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<p>This seems positive and in one sense it is. I have interviewed several hundred of these students as they aim to secure a career in investment banking or with other financial and professional service firms. Many described these opportunities as “life changing”, telling me uplifting stories of their experiences as they first engaged with the City – sometimes while still at school.</p>
<p>Aspirant banker Max explained how everything about the City seemed to him “oversized” – from the office buildings to the furniture that fills them:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I mean, you’re in this massive building with these massive tables and chairs, and really awesome decor and art, and there’s people who are really well spoken and really professional in their suits.</p>
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<p>Rahul sounded similarly awestruck as he described how growing up, he had seen the City from a distance but never expected to find himself there:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My father was a greengrocer. We used to go to the market and [on the way] we’d be able to see the City … I used to literally stand and stare over and imagine what it would be like to be there. To fast-forward a couple of years and be able to be at the [bank’s] office was quite amazing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Skyscrapers in the City of London" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509260/original/file-20230209-16-lwm7wz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The City of London skyline: ‘I used to stand and stare …’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/photos/skyline-london-financial-district-4587051/">Waid1995/Pixabay</a></span>
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<p>Participants of these schemes were frequently told that, given the City’s “meritocratic culture”, they should have high expectations of getting in. As Emily put it: “They say all the time: it doesn’t matter who you are, you can do anything as long as you work hard enough.”</p>
<p>Sam described having learnt that: “Anybody could become the CEO of a major bank. It’s just all about sacrifice … To do well, to rise up the ranks, it’s definitely the people that are the hardest working.”</p>
<p>Yet the reality for these working-class interns could soon feel very different. On entering mainstream graduate recruitment programmes, some told me they quickly discovered that “merit is a myth”. When we spoke in 2019, bank intern Mishal, a black woman in her early twenties from a working-class background, described her experience in visceral terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What those people have been telling you [about diversity] is just the corporate crap that everybody vomits from their mouths … If you’d interviewed me [before] I probably would have said all those things. But now that I’ve actually been in a bank and seen it – I kept saying to my friends over the summer: “I have been sold dreams.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mishal’s disillusionment was striking. “[They’ve] told me one thing and then I’ve come in and it’s a complete opposite other thing,” she complained. “Your motivation has to be so strong, because everything they tell you turns out not to be true.”</p>
<p>Some of the interns I met felt very self-conscious of their “different” appearance and demeanour, compared with the image that is so carefully cultivated by these City firms. Kasia described one of her encounters during an internship at an investment bank:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My team had sent me to a meeting with about 40 white, middle-aged men. There was not a single female in the room … No one was below 35, 40 years old … I was just trembling with fear – like, I’m not valuable in this room.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many interns said they felt strong pressure to assimilate while navigating sometimes hostile and frightening cultures. Kasia described making efforts to change her look and accent, adding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t want to be viewed as a social experiment who’s come, like, from the street … I want to be judged based on my abilities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young people like Kasia and Mishal are far from victims and would not wish to be seen as such – although neither went on to be offered a graduate job. However, it is clear that for some young interns, assimilation into the City of London is impossible – especially where class intersects with ethnicity.</p>
<p>Nor are these problems restricted to entry-level recruitment, as evidenced by lower retention rates and slower career progression for those who are employed. A <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c18e090b40b9d6b43b093d8/t/5fbc317e96e56f63b563d0f2/1606168962064/Socio-economic_report-Final.pdf">2020 study</a> of eight major financial services firms found that employees from less privileged backgrounds took 25% longer to progress, despite no evidence of poorer performance. Describing how your educational background can cast a shadow over a whole career, asset manager Euan told me, only half-jokingly: “It’s like if you went to an ex-poly – in the City that comes with a lifetime of shame!”</p>
<p>Tanya, a black woman working for a City finance firm, graduated from a leading <a href="https://russellgroup.ac.uk/about/">Russell Group university</a> but still described the barriers – some blatant, others more subtle – that she felt had delayed her career progression within the firm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s difficult to exactly know the impact because a lot of it’s quite subtle. But I’m always, always focusing on creating the right impression, the right amount of assertiveness … It’s exhausting and there’s less energy to focus on work. But you never want to come across as the “angry black woman”, so even when there is more blatant discrimination, it’s too dangerous to complain.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The myth of merit</h2>
<p>Many people are taken in by the City’s “myth of merit” – not least some of its top bosses, who prefer to believe their own positions are based on exceptional talent and hard work, rather than any inherited privilege. Attempts I have made to question this narrative, both during informal conversations and formal interviews, have sometimes met with robust responses. As corporate lawyer Kris said when we spoke a few years ago:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came from a relatively humble background myself and I got into the system … I think they would be quite offended if you said the major City firms were unmeritocratic. I would be offended.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And indeed, some working-class figures have acquired legendary status. In his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/30/city-london-david-kynaston">biography of the City of London</a>, historian David Kynaston profiles several, including John Hutchinson – a “brash whiz-kid” who took on a key role trading gilts at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/28/business/merrill-lynch-s-london-blitz.html">Merrill Lynch</a>. Playing up the successes of such figures has helped to support the City’s meritocratic narratives.</p>
<p>The emphasis on merit also helps cement the impression that these firms are engaged in highly complex work that only the very smartest people can do. In her <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/liquidated">superlative work</a> exploring the City’s US equivalent, Wall Street, anthropologist Karen Ho shows how this exaggerated narrative helped situate investment bankers as the epitome of control and technical competency, offering them a “naturalised” right to their place near the top of the social order – both in terms of earnings and status.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Big Bang in 1986 changed the culture of the City – but its elitist image has endured despite calls for change.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, in London since the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37751599">Big Bang</a>, a discourse of “smartness” (of intellect) has become central to the image of investment bankers and other City professionals. This means financial rewards which far outstrip most other sectors’ pay levels can be justified on the basis that they are fairly allocated to “only the brightest and best”.</p>
<p>Many City workers <em>are</em> exceptionally qualified and also very bright. By the 2010s, new entrants to investment banks in the UK were typically among the top 1% of performers in A-levels or equivalent. Corporate lawyer, Rob, explained that while in the old days “it didn’t really matter if you were a bit dim”, the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/the-day-big-bang-blasted-the-old-boys-into-oblivion-422005.html">arrival of the American banks</a> in the wake of the Big Bang led to a more “intensive, more competitive style of work … more of a meritocracy”.</p>
<p>However, the City’s highly remunerated jobs are still overwhelmingly done by white men who have benefited from a private school education – the children of the affluent middle and upper classes. Furthermore, if any unfair recruitment practices or treatment of employees come to light, City firms typically employ the shield of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/style/diversity-consultants.html">unconscious bias</a>” to explain away any discrepancies in staff makeup or treatment.</p>
<p>This response can suggest a sort of “no-fault discrimination” where since everybody is to blame, nobody is. Some academics <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/iris_bohnet/what-works">argue</a> that putting a heavy focus on unconscious bias reflects a misguided, highly individualised response to what is actually a systemic, structural problem.</p>
<p>But in the City of London, my research shows that discrimination is also, in part, a conscious choice that offers systematic advantages for more privileged groups – while supporting an image of “desirable elitism”. And where this is the case, City firms prefer us to look away.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ian Clarke came through HSBC’s management training scheme in 2008, but resigned from his job in global sales in 2021 after writing a report about the bank’s lack of diversity.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Investment banks are characterised by opacity and secrecy – sometimes justified by their need to to maintain a “competitive advantage”. But the related use of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement">non-disclosure agreements</a> for employment contracts has meant that many discrimination cases involving City firms have never seen the light of day.</p>
<p>Where this was not the case, legal actions and tribunals have periodically shed light on instances of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/17/london-insurance-firm-fined-1-million-over-bullying-sexual-harassment.html">bullying and sexual harassment</a> (leading to a more than £1 million fine) and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/310caee4-d2d9-4f88-9a2b-f6d790b9eb1b">gender discrimination</a> (£2 million payout). There is strong evidence that the City’s historic “laddish” culture <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/has-the-city-booted-out-lad-culture-tfc9mqptl">continues to exist</a> in <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/business/lloyd-s-of-london-culture-drinking-sexism-b988746.html">pockets</a>, and that in some cases this leads to <a href="https://twitter.com/Telegraph/status/1505838573467144193">hostility</a> towards individuals who exist outside established white, male, middle-class norms.</p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>Over the past 40 years, inequalities of income and wealth have become more pronounced in the UK. The <a href="https://ifs.org.uk/publications/characteristics-and-incomes-top-1">share of national income</a> taken by the top 1% increased from almost 6% in 1977 to around 14% in 2019. The City’s remuneration practices are implicated here, with the Institute of Fiscal Studies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/may/04/city-london-bonus-boom-risk-driving-up-inequality-institute-fiscal-studies">reporting</a> in 2022 that the City’s pay and bonus packages exacerbate inequality.</p>
<p>The UK’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/30/england-old-boys-club-zahawi-wealthy-network">cosy relationship between finance and politics</a> enhances the City’s influence. Bosses and politicians alike claim this is justified because of the City’s <a href="https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-important-is-the-city-to-the-uk-economy#:%7E:text=Economists%20use%20the%20expression%20because,City%20(Hutton%2C%202022).">major contribution</a> to the UK economy in terms of jobs, tax revenues and trade.</p>
<p>Yet an alternative argument is that the UK’s oversized financial sector impoverishes the UK, resulting from what author Nicholas Shaxson calls the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/05/the-finance-curse-how-the-outsized-power-of-the-city-of-london-makes-britain-poorer">finance curse</a>”. He cites <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finance-curse-uk-economy-sector-city-of-london-loss-financial-services-a8571036.html">research</a> estimating that an oversized City of London inflicted costs of £4.5 trillion on the UK economy between 1995 and 2015. This is explained in part by lost economic output since the 2008 financial crisis, and in part from “<a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/143275/1/Baker%20The-UKs-Finance-Curse-Costs-and-Processes%20final.pdf">misallocation costs</a>” as big finance has generated activities that distort the rest of the UK economy – diverting skills, investments and resources from more productive uses.</p>
<p>Shaxson also points to £700 billion of “excess profits” and “excess remuneration” enjoyed by big finance which might otherwise have contributed to the UK economy. He suggests the salaries, bonuses and profits paid out by the City significantly exceed what is necessary to incentivise the supply of financial products and services in an efficient, competitive market.</p>
<p>At the heart of these eye-watering figures are policies first implemented during the 1980s, which privileged the need to maximise shareholder returns over reinvesting profits. This <a href="https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/NEF_SHAREHOLDER-CAPITALISM_E_latest.pdf">short-term agenda</a> has been associated with rising salaries at the top, growing inequality in UK society, and even increased levels of environmental destruction.</p>
<p>At the same time, financial institutions have been afforded ever-more influence over UK economic policy. Wealthy City donors have <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-funding-donors-money-general-election-lib-dems-labour-a9362571.html">helped fund political parties</a> to ensure policies are prioritised that protect their interests. City leaders have not only shaped laws and regulations in their favour, but also influenced society and culture. This includes promoting a form of “winner takes all” individualism in which the notion of the common good has slowly dissipated.</p>
<p>In the UK, the <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/why-we-cant-afford-the-rich">poorest 10%</a> pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the richest 10%, while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/opinion/pandora-papers-britain-london.html">corporate tax avoidance strategies</a> have additionally limited the redistribution of wealth. In 2015, the Bank of England’s then chief economist, Andy Haldane, <a href="https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/625081308063121408">warned</a> that under our system, businesses are now “almost eating themselves”. He called on policymakers to consider new models of corporate governance that “share the spoils more equally between a wider set of stakeholders in a firm”, including employees and customers.</p>
<h2>Will the City ever change?</h2>
<p>In 2021, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation">City of London Corporation</a> (the City’s formal governing body) set up an <a href="https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/supporting-businesses/business-support-and-advice/socio-economic-diversity-taskforce">independent taskforce</a> with a vision of encouraging “equity of progression”, where high performance is valued over “fit” and “polish”. I was a member of this two-year initiative, which culminated in the publication of a <a href="https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/assets/Business/breaking-the-class-barrier-december-2022.pdf">five-point pathway</a> to achieve a more socio-economically diverse City of London.</p>
<p>The impact of this taskforce is debatable, but to be fair to its many committed participants, delivering more inclusive and diverse organisations is a “wicked problem” that is difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Not least because not everybody agrees on the nature of the problem – nor even that the problem exists.</p>
<p>Efforts at change have generally been pinned on the “business case” – that once hiring managers are convinced discrimination is irrational, they will feel compelled to act. Yet this is unlikely to work because the incentives are not there. Class-based inequalities embedded within systems and structures offer elite City firms certain benefits, while diversification carries perceived risks.</p>
<p>The business case sometimes suggests diversification will make the City a better or even safer place, by allowing for cognitive difference while preventing “<a href="https://www.cityam.com/businesses-without-diversity-are-plagued-by-groupthink/">groupthink</a>”. But new entrants are generally subjected to strong socialisation processes that train them to present and even think much the same, as management consultant, Diletta, explained to me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As much as [firms] talk about diversity, especially now with all this stuff on social class – it’s almost impossible to exist outside the norms … That’s what training is all about. We’re extremely effective at making sure everybody is packaged up and churned out looking and sounding exactly the same. That’s our product. It’s what we sell.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It seems that in the City, people can be different as long as they are the same. A genuine desire among many City people to deliver fairer outcomes is no match for institutional inertia. When it comes to social class, firms have historically tended to adopt a “deficit” model where young people from working-class backgrounds are assumed to lack the necessary forms of “polish” to get on, and efforts centre on how these deficits can be addressed.</p>
<p>But the challenges they face are not limited to “polish”. Growing up poor in a rich society contributes to long-lasting and sometimes career-limiting feelings of stigma and shame. Abdul explained his feelings as he struggled to access a graduate position in an investment bank:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was surrounded by people who were, I suppose you could say, better than me … I didn’t belong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An emphasis on social mobility is an attractive agenda for both City leaders and politicians who can present change as a “win-win” – for talented people and the organisations they join. But in practice, this is a zero-sum game: when opportunities are not expanding in absolute terms, for some people to move up others must move down. Current conversations allow City and other elites to avoid such uncomfortable truths.</p>
<p>Instead they focus on more palatable, less threatening questions of culture and behaviour, over the fundamental changes that are needed if the UK’s resources and rewards are to be more fairly distributed. The City of London must recognise its own role in perpetuating – and increasing – economic injustice if ever this status quo is to change.</p>
<p><em>* All interviewees’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity.</em></p>
<hr>
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<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199474/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Research mentioned in this article received funding from government and charitable bodies. However, to protect confidentiality I do not mention which organisations. There is no conflict of interest and individuals took part on the basis of informed consent. I was a working group member for the Corporation of London Taskforce on Socioeconomic Diversity, which is mentioned in this article. I am the author of the recently published book Highly Discriminating: Why The City Isn't Fair and Diversity Doesn't Work. </span></em></p>
My research suggests City firms’ efforts to deliver more equal representation at the top have not worked because they were never meant to.
