Politics of Inequality
Written by: Zaineb Belhassen
As democratic societies, we aim to realize our common goals which we perceive as favorable for the public interest through maintaining an inclusive representation in the framework of policy making. Although, if we take a thorough look at what is happening around us today, we will quickly notice that every time we try to take a step forward, we find ourselves back at square one or in face of new issues that hinder our attempts of realizing welfare and social equality. And since it is unlikely that our elected policy makers are unable to lay the groundwork for a more equal, all-embracing society, it is assumed that there exists an imbalance regarding different parties’ influence on our politics.
As economic inequality is continuing to grow in democracies around the world, we cannot help but shed the light on the greater capability of economically powerful individuals to influence the track of policy making than those with lower income. Implying that as economic inequality increases, the representation gap between the poor and the rich will subsequently enlarge.
The question here to ask is what strategies are being used to implement this influence? And what is its impact on the less influential part’s engagement in decision making?
As the economic gap is growing, it is becoming more urgent that we wonder about the mechanisms by which money influences democratic politics. The obvious and commonly agreed upon answer is that simply through the transfer of their capital resources, the wealthy elite can turn the balance in their favor, usually at the expense of labor or those who are economically disadvantaged. This idea of economic imbalance translating into a political one is generally evident, at the very least, enjoying financial security can provide you with higher quality of education and access to political awareness raising means, or simply buy you more time to pay attention to politics.
However, direct financial funding as a way of redirecting policy have not been proven affective, as studies on lobbying and campaign donation showed that even the wealthiest lobbyists fail to obtain significant policy-related achievements. Plus, political parties or candidates often receive donations from their allies, that is parties or individuals that already agree with them politically.
So that leaves us wondering, what is their strategy?
Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong direction and should have taken a better look on what is not being passed rather than what is being passed.
If direct power is about putting an issue on the policy agenda and having your solution approved, then the opposite is equally as important. This process can take place directly by lobbying against a certain issue to be displayed on the policy agenda or at least by crowding a certain issue off the agenda by assigning it at the bottom of the list of priorities.
The difference is that the first form of power is practiced in a more open and direct form while the second is more secretive, consisting of strategic gatekeeping decisions that reinforce the rules or norms that prioritize some issues over others. It is therefore a way to direct legislative attention away from matters they find disruptive in relation with their interests or threatening for their status quo, meaning that matters like a downward redistribution of wealth would be kept off the agenda.
So in societies where economic inequality creates a grave concern for the majority, the logical direction for the legislative attention is to focus on safety net policies where more equality is guaranteed, whereas in reality, according to data by the Comparative Agendas Project which uses a uniform coding system to track the amount of legislative activity around different policy areas over time, higher levels of inequality are associated with less legislative attention to those policies. This is certainly associated with the idea that economic elites relatively control the process of decision making by crowding out certain policies from the agendas of policymakers.
By this point we have a representative body that indirectly, mainly serves the interests of the economic elite.
From here we can accentuate on the fact that economic inequality, backed up with the indirect imposition with the “bourgeois values”, creates a representation gap which consequently creates some form of political alienation resulting in social anxiety among members at the bottom of the end of the wealth and income distribution scale as they do not feel heard nor seen and their concerns and troubles unaddressed. Broadly speaking, the more socially and economically unjust the society is the less politically engaged its citizen body and the poorer one in relative to other in society, the less likely one will participate as it is seen as “unnecessary” since “it would not make any significant change”, a sense of despair is sensible.
This phenomenon is defined by Sigmund Neumann as “the conscious rejection of the whole political system” which can be defined as apathy because one sees no possibility of changing anything in the system.
By contrast, we can take an example as a proof of the validity of this theory as social democratic states with comparatively low levels of socio-economic inequality like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have ones of the highest and most stable levels of political and civic engagement of all OECD countries.
In conclusion, socio-economic injustice creates a chance for the economic elite to transform into a prominent political power resulting in an underrepresented majority of citizens and low rates of aggregate participation. Here, we find democracy stripped of one of its fundamental goals being social justice as they are structurally considered inseparable.