Inequality in the 21st Century

The London School of Economics & Political Science

London, UK

July 02 - 04, 2015

The papers on this panel address the distributive politics away from taxes and transfers, both in the form of education policy and labour market regulation-- the `new' and `old' politics of predistribution. 

Haberstroh examines stratification and choice within school system reform in the United Kingdom and Sweden, and argues that the politics of coalition-building with different parts of the middle class can explain the different trajectories of these two countries' reforms.

Lopez examines variation in the decentralization and marketization of schooling in Scandinavian countries. Variation on these dimensions is explicable with reference to the interaction between government partisanship and the fragmentation of teachers' unions. 

Mabbett, in contrast, considers `old' predistributive policy in the form of minimum wage institutions, but again with an eye to union organisation and cohesion. The paper argues that the structure of delegation affects whether corporatist participation reduces inequality or reinforces insider-outsider divides.

Finally, Busemeyer considers the trade-offs involved in new predistributive investments in education, investigating individual preferences over spending on education rather than social transfers, and finding a strong role for individual membership in (potential) recipient groups.