Louise Ashley, Senior Lecturer, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195943
2022-12-16T11:09:47Z
2022-12-16T11:09:47Z
Land is a heated issue in South Africa – the print media are presenting only one side of the story
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500352/original/file-20221212-96198-ffnxf6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa’s vast commercial press is dominated by four conglomerates.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Moeletsi Mabe/Sunday Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The land question was at the heart of the South African national liberation struggle. The 1913 Natives Land Act restricted black people from owning and occupying parts of the country, leading to whites owning about <a href="https://www.gov.za/1913-natives-land-act-centenary">87% of the land</a>. This reduced the African majority to “<a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/sol-plaatjes-native-life-in-south-africa/editions-of-native-life-in-south-africa-1916-to-the-present/EC1B8069762D083ECF7D134B97017E42">pariahs in the land of their birth</a>”, in the 1916 words of Sol Plaatje, the founding secretary general of the African National Congress, now South Africa’s governing party.</p>
<p>To reverse this injustice, in 2018 the national assembly acceded to demands from various pressure groups and began the process to <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/project-event-details/285">amend section 25 of the constitution</a>, which deals with restitution and redress of the dispossessed. Some had argued that the section hindered land expropriation. Parliament <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/project-event-details/285">conducted public hearings</a> across the country to get public input on the proposed amendments. </p>
<p>This process received extensive media coverage. But, the voices of ordinary people at the public hearings were severely underrepresented in the media. This amounted to denying them narratives resources to tell their own stories. In the process, the dispossessed and marginalised were forced to look at themselves through the prism of others.</p>
<p>As the land reform debate rages, there are signs that the commercial press marginalises anti-western alternative voices opposed to the current dominant political, social and economic outlook underpinned by capitalism. This is discernible in views such as that the debate causes <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/land-bank-issues-stark-warning-on-land-grabs-16664550">“uncertainty” and investment jitters</a>, primarily driven by business and government sources, are prevalent. </p>
<h2>Commercial press in South Africa</h2>
<p>South Africa’s press is vast and dominated by four conglomerates – Media24, Arena Holdings, Sekunjalo (Independent Media) and Caxton. While recent figures paint a bleak picture with plummeting circulation, the press still commands a sizeable readership. Circulation is estimated at 445,485 physical copies for dailies, 172,348 for weeklies and <a href="https://abc.org.za/">550,416 for weekenders</a>.</p>
<p>Though there have been changes in media ownership patterns since the end of apartheid, we argue in our latest <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23743670.2022.2033289">journal article</a> that the ethos of this press remains rooted in apartheid-like economic and ideological beliefs. Hence the voices opposed to the dominant ideas are marginalised. By elevating the views of economic elites over the dispossessed majority, the media perpetuate the past injustices. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/media-literacy-education-in-south-africa-can-help-combat-fake-news-heres-whats-needed-185338">Media literacy education in South Africa can help combat fake news - here's what's needed</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Commercial factors such as ownership and funding result in unfair treatment of anti-west and anti-capitalist discourses. The media don’t treat the concerns of the dispossessed as legitimate. </p>
<p>But how exactly do the print media represent the land debate? To answer this question, we analysed articles on “land expropriation” in the commercial press between January and December 2018. The newspapers we analysed include <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/">Business Day</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus">Argus</a>, <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/">The Citizen</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes">Cape Times</a>, <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/">Financial Mail</a>, <a href="https://www.heraldlive.co.za/">The Herald</a> and <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/">Sowetan</a>. What emerged was overwhelmingly negative coverage of the discourse, dominated by what we regard as elite sources. Instead of being impartial, the commercial press failed to play a democratic role. This erodes public trust in the media. </p>
<h2>Framing land expropriation</h2>
<p>This negative coverage is driven by five themes: land grabs, private property rights, food insecurity, negative consequences to the economy and investor confidence. </p>
<p>These themes betray the media’s slant towards ideas of the dominant class. Through a close analysis, it becomes apparent that the way the press represents the land debate is linked to its historical place in capitalist economy.</p>
<p>For example, through interviewing and quoting elitist sources from academia and business, the media employed the “land grab” frame to sound the alarm in numerous sensational headlines that the debate scares away investors and is damaging to the country. It’s suggested that the country would head down the same path of “ruin” as Zimbabwe if it pressed ahead with <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/daily-news-south-africa/20180816/281522226928541">land expropriation</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/public-trust-in-the-media-is-at-a-new-low-a-radical-rethink-of-journalism-is-needed-155257">Public trust in the media is at a new low: a radical rethink of journalism is needed</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>The “private property rights” frame was equally employed. The media leaned heavily on the European classical liberalism that perceives private property protection as the government’s primary purpose. Attempts to redress colonial injustices were portrayed as having dire economic consequences. The “private property” narrative remained unchallenged. </p>
<h2>Description bias and narrow neoliberal framing</h2>
<p>The framing of the land debate is guilty of “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/sf/article-abstract/79/4/1397/2234084">description bias</a>”. This is when the media avoid unpacking underlying causes of important issues. The media fail to critically engage the land question and the broader redistributive justice debate in the country. Their claim to be neutral obscures a neoliberal bias.</p>
<p>Many stories analysed were written in a manner that did not support land expropriation. A narrow neoliberal frame was employed rather than one that recognised the dispossessed. </p>
<p>When parliament organised public hearings on the land debate <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/project-event-details/285">in 2018</a> to give ordinary people a chance to air their views, their voices were severely underrepresented in the media. The dispossessed were compelled to look at themselves through the prism of others. The privileged spoke on behalf of the marginalised, reinforcing unequal power relations in society.</p>
<h2>Capitalism and media ownership</h2>
<p>Even though South Africa’s media ownership has gradually shifted to black-owned companies following democracy <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-04-00-who-runs-sas-media-is-a-black-and-white-issu">in 1994</a>, the financial muscle to control and define the overall goals and scope lies in the hands of powerful corporations with ties to global capital.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africa-ranks-in-the-press-freedom-stakes-116009">How South Africa ranks in the press freedom stakes</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>The skewed reportage in the land debate can also be explained by the ownership and funding of the media. The causal relationship between ownership and media content is not always discernible. But numerous media scholars have found a strong <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23743670.2022.2096090">correlation between ownership and media texts</a>. </p>
<p>The framing of the land debate contributes to entrenching the injustices of colonialism and apartheid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195943/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mandla J. Radebe is affiliated with the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Chiumbu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Skewed reportage on the land debate contributes to entrenching the injustices of colonialism and apartheid.
Mandla J. Radebe, Associate Professor and Director, University of Johannesburg
Sarah Chiumbu, Associate Professor, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187660
2022-08-04T07:26:04Z
2022-08-04T07:26:04Z
Racism in South Africa: why the ANC has failed to dismantle patterns of white privilege
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476919/original/file-20220801-77700-t3rcsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">ANC leaders led by Cyril Ramaphosa cut a giant cake to mark the ANC's 110th birthday in January.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Phill Magakoe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the sources of social discontent in post-apartheid South Africa is the legacy of white racism. This toxic legacy is evident in racialised poverty and inequality. </p>
<p>It is a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/719876">historical fact</a> that the economic prosperity of whites in South Africa is based on the racist exploitation and impoverishment of blacks. </p>
<p>The long <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/719876">history</a> of racism enabled white South Africans to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world by the 1970s. In his new book, titled <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31759">Can We Unlearn Racism?</a>, Jacob R Boersema, a New York University academic, shows that by the 21st century white South Africans’ “lifetime work-related earnings on average are four times higher than for Africans”. </p>
<p>Add to this <a href="https://www.statecapture.org.za/">corruption</a>, rampant <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-bheki-cele-release-quarter-four-crime-statistics-202122-3-jun-2022-0000">crime</a>, frightening levels of <a href="https://theconversation.com/change-what-south-african-men-think-of-women-to-combat-their-violent-behaviour-167921">gender based violence</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-08-18-south-africas-profound-institutional-failure/">failing political institutions</a>: the outcome is a social horror show that produces misery for millions of black people. This is what former president Thabo Mbeki was referring to in his <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-07-22-thabo-mbeki-slams-anc-for-failing-on-unemployment-poverty-inequality/">recent scathing critique</a> of the governing African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<p>Mbeki also criticised the party for not being able to organise a racially diverse audience for the memorial service of the late ANC deputy secretary general <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jessie-yasmin-duarte">Jessie Duarte</a>. That, he said, showed that the ANC had failed to embody its fundamental value of <a href="https://repository.uwc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10566/5829/Non%20racialism%20and%20the%20African%20National%20Congress%20views%20from%20the%20branch.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">non-racialism</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pandemic-underscores-gross-inequalities-in-south-africa-and-the-need-to-fix-them-135070">Pandemic underscores gross inequalities in South Africa, and the need to fix them</a>
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</em>
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<p>Mbeki’s thinking reveals deep confusion about “race”, racism, diversity and non-racialism. He falsely assumes that diversity means harmony. </p>
<p>Non-racialism is one of the unexamined dogmas of the ANC. It has its roots in the politics of Christian humanism that inspired the formation of the party in 1912. That humanism regarded Christianity as transcending race by offering <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">“an ultimate goal of inter-racial harmony based on the brotherhood of man”</a>. </p>
<p>Whatever solidarity there was between different racial groups in political structures like the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/significance-congress-people-and-freedom-charter">Congress Alliance</a> – which drew up the ANC’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">“Freedom Charter”</a> in 1955 – did not translate to the social world outside politics. </p>
<p>The world outside politics was defined by racial segregation. That has not changed much. Apart from the workplace and in schools, ordinary blacks and whites continue to live <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-johannesburgs-suburban-elites-maintain-apartheid-inequities-169295">racially segregated lives</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-south-africas-white-liberals-dodge-honest-debates-about-race-127846">How South Africa's white liberals dodge honest debates about race</a>
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<p>The ANC, since its formation, has been ideologically trapped in the 19th century black Cape politics of Victorian liberalism – which advocated for loyalty to the British Crown. This resulted in blacks making moral appeals to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/274742">white benevolence</a> for justice and freedom, instead of making political demands. The ANC has never fully understood how white racism functions.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>The ANC’s establishment in 1912 was driven by an ideological blending of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-African-Nationalism-South-Africa/dp/0520018109">British liberalism and a Christian vision of non-racialism</a>. This equipped it poorly to respond to and make sense of racism and modern South Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men and women give the thumbs up sign from inside a train coach reserved for whites only in 1952, during apartheid. A sign on the train says 'Europeans only'." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C528%2C390&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476916/original/file-20220801-24-eadx6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black commuters defiantly board a train reserved for whites during apartheid in 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bettman via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For most of the early 20th century, the ANC thought it could defeat racism by appealing to Britain’s sense of common justice. In his presidential address to the South African Native Congress (now ANC) in 1912 – which was published in the Christian Express, the Christian missionary journal published by the Lovedale Press – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-langalibalele-dube">Reverend John Dube</a> <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1arfjVg421EBuXh6iMRiWwC7e1-ouGFcn/view?usp=sharing">encouraged</a> black people to show “deep and dutiful respect for the rulers whom God has placed over us” because the</p>
<blockquote>
<p>sense of common justice and love of freedom so innate in the British character (would) ultimately triumph over all other baser tendencies to colour prejudice and class tyranny.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Consequently, from its formation to the 1950s, when its leaders were subjected to government bans, the ANC failed to win a single political victory over white racism, as <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">historians</a> have pointed out.</p>
<p>From the 1950s, it moved away from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24738360">“black Victorianism”</a> and incorporated a Pan-Africanist worldview, as well as Das Kapital – Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. The Marxists in the ANC argued that the aim of the struggle was to overthrow capitalism, which they saw <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">in terms of class rather than race</a>.</p>
<p>Black people thus focused their hostility on the apartheid government, and <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520039339/black-power-in-south-africa">“never on whites as such”</a>. Black people who dared to use race as an analytical category were eventually purged from the ANC. </p>
<p>By the turn of this century the ANC had rid itself of British liberalism and Christian politics. But it remained committed to the idea of non-racialism.
And it has <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237800101_The_ANC_black_capitalism_in_South_Africa">embraced capitalism </a> – in particular the capitalism entrenched in South Africa by white people.</p>
<p>There are three consequences.</p>
<p>Firstly, the ANC is an intellectually impoverished organisation that rewards incompetence and greed, and encourages individuals to strive to be the king of the rubbish pile. </p>
<p>Secondly, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-State-Unravelling-Magashules-Pieter-Louis/dp/1776093747">corruption</a> and blatant disregard for the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-06-03-crime-crisis-continues-in-first-quarter-of-2022-with-women-and-children-worst-affected/">law</a> have achieved ambient levels. </p>
<p>Thirdly, South Africa is dysfunctional and <a href="https://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/900">social cohesion</a> has broken down.</p>
<h2>Failure of non-racialism</h2>
<p>Mbeki is one of the few ANC politicians <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PpZlvfSP_A">to admit publicly</a> that non-racialism has failed to unite South Africans. The black intellectual ecosystem has yet to develop a compelling analysis of the relationship between white wealth and black poverty. </p>
<p>The white narrative that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2021.1878251?src=recsys">blames the black elite</a> for the persistence of <a href="https://www.da.org.za/2018/08/das-position-on-economic-empowerment">racialised inequality</a> erases white racism from post-apartheid South Africa. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-10-19/Report-03-10-192017.pdf?_ga=2.14935350.1863706996.1659349869-103406588.1655989340#page=59">Statistics South Africa</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The labour market experiences of different population groups in South Africa continue to diverge substantially, and still reflect the strongly persistent legacies of apartheid policies … Thus, black African unemployment rates are between four and five times as high as they are amongst whites.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The black middle class remains largely an academic construct. It consists of a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1750481317745750">mere 4.2 million</a> people whereas blacks make up 80% of the population of <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=15601">60 million</a>. <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/scis/publications/working-papers/">Research</a> shows no sign of a decrease in racialised wealth inequality since apartheid.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-pro-poor-policies-on-their-own-wont-shift-inequality-in-south-africa-117430">Why 'pro-poor' policies on their own won't shift inequality in South Africa</a>
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<p>The ANC’s failures mean that the vast majority of black people are trapped in poverty, with few prospects of escaping.</p>
<p>Thabo Mbeki is right to be worried. And it is not only the ANC that does not have the solution to the country’s problems. </p>
<p>Until black people break from the ideological capture of non-racialism, the legacy of white racism will never be dislodged.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mandisi Majavu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Non-racialism is one of the unexamined dogmas of the governing ANC, which has never fully understood how white racism functions.
