Capital, Privilege, and Political Participation
Joe Greenwood-Hau (2025)
British Academy Monograph (Liverpool University Press). DOI (open access): 10.3828/9781836245902
Online Appendices (supplemental to appendices included within the book)
Capital, Privilege, and Political Participation examines how privilege and people’s perceptions of it relate to their involvement in politics. It treats people’s stocks of economic, social and cultural capital as indicators of privilege as well as resources that help them engage with politics. It also argues that how people perceive privilege in society, their own lives and politics matters for their political participation. Using survey, interview and focus group evidence, the book shows that capital and perceptions of privilege do, indeed, relate to involvement in a host of political activities. Whilst political participation is a normal if not daily feature of many people’s lives, having more economic and cultural capital is associated with being more politically active. Perceiving the role of privilege in society is also linked to higher levels of participation, whilst perceiving privilege in politics is unsurprisingly associated with being less politically active. Questions abound about how, if at all, capital and perceptions of privilege are causally related to political participation, but the book concludes that getting involved in politics is a distinguished activity. Efforts to tackle these inequalities in participation should, according to the people who participated in the research, centre on outreach activities by political institutions, more extensive and consistent citizenship education, and the active opening up of politics to the population.
Capital, Perceived Descriptive Representativeness and Competence, and Voting in India, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
Joe Greenwood-Hau (2023)
Working paper. Pre-registration DOI (open access): 10.17605/OSF.IO/WFKPA. MPSA Conference paper available here.
Abstract: Whether voters feel that politicians are like them is an important factor in vote choice and has implications for public views of the efficacy of the political system at large. There is often talk of a gap between voters and their representatives, in which the politicians are described as ‘not like us’ and ‘out of touch’ with the electorate. An important sub-literature has shown that social alienation on the basis of class can shape how people vote and whether they vote at all (Carnes and Lupu 2016, Vivyan et al. 2020, Heath 2015, 2018). However, the extant literature has overlooked a wider conception of the three forms of capital that are related to class and other factors: economic, social, and cultural (Bourdieu 1984). This paper addresses the possible role of these forms of capital in politics by testing their effects on voters’ perceptions of candidates. It deploys conjoint survey experiments fielded to representative samples in India, Poland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom to test whether candidates’ incomes, acquaintances, and cultural tastes affect how they are perceived by the public in diverse contexts. Specifically, it investigates perceptions of the descriptive representativeness and competence of candidates, and whether these mediate the relationship between capital and vote-worthiness. As such, the paper sheds light for the first time on whether stocks of economic, social, and cultural capital affect how candidates are perceived by the public.
The same fieldwork also underpins a future working paper, titled ‘Candidate Capital and Self-Perceived Status in India, Poland, Sweden, and the UK.’ Pre-registration DOI (open access): 10.17605/OSF.IO/NGD4E
The System Works Fine: The Positive Relationship Between Emphasis on Individual Explanations for Inequality and External Political Efficacy
Joe Greenwood-Hau (2021).
Frontiers in Political Science online. DOI (open access): 10.3389/fpos.2021.643165. [Appendices (PDF)]
Abstract: This article addresses the largely overlooked question of whether explanations for inequality are related to appraisals of the political system. It posits a positive relationship between individual explanations for inequality and three indicators of appraisals of the political system: satisfaction with democracy, political trust, and external political efficacy. Individual explanations for inequality are a form of system justifying belief and constitute part of a wider ideological view of the status quo social order as just and defensible. This positive view of the functioning of society may flow over into appraisals of the political system, imply a positive disposition towards high-status groups including politicians, and remove the motivation to blame the political system for ongoing inequality (which is instead seen in a positive, meritocratic light). The relationships between explanations for inequality and appraisals of the political system are tested for the first time in the United States, using 2002 ANES data, and in Great Britain, using data from a survey fielded in 2014. The results in the United States show few consistent or significant relationships between explanations for inequality and any of the appraisals of the political system. However, the results in Great Britain show consistent, robust, and statistically significant positive relationships between individual explanations for inequality and external political efficacy. The inconsistency in these results may stem from the differing temporal and national contexts of the surveys. It is also likely that the ranking measures of explanations for inequality in the GB data distinguished respondents for whom individual explanations are particularly important, who have a less negative appraisal of external political efficacy. However, more work is required to investigate the effects of question format, the impact of national and temporal context, and the causal direction of the relationship between explanations for inequality and appraisals of the political system.
Privilege and Participation 