Mandisi Majavu, Senior Lecturer, Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181637
2022-05-04T14:32:39Z
2022-05-04T14:32:39Z
What cattle conflicts say about identity in South Sudan
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459430/original/file-20220425-66366-1i3rnm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An armed man guards cattle in a village in South Sudan.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In March 2022, <a href="https://www.eyeradio.org/makuei-appeals-for-calm-as-govt-promises-to-remove-cattle-from-magwi/">violent clashes</a> between farming communities and cattle herders broke out in Eastern Equatoria State, South Sudan. It was the latest incident in months of cattle-related violence in the area, which is in the country’s southern region. </p>
<p>Dinka Bor herders from the neighbouring Jonglei State were pushed south into Eastern Equatoria’s Magwi County after floods submerged grazing lands. In just days, however, farmer-herder conflict <a href="https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/following-conflict-between-farmers-and-herders-magwi-unmiss-steps-patrols">displaced</a> more than 14,000 people. </p>
<p>The Equatoria region hosts South Sudan’s capital, Juba. It is inhabited by more than 30 different ethnic groups, most of them farmers. It was the birthplace of the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14019208">southern rebellion</a> against Sudan’s Khartoum. Economically, it is the strongest region of South Sudan, with immense agricultural potential. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="https://jhumanitarianaction.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41018-018-0030-y">militarisation</a> of cattle raiding since the 1990s has led to frequent eruptions of violence. These raids were originally regulated by cultural authorities. But political <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/south-sudan/popular-struggles-and-elite-co-optation-nuer-white-army-south-sudan-s-civil-war">elites</a> have armed ethnic groups to advance their interests, leading to a proliferation of guns in the region.</p>
<p>Today, the presence of Dinka herders in Equatoria is used to project historical and ideological disagreements about state structure and identities in South Sudan. </p>
<p>As a result, what looked like local, inter-communal violence between farming host communities and displaced herders in March led to heated national debate. The Equatoria caucus in South Sudan’s Transitional National Legislative Assembly held a joint press conference to condemn the Magwi attacks. </p>
<p>The importance given to the Magwi conflict can be seen as the result of irreconcilable visions of the state by Equatorian and Dinka elites in South Sudan. My PhD <a href="https://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/person/francois-sennesael">research</a> into Equatorian political identity traces how these visions emerged. </p>
<h2>Equatoria as a resistance identity</h2>
<p>More than an administrative territory, Equatoria is a context-dependent idea. It is, first, a fragile, unfinished <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">political identity</a>. It is used as an umbrella term to attempt to unify heterogeneous political elites coming from the colonial-era Equatoria province. </p>
<p>Equatorian leaders have been asking for more <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">autonomy</a> to run their own affairs. Its leaders feel marginalised at the national level, which is heavily tilted towards the predominant <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2013/12/what-is-tribalism-and-why-does-is-matter-in-south-sudan-by-andreas-hirblinger-and-sara-de-simone/">Dinka and Nuer</a> ethnic groups.</p>
<p>Unlike the creation of a <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo11913256.html">Kalenjin political identity</a> in Kenya, the Equatorian political identity has struggled to become a reality. It has a weak popular base and no political party. Its more prominent leaders have been <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-23816191">co-opted</a> into government.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-sudans-attempts-at-peace-continue-to-fail-126846">Why South Sudan's attempts at peace continue to fail</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Second, for many regional elites in Juba, the term Equatoria represents a political project: federalism. These elites want to create political space for their region in the power-sharing agreement between Dinka and Nuer elites. </p>
<p>This was not always a priority for them. </p>
<p>Equatoria as a political identity emerged in the 1970s as a consequence of the perceived <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328639494_Why_Equatoria_Region_in_South_Sudan_may_opt_to_secede">political marginalisation</a> of its elites. Members of this group had previously defined themselves first as South Sudanese. They defended unity as long as they were in power. </p>
<p>However, they began to warn of a growing Dinka nationalism when Abel Aleir was appointed head of the autonomous region of Southern Sudan <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/South+Sudan">in 1972</a>. </p>
<p>Equatoria as an identity of resistance gained momentum alongside the <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/huria/article/view/198498">ethnicisation of politics</a> in the 1970s. The presence of Dinka cattle herders in the predominantly farming region became the proxy through which political grievances were expressed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://paxforpeace.nl/what-we-do/publications/the-legacy-of-kokora-in-south-sudan">Kokora system</a> – the redivision of Southern Sudan into three provinces at the request of Equatorian elites in 1983 – was primarily a way to expel the Dinka and their cattle from Equatoria. </p>
<hr>
<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sudans-deep-state-still-poses-a-threat-to-the-democratic-process-130243">Sudan's deep state still poses a threat to the democratic process</a>
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<p>My interviews in Juba found that the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14019208">war against Khartoum</a> – which was started by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in 1983 – is still perceived primarily as an anti-Equatoria movement led by Dinkas, rather than as a liberation movement. As a result, for Equatorian elites, the history of liberation and the roots of South Sudanese identity are contested. </p>
<h2>Challenging central rule</h2>
<p>Following power-sharing agreements in 2015 and 2018 <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/270-salvaging-south-sudans-fragile-peace-deal">after years of war</a>, Dinka and Nuer politicians divided major political positions largely among themselves. </p>
<p>The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement has emphasised the importance of ‘South Sudan-ness’ to foster a sense of national unity. Claims for institutional and political autonomy from the central state are viewed as <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article50197/">threats</a> to the young state. </p>
<p>While Equatorians have been speaking of regionalism, the liberation movement has labelled it “localism” to emphasise how contrary to the idea of nation it is. </p>
<p>Yet Equatorians have <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/south-sudan/b169-south-sudans-other-war-resolving-insurgency-equatoria">long felt marginalised</a> within the South Sudanese political system. They have also been blamed for trying to <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article50197/">divide the country</a>. </p>
<p>Additionally, an unsuccessful attempt to <a href="https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/sr_493-conflict_and_crisis_in_south_sudans_equatoria.pdf">form an alliance</a> with the Nuer in 2016 and implement a federal system gave birth to radical Equatorian factions calling for secession. </p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peace-in-south-sudan-hinges-on-forging-a-unified-military-force-but-its-proving-hard-181547">Peace in South Sudan hinges on forging a unified military force: but it's proving hard</a>
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<p>This discussion is somewhat performative in the sense that Equatorians’ ultimate ambition is not to create their own state, but rather to be included within existing structures. Yet, demands for federalism are high. Equatorian elites portray it as the only system that could liberate them from what they see as Dinka domination. </p>
<p>As a result, Equatorian elites have used cross-border cattle-related violence to call for a hardening of internal boundaries. It has also been used to challenge centralised power. </p>
<p>The defence of Equatorian farmers represents a much-needed unifying cause for a grouping divided by internal disagreements on whether to cooperate with the government or not. </p>
<p>The government has also been accused of <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2022/1/5/why-return-displaced-people-thorny-issue-South-Sudan">arming herders</a> to target populations that are not inclined to support its actions. This is becoming more prevalent as politicians get ready for <a href="https://sudantribune.com/article256604/">potential elections</a> in 2023. </p>
<p>The Equatorian political identity draws on existing fault lines of culture and historical memory. If the feeling of marginalisation persists, however, a strong movement could establish a community with separatist aspirations. This could endanger efforts to stabilise the world’s youngest nation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Sennesael receives funding from the Richard Stapley Educational Trust and a Santander Academic Travel Award (University of Oxford) for this research. </span></em></p>
The idea of what it means to be South Sudanese is not universally accepted in the young nation.
Francois Sennesael, DPhil Candidate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/165619
2021-08-11T14:57:59Z
2021-08-11T14:57:59Z
Book review: Nigeria has democracy but not development. How to fix it
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415067/original/file-20210807-24-1pkdksf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria recently started commercial operation of a China-assisted railway linking the southwestern cities of Lagos and Ibadan. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Emma Houston/Xinhua via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After struggling for 39 years to develop a fertile ground for democratic governance, Nigeria had its turning point in May 1999 when it became the <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/nigeria/1979-12-01/democracy-nigeria">world’s fourth largest democracy</a>. This came after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/04/weekinreview/oct-28-nov-3-massacre-in-nigeria.html">16 years</a> of brutal military rule.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nigeria-has-a-history-of-dodgy-elections-will-it-be-different-this-time-111093">Despite complaints of fraud</a> by political opposition in each election held since 1999, local and international <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/may/29/nigeria-elections-free-fair-democracy-kofi-annan">election observers</a> have regarded each of Nigeria’s general elections as relatively free and fair.</p>
<p>On the economic front, Nigeria is now the largest economy in Africa and <a href="https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/nigeria-maintains-her-lead-as-the-largest-economy-in-africa-26th-largest-economy/t62z11j">26th globally</a>. It now attracts more foreign investments than in the military era.</p>
<p>Taken together, the Nigerian democratic experiment seems to have come a long away.</p>
<p>But has democracy led to development in Nigeria? The award-winning international political economist Omano Edigheji, in his new book, <a href="https://rhbooks.com.ng/product/nigeria-democracy-without-development-how-to-fix-it/">Nigeria Democracy Without Development: How To Fix It</a>, argues powerfully that Nigerian democratic experiment is marred by monumental flaws. This is notwithstanding the modest progress it has achieved. </p>
<p>The book offers interesting detail and finely reasoned conjecture about the paradoxical relationship between democracy and development in Nigeria. </p>
<p>In this review, I organise the main ideas of the book into three parts:</p>
<ul>
<li>the paradox of democracy without development in Nigeria; </li>
<li>explanations of democracy without development in Nigeria; and </li>
<li>pathways to democracy with development in Nigeria.</li>
</ul>
<h2>The paradox of liberal democracy</h2>
<p>The book demonstrates that Nigeria continues to face massive developmental and institutional challenges. This is despite the implementation of western liberal democracy and the good governance reforms driven by donors. The challenges include human capital deficits and extreme poverty. This is due to under-investment in health, education and infrastructure. For example, <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/NGA.pdf">Nigeria’s human development index</a> value for 2020 was 0.539, placing the country in the low human development category.</p>
<p>Of all African countries, Nigeria faces the most significant challenges for reducing poverty and inequality due to rapid population growth. More than <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/lsms/brief/nigeria-releases-new-report-on-poverty-and-inequality-in-country">40% of Nigerians</a> (83 million people) live below the poverty line of $1.90 a day.</p>
<p>Another 25% (53 million) are vulnerable. Yet, the combined wealth of Nigeria’s five richest men is $29.9 billion. According to a <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">recent report</a> by Oxfam International, the combined wealth of the Nigeria’s five richest men could end national poverty. The implication here is that democracy has led to massive increases in poverty and economic inequality in Nigeria.</p>
<p>The book flags another major challenge: high unemployment, which has continued to increase since 1999. At <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-15/nigeria-unemployment-rate-rises-to-second-highest-on-global-list">33%</a>, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. Youth unemployment is higher than for older workers. This means the risks of violent conflict and civil unrest are especially high.</p>
<p>And despite anti-corruption campaigns, Nigeria is still perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Nigeria <a href="https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2020/index/nga">ranked 149 out of 180 countries in 2020</a>, the second lowest in West Africa after Guinea-Bissau.</p>
<p>Then there is the security issue. Bandits, separatists and Islamist insurgents increasingly threaten government’s grip on power. Mass kidnappings, killings, maiming and other forms of insecurity are on the rise nationwide. This is true even in more stable parts of the country.</p>
<p>By and large, the book empirically demonstrates that the democratic experiment of the last 20 years has had negative results on Nigerians. Nigeria’s corrupt political elites (with a few exceptions) have largely been the beneficiaries of the democratic experiment. Not the masses.</p>
<h2>Explanations of democracy without development</h2>
<p>Edigheji focuses on structural and agent-based factors of the state as the likely explanatory factors behind Nigeria’s democracy without development. More specifically, Edigheji zooms in on two principal explanations that account for democracy without development: poor leadership and weak institutions. In this, he goes beyond the conventional argument that the prospects of democracy and development in a post-colonial country are invariably linked to its level of economic development, political culture and social make-up.</p>
<p>First, he blames Nigeria’s democracy without development on two factors. These are a lack of an ideology of development nationalism and the preponderance of politics without principles. The ideology of development nationalism is not only about national identity, consciousness or a feeling of belonging to a particular nation. Instead, it is premised on the need to catch up and to overcome underdevelopment, dependence on foreign countries and poverty.</p>
<p>The ideology of development nationalism, Edigheji argues, can only be promoted by developmentalist or patriotic elites. That’s because they do not engage in the politics of self-enrichment that undermines the collective national interest. Instead, they make necessary sacrifices to achieve their collective goals.</p>
<p>Developmentalist elites have a shared vision for national development. This includes massive investment in the provision of public goods. These include education, healthcare and infrastructure, or national policies, such as international trade and monetary policy.</p>
<p>Nigeria’s political elites since 1999 have not been developmentalist. They have been rent-seeking and predatory.</p>
<p>The second contributing factor to democracy without development has been the capture of the state. This has been achieved through a non-merit-based recruitment and promotion of civil servants, the core of which is the civil service.</p>
<p>The efficient and effective management of the civil service is central to sustainable and equitable economic development. This is underscored by the experiences of the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) and the Tiger Cub economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam).</p>
<p>In the 1960s and 1970s, Nigeria had one of the best and most meritocratic civil services in Africa. It was made up of mostly career civil servants. They progressed based on qualifications, performance and seniority.</p>
<p>Today, however, Nigeria has one of the worst civil services in Africa. Recruitment and promotion have become politicised and ethnicised, particularly since 1999. The result has been that the best and brightest Nigerians are no longer in the civil service.</p>
<p>Non-merit-based recruitment and promotion have brought about inefficiency in the public service, low-levels of economic development and higher corruption.</p>
<h2>Pathways to democracy with development</h2>
<p>For Nigeria to overcome its developmental and institutional deficits, Edigheji argues for a democratic developmental state. The term developmental state was coined during much of the 1980s and 1990s to describe countries which had experienced rapid economic growth through state-led interventions. These include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Vietnam.</p>
<p>Edigheji sets out some of the key elements of a democratic developmental state:</p>
<p>First, Nigerian politics needs to be driven by developmentalist elites whose politics is anchored on the people and political parties based on ideology. </p>
<p>Second, the political elites need to transform the structure of the economy. They can do this by promoting human capital development, infrastructural development, and industrialisation. They must also combat the challenges of insecurity, corruption and climate change.</p>
<p>But achieving these depend on inclusive political and economic institutions.</p>
<h2>Unanswered question</h2>
<p>Notwithstanding the enormous contributions of the book, some questions remain to be fully answered. These include the suitability of the developmental state model as a panacea for Nigeria’s challenges. </p>
<p>The first question centres on understanding the processes that produced developmental states. How did developmental states achieve their successes in economic development? What worked, what didn’t, and why? </p>
<p>The second centres on the possibilities and the lessons Nigeria can draw from developmental states elsewhere. Would a developmental state model work in Nigeria? If yes, how? </p>
<p>Overall, the book makes a compelling argument for why democracy has failed to produce inclusive development in Nigeria. It offers perceptive insights into what the country needs to do to overcome its developmental and institutional deficits. It’s a very illuminating book and enjoyable to read. It is a valuable book for students, scholars, policymakers, politicians and development practitioners who want to comprehend the political dynamics of Nigeria. It is also an important contribution to the literature on the challenges of democracy and development in the global South.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ayokunu Adedokun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In his new book, Nigeria Democracy Without Development: How To Fix It, international political economist Omano Edigheji explains why democracy has not led to development in Nigeria.
Ayokunu Adedokun, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and International Development, Leiden University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157026
2021-03-18T12:19:18Z
2021-03-18T12:19:18Z
All American presidents have made spectacles of themselves – and there’s nothing wrong with that
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390139/original/file-20210317-23-1yvecxe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C3%2C1002%2C505&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Both Andrew Jackson, left, and Donald Trump presented themselves as men of the people.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g02109//https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-speaks-to-reporters-on-the-south-news-photo/1230547564?adppopup=true">Jackson, Library of Congress; Trump, Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After four years of Donald Trump as president, many Americans were sick and tired. They booted him out, with large numbers likely preferring not to hear about him ever again. </p>
<p>And yet, as <a href="https://unito.academia.edu/MaurizioValsania/CurriculumVitae">a historian of the early American republic</a>, I dare say that the man – or rather the personage – has already become a classic. Trump will remain in the public debate for centuries.</p>
<p>Trump’s apparently calculated shows of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/05/will-americans-forgive-trump">lack of compassion</a> plus his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/us/politics/donald-trump-access-hollywood.html">galloping vulgarity</a> made him into one of the most <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-beastly-is-trump-the-post-gut-checker-investigates/2019/08/23/72b70ab2-c5b3-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html">unpresidential presidents</a> ever. </p>
<p>But while Trump’s <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-trump-norms-presidency-20191028-20191025-sfjob7bizzf2fbqb7eqhcuw3uy-story.html">vulgarity alienated many</a>, a big chunk of Americans saw it as a show, a choreography aimed at doing away with the hypocrisy of Ivy League-educated liberals, although Trump’s appointees were <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/12/01/republicans-criticize-biden-cabinet-ivy-league-reality-check-avlon-vpx.cnn">even more Ivy League</a> than those in other administrations. </p>
<p>As the recent elections demonstrate, large numbers of voters have condoned the former president’s lowbrow attitudes. Vulgarity, for millions, was just a means to an end. It was part of a larger plan, the beginning of a <a href="https://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/colonization-revolution-and-new-nation/pair-daniel-lamotte-independence-squire-jack-porter/">Jacksonian, democratic revolution</a> expected to give <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-legacy-obliterated-norms-chipped-institutions-end/story?id=75275806">a voice to working-class voters</a> who have been overlooked, allegedly smothered by decades of censorship or “<a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/11/04/opinion/trump-speaks-people-whove-grown-weary-political-correctness/">leftist political correctness</a>.”</p>
<p>Trump would have loved to emulate the achievements of <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2017/may/02/whats-up-with-donald-trump-andrew-jackson/">Andrew Jackson, his idol</a>. Jackson was the <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/jackson/impact-and-legacy">president who changed 19th-century America forever</a>. He expanded (male) suffrage, fought against the banks, reshaped federal institutions, and championed territorial expansion – at the expense of Native Americans.</p>
<p>Jackson was also the man who <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/430927-america-lived-through-a-trump-like-presidency-before-with-lasting">revolutionized the figure of the president</a>. With a penchant for exaggeration, he called for a degree of authenticity in the personage – and it didn’t matter if it was real or pretended. </p>
<p>It’s an American idea that Trump also got perfectly right: Acting out the “man of the people,” with a load of weaknesses and flaws, may well help the president send citizens the message that the supreme office also belongs to them; that the president is like “<a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/preamble">We the People</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Trump at a rally throwing MAGA hats into a crowd." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390147/original/file-20210317-13-936aiw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump’s ‘galloping vulgarity’ distinguished him among U.S. presidents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-throws-hats-to-the-crowd-during-a-news-photo/1025390272?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Alike in style, communication, resentments</h2>
<p>In terms of political achievements and successes, Trump <a href="https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2017/february/donald-trump-is-not-a-twenty-first-century-andrew-jackson/">is not like Jackson</a>. Personally, the two are also very different: While <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/06/655121335/how-trump-got-his-fortune">Trump was steeped in privilege since birth</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrew-Jackson">Jackson was born into</a> a Scots-Irish family of modest means, somewhere along the border between North and South Carolina. And only Jackson was a <a href="https://thehermitage.com/learn/andrew-jackson/general/#:%7E:text=War%20Hero,them%20to%20withdraw%20from%20Louisiana.">military hero</a> and <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/jackson/impact-and-legacy">a committed</a> <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/10/24/660042653/what-is-a-nationalist-in-the-age-of-trump">nationalist</a> who, despite all flaws, never chased personal interests. No competition. </p>
<p>But there is one area in which the two can compete: Trump is a novel Andrew Jackson in matters of personal style, approach to communication and raids launched against the “liberal elites” – in Jackson’s case, against the two patrician <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564486/the-problem-of-democracy-by-nancy-isenberg-and-andrew-burstein/">Presidents Adams</a> – John and John Quincy – plus the presidential class known as the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Virginia-Dynasty-Presidents-Creation-American/dp/1101980044">“Virginia Dynasty</a>”: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A political cartoon satirizing the pandemonium after President Andrew Jackson tried to shut down a major U.S. bank." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390141/original/file-20210317-15-1gkn350.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Jackson took aim at elite institutions; this political cartoon shows the mayhem after he withdrew government funds from the Bank of the United States.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-andrew-jackson-refuses-to-renew-the-charter-of-news-photo/2668436?adppopup=true">Artwork printed by H R Robinson, photo by MPI/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both Jackson and Trump put on stage the same seductive character, the “man of the people.” Like Trump, President Jackson was less than regal. Like Trump, Jackson made deliberate shows of coarseness, profanity and vulgarity in general. </p>
<p>By 1829, the year of his inauguration, the man was a physical wreck. Toothless, his lungs chronically irritated by a bullet he was shot with during a duel, Jackson used to sputter what he called “<a href="https://www.healthguidance.org/entry/8908/1/the-health-of-the-president-andrew-jackson.html">great quantities of slime</a>.” There’s worse: In a calculated effort to intimidate his enemies and inspire his followers, Jackson would break into terrible fits of shouting, foot-stomping, book-slamming and <a href="https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/rise-american-democracy-jefferson-lincoln">table-pounding</a>.</p>
<p>And he cursed like a sailor. President Jackson had a pet parrot, Poll. On June 10, 1845, about 3,000 people attended Jackson’s funeral, at the Hermitage, Tennessee. A story goes that Poll was greatly annoyed by the mourners. Jackson’s propensity for swearing must have rubbed off on his pet, because the parrot unexpectedly launched into a blasphemous tirade. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/12/a-potty-mouthed-history-of-presidential-profanity-and-one-cursing-white-house-parrot/">Everyone was flabbergasted</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="George Washington taking the oath of office among almost a dozen men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390145/original/file-20210317-21-1bhu1x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Washington, here being inaugurated as the nation’s first president, had no precedent to rely on for how he acted.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-inauguration-of-george-washington-lithograph-currier-news-photo/629448241?adppopup=true">Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Demean himself’</h2>
<p>Marking the proper measure of the “regality” of a president is similarly important. For a nation built upon a Constitution, rather than upon hereditary aristocracy, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691211992">the figure of the president must be unlike any king</a>. And presidents must not be demi-gods or saints either. </p>
<p>When he was <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/inauguration/timeline/">sworn in as the new nation’s first president on April 30, 1789, George Washington</a> had no precedent to rely on. Understandably, he was a little bemused. What shall the president be doing? And who is the president, after all? On May 10, Washington wrote to John Adams and asked for his “candid and undisguised opinions” in matter of presidential etiquette and strategies of <a href="http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/self/self-presentation/">self-presentation</a>. </p>
<p>An 18th-century elite man, Washington wasn’t tempted by vulgarity, of course. He wasn’t trying to become a “man of the people” himself. He rather feared he could fall into the opposite excess, aristocracy.</p>
<p>“The President,” he wrote to Adams, “can have no object but to demean himself in his public character, in such a manner as to maintain the dignity of Office, without subjecting himself to the imputation of superciliousness or <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-02-02-0182">unnecessary reserve</a>.”</p>
<h2>‘Persona is a public act’</h2>
<p>Washington’s era was different from Jackson’s era, and from our era. But Washington is still right, I believe, and not only to suggest that moderation may be preferred over extremes. Washington is especially right in his claim that the president’s persona is a public act, and does not belong to the individual exclusively. </p>
<p>In terms of institutional procedures, Trump may have done some harm to the office, but he did not and could not destroy the role of the president – the symbolic, inspirational, educational role attached to that office. </p>
<p>The reason is that this role must be reenacted each time. In over 200 years, all presidents, good and bad, couldn’t help asking themselves what the title “President of the United States” entailed, practically. And what piece of theater they were supposed to perform, exactly.</p>
<p>Joe Biden must be asking himself the same question. And he has already provided some answers. Neither an aristocrat nor a pure “man of the people,” he has already presented himself as an <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/joe-bidens-superpower/616957/">empathetic</a> man and a loving, supportive and protective <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/upshot/trump-biden-masculinity-fatherhood.html">father</a> and grandfather. Biden’s persona, presented in an elderly man with feathery white hair, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/913667325/how-joe-bidens-faith-shapes-his-politics">brings his religious faith</a> to the fore.</p>
<p>The first Catholic president after John F. Kennedy, Biden offers himself as <a href="https://theconversation.com/anointing-the-nation-how-joe-bidens-catholic-faith-permeated-his-inaugural-address-154672">a novel, much-needed American Moses</a>. Are Americans ready for this personage? Will he succeed in connecting with “We the People?”</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurizio Valsania does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A president’s persona is always a public act. In that way, Trump’s shtick – vulgar man of the people – was not exceptional. And every president has had to invent his version of the role.
Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/120068
2019-07-29T12:24:48Z
2019-07-29T12:24:48Z
Why Trump’s stoking of white racial resentment is effective – but makes all working-class Americans worse off
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285554/original/file-20190724-110166-aahcot.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump's largest base of support comes from white men. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/ebeac91b95f34e3492554fef0b061eb7/12/0">AP Photo/Gerry Broome</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many white men <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559604836/majority-of-white-americans-think-theyre-discriminated-against">say</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/28/17913774/brett-kavanaugh-lindsey-graham-christine-ford-backlash">they feel</a> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/white-men-react-poorly-women-and-minorities-power-positions-study-finds-839862">threatened</a> by the increasing presence and success of minorities in the workplace.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.umass.edu/issr/eric_hoyt">social</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=6IIFqigAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scientists</a>, we wondered if there is any evidence to support this perceived economic threat, a perception that can provide fertile ground for current rounds of racist and xenophobic political messaging. </p>
<p>Our work at the <a href="https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/home">Center for Employment Equity</a> at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, involves using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data to explore workplace discrimination and diversity in states and cities across the U.S. Our aim is to discover and promote more equitable workplaces. </p>
<p>In our most recent report, called “<a href="https://www.umass.edu/employmentequity/diversity-reports">Race, States and the Mixed Fate of White Men</a>,” we examined the connection between minority populations and the job prospects of white men in private-sector companies. </p>
<h2>White male privilege</h2>
<p>Social scientists generally agree on three research findings about white men in the U.S. and the notion that they are losing their unearned but expected racial privileges.</p>
<p>First, white men at every education level are more likely than women and non-Asian minorities to get access to <a href="https://www.epi.org/data/#?subject=wage-education">higher-wage jobs</a>.</p>
<p>Second, while wages of average working-class people in the U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043">have stagnated in recent decades</a>, and economic insecurity has grown, earnings for middle- and upper-class jobs – which are dominated by educated whites – have soared. </p>
<p>A third and more recent finding is that working-class white men are the group that is most <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/explaining-the-trump-vote-the-effect-of-racist-resentment-and-antiimmigrant-sentiments/537A8ABA46783791BFF4E2E36B90C0BE/core-reader">racially resentful and most opposed to further immigration</a>. This finding is based on analyses of survey data of the whole U.S. population examining both voting behavior and attitudes toward blacks and immigrants, zeroing in on President Donald Trump’s core supporters and the content of his political messaging to them.</p>
<p>This resentment probably explains why working-class whites, particularly men, are <a href="https://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-v5-10-234/">so receptive</a> to President Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist messages – and why <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12315">he targets them</a>.</p>
<p>We suspected that the reception to racist and xenophobic messages might be a reflection of a growing competition between working-class whites and minority men for increasingly insecure, low-wage jobs. </p>
<h2>White men dominate the executive suite</h2>
<p>In our study, we compared different racial groups’ share of specific occupations with their percentage of their state’s workforce. In other words, we wanted to see how over- or underrepresented white, black and Hispanic men were in various jobs. </p>
<p>In general, we found that while some white men are prospering in executive and managerial roles, there is another group of white men with very different employment experiences.</p>
<p>At the top end of the labor market, our data showed that in every state, white men were overrepresented in executive and managerial jobs. But this white male privilege varied substantially by state. White men got even more of the top jobs in states with larger minority populations.</p>
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<p>Texas, where minorities make up a third of the labor force and white men slightly more at 37%, was the most extreme. White men held 85% of private-sector executive jobs, making them overrepresented in top jobs by 138%. </p>
<p>Other states with sizable minority populations, such as California, New Mexico and Mississippi, similarly showed white men are especially advantaged in their control of the executive suite.</p>
<p>We found the same, if less extreme, pattern of white male advantage in private-sector management jobs.</p>
<h2>Working-class competition</h2>
<p>The pattern shifts dramatically, however, when we look at lower-paid working-class jobs. </p>
<p>These include machine and factory operatives, manual laborers and service occupations. Such jobs typically require high school degrees or less and tend to pay low wages. We find that more than half of these jobs pay below the living wage target of US$15 per hour.</p>
<p>In every state, black men were overrepresented as machine operatives, manual laborers and service workers. Hispanic men were overrepresented in machine operative and manual labor jobs in every state except Hawaii. </p>
<p>Working-class overrepresentation for minority men tends to be higher in states with <a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/urban/gov-majority-minority-populations-in-states.html">small minority populations</a>, such as Vermont, Maine and North Dakota.</p>
<p>But we wanted to get more directly at the degree to which working-class white men are competing for the same low-wage jobs as minority men. So we compared the number of black, Hispanic, Native American and native Hawaiian men performing operative, laborer or service jobs versus white men. In all states except Hawaii, these minorities are mostly black or Hispanic or both. </p>
<p>We found that in almost all states, working-class white men were competing for jobs with relatively large groups of minority men. And in 20, there were more minority men in these working-class jobs than white men. This pattern was most extreme in Washington, D.C. and California, where there were more than three minority men in these jobs for every white man.</p>
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<h2>Improving working-class lives</h2>
<p>This does not mean that working-class whites have lost their entire racial advantage, but rather that it is more tenuous and exists in a context of wage stagnation and increased insecurity. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/american-non-dilemma">Research</a> shows that many whites attribute being stuck in low-wage, insecure jobs to competition with minorities but are unaware of the larger trends of wage stagnation and growing insecurity for all working-class jobs.</p>
<p>So it is perhaps not surprising that this combination of visible competition and misplaced blame creates fertile conditions for stoking racial and immigrant resentment, particularly at a time of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjx043">stagnating incomes</a>, <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.95">falling unionization</a> and a <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400101?casa_token=APOLn-6H_kYAAAAA:Ky6iXAV-mH5oYuZoxn_aL26VAHhKdtN46gA0GtvV6MJujA35vfeX19aZsbNxvdF5JDdhB-Q4zjz46w">growing lack of job security</a> – problems that have done the most harm to the working class, regardless of race or national origin. </p>
<p>Perhaps it is politically simpler to encourage workers to see each other as rivals, but <a href="https://www.epi.org/research">policy solutions</a> that will actually make a difference need to focus on shared economic security – rather than blame games. </p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donald Tomaskovic-Devey is the director of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity, which receives funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Hoyt is the research director of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity, which receives funding from the W.K Kellogg Foundation.</span></em></p>
Two social scientists investigate why working-class white men are particularly receptive to President Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant messages.
Donald T. Tomaskovic-Devey, Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for Employment Equity, UMass Amherst
Eric Hoyt, Research Director of the Center for Employment Equity, UMass Amherst
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114415
2019-03-29T10:45:27Z
2019-03-29T10:45:27Z
What happens to rural and small-town Trump voters after Trump is gone?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266430/original/file-20190328-139371-1kgb6d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How will Trump's rural and small-town voters affect American politics after he's gone?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Postcards-From-Trumps-America-Georgia/30103adbed3741f79f204a94981bfe72/19/0">AP/David Goldman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If one word can capture the sentiment of rural and small-town dwellers in recent years, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/13/how-rural-resentment-helps-explain-the-surprising-victory-of-donald-trump/?utm_term=.7dfd26e6ccc4">it is “resentment</a>.”</p>
<p>I am a scholar who <a href="https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/departments/school-of-interdisciplinary-global-studies/people/edwinbenton.aspx">studies politics at the state and local level</a>. Residents of rural and small-town communities believe they are not getting their fair share of government attention and vital resources compared to urban dwellers. They believe that America is moving away from them.</p>
<p>As the 2020 presidential campaign gears up, these resentful Americans will play a key role. How <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501737150/rural-voters-played-a-big-part-in-helping-trump-defeat-clinton%5D(https://www.npr.org/2016/11/14/501737150/rural-voters-played-a-big-part-in-helping-trump-defeat-clinton">strong supporters of Donald Trump in the 2016 election</a> vote in 2020 will depend on whether the president has delivered on the promises he made to help them out.</p>
<p>Will this growing divide affect American politics beyond Trump?</p>
<h2>Left behind</h2>
<p>Political scientist <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/13/how-rural-resentment-helps-explain-the-surprising-victory-of-donald-trump/?utm_term=.7dfd26e6ccc4">Katherine Cramer has spent over a decade doing field work</a> in 27 small Wisconsin towns to understand how <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/16/13645116/rural-resentment-elites-trump">people use social class identity to interpret politics</a>. Cramer found that people in these rural areas <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo22879533.html">feel as though they are being ignored</a> by urban elites and urban institutions like government and the media at a time when they are struggling to make ends meet.</p>
<p>They believe their <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/rural-america-economy-revive.html">communities are dying, the economy is leaving them behind, and that young people, money and their livelihoods</a> are going somewhere else.</p>
<p>They think that <a href="https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/2393-rural-america-is-losing-young-people-">major decisions affecting their lives are being made far away in big cities</a>. And perhaps most importantly, they feel that no one is listening to them or their ideas about things that are important to them.</p>
<p>Most distressing to those living in this situation is the belief that no one, and especially no one in government, really cares.</p>
<h2>From resentment to division and deadlock</h2>
<p>To date, the phenomenon of “resentment” has been responsible for adding <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/urban-rural-vote-swing/">another layer of heightened division among Americans</a>, including an increase in political polarization.</p>
<p>That makes it much more difficult for federal government officials, as well as those at the state and local level, <a href="http://www.apsanet.org/portals/54/Files/Task%20Force%20Reports/Chapter2Mansbridge.pdf">to reach consensus on important issues of the day</a>.</p>
<p>University of California, Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s book, “<a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land">Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right</a>” helps in explaining how this frustration and anger of small-town and rural area dwellers has resulted in <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/strangers-in-their-own-land-anger-and-mourning-on-the-american-right/oclc/986603010">increasing political support for Republican</a> candidates, generally, and for Trump, specifically.</p>
<p>Given their intensifying feelings of resentment for being ignored and left behind, rural and small-town dwellers were particularly receptive to the slogan touted by Trump in his campaign – “Make America Great Again!”</p>
<p>Trump won the country’s small town and non-metropolitan areas by 63.2 percent to 31.3 percent, with his largest vote shares <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716217712696?journalCode=anna">coming from the most rural areas</a>.</p>
<p>Like other Republican presidential candidates over the last 10 years, Trump garnered a large majority of the vote in traditional rural areas like Appalachia, the Great Plains and parts of the South.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, however, Trump also won a substantial proportion of the traditionally Democratic small town and rural vote in several key Midwestern industrial areas. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/analysis-rural-america-silent-majority-powered-trump-win-n681221">He won 57 percent of that vote in Michigan, 63 percent in Wisconsin and 71 percent in Pennsylvania</a>.</p>
<h2>Why Trump triumphed</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-obamacare-analysis-idUSKBN135171">Trump implied or clearly promised to repeal Obamacare</a>, <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1397/build-wall-and-make-mexico-pay-it/">build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border</a> and <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/subjects/immigration/">deport around 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.</a></p>
<p>Other appealing policies were <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1424/cut-taxes-everyone/">tax cuts for both businesses and individuals</a>; significant <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2018/10/23/trump-exceeds-one-in-two-out-goals-on-cutting-regulations-but-it-may-be-getting-tougher/">reductions in the regulation of business and industry</a>; and <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1411/raise-tariffs-goods-imported-us/">import tariffs on foreign goods that compete unfairly</a> with American-made products.</p>
<p>Data collected by the <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/">Cooperative Congressional Election Study</a> (from a national survey of more than 54,000 respondents) clearly show that people living in small towns and rural areas who supported these kinds of policies were <a href="https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/doi/full/10.1177/0002716217712696">decisively more likely to vote for Trump rather than Clinton in 2016</a>.</p>
<p>Above all, Trump promised a shift in the focus of the national government so that much more attention would be directed to <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/1109/Trump-rides-rural-rebellion-to-stunning-victory">rural areas and small towns and the challenges they faced</a>.</p>
<p>This evidently buoyed the hope of Trump supporters in these areas that they would be getting something closer to their fair share of government attention and resources.</p>
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<h2>Voting implications</h2>
<p>There is ample evidence of voting patterns in recent years – even before the 2016 election – that suggest that voters in rural areas and small towns were increasingly voting for Republican candidates in national and state elections. This trend was quite visible from Republican and Democratic vote proportions in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716217712696?journalCode=anna">the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections</a>.</p>
<p>In 2008, 53 percent of rural voters cast ballots for the Republican presidential candidate; 59 percent did in 2012; and 62 percent did in 2016.</p>
<p>This was most clear in the 2016 election in the 2,332 counties that make up small-town and rural America, where Trump swamped Hillary Clinton by winning <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rural-america-lifted-trump-to-the-presidency-support-is-strong-but-not-monolithic/2017/06/16/df4f9156-4ac9-11e7-9669-250d0b15f83b_story.html?utm_term=.e53f08d44b54">60 percent as opposed to 34 percent of the vote</a>.</p>
<p>Trump’s 26-point advantage over Clinton in rural America was much greater than had been the case for Republican presidential nominees in the four previous elections.</p>
<p>The Trump appeal and the growing urban-rural division in the country is also evident from the fact that Trump’s vote percentage in rural America was 29 points higher than he received in the nation’s urban counties and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716217712696?journalCode=anna">far larger than for Republican presidential nominees between 2000 and 2012</a>.</p>
<p>Moreover, responses to a 2017 Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of rural and small-town voters in the 2016 election indicate that <a href="http://files.kff.org/attachment/Topline-The-Health-Care-Views-and-Experiences-of-Rural-Americans">they were more likely to vote for Trump and also agree with him</a> on a variety of issues.</p>
<p>Those included immigration, tax cuts, eliminating regulations on businesses, making better trade deals, targeting more infrastructure projects and federal government services to rural areas and small towns, and appointing more conservative judges to the federal courts.</p>
<p>But, did this trend of strong support from rural voters for Republican candidates, including Trump, continue into the 2018 midterm election?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/686531523/progress-report-president-trumps-campaign-promises-2-years-later">About half of Trump’s ideas and policy proposals</a> have been accomplished, with the others yet to gain traction in Congress, two years after his election. So his record of delivering for these rural voters is mixed.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, they stuck with Trump in the 2018 election.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/415441-americas-urban-rural-divide-deepens">Rural voters stormed to the polls in virtually unprecedented numbers</a> in 2018 and once again delivered for the president they voted for in 2016,” The Hill reported. They delivered Trump “a handful of critical Senate and gubernatorial elections in ruby red states.”</p>
<p>While not totally surprising, the Trump camp did not know what to expect going into the midterm election, given the numerous investigations of the president and his low public approval rating.</p>
<p>Somewhat more surprising is what has been happening in a purple state like Florida, where Republicans have improved on both their turnout and overall performance in <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/415441-americas-urban-rural-divide-deepens">rural areas for several elections in a row.</a></p>
<p>Newly elected Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ran ahead of Trump’s 2016 performance and former Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/415441-americas-urban-rural-divide-deepens">2014 vote share in 13 of 16 counties in the Florida Panhandle</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-florida-elections.html">Rick Scott unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson</a> by piling up large margins in the small towns and rural areas of the state. Similar scenarios in U.S. Senate races took place in key states like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-missouri-elections.html">Missouri</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-indiana-elections.html">Indiana</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-texas-elections.html">Texas</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/06/us/elections/results-tennessee-elections.html">Tennessee</a>, where Republicans won huge victories in rural counties.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/266437/original/file-20190328-139352-p2c6kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump won Iowa in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump-s-Iowa-Voters/36abb3bec83d44d1afdbd41c9973b8dc/19/0">AP/Charlie Neibergall</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Beyond Trump</h2>
<p>Survey data collected from over 90,000 people by the <a href="http://www.norc.org/Pages/default.aspx">National Opinion Research Center</a> at the University of Chicago in November 2018 paint a vivid picture of the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/graphics/election-2018-votecast-poll">continuing urban-rural/small-town divide</a>.</p>
<p>Results show that residents of small towns and rural areas are much more supportive of the Republican Party and its candidates than people in urban and suburban areas.</p>
<p>In addition, the most ardent supporters of Republicans are among those small-town and rural dwellers who are white and male, have less than a college education and vote on a regular basis.</p>
<p>I believe that the urban-rural/small-town divide will continue to act as a major force in politics for the remainder of the Trump era – and probably longer.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct a reference to Arlie Russell Hochschild’s book.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>J. Edwin Benton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Rural and small-town residents believe they aren’t getting their fair share from the government. A majority of them were Trump supporters in 2016. How will they vote when Trump is gone?
J. Edwin Benton, Professor of Political Science and Public Administration, University of South Florida
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97618
2018-06-15T09:36:29Z
2018-06-15T09:36:29Z
Mega-basements of the super rich are a good reminder of the city London has become
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246256/original/file-20181119-76163-ucbppl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/panoramic-view-city-london-uk-438871009?src=oYW3JWmto_qm_-UzGc5lZA-1-7">Lukasz Pajor/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2008 there were estimated to be 8.6m “high net worth individuals” – people with $1m or more of investable assets – in the world, but by 2016 this had <a href="https://www.worldwealthreport.com/download">increased by 92%</a> to 16.5m, according to the World Wealth Report. The geographical distribution of this population is highly concentrated: 4.795m in the USA; 2.891m in Japan; 1.280m in Germany; 1,129,000 in China; 579,000 in France and 568,000 in the UK (compared to 362,000 in 2008). Some half a million of these people live in and around London, in a set of <a href="https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/222539/CDEA3A06-E1B5-4E15-8280-24A41BA85410.pdf">tightly circumscribed neighbourhoods</a>.</p>
<p>All of this wealth sloshing around London has had myriad consequences for the built environment. Perhaps the most evident has been the appearance of a large number of “super-high”, “super-prime” <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-fear-the-skyscraper-why-london-needs-more-tall-buildings-45029">residential towers</a> – vertical urban housing that has become something of an <a href="https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/219812">elite preserve</a>. </p>
<p>But the wealth that has not found its way into the changing skylines of the city has still had major impacts on the existing built environment. Many high-end properties have been transformed as super-affluent newcomers commission often brutal structural conversions of older properties into “state-of-the art” living spaces. Maximising the size of all interior spaces and infusing them with exterior light has now become <em>de rigueur</em>, as have various design and technological “solutions” to matters of privacy and security.</p>
<p>But, in many areas of “super-prime” London attractive to “super-rich” elites, the nature of the original architecture combined with planning restrictions often makes it very difficult to extend properties laterally, or to add additional floors on the top of properties. And so, for some, the only “solution” has been to go down. </p>
<p>Consequently, residential basement developments in the wealthiest parts of London have increased markedly in recent years. The construction of this new subterranean London for the super-rich has been the subject of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/nov/09/billionaires-basements-london-houses-architecture">much comment</a> but, until recently, little systematic investigation. Our new <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325046741_Mapping_the_Subterranean_Geographies_of_Plutocratic_London_Luxified_Troglodytism">research</a> now suggests that such developments are emblematic of how London is changing. Along with residential high-rise luxury towers (“luxified skies”) sprouting up across the city, we are also witnessing an epidemic of “luxified troglodytism” – super-rich households extending their properties in a subterranean direction by way of basement excavation. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223240/original/file-20180614-32323-12phwd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Basement blueprint.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Emphasis photography and Hogarth Architects</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Digging down</h2>
<p>In order to investigate this phenomena, we extracted data from planning portals for the seven London Boroughs of Camden, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harringay, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Westminster – all localities that cover core “super-prime” London – between 2008 and the end of 2017. We discovered that <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325046741_Mapping_the_Subterranean_Geographies_of_Plutocratic_London_Luxified_Troglodytism">4,650</a> basement developments had been granted planning permission. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=714&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=714&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223175/original/file-20180614-32339-hh6o57.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=714&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Granted basement applications in Kensington & Chelsea, 2008-2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sophie Baldwin and Beth Holroyd</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hammersmith and Fulham has the greatest number – 1,147 over the decade – followed by Kensington and Chelsea with 1,022 and Westminster with 678. We would classify the great majority (80.7%) as “standard” single-storey excavations – but 16.9% (785) were “large” two-storey (or the equivalent in volume) constructions and 2.4% (112) could only be described as “mega” basements – three storeys or more deep (or the equivalent in volume).</p>
<p>It is the 785 large and 112 mega-basements that should be the real focus of our interest. These almost 900 excavations are on a different scale to the standard constructions. Together they contain: 367 swimming pools, 358 gyms, 178 cinemas and 63 staff spaces. We also found 14 car lifts, seven art galleries, two gun stores – and one owner who admitted to building a “panic” room. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/223173/original/file-20180614-32323-1fxj52u.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Upside down houses revealing basements as extrusions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sophie Baldwin and Beth Holroyd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of these basements can take many years of disruptive construction to complete and <a href="https://www.southerntesting.co.uk/services/pre-planning-investigations/basement-impact-assessment-bia/">concerns have been raised</a> about their environmental impact. Perhaps the most “luxified” development we discovered was one that had been granted planning permission in Holland Park in 2013 under a large semi-detached house. It consisted of a new three-storey basement under the entire property and part of the rear garden. It includes a staff kitchen, staff bedroom, six WCs, a gym, a media room, a family room, a family kitchen, a guest bedroom, a guest kitchen, a laundry room, a drying room, a sauna, a steam room, two shower rooms, a jacuzzi, a plunge pool, a pantry, a full-sized swimming pool and a beach. Yes, a beach.</p>
<p>In this particular basement development the “water-related” features were of a roughly equivalent volume to an average new-build property in England. Some of the super-rich swim, bathe and steam subterraneously in spaces equivalent to what the rest of us might consider adequate to undertake all of our domestic activities in.</p>
<p>All this shows that there has been a significant increase in the number of larger basement excavations in the last ten years. Such widespread development of subterranean London is an important component of broader changes in the built environment that have occurred since the 2008 financial crash. The “luxified skies” that Londoners are more used to are highly visible reminders of elite power – but these deluxe basements which, in aggregate, are equivalent in depth to 50 Shards, are also an important aspect of the type of city that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/may/07/pool-basement-wealth-super-rich-digging-down-london">London has become</a>.</p>
<p>The super rich continue to have a significant impact on London – it is simply not so noticeable any longer. Wealth is burrowing underground, rather than just reaching for the skies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Burrows has received funding from the ESRC and the JRF. He is a member of the Labour Party. This research was done in collaboration with The Guardian. The research was carried out with Sophie Baldwin and Beth Holroyd, both students on the MArch programme at Newcastle University, as part of a linked research project.</span></em></p>
London’s super rich are building thousands of subterranean palaces.
Roger Burrows, Professor of Cities, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/90951
2018-02-05T14:20:51Z
2018-02-05T14:20:51Z
Why treating water scarcity as a security issue is a bad idea
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/204583/original/file-20180202-162077-e1tfhf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C118%2C1801%2C1084&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa, has made two startling claims about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-driving-cape-towns-water-insecurity-and-what-can-be-done-about-it-81845">water crisis</a> in the province. She says there will be anarchy when the taps run dry, and that normal policing will be <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-01-22-from-the-inside-the-countdown-to-day-zero/#.WnLXMq6Wbcs">inadequate</a>. </p>
<p>She stated this as fact. Neither claim has any basis in truth. But they reflect an <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sf/article/87/2/993/2235528">“elite panic”</a>: society’s elite’s fear of social disorder. We see this when public officials and the media draw on stereotypes of public panic and disorder, or, in Zille’s words, “anarchy”. </p>
<p>Research <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020808075321.htm">shows</a> that mass hysteria and lawlessness during disasters is actually remarkably rare. Yet elite panic can lead to security taking priority over public safety. Preventing criminal activity is then treated as more important than protecting people from harm.</p>
<p>The more society’s response leans towards security, the closer the situation gets to “securitisation”. In the field of security studies, securitisation is the notion that nothing is a threat until someone <a href="http://www.e-ir.info/2011/10/09/does-security-exist-outside-of-the-speech-act/">says</a> it is. This “framing” happens in many ways, including the words politicians choose to describe a situation. A militarised response, for example, can be triggered by an issue being portrayed as a threat so severe that it requires extraordinary measures beyond normal political processes. </p>
<p>Zille’s characterisation of the water crisis is a classic example of this process. A major part of her communication about the preparation for Day Zero has been about securing the province and outlining the police and military strategy <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-01-24-zille-police-army-will-help-secure-day-zero-water-distribution-points">to prevent criminal activity</a>.</p>
<p>This approach gets in the way of more constructive responses to disaster. It can even trigger the very disorder it seeks to avoid. In other words, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs which has serious consequences for a community and the humanitarian response to a disaster.</p>
<h2>False framing</h2>
<p>According to Zille, the day Cape Town runs out of water is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFiPfLGNu3g">“disaster of disasters”</a>. It</p>
<blockquote>
<p>exceeds anything a major City has had to face anywhere in the world since the <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-01-22-from-the-inside-the-countdown-to-day-zero/#.WnLXMq6Wbcs">Second World War or 9/11</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The panic in her tone, and her choice of examples, are telling. The Second World War and 9/11 were not natural disasters, they were consequences of war and terrorism. By invoking these national security events she frames the threat as one that needs to be managed using extraordinary means. </p>
<p>Zille imagines</p>
<blockquote>
<p>many other foreseeable crises associated with dry taps, such as conflict over access to water, theft of water, and other criminal acts associated with water, not to mention the outbreak of disease.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She has asked President Jacob Zuma to declare a national state of disaster. It would enable the country’s intelligence agencies, the South African National Defence Force and the South African Police Service to make a shared plan with the province and the private sector</p>
<blockquote>
<p>to distribute water, defend storage facilities, deal with potential outbreaks of disease, and keep the peace.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Military and disaster</h2>
<p>It’s not uncommon for the military to get involved in disaster relief. During the Fukushima/Daichi disaster following the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011, the Japanese military played a critical role in providing aid and relief. But they were not there to <a href="http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-nuclear-accident/whats-happened/the-japan-us-military-response">defend or guard</a> people and property.</p>
<p>The South African National Defence Force played a similar role during <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/mozambique/mozambique-natural-disasters-floods">serious floods in Mozambique</a> in 2000, and again during flooding <a href="http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti%20cle&id=37789:job-done-in-mozambique-sandf-safely-back-home&catid=111:sa-defence&Itemid=242">in 2015</a>. </p>
<p>But Zille’s intention to involve the military and State Security Agency in Cape Town’s disaster management is different. </p>
<p>They won’t be there in a humanitarian capacity, such as setting up infrastructure or distributing water, but to guard against anarchy. Her aim is to legitimise security measures, or, more bluntly, the use of force. </p>
<p>Her approach should be resisted.</p>
<h2>Lessons from Hurricane Katrina</h2>
<p>Author and humanitarian worker Malka Older, who studied the disaster response in the US to <a href="http://www.revue-rita.com/traitdunion9/securitization-of-disaster-response-in-the-united-states-the-case-of-hurricane-katrina-2005.html">Hurricane Katrina in 2005</a>, found that an obsession with security was legitimised through unsupported claims of widespread violence and looting.</p>
<p>She writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The story of Hurricane Katrina is one of security overtaking and overriding disaster management from preparedness through response.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She concludes that the shift from safety to security – where armed guards were sent to shelters and distribution points – actually reduced the city’s capacity to respond to the disaster. The security emphasis tied up human resources. And the focus turned away from helping those affected by the flooding to controlling them. </p>
<p>On top of this, the securitised response reflected prejudices about race and class. Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent for Slate Magazine and a political analyst for CBS News, has <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/08/hurricane_katrina_10th_anniversary_how_the_black_lives_matter_movement_was.html">argued that</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Black collective memory of Hurricane Katrina, as much as anything else, informs the present movement against police violence, ‘Black Lives Matter.’</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Thinking differently</h2>
<p>Water scarcity, like any issue, can be thought of in several ways. </p>
<p>It can be imagined as a hardship that many Capetonians in poor, black townships have <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/water-restrictions-its-nothing-new-us-say-residents-informal-settlements/">endured all their lives</a>.</p>
<p>People can consider staying calm and being resilient and resourceful as they make plans to source and store water. They can even imagine a new community spirit as they find ways to <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-southern-africa-can-learn-from-other-countries-about-adapting-to-drought-90876">share this scarce resource</a>, help the most vulnerable and receive help from around the country. </p>
<p>Part of this imagining depends on leaders staying level headed. Citizens need public communication, not scaremongering that equates the worst case scenario with objective reality. They don’t need to be paralysed by a mindset of suspicion and dread.</p>
<p>Cape Town’s leaders should remain calm and help the people to act collectively in a democratic spirit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joelien Pretorius does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Mass hysteria and lawlessness during disasters are remarkably rare, contrary to Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s prediction of anarchy when Cape Town’s taps run day.
Joelien Pretorius, Associate Professor in Political Studies, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85636
2017-11-09T09:47:10Z
2017-11-09T09:47:10Z
To be cosmopolitan you don’t have to be rootless or a member of the global elite
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193181/original/file-20171103-26478-izmpaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/restaurant-alcohol-bar-drinks-3540/">pexels.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of being a “citizen of the world” is often associated with global elites – those who <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-things-the-paradise-papers-tell-us-about-global-business-and-political-elites-86946">shelter their wealth in offshore tax havens</a> or invest their way to citizenship wherever they choose using a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a8b1cf7c-8bea-11e6-8cb7-e7ada1d123b1">“golden visa” route</a>. </p>
<p>This was the “international elite” that the British prime minister, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ffb25e84-8af2-11e6-8aa5-f79f5696c731">Theresa May</a>, targeted in her conference speech in the wake of the Brexit vote when she argued that: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” Her comment draws from a <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Conceiving_Cosmopolitanism.html?id=LSClrIr4rToC">common and longstanding stereotype</a> of cosmopolitans as rootless, uncommitted elites. </p>
<p>The journalist <a href="http://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-road-to-somewhere">David Goodhart</a> refers to what he calls a tribe of mobile “global villagers” who are likely to identify as citizens of the world. This is the image of individualistic high flyers who benefit from globalisation and want a borderless world. They live in their “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-cosmopolitanism.html">global-citizen bubble</a>” and value autonomy and mobility over local and national attachments, community and belonging. </p>
<p>The reality is far more nuanced and complex. </p>
<h2>Cosmopolitans come from many backgrounds</h2>
<p>May’s “citizen of nowhere” comment caused widespread controversy. There was a <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-may-sparks-twitter-backlash-over-citizen-of-the-world-remark-in-conservative-party-a3361701.html">backlash on social media</a> and critique from <a href="https://medium.com/@tristanjakobhoff/on-being-a-citizen-of-nowhere-282a4ee81365">Londoners</a>, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a9f91acc-8fb7-11e6-8df8-d3778b55a923">journalists</a>, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-mein-kampf-adolf-hitler-nazi-vince-cable-liberal-democrat-conservatives-a7825381.html">rival politicians</a>, and the philosopher <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37788717">Kwame Anthony Appiah</a> – who has <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/448846">long challenged the assumption</a> that cosmopolitans are rootless. </p>
<p>Those who embrace cosmopolitan values or see themselves as “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-36139904">global citizens</a>” come from a broad range of social backgrounds and from all over the world, constituting not one, but many tribes. These include <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8676.1999.tb00176.x/full">working-class labour migrants</a>, lower-class <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2010.00126.x/full">Creoles in Mauritius</a> as well as young people who have <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691830903426838">moved to study</a> and globally mobile, <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2010.00298.x/full">middle-class career professionals</a>. </p>
<p>I studied such a group of professionals from 14 different countries including France, Britain, Italy, Mexico, the US, Azerbaijan and Finland, who are living and working in Amsterdam. My research showed how they construct and <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726717714042">share a cosmopolitan identity</a> and sense of belonging. This means that they feel less attached to their nation of origin and cultural background. As one British interviewee told me: “I always denounce my nationality.”</p>
<p>But at the same time they also maintain their different national or ethnic identities and cultures – albeit as ingredients in what some of them called the “melting pot” of their diverse community. They embrace the idea of being a “global person” who has lived in different places and who does not identify with either home or host country. As one French interviewee put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>If I go home to France, the only people I can relate to are people who have also lived other places, who have been abroad. There is this new nationality which is globalism, you know. I have a French passport, but I don’t feel French. I have lived in Holland for 15 years, but I don’t feel Dutch either.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This however does not mean they are rootless. They are proud “Amsterdammers” who have put down roots in the city and call it home. They have become a new kind of “local” – and live lives just like other middle-class professionals. They work, become unemployed, change careers, buy homes, get married and start families, mostly of mixed nationality. Some have Dutch partners, but many are of other nationalities. They form strong and lasting friendships with people from all over the world that often endure when people move on to other places. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193184/original/file-20171103-26462-1grouc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fitting in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">via shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Not a byword for ‘openness’</h2>
<p>Some of the people I interviewed referred to their identity using terms such as a “non-nationality” or “an international nationality”. Such a sense of belonging produces its own “us-versus-them” dynamic, in which “them” refers to people who are seen as “monocultural”, or “too narrow-minded” and “can’t cope with people from different cultural backgrounds” as some interviewees described to me. This is not an attitude of unlimited openness. </p>
<p>Nor does identifying as a citizen of the world necessarily involve allegiance to humanity as a whole, or to one definition of global culture. This is a cosmopolitan identity that is local and grounded. It takes shape in the context of diverse social networks in specific places, often in urban environments. </p>
<p>As one interviewee with a mixture of Tanzanian, Ugandan and German backgrounds explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I surround myself with people from everywhere generally speaking. I don’t know any other way than being with people from different places.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Opportunities to be part of diverse, international communities are predominantly accessible in larger metropolitan cities. For those who do not have access to such social networks, a sense of non-belonging might become dominant. Some of the people I interviewed talked about their experience of “monocultural environments” and it was consistently a negative one. </p>
<p>They talked about feeling uncomfortable, not fitting in and feeling like they couldn’t trust anyone. One for instance had lived for a short while in a town in Switzerland where her husband is from and where there was little diversity and no international community. Before long they moved on to Sydney, Australia. </p>
<p>Feelings of non-belonging can further intensify when a rhetoric of exclusion based on national identity gains ground, such as in the wake of the Brexit vote in the UK. A recent <a href="https://home.kpmg.com/uk/en/home/insights/2017/08/the-brexit-effect-on-eu-nationals.html">KPMG survey</a> suggested that many highly qualified EU nationals are considering leaving, mainly because of a perception that British society has changed. Half of those surveyed said they felt less valued and welcomed in the UK since the EU referendum.</p>
<p>The ability for people to move to new countries also cannot be taken for granted. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1005007?src=recsys&journalCode=cjms20">Research</a> shows that visas have become increasingly difficult to secure for those who are not citizens of OECD countries. The election of Trump to the US presidency and the UK’s vote for Brexit mean further restrictions on migration and global mobility are on the cards. British citizens, for instance, are unlikely to retain the right to free movement in the EU after Brexit, and vice versa. </p>
<p>These developments mean that some people who have moved across national borders now face an increasingly uncertain and precarious future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85636/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Irene Skovgaard-Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
What does it mean to have a cosmopolitan identity?
Irene Skovgaard-Smith, Senior lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81900
2017-08-16T20:13:12Z
2017-08-16T20:13:12Z
Grooming the globe: denying fairness, complexity and humanity
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180833/original/file-20170803-14599-1eh8nso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Donald Trump may not have been the 1%’s preferred candidate, but he embodied its message.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Joshua Roberts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This piece is republished with permission from <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">Perils of Populism</a>, the 57th edition of Griffith Review. Articles are a little longer than most published on The Conversation, presenting an in-depth analysis of the rise of populism across the world.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>“I know it makes you sick to think of that word fairness,” Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, told the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2013. But he went on to tell the heads of Washington’s most influential right-wing think-tanks, who were still shocked by Barack Obama’s continuing appeal, that Americans “universally believe it’s right to help the vulnerable”.</p>
<p>He continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you want to win, start fighting for people! Lead with vulnerable people. Lead with fairness … telling stories matters. By telling stories we can soften people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>New Yorker investigative journalist Jane Mayer paraphrased Brooks’ message in her magisterial book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27833494-dark-money">Dark Money</a>. If the 1% wanted to win control of America, they needed to rebrand themselves as champions of the other 99%. </p>
<p>Donald Trump may not have been the 1%’s preferred candidate – his ego, ignorance and lack of discipline were well known – but he embodied the message. <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/arendt-matters-revisiting-origins-totalitarianism/">In the words</a> of the Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz, Trump:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… appeals to the need for constant distraction, destruction and entertainment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is tempting to think that this appeal, and its authoritarian consequences, is innate – a default setting of human societies across history and geography. But the swift counter-reaction to Trump at home, and subsequent elections in Europe, challenge this presumption. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, there is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/discontents-identity-politics-and-institutions-in-a-time-of-populism-80882">long list</a> of authoritarian leaders across the globe ready to deride the rule of law, circumvent checks and balances, undermine institutions, cultivate ignorance and encourage fear.</p>
<p>As Mayer painstakingly demonstrates, making self-interest seem normal and a commitment to fairness an elite aberration has been a long-term project. </p>
<p>Upending this commitment – expressed most simply in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s <a href="https://fdrlibrary.org/four-freedoms">four freedoms</a> (of speech and religion, from want and fear) that were ultimately embodied in national and global institutions created at the end of the second world war – is not something that has happened by chance. It has been the result of a deliberate, well-funded, long-term strategy that has touched us all, whether we are aware of it or not. </p>
<p>As Mayer writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>During the 1970s, a handful of the nation’s wealthiest corporate captains felt overtaxed and over-regulated and decided to fight back. Disenchanted with the direction of modern America, they launched an ambitious, privately financed war of ideas to radically change the country. They didn’t want to merely win elections; they wanted to change how Americans thought.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These well-lubricated ideas quickly spread through the world due to American global dominance. </p>
<p>It didn’t take long before institutions were accused of failing, experts gained the prefix “so-called”, and “elites” ceased to be the mega rich or those born with silver spoons, but were redefined as educated people who questioned the self-interest orthodoxy. </p>
<p>The globe was being groomed for a profoundly different settlement than the one that grew out of the conflagration of war, one that ignored complexity, challenged the rule of law, bred oligarchs, and undermined fairness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-restorationist-impulse-why-we-hanker-for-the-old-ways-80880">The restorationist impulse: why we hanker for the old ways</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Understanding populism’s rise</h2>
<p>Millions of words have been written in an attempt to make sense of the recent global political disruptions that are conveniently grouped under the banner of “populism”. </p>
<p>Although newspaper sales are at their lowest since 1945, the hunger for news, information and analysis, and the expectation that it can be found, remains. Explanations are sought in personal experience, in nostalgia, or by slicing and dicing the data from opinion polls and voting patterns. </p>
<p>Professor Pippa Norris of Harvard University <a href="https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/populistauthoritarianism/">calculates that</a> the populist vote (both left and right) in Europe has doubled since the 1960s to reach double digits. </p>
<p>Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has demonstrated with remarkable effectiveness a broader global trend: the ability of a relatively small voting bloc to catalyse a response from political parties that do not share their same extreme values.</p>
<p>Old class-based accounts are no longer sufficient to explain political behaviour, as was sharply demonstrated in the recent UK and French elections. The emerging consensus among political scientists is that cultural factors provide a better predictor of electoral behaviour – particularly education, age, gender, religiosity and attitudes to diversity. </p>
<p>These values can find expression on the left and the right. But they tend to appeal mostly to an older cohort who feel they have lost power and influence, whose worlds have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-restorationist-impulse-why-we-hanker-for-the-old-ways-80880">upended by economic and social change</a>. But, to put it crudely, their days are numbered.</p>
<p>The “war of ideas” has encouraged mistrust of experts and cynicism about institutions, undermined faith in a shared humanity irrespective of ethnicity or religion, and discouraged questioning of the neoliberal economic orthodoxy. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the quiet post-materialist revolution that started in the 1970s has produced generations of people who are more open-minded, tolerant, trusting and accepting of diversity. The numbers suggest they are on the ascendancy.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="https://theconversation.com/discontents-identity-politics-and-institutions-in-a-time-of-populism-80882">Discontents: identity, politics and institutions in a time of populism</a></strong></em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Education and populism</h2>
<p>It is not really surprising that education – rather than income, gender or class – is the strongest marker of populist appeal.</p>
<p>This is not simply because you learn stuff at school, college or university, but because education provides the tools for dealing with complexity, for weighing and evaluating arguments, for seeking and testing information, learning from history and those who went before. </p>
<p>It also embodies a social contract, valuing expertise, teasing out right and wrong, tolerating difference and learning respect.</p>
<p>The populist public sphere is a degraded, distracted place where might is right and simplicity and “common sense” the answer to complex, multifaceted questions; where little is learnt from history, and respect is in short supply. </p>
<p>Yale professor and Holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder in <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558051/on-tyranny-by-timothy-snyder/9780804190114/">On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the 20th Century</a> provides a wise compendium of caution and a few handy rules: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>defend institutions; </p></li>
<li><p>remember professional ethics; </p></li>
<li><p>believe in truth; and</p></li>
<li><p>do not pre-emptively obey but be calm, patriotic and courageous.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In the “war of ideas” over the past few decades, incalculable amounts of money have been spent to undermine these hard-won values and undermine both institutions and checks and balances that, while not perfect, have produced unprecedented opportunities. </p>
<p>As those who turn up in large numbers to reclaim public spaces after terrorist attacks show, and those who demonstrate to demand equality illustrate, the appeal of authoritarianism is not necessarily innate, but is always ready to be challenged.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read other essays from Griffith Review’s latest edition <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/perils-of-populism/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julianne Schultz receives funding from the Australia Council for Griffith Review. She works for Griffith Review, published by Griffith Uni in partnership withText Publishing. She is a member of the editorial board of The Conversation.</span></em></p>
Making self-interest seem normal and a commitment to fairness an elite aberration has been a long-term project.
Julianne Schultz, Founding Editor of Griffith REVIEW; Professor, Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research, Griffith University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81366
2017-08-13T08:40:46Z
2017-08-13T08:40:46Z
The African middle class matters: but not for the reasons commonly put forward
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181465/original/file-20170808-16039-13cbs39.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The debate about Africa's middle class has largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days the African middle class is widely discussed as a phenomenon considered indicative of social change.</p>
<p>But a great deal of the debate hasn’t been very well informed. For a long time contributions lacked a rigorous analysis, failing to examine the so-called middle class in terms of its potential as a proper class. People involved in the debate hardly bothered to engage with the more methodological aspects of the analysis of classes, which has a long tradition in social sciences and should be an integral part of any analysis.</p>
<p>Most problematic was the fiddling with figures, which classified people according to a minimum income as middle class. This is clearly not a very sensible way to approach proper class definition. It puts almost exclusive emphasis on financial and monetary aspects. But professional and social status, cultural norms and lifestyle related attributes as well as political orientation(s) and influence were often ignored. Where they were considered, it was often only in passing.</p>
<p>The debate largely ignored earlier analyses on African elites. It promoted the assumption that the middle class(es) are a positive ingredient for the development of and in African societies. </p>
<p>But such optimism is unhelpful both in terms of the potential economic role of these loosely defined middle classes, as well as the expectations about their political relevance.</p>
<p>In the meantime that’s started to change. Scholars from various disciplines related to African Studies are gaining the upper hand and claiming ownership. <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">New publications</a> testify to increasingly concerted efforts to respond with different and more nuanced perspectives.</p>
<p>These engagements offer insights based on more than lofty generalisations void of any social realities on the ground. Rather, the case studies test some of the assumptions and are able to portrait existing identities and practices of social segments of societies, which might be considered as middle class - or not. </p>
<p>So then, what class is the middle class?</p>
<h2>Caution required</h2>
<p>What is lumped together as middle classes represent at best an opaque awareness – if not about themselves (in the plural) – then at least about society and their position, aims and aspirations. Such ambiguity explains the different political and social orientations of members of a middle class, their different roles and positions in social struggles and their difference in interests.</p>
<p>The conclusions seem to suggest that there is no social force in the making, which by status and definition would indeed be the torch bearer for more democracy, participation, human rights, social equality and redistribution of wealth beyond benefiting just the group. One might call this a class interest, shared by many members of these middle classes across the continent. </p>
<p>But depending on the circumstances, ethnicity, pigmentation and other criteria (not least religion) matter at least as much as (at best) diffuse class awareness.</p>
<p>This should not stand in the way of continued interest in this species called middle class, which at a closer look is not as new as some contributions to the wider debate suggest. After all, there were always some middle layers of societies with a set of differing interests and orientations – only that their visibility and size in African countries seems to have increased lately.</p>
<p>But we should be much more cautious about providing simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms and the impact on transformation of societies these middle classes are able – or willing – to promote.</p>
<p>After all, it is neither the middle class(es) nor even the upper fifth of the income pyramid that has any influence on the distribution of wealth in societies. They too are at the receiving end. </p>
<p>It is indeed the top decimal if not the top 5% or an even smaller fraction that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andy-sumner">drives inequality</a>, and it is these haves that have grasped the steering wheel. Their forms of appropriation and enrichment are the ultimate determinants of the scope and limit of poverty reduction by means of redistributive measures in favour of those in the bottom half of society.</p>
<p>To understand inequalities and the mechanisms of their reproduction, the motto coined by University of Cambridge economist <a href="http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/emeritus/jgp5">Gabriel Palma </a> is appropriate. He points to the decisive impact of the wealthy segment of societies as regards growing inequalities on a global scale and <a href="http://www.networkideas.org/featart/mar2011/Palma.pdf">concludes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s the share of the rich, stupid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One is tempted to suspect that the middle class(es) hype seeks to propose a historical mission of these social layers in terms of future perspectives. But, in the light of the real (also material and political) power relations and structures of societies and the global economy, they are never able to live up to this mission.</p>
<p>Despite this sobering conclusion, the current engagement with the phenomenon called the African middle class(es) is anything but obsolete. Independent of their size, they signify modified social relations in African societies, which indeed deserve attention and rigorous analysis – with the emphasis on the latter.</p>
<p><em>These edited extracts are from the Introduction and Conclusion of Henning Melber (ed.), <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-rise-of-africas-middle-class/">The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class</a>: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
We should be wary of simplified and sweeping explanations about the scope for potential social and political reforms the middle classes can promote.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76588
2017-04-25T14:08:07Z
2017-04-25T14:08:07Z
And the winner in the French presidential election is… populism
<p>The first round of the 2017 presidential election highlighted a transformation in the French political landscape. This is clear from <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-23/le-pen-macron-in-french-presidency-runoff-as-main-parties-lose">the weak performance</a> of candidates from the two major parties that have dominated the political scene in France since 1981. </p>
<p>The votes cast for both François Fillon (Republican Party) and Benoît Hamon (Socialist Party) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/22/france-presidential-election-le-pen-macron-socialists">added up to just 26%</a> of the total. The remaining 74% went to candidates who did not participate in the primaries and who have not dominated parliamentary life for decades. </p>
<p>But the greatest victor of the presidential election is clearly populism. Together, candidates who in some way exploited <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/04/how-frances-brand-of-populism-differs-from-what-drove-brexit-and-trump">populist ideology</a> captured about half the vote. </p>
<p>Populism relies on the principle that “the people” (a vague concept that’s now back in the political discourse) know what is best for themselves and that, as a consequence, they do not need political representatives. </p>
<p>Thus, <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/cas-mudde/populism-in-europe-primer">argue</a> sovereignists, nationalists, and a few half-baked intellectuals, the oligarchic divide between the people and the elites is intolerable. And the European project is reprehensible. </p>
<p>In the same vein, scientific or intellectual study of society is considered unnecessary. Throughout the campaign, polls were frequently called inaccurate and cited as instruments of <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-voters-deluge-fake-news-stories-facebook-twitter-russian-influence-days-before-election-a7696506.html">media manipulation</a> – an assertion disproved on election night. </p>
<h2>Populism takes root</h2>
<p>If we add up the votes for populist candidates in the first round – that is, all votes except those for conservative François Fillon, socialist Benoît Hamon, and centrist Emmanuel Macron – they make up 50% of what was counted on the night of April 23 2017. </p>
<p>This is in line with <a href="https://www.enef.fr">a French electoral survey</a> carried out April 16-20 by Cevipof, demonstrating the extent to which populist ideas have taken root in the French collective imagination. </p>
<p>The survey included five statements that allowed us to measure populist attitudes among those surveyed:</p>
<ul>
<li>Parliamentarians in the National Assembly should follow the will of the people </li>
<li>The most important political decisions should be taken by the people, not by politicians </li>
<li>The political differences between ordinary citizens and elites are greater than those between ordinary citizens themselves </li>
<li>I would rather be represented by an ordinary citizen than a professional politician</li>
<li>Politicians talk too much and do not take enough action.</li>
</ul>
<p>Each of these statements garnered various rates of positive answers (four or five on a scale from zero to five). The vast majority of people agreed with the statement that parliamentarians should follow the will of the people, and that politicians talk to much and do not take enough action (80% and 84%, respectively). </p>
<p>But while 71% of respondents agreed with the statement that political differences between ordinary citizens and elites are greater than those between ordinary citizens themselves, just 57% thought that the most important decisions should be made by the people rather than politicians. And 51% would prefer to be represented by an ordinary citizen rather than a professional politician. </p>
<p>These lines of inquiry may appear questionable because, for example, of their use of rather vague concepts such as “ordinary citizen”. But they help us identify strong criticism of political representation, and the professionalisation of elected representatives. </p>
<p>If we establish a populism index on this basis, counting the number of positive answers and using a scale from zero to five, we can see that the average level of agreement with these statements is very high: 69% of respondents are at level four or above on the index. </p>
<p>We can then split the index, as this simplifies the calculations and allows us to distinguish the 55% of respondents with a high level of support for populism from the 45% with a weak to moderate level. </p>
<p>Table 1: Populism Index (%)</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166379/original/file-20170423-25594-1xbde0f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Number of times that respondents agreed with each statement (answers of four or five on a scale from zero to five. Total respondents = 8,122).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">French electoral survey, Cevipof, phase 13.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Populism affects even the most highly educated</h2>
<p>According to our survey, the average level of support for populism did not correlate with the respondent’s age, employment status (working, unemployed, retired, or self-employed), or whether their career is in the public or private sector. But it did depend of their level of education. </p>
<p>Among those who ended their studies after primary or secondary school, the level of support for populism is at 63%. And it drops to 40% among those who completed their tertiary education at one of France’s prestigious <em>grandes écoles</em>. </p>
<p>This correlation is also evident when looking at socio-professional categories. While 44% of professionals and entrepreneurs and 45% of executives can be categorised as highly populist, this percentage rises to 58% for private and public sector employees and to 64% for skilled labourers in the private sector. </p>
<p>Overall, the rate of populism’s appeal is at 59% for low-income families, 54% for median-income families and 44% for high-income families. This demonstrates that the feeling of unease with the state of democracy goes far beyond the working class. </p>
<p>The difference lies in the extent to which each category rejects professional politics: 38% of professionals and managers (as compared to 56% of labourers) would still prefer to be represented by ordinary citizens than professional elected representatives. </p>
<h2>Prominent political figures against the populists</h2>
<p>As shown in table 2, the level of support for populism varies significantly for each electoral base and remains associated with each candidate’s level of support for the European Union. Among supporters of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (<em>La France Insoumise</em>), it is similar to that found among supporters of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen (National Front). </p>
<p>Table 2: The level of populism for each candidate’s electoral base (%)</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166380/original/file-20170423-24654-kpq9mf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=346&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Faible</em> = weak; <em>Forte</em> = strong. Results for Artaud, Asselineau and Lassalle suffer from small sample size; Cheminade’s electoral base is not featured.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">French electoral survey, Cevipof, phase 13</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Conversely, supporters of the candidates from the movement <em>En Marche</em> (Emmanuel Macron), the Republicans and the Socialist Party — themselves fairly representative of French elites — are relatively less eager to challenge the idea of elected representatives and representative democracy. </p>
<p>As for minor candidates, their supporters – from the left and the right – are even more comfortable with populism. This is perhaps the basis for the argument that France has moved beyond the left-right divide, even though those in each camp still have nothing in common when it comes to economic or societal values. </p>
<p>This confrontation between populists and elites, which is embodied in the May 7 Macron-Le Pen run-off, revives the historical opposition between advocates for direct democracy and supporters of a liberal democracy that allows representatives enough freedom to take action during their mandate. </p>
<p>It also reveals very different perceptions of political life. Anger plays a greater role in the political choices of populists: 62% of highly populist voters (versus 41% of less populist voters) say they are angry at France’s current political situation.</p>
<p>This initial, rapid examination of the situation shows that the current French desire for political change is expressed by a blanket challenge to modern representative democracy. The model, born of the French and American revolutions, requires unconstrained mandates, competent elected representatives trained in the political profession, and a sharp separation between the public and private spheres. </p>
<p>First round presidential election results from France suggest that the question of this separation will hang heavily over the next five-year term. </p>
<p><em>Translated from the French by Alice Heathwood for Fast for Word.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luc Rouban does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A survey shows that candidates who exploited populism in one way or the other during the first round of the French presidential election captured about half of the vote.
Luc Rouban, Directeur de recherche CNRS, Sciences Po
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71172
2017-01-12T15:03:44Z
2017-01-12T15:03:44Z
New index of economic marginalisation helps explain Trump, Brexit and alt.right
<p>If 2016 brought Brexit, Donald Trump and a backlash against cosmopolitan visions of globalisation and society, the great fear for 2017 is further shocks from right-wing populists like Geert Wilders in Holland and Marine Le Pen in France. A new mood of intolerance, xenophobia and protectionist economics seems to be in the air.</p>
<p>In a world of zero-hour contracts, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/picture-galleries/11902080/Anti-Uber-protests-around-the-world-in-pictures.html">Uber</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/11/deliveroo-boss-pay-ahead-riders-protest">Deliveroo</a> and the gig economy, access to decent work and a sustainable family income remains the main fault line between the winners and losers from globalisation. Drill into the voter data behind <a href="http://inequalitybriefing.org/brief/briefing-61-regional-inequality-in-the-uk-is-the-worst-in-western-europe">Brexit</a> and <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academics-urged-address-trump-rust-belt-revolt">Trump</a> and they have <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GRR17_Report_web.pdf">much to do</a> with economically marginalised voters in old industrial areas, from South Wales to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, from Tyneside to Ohio and Michigan. </p>
<p>These voters’ economic concerns about industrial closures, immigrants and businesses decamping to low-wage countries seemed ignored by a liberal elite espousing free trade, flexible labour and deregulation. They turned instead to populist “outsiders” with simplistic yet ultimately flawed political and economic narratives. </p>
<p>Much has been said about the crisis of liberal political democracy, but these trends look inextricably linked with what is sometimes referred to as economic democracy. This is about how well dispersed economic decision-making power is and how much control and financial security people have over their lives. I’ve been involved in <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/business/research/centres/transformingpublicpolicythrougheconomicdemocracy/">a project</a> to look at how this compares between different countries. The results say much about the point we have reached, and where we might be heading in future. </p>
<h2>The index</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://democratisingtheeconomy.com/">economic democracy index</a> looked at 32 countries in the OECD (omitting Turkey and Mexico, which had too much missing data). While economic democracy tends to focus on levels of trade union influence and the extent of cooperative ownership in a country, we wanted to take in <a href="http://classonline.org.uk/docs/Renewing_Public_Ownership_-_Andrew_Cumbers_FINAL.pdf">other relevant factors</a>. </p>
<p>We added three additional indicators: “workplace and employment rights”; “distribution of economic decision-making powers”, including everything from the strength of the financial sector to the extent to which tax powers are centralised; and “transparency and democratic engagement in macroeconomic decision-making”, which takes in corruption, accountability, central bank transparency and different social partners’ involvement in shaping policy. </p>
<p>What is striking is the basic difference between a more “social” model of northern European capitalism and the more market-driven Anglo-American model. Hence the Scandinavian countries score among the best, with their higher levels of social protection, employment rights and democratic participation in economic decision-making. The reverse is true of the more deregulated, concentrated and less democratic economies of the English-speaking world. The US ranks particularly low, with only Slovakia below it. The UK too is only 25th out of 32.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=328&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152428/original/image-20170111-4576-1cmq4bz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Economic Democracy Index, figures from 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Cumbers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, France ranks relatively highly. This reflects its strong levels of job protection and employee involvement in corporate decision-making – the fact that the far right has been strong in France for a number of years indicates its popularity stems from race at least as much as economics. </p>
<p>Yet leading mainstream presidential candidates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/francois-fillon-on-course-to-win-french-primary-to-be-candidate-for-the-right">François Fillon</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37994372">Emmanuel Macron</a> are committed to reducing France’s protections. These are often blamed – without much real evidence – for the country’s sluggish job creation record. There is a clear danger both here and in the Netherlands that a continuing commitment to such neoliberal labour market policies might push working class voters further towards Le Pen and Wilders.</p>
<p>One other notable disparity in the index is between the scores of Austria and Germany, despite their relatively similar economic governance. Germany’s lower ranking reflects the growth of labour market insecurity and lower levels of job protection, particularly for part-time workers as part of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/01/germany-hartz-reforms-inequality">Hartz IV labour market reforms</a> in the 1990s that followed reunification.</p>
<p>The index also highlights the comparatively poor levels of economic democracy in the “transition” economies of eastern Europe. The one very interesting exception is Slovenia, which merits further study. It might reflect both its relatively stable transition from communism and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and the continuing presence of active civil society elements in the trade union and cooperative movements. Southern European economies also tend to rank below northern European countries, as does Japan.</p>
<h2>Poverty and inequality</h2>
<p>The index provides strong evidence that xenophobic politics may be linked to changing levels of economic participation and empowerment – notwithstanding the French data. We found that the greater the poverty and inequality in a country, the lower the rates of economic democracy. </p>
<p>These findings suggest, for example, that the Anglo-American-led attack on trade unions and flexible labour policies may actually drive up poverty and inequality by cutting welfare benefits and driving up individual employment insecurity. While the OECD itself advocated these policies until recently, countries with high levels of economic democracy such as Norway, Denmark and Iceland have much lower levels of poverty than countries such as the US and UK. </p>
<p>Far-right populism is on the march everywhere, including the Nordic countries. But Brexit, Trump and the more serious shift to the far right in Eastern Europe have been accompanied by diminishing economic security and rights at work, disenfranchised trade unions and cooperatives, and economic decision-making concentrated among financial, political and corporate elites. </p>
<p>We will monitor these scores in future to see what happens over time. It will be interesting to see how the correlations between economic democracy, poverty and voting patterns develop in the coming years. For those looking for answers to the crisis in liberal democracy, this may well be it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71172/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The project referenced in this piece is based at the Universities of Glasgow and Nottingham Trent and received funding from the ESRC. </span></em></p>
New measure of 32 countries’ economic balance places UK and US near bottom of the pile.
Andrew Cumbers, Professor of Regional Political Economy, University of Glasgow
